Doughboys - Delta Sky Club with John Hodgman

Episode Date: January 17, 2019

The 'boys are joined by author and actor John Hodgman (Vacationland, Judge John Hodgman) as they journey to LAX to review Delta Sky Club, an airport lounge reserved for high-paying customers. Plus, an airport-based edition of Snack or Wack.Want more Doughboys? Check out our Patreon!: https://patreon.com/doughboysSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In 1924, amidst a bull-weavell infestation that threatened Louisiana's cotton crop, area agricultural scientist Colette Woolman and BR Code approached the Huff-Dalind Aero Corp with a novel solution, dumping insecticide from high altitude via the still young technology of aviation. And so was born Huff-Dalind Dusters, which would gradually morph from a local crop dusting operation into the world's second largest commercial airline. In 1929, Huff-Dalind Dusters renamed itself after a region in nearby northwest Mississippi to account for its new focus on passenger service.

After reconfiguring its operations to build military planes during World War II, the company expanded nationwide in the 50s, launching a spiderweb of routes across the country along with other legacy carriers. And it was in this era that the competing airlines launched a war on the front of customer comfort, leading to cushier seats, more accommodating interpersonal service from flight attendants, and the proliferation of the airport lounge, where food, drinks, and relaxation were provided to airline's most elite clientele. Following American Airlines' lead with its Admirals Club, in 1958 the company launched

their own version dubbed the Crown Room. Given the thin margins of airline corporations, the industry collectively settled on a model of improving service where more profitable first-class and business travelers, while degrading service for budget-conscious coach passengers, as far as would be tolerated. And the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 only ratcheted up the stratification, leading to airport lounges becoming ever more luxurious and exclusionary. After the 9-11 attacks led to a series of increasingly onerous and invasive security procedures, making air travel more time-consuming and unpleasant, the demand for the on-the-ground

oasis of the airport lounge has grown. And with the economy becoming increasingly divided between the haves and the have-nots, the exclusivity of the airport lounge has become part of its appeal, a way for the power traveler to avoid having to fight over a seat in the terminal with the masses. In 2009, the regal branding of the Crown Room seeming stuffy and antiquated, the airline redubbed them with a simpler, more contemporary name, and has continued to increase the number of its lounges while upgrading its existing ones. Today, the formerly Huffdale and Duster's boast 50 lounge locations at airports across

the globe. For years, its famous slogan encouraged prospective passengers to, come fly the friendly skies. But how is their service on land? This week on Doe Boys, the Delta Sky Club. Guys, welcome to Doe Boys, the podcast about chain restaurants. You set a very ASMR episode. It absolutely. I mean, because we're here.

We'll give some context for what's going on in a second here. You can absolutely be talking. I'm Nick Weigar alongside my co-host, Big Trouble and Little Caesars, the Spoon Man, Mike Mitchell. You know, I like that one. That was a good one. The very creative courtesy of at Zane Hopkins 23 on Instagram, if you have a roast you'd like me to use on Mitch at the top of the show, roastspoonmanageemail.com.

Mitch, happy 2019. Happy New Year to you. Happy New Year to you, Nick. You're dressed insane right now. I mean, we should say that this is a time capsule, right? This is, yeah. We're not really in 2019. We're not really in 2019.

Are there any predictions you'd like to make? You made the prediction that Hillary Clinton won the election, which bummed everyone out when the episode played. Way too confident. Way too confident about that. So any 2019 predictions so far? Yeah. My 2019 prediction is that Hillary Clinton will be present.

They're going to swear in with the new Congress. You actually yourself look like the creepiest politician. You're in a suit and tie. Yeah. You're closely talking to the microphone. Right. You look like a full-on creep, like Ted Cruz level. Oh, boy.

It's not what I'm going for. I don't look like Ted Cruz. That's the vibe that you're giving off. I feel like I look like a very presentable businessman. Thank you. Thank you. Why are you guys whispering? Because we're scared.

It's weird. Let's introduce our guest, an author, actor, and comedian from The Venture Brothers, a podcast. Judge John Hodgman. Not John Judge Hodgman. It's a very difficult name to pronounce. Judge John Hodgman. It's a great podcast name.

And his book Vacationland, True Stories from Painful Beaches, is available wherever books are sold. John Hodgman is back. John, thank you for your time for us. Hello. Thank you. Look, I know it's too early for me to come in. Not at all.

There should be at least 35 minutes of you guys before. We skipped something. Here's a thing, because we don't have headphones, so we can't hear it. But Mitch, of course, you have to give your drop. Yeah. Howdy-ho. To Spoon Nation. And here is a little drop that none of us will hear.

So hopefully it's good. But if you said it, then somebody could take one, Nick said it, and sync it up together. Here's a treat that'll put you on cloud nine at Dairy Queen. Flamethrower sauce, melted pepper jack cheese, jalapeno bacon, and lettuce tomato, and a bun. Fuck! Why did you say that all? Yeah.

You were told you to do that. What do you think? There's like a crowd outside of your house, Amel? Hi guys, Mitch here. That drop was courtesy of Moses Goldfarb. Hi, Mr. Spoon. Here's a short drop as requested by Paul Rust on the Dairy Queen episode. Hope you enjoy.

Fuck Weiger. Hey, I'd like to cut of your jib there, Moses. Atgrilled underscore onions on Instagram. Thanks buddy. And now back to the episode. There it was. Wow. That was crazy.

I can't believe you played that in the Delta Sky Club. Yeah, you said no one was going to hear it, and then it played over the PA. I know, it's really weird. Everyone's heads turning. They interrupted the jazzy music. Yeah, somebody was like, what's hot salad? We had to explain it to them, and they just still didn't like it. Let me bring everyone up to speed.

We're in the Delta Sky Club at LAX, where we had to immediately stop and explain what the drop meant to every person here in the club. Which by the way, a pretty crowded Delta Sky Club here today. It's a Tuesday night. John, you're about to hop on the Red Hour across the country. Red Hour. Red Eye, boy. They produced birthday boys, the TV show.

I'm not talking about Ben Stiller's production company, guys. Calm down, deadline. You're about to hop on the Red Eye across the country. Yeah, I'm going home. And so we decided to meet you here. We're at the Delta Sky Club. I could not be happier. And we're recording a podcast just kind of tucked away in a corner.

And we decided we decided a different volume than normal. Nick M and I decided we're going to fly to LAX and not get on a flight. We're going to just come here for the fun of the podcast. We just came to the airport for the thrill of it. I could not be more pleased. I could say it does take pressure. I mean, obviously there's no flight for us to catch, but it takes a lot of pressure off that drive, which is a terrible, always a terrible drive.

But Nick, I was getting through security. You're on some sort of list, I'm sure. No, I'm got TSA pre-check. There's no list that I'm on. They've pre-checked. They know what you're up to. And they approve of it. They whisked me through.

I did have to take my shoes off because apparently these leather shoes I'm wearing, these dress shoes have some sort of metal element I wasn't aware of. And there is a fuse coming out of each one. Let's see what that talk. When Mitch was referring to Nick's outfit, I also was taken aback by it because I was walking through the regular walkway down below this guy club where garbage people live. And all of a sudden I hear, John, John, I turn around, I see Nick Weiger, but you're wearing a very nice blue suit, a red tie, a little Madras check shirt.

Right. A little purple lavender color there. Purple socks, Donnie Osmond over here, and also some brogued leather dress shoes. Is that the term brogued? Brogued, yeah. Okay. If I had to make a guess, this is the outfit you'll wear to my funeral. And his own.

And my own. I'm getting buried in this. At first I didn't see you and I'm like, oh, that guy's going to sell me a timeshare. I thought I was just approaching you randomly in an airport terminal. That happens all the time here at the airport. Yeah, you just get sold timeshares, someone recognizes you and thinks they have a fish to reel in. Oh man.

I'll tell you at this point, so few people recognize me that if someone wants to sell me a timeshare, I'm like, let me sit down with you. Where do you say Croatia? I'm interested. You know, as you went bearded, I think you're so known as like a clean shaven guy. And now you get that beard, you kind of look a little more incognito. Yeah. I guess I just wanted to test whether the world would still love me if I looked even

worse. And message received world. Come on. You look, you wear that beard well, as does my co-host, Mike Mitchell. Mine's a little unruly right now, I understand that, but I'm going to trim it up in the next week or so. I think you could use a trim. Wait, no way.

Everyone who's listening is like, what is going on? Right. Everyone's mumbling. There, there's a weird jazz combo in the background. Yeah. And can you hear, can you hear us? Can you hear the jazz as well? I can hear you guys.

I can't really hear the jazz. Hang on a sec. You know. You gotta scoop up. Bop, bop, bop. Pick it up a little bit for sure. Bop, bop, bop, bop. Now that would be a true Sky Lounge power move.

Nick's going to get on the table after so it's scatting people. The ball is like on a three of 10. Do you think Double Reed had anything to do with this music that's playing right now? Oh, right. Yeah, I know, right? I don't hear any oboe on this. Yeah, first of all. There's very little jazz oboe.

First of all, it's bassoon. Oh, whatever. Big oboe. Big oboe. Can you guys see the weird looks you're getting from the people who are walking around? Have you guys seen it? Are we really in strange looks? It's just everyone just kind of staring.

You know what? I feel like I was going to be dazed. I think we were getting, Nick and I were getting a few of those before the podcast even started. Right. So it's a little subdued. Yeah. Right.

And here's like, I'm... But high energy. I'm really, I'm really grateful you guys are here because this is, the Sky Club is a big part of my life. Wow. It's a big part of my identity as a, as a diamond medallion member for this particular airline. Diamond.

Which shall not be mentioned. Sure. You know, right? They, they ruined a diamond to make it a medallion for me. Wow. Yeah. And you went to great lengths to be here. We have a view of...

But what's really weird about it. Like, so I was just saying before we started recording, like, I feel like I know you guys really well because I listen to you every week. A frequent caller to our audio feedback as well. Yeah. But that is also a one way communication. Which I take advantage of. Yeah.

But, you know, it's been just a little bit more than a year since I sat down and ate Arby's with you. Has it been that long? Yeah. I looked at that. Where does the time go? November 20th of last year. Wow.

I think I recorded it. I feel like that's crazy to me. So as a, as a fan, first of all, I'm like, you're, you're my, you're my friends. But you guys haven't, I've been hearing you. You guys haven't heard me for a while. That's not true. It's almost like a walkie-talkie. I mean, like, or not a walk, but you know what I'm saying?

When his voice, his call ins, it's just a little delayed interaction between us because then we respond to you. That's right. Sending you a message. Yeah. It's a great little check. Here's the deal. Everybody's listening.

We're all nervous. We're all off our game because we're afraid we're going to get kicked out of the skyline. I feel like I'm doing better than I usually do. Yeah. This episode was like an 11 out of 10 of our standards, but like, I don't think like, so as a fan though, I'm listening to this and I'm like, all right, did you even credit the guy who, who roasted Mitch? Oh, I did.

I did actually. Oh, you did? I just couldn't hear him. He said, Hopkins 23 on Instagram. Okay. Good job. That person. I hope you're, I hope you're satisfied with that.

I was Insta. Can we, can we, can we, can we just talk about what we're, can we talk about the beautiful picture? There is, you got, you got baggage carts going all over the place. There's planes coming in and out. It's the train. It's the planes. There's planes.

Do you say trains or planes? There's planes. And automobiles. And, and automobiles. We're missing, we're missing the train part of it all. Oh my God. I'd be in heaven if a train came through here. What?

What, what weird element of your personality am I learning now? I'm a train enthusiast. Do you not know this about him? Your train spotter? Yeah. I like it. Well, not a train spotter. Really?

Yeah. Are you like Diamond Medallion on Amtrak? Oh boy. I wish. No, I don't, I don't, I don't traverse the country, but I use the, the, the light rail that's now in LA. The LA Metro's got it very nice. Which he calls it Nick.

What do you call it? You call it the choo-choo. The choo-choo. I like to hop on the choo-choo. I mean, it doesn't have an old-timey train horn. I wish it did. Never mind. Hang on.

Let me wave someone over. Can we get them out? Hi, Diamond Medallion here. Putting this two on a choo-choo. There is, there is no train that comes into LAX, Nick, so you had to, you had to do the ride in yourself. Not yet. 2019, 2020, and should the connection, the connection should be happening.

Yeah. Really? Yeah. A lot of big changes. The silver line should be coming from Crenshaw. Yeah. That's very exciting. Very exciting.

And you have to understand that this, this Delta Sky, I'll say the name of the airline now. Right. This, this sky club is inter, intermediary sky club. Interesting. Because it's a stop gap. Wow. Right.

Several years ago, two years ago, they started moving all of Delta over from one terminal to this one. Yes. While they build up a brand new terminal. Right. Okay. The, the one that, it was insane because I, I was flying back and forth a lot for a TV show.

And that's how I accidentally got into this dumb video game of Delta Miles. Right. Because I was just racking them up and I was, I was jumping in status and getting free membership to this club. Yeah. Frequent transatlantic flights. That'll do for transcontinental. Not transatlantic.

Not transatlantic. Thank you. No. I'm not, not, not Rob Delaney. It wasn't a BBC show, Nick. Yeah, exactly. I'm not, I'm not Dr. Who. So I, I watched as, as over two or three years, step by step, they built this incredible

pleasure dome of, of delights over at the other terminal. I can't remember what terminal it was, but it was probably three times this size. Wow. The buffet was, I mean, a mile long. They had a full bar with a person behind it and many, many nooks and crannies and easily sanitizable armchairs. Right. Um, and it was, it was a very big deal and it, and they finally finished it and I feel

it's like it was finished for six months when they shut it down and moved everything over here. Wow. All that money just was wasted. Wow. And they're not going to, they're not going to reopen it at some point. We should go break into it. No, they're, because they're building a whole new, I, I don't know the, the, uh, geography

of this airport well enough to know which terminal it is, but I was just, I was just chatting with the lady, uh, at the, uh, Delta one check-in area because as a diamond medallion they're, they have to talk to me. God man. They live in a high life. And I'm like, what's happening with, is this going to be it forever? She's like, no, in two or three years we're opening a whole new thing with a whole new sky club.

So, Boy, what a future. Hillary Clinton in the white house, you can ride the, ride the light rail straight to LAX and get right in that red, the Delta pleasure dome. So we're, we're in the midst of history. It's very exciting. And I would, I'm going to say right now history's garbage. So we're saying, we're, so we're saying that this is bad, this is a bad experience comparatively.

I think, I think even, yeah, I think everyone here would agree, uh, that this is, um, we're getting there. This is kind of just a long corridor full of, full of complimentary, uh, uh, Kalua and cheese squares. I got a question for you. Please. Will the new Delta sky club have podcast studios for us to record in? I can't, honestly, I can't believe that we're doing this, not only that you would come here,

but you know me, I don't break the rules. Right. I'm a nervous only child. Oh, me too. I'm very scared. And when you, you suggested this, was this something we had joked about doing at one point? I think we talked about, we, we, we'd previously talked about you coming, you reviewing the

Delta sky club. In fact, I think in our previous episode, we discussed that. That's right. And, um, and then we were emailing about you possibly making a return appearance, which thankfully we were able to make happen. And then we just landed on, let's, let's do this. Yeah. I may, I may have suggested it.

Let's just record it here. I think I was suggested reviewing the Delta sky club and my switching microphones with Mitch. We'll see what happens. If he sounds a little different. That's why this one's turned off. Um, that's the other, that's the other weird thing about this edition is that, you know, one of the, you may not realize this, but one of the signatures up to a listener of

this podcast is Nick's maniacal laughter that is completely unrestrained and very loud. And now you have to, you have to bring it down to a low chuckle. I have to tone it down a little bit. It's been so far. There's one person who's, who has been staring at us, but so far, not too bad. You know what's funny is that they, are they, are they, uh, official? Yeah. Are they official?

Are they somebody? No, no, no, not official. Oh, they're just a civilian. Like a, like a Delta Marshall. Well, you bring up the fact that you, you're a nervous only child. Nick and I are maybe two of the most frightened men in show business. Right. Nick is Nick.

I think you could probably our self described coward. Yeah. I'm a coward. Yeah. And me, I'm, I like to pretend I'm not a coward, but I'm maybe even more scared than you are. I will say I'm a coward, but like, like pressure focuses me. So I think if like, if I was in a movie, I'd be like, like, if I was like in Robin Hood's

Merry Men, I'd be like trembling the whole movie and like hiding, you know, behind a tree stump. Right. But then there would be one, I'd have one moment where I'd like shoot a perfect arrow and like hit like Sheriff Nottingham to just save Robin Hood. Like I'd have like that one moment of redemption. So you'd be like the hero? I wouldn't be the hero.

Yeah. I wouldn't be the hero, hero, but I'd be like a, like I'd have a little bit of redemption. You'd be like the sniper? Yeah. I'd be the shaky sniper. I'd be the shaky sniper. But then also you were, this was very confusing because you said if you were in Robin Hood, the movie.

Yeah. Old time Robin, the, well, I'm not being the tale of Robin Hood. Well, that's a legend. I mean, I'm saying your whole thing is that you're in Robin Hood, the movie. Yeah, we don't know that, we don't know that Robin Hood really existed, but we know that movie exists. We know that movie exists. We know they're going to remake it again and again, and we know it at some point they

may be casting a cowardly Merry Man. And I'll be right there. Southern Californian. Yeah. I haven't seen that new Robin Hood have you? It was executable. At least historically inaccurate, right? I mean, I just heard it was just bad, like not entertaining.

I see. I don't know anything about that. You know what it lacks? It was a shaky sniper. Yeah. Could have used one of those. I mean, I was in it. I mean, my scenes got deleted.

Hopefully they'll be on the blue right. You were in it? Yeah, I was in it. Because I thought you, like, I mean, I thought you guys were like, yeah, let's do this. Right. And I was like, well, I don't want to do this, but okay, I guess we have to do it because this is a funny idea. Right.

And I was like, yeah, okay, let's totally do it. And you're like, yeah, well, okay, we all, well, we're going to, and we bluffed our way into it. And now we are totally scared out of our minds that what's going to happen. A Delta Marshal is going to come over and say, please leave. Yeah. We're just like, hey, guys, put the, can you guys put the microphones away and just like talk like, like you can talk at the same volume, but just like be people, don't record

this. I think they may tell us to just never talk here again. They're not, they don't even. They can't do that. I'm Diamond Medallion. It's not because we're recording. They just know we're the hosts of Doe Boys. Can you guys just stop doing this?

You're on a watch list. Yeah. You're on a podcast watch list. Yes. Now, Nick, you, first of all, how was your experience getting through? We did do TSA pre. Do we do your TSA pre-check, which I'm curious is, did Emma, because sometimes if you're part of a party, we all arrive separately.

Yeah. I got pre-checked. You got pre-checked, too. I thought I didn't. I tried to get in the other line and she was like, no, you're pre-checked. Go that way. This is an amazing loophole in the pre-check thing where if you have a party of people with pre-check and there's one straggler who doesn't have it, they'll just give them

pre-check anyway. Yeah, I just got it. It's awesome. It's like, it feels like a problem. Kind of a bad loophole if you ask me. It feels like a flaw, yeah. They didn't even question the huge bag full of wires that I had. Right.

When I'm traveling with my family, I mean, obviously my kids have not gone through an interview process. Yeah. But they get pre-checked and they're terrible. They should not. Would you rather them go through the security line? Well, they need to learn. They need to suffer a little, right?

I walked right through it. There was no one. There's no one here. In fact, the longest way I had was that the guy, my wallet, and my phone, and my keys were one of those little dogs. They basically have dog dishes now for your smaller things. Right. And the...

What if you took one of those things going through security and you just took out a bag of dog chow and just poured it in? Please do that and let me know how that goes. Sorry, I thought this was what this was for. I had cat food in my car. It would have been the perfect time to do this. I honestly can't see another moment. I had cat food in my backpack.

I had some YAMMics right there. I should have done it. I can't think of another moment when that will be possible for me to do besides today. I'm not going to come back for fun. Yeah, you'll never have cat food in your car again. It's one thing to record a podcast in a Sky Club. It's another thing to prank the TSA. That's not something you really want to do.

This is my issue. My phone and keys are there. The guy didn't even know anything was on the conveyor belt. I was just standing there for five minutes like a fool. You didn't bring any luggage. I didn't have any luggage or anything. Nick, now which brings me to my next point. Nick did bring a carry-on bag.

I did. Well, I had to get my laptop on and I was like, I can stick this in my backpack or you know what? I'm just going to put it in my roll bag. Which by the way looks anew. This has been used. This is, look, it has a stain right here. You can tell it's been used.

Yeah, that does not look new. It's a little worn. How long did it take you to spill something on that? Immediately. I opened the box from Amazon and just dumped a bunch of chocolate milk right on it. Hang on, before I open this box, let me get my Dr. Pepper. But no, I was like, you know, we're going to do this exercise. And I was like, okay, well, I'm not actually traveling, but I want to feel like I'm traveling.

So I'm like, I'm going to get a roll bag. I'm going to, because I'm going to have that be part of the experience. And I also decided to, you know, I'll just give myself a little backstory. And did you also feel like you were breaking the law for some reason? I did a little bit. So I was like, I felt like I was going to get caught and I wasn't even doing anything. It's totally what we're doing is totally on the up and up. We bought refundable tickets.

I actually told Delta basically what that we're just going to plan to go through. What do you mean you told them? I DMed Delta. I had a DM conversation. I slipped into Delta shirt. I slipped into DMs. What? I'm going to say the only DMs he's ever slipped into how now this is happening now.

Yes. And I'm very happy it is. It's a blast. But how this is not spawn con for Delta, that's crazy that we're not getting a lot of money right now from Delta. We should publish the text chain that happened while we were figuring this out. If we, I'm mad now, let's stop. Let's not say that word again.

Okay. We won't say the name of the airline. Which by the way, we spent like $2,000 on tickets. It's okay. There's a premium. Okay. Yeah. We're going to get that money back.

I don't know. You already tipped your hand to the Delta Twitter account, sorry, the airline Twitter account. Now they know. Now they're looking for their records. I think we'll be fine. I think we're going to be fine. So what happened when you wrote them?

I just wrote them. I was like, hey, we want to just go through. Can we just go through, check in, go to this, like, I didn't mention going to the sky clip. I was like, can we check in with refundable tickets? That would be too far. But even after we check in, if we don't board, can we still get a refund? And they're like, that's a great question.

I mean, I guess so. Like they're basically, I guess they hadn't encountered that before, but yeah, you can check in and not board and still get your refund. Well, yeah, but of course, because if you're getting a refundable ticket, you're not going to try to get the money back after you board the plane and take the trip. Right. It's only if you have an emergency. That's why you can't take the trip.

It just must be pretty rare with a situation where someone checks in, like they get to the airport and then the decision is made. I see what you mean. Like, once you check in, refundability is at the window. Yeah, but that's not the case. You can still get it full refund and hopefully we're going to. We were checked in when I, when I print out my boarding pass. Yeah.

So we'll see. Oh, a bunch of Patreon money is getting flushed down the toilet. Why didn't you buy just like El Chippo tickets? That's that was my, that was my idea. We thought about that flush the money down the toilet. We thought about that. But the thing is, I think based on the refund fees, it's still cheaper for it to do what we did.

Buy a ticket to Boston. That's right. Nevermind. I think still cheaper. I don't know why I asked. I'm sure that you have a spreadsheet where you can compare it every possible. The pros and cons. Every possible timeline.

It's spreadsheets right up here in the old noodle. I'm sure you thinking it over was like Dr. Strange looking into the future adventures. Just have 14,800 possible outcomes chose the one where we get the biggest refund. I have an idea. I think that so we, it's a, there's a layover. Just as a flight to Boston. Yes. Nick, I think I should fly back to Boston for good and you should, and you should fly

to New York and start a new life in New York city without my wife. I mean, she'd be happy, but she'd be very happy and I also don't have any of my stuff. My PlayStation four is at home. Didn't you say you have your laptop in the carry-on? I got my laptop. You got a suit. I got a suit. You didn't bring your PlayStation four in your carry-on.

No, I should have. I should have back to just in case. So I said to you, like, I was so impressed because you look very dapper. I have to say. God bless you. What a nice thing to say. You're dressed up. Yes.

You look good. You look good. But I was like, you are well overdressed for Sky Club. Yeah. I thought I'd be like about the median dress level. You truly do look like a junior member of the house of representatives. And you know, the, the, the Cretans who come in here are, you know, like the, the business class travelers.

Yeah. They're, they all dress like garbage. They're all elastic waistband. Oh man. Business guys. Right. Yeah. Nick, you kind of look like Tom Hanks on the end of Big when he shrunk back down and

he's wearing a suit, except you also do look old at the same time. Now that's only because Nick is hunched over because he's terrified of revealing to the world that he has a microphone. If you were, if you were sitting up prop, that's, that's a well-tailored suit. It looks good. It fits me decently. Well, yeah. It looks good on the neck.

Jackets may be a little size too big, but I've lost a little bit of weight. Um, yeah. Oh wow. I never mind. I'm not trying to brag. I know it's fine. I was trying to think about this. Oh no, no.

It just comes to you naturally. You weren't trying at all. I got it a few years ago. I wasn't conscious. Where'd you get it? Where'd you get it? This is a J crew. I'm pretty sure.

Yeah. That's pretty good. I like it. Classic American suit. Yeah. I threw a barn jacket on that and I'm not going to follow through with what I was going to say. Very collegiate was what I was going to say.

Oh, okay. Yeah. You look like a member of the Young Republicans club. Yeah. Maybe you got a little, a little packet of a hypnol somewhere. I really don't like that my default look look like I look like someone with an R next to their name. I don't like, I feel like I like, I wish I looked a little bit more like my politics,

but I just, I accept that I, I look just so milk toasted. Yeah, but you should, you should lean into it. Yeah. I mean, yeah. I'm saying infiltrate. The Young Republicans are like, this guy's too lame, this fucking dork out of here. Nick, I also got to say, I got to point out that Nick did this very nice thing. He bought all, he bought three middle seats on the plane.

Oh, wow. Yeah. Which is a nice, nice little gift. I knew those seats were going to be vacant. So I was like, well, me and Mitch and Emma, who's here, I figure we get them these little seats for. It's a little holiday miracle. It is a holiday miracle.

We're like a, like a silent benefactor to all those people on those three rows of that plane who are not going to have anyone in the middle. Right. I hope that works out. Which is huge. Or we're just separating some married couples. Right. They can move next to each other.

That's true. I'm sorry, my child, you must sit way back by the, you're not allowed to sit next to me because Nick Weigert needs to sit here apparently. Like, mommy, why, why do I have to sit in the bathroom? Mr. Weigert is, we're waiting for Mr. Weigert. He'll be here any moment. There's one thing airlines need to stop doing is making children sit on the toilets throughout the entire flight.

Nick, maybe a married couple will move closer together and maybe, hey, maybe someone's going to be joining the Mile Hawk High Club up there because of you. Oh, the Mile Hawk Club. Boy, I'm not comfortable with that. What? Do you don't want that? You're not comfortable with it? No, I'm not.

You're not comfortable with the idea of that? A married couple having Congress in the air? Not in the plane. Why? It's their life. I just think that's... Come on. I'm a long married person.

We have to keep it interesting. Is that the secret? There are a lot of secrets. I gotta learn some of this. Are you a member of the Mile Hawk? I haven't been in an airplane in your life. I'm barely a member of the Ground Zero Club, the Ground Zero Club, C-Level Club. Ground Zero Club?

Like you go to the 9-11 site? Weirdly I am a member of the Ground Zero Club. Oh, boy, Mitch. That was in poor taste. But that is a thing, though. I'm sure. I'm sure it is. Yeah.

Oh. The Ground Zero Club? Yeah. I've never been there. I've never been there either. I've been to the memorial. You've never traveled, of course. You've been there.

I have been. That was the one, the reason they made a trip to the memorial. How are you shaming him for visiting the 9-11 memorial? I've been there. That's a good point. That is very nice of him to go. I was in New York for the Delclos Marathon, and so I decided, like, oh, I'll take a little trip down there and take a look.

And the thing that I was, and this is, I guess, just a thing that happened at every restaurant. You'd do anything to escape the Delclos Marathon? Exactly. Any excuse? I gotta get out of here. I'm gonna go visit the site of the worst tragedy in the nation's history. Yes, and I'll be leaving now.

So I watched like a 7.30 AM Herald, and then I went down to 9-11, which, by the way, perfect time. Have you ever wanted to improv comedy at 7.30 AM? First thing in the morning. And then, and the thing about it is, and I guess this happens in a lot of historical sites now, but there's just so many people taking selfies and just like not like, not with any of this kind of, maybe the seriousness that you would expect for like a memorial, just kind of like, hey, here I am, you know, and just like, oh, that's, that's just like

what culture is now. I mean, it's like a big judgment on it, but it's interesting to see. That famous photo of the teenager taking a selfie of herself at Auschwitz. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I think there's just a lot of that that goes on now, but I was curious. Did you take a selfie? Yeah, did you?

Selfie? Yeah, I did. Hangin' out at 9-11, what up? So I'm curious, John, as a frequent traveler, I had a few queries I wanted to ask you. I am extremely ready for this quiz. You're taking, you're taking the red eye. Is that your preferred flight time? Do you like to fly overnight?

No, no, not particularly. Not necessarily, that's just, just necessity of this particular time. It happens from time to time. This was not, this was a, I was at a wedding this weekend and then because it was in the LA area and I hadn't been here for some time, I decided to go and see some friends and do some podcasts. A lot of fun. It's hard for me to be away from my family, so I sort of took the red eye to make a full

day of Tuesday without spending another night. That's nice. And my initial thought was I would arrive in New York City at 7.30 tomorrow morning and then go home and see my wonderful family, but because of reasons I have to immediately fly to Columbus, Ohio, which was never anyone's plan. Yeah, it's a little curveball. That's all. Anyway, we won't talk about that ever.

Discussed it with you off mic. Can you catch, and sorry, Mitch, I do want to hear your question, but can you, are you someone who can sleep on the red eye? I can give some shots. That's what I was about to ask, Mick. Oh, there we go. Same page. Because you're going to be tired tomorrow.

Yeah. I've taken the overnight flight a little bit. You know, I'm much older than you are. No. That's not true. I'm considerably older and I'm considering it a lot. But I have reached a point where I just, that fabled, like, I don't sleep that much anymore.

Right. Oh, interesting. So, like, five hours is a good- That's enough for you. That's a good one for me. Boy. If I can get it. And also, there's, like, it is very common for me to wake up in the mid, like, say one

or two a.m. Right. And be awake for two, three hours. That doesn't go back to sleep. That happens to me as well. Except I don't go back to sleep. And you know that that's a phenomenon that is known as second sleep. Oh, interesting.

To break up the night that way is biologically very, very common and ingrained in us. Right. And before the invention of electricity. This I have heard about. I think we're going with this. Did I hope I didn't talk about it last time? No, no, please. I only have a few tricks.

Yeah. Yeah, that there is a thing called second sleep where before the invention of electricity, people would go to sleep earlier. Right. They would go to sleep with the sun. Yeah. And they would routinely wake up from, like, midnight to three. And that would be a normal social time of wakefulness.

You just sort of hang out with your family. You wake up. You do a little work. Right. You smoke a corn cob pipe. A lot of fun. You look out into the darkness and consider the enlightenment. Or you go and visit with friends.

And that was weirdly erased from history once electricity was invented. Yeah. Let's bring it back. You've never seen it in, like, a period drama or anything. You've never seen it in, like, a little historical fiction. No, but it's still like Shakespeare scholars. And Marlowe, the contemporary of Shakespeare, Shakespeare mentioned second sleep a lot. Oh, interesting.

And people just didn't know what he was talking about. And then it was later they discovered that intentional communities that do not have electricity, like the Amish, for example, it still happens. They still do it. Yeah. Wow. And once you accept that you're not a weirdo, but it's time to be awake for a couple of hours in the middle of the night, it's much more relaxing.

Hey. Because you think you feel terrible. Right. Like, I should be asleep. But in fact, your brain is like, nope, be awake now. Yeah, that's fascinating. And I read a book. And I've come to really enjoy that period of wakefulness.

Because when that happens to me, I get so frustrated because I'm just like, I wish I could go back to sleep. Embrace it, Nick. You got to embrace it. I guess I got to embrace it. I guess it was coming over your house tonight at about 2, 3 a.m. Yeah. Oh.

Hello, Proctor Nick. I'm here for a visit. Shall we play a game of drafts? It is I, Goody Mitch. For me to do this, I would have to have been given Nick's address at some point, which I have never been given. Right. Yeah.

Okay. You know what? The Della Club at Starna, it's thinned out quite a bit. It's thinning out. I think we were here for a rush. We're chasing them away. Right. You know what?

There's a great back corner, but there's one person over there in it. That couple. So you remember biceps from before? Yes. Okay. So he's, I don't know where he went, but there's a woman over there now, right? Oh, wow. Does she also have big biceps?

No, no, no. But they were on my flight out here. Oh. Wow. Yeah. That's a great thing when you start recognizing people from the air. Yes. Yeah.

I don't like that. Don't want to make friends at the airport. Friends are off limits at the airport. Yeah. I'm good on friends in general at this point. What is your number? You got it covered? Yeah.

You don't need it anymore? Yeah. All right. Usong, Joe Saunders. Uh-huh. And that might be in your wife. Yeah. I mean, she's, from her perspective, it's like tenuous.

But yeah, about three. When was the last time you took an airplane? Uh. Excuse me. I apparently made him very uncomfortable. Yeah. For sure. We had an allergic reaction to that question.

Uh, the, no, I flew fairly recently. I went to Las Vegas, our good friend John Gabrielus. We ran the half marathon. Oh, yeah. Congratulations. And so we did. Thank you so much. So I fly a few times a year, but it's usually for something work related.

It's usually I got to go to New York for work, or I got to go to San Francisco for Doughboys, which we'll be doing later this month at the SF sketch fest. Oh, yeah. Sure. I'll see you there. Yeah. Oh, that's gonna be fun. We'll also be going to Saskatoon this month.

Oh, God. Look out for that. Oh, well, I have a question about that. Yes. But first of all, when, when is this going to air? This episode will be out. I actually wrote this down for you because I know you have a little tour. This episode is going to come out on January 10th, 2019.

Oh, perfect. So I know you have some things to plug. Listeners to the Doughboys podcast, please consider coming to see me, John Hodgman and my co-host, Jesse Thorn, as we do a little mini tour of the American Northwest and Los Angeles centered around our appearance at sketch fest will be in Vancouver, then Seattle, then Portland, then San Francisco on the 18th of January, and then Los Angeles. Very cool. See, you guys do it.

You're smart. Yeah. So we're going to do a sketch fest flying, coming back to LA, then flying up to Saskatoon. Saskatoon to Saskatchewan. Saskatchewan. Yeah. In January. We, you know, there's this lovely festival that asked us to participate in, and we're

very excited to do it. It's lovely. But we, and, but it's our, it's our second show in Canada. We did one in Vancouver, and we made an announcement like, oh, the Doughboys are going to Canada. We're going to Saskatoon. Everyone was mad. Everyone was mad. What are you talking about?

I'm really mad at us. It's like the equivalent of like, the Doughboys are going to the U.S. We're going to Oklahoma City. It just like seems like it's so far down the list of... Not even that. Yeah. Is it really? Is it that remote?

It's like, guess what, everybody? Your favorite thing from another country is coming to the United States. Get ready. Bismarck, North Dakota. Oh boy. No, no. Look, I've never been to Saskatoon, but I've been to the provincial capital of Saskatchewan, which is Regina, and it is a remote place, a lovely but remote place.

So we're going to a more remote place than that. Yeah. But I feel like Saskatoon might, I don't know what the deal is there. Right. Is it, is the capital the biggest city or is it, or is maybe Saskatoon more of the population is there? We're going to find out. Even if it's the biggest city, Saskatoon might have a tourist destination there, or a thing

you slide down on skis or something like that. Sure. Whereas, you know, like, it might be like Regina is Aldony to Saskatoon's Lake Placid. Yeah. I was in Lake Placid for the first time for a wedding. My friend Miles got married to his lovely now wife, Laura. And Lake Placid, of course, is where the 1980 Winter Olympics were. That's right.

Yes. I didn't think about it this much, but it was, someone pointed out, it's like kind of the last time a small town got the Olympics. Right. Do you know what I mean? That's awesome. It's so competitive now. It's always these big cities and so forth.

And no one, like, people go back to Lake Placid, it's a lovely town. But when you drive in, especially on a kind of like, a wintry, like, wintry mixed day like this, you're watching that woman walk away from us in anger? No. I think she actually was a person who didn't mind us more than anyone. Oh, okay. She was smiling at moments. Oh, okay.

Good. Yeah. All right, good. I actually started doing American Sign Language. I think she was deaf. I think that was the issue. Oh, perfect. So that's why.

Yeah. She was unbothered by the Doughboys podcast because she was incapable of hearing it. We passed the first Delta test because a guy with a tray came around collecting stuff, walked right by us. I feel much, I feel more like I can speak a little less. He definitely clocked us. He clocked us. He saw we were up to something, but he was, I guess he was just more, more curious about

it, less bothered. Yeah. Should we have gotten him on? This is one of those things where, like, this is, we know, we know that we are not doing anything wrong. Right. Nor are we doing anything disruptive. We're not.

We're talking in a normal, we're talking if anything in a subdued volume because we're self-conscious. Right, exactly. I've heard D-bags in the Sky Club, much worse than this, but there is something, in every cell of our bodies, we are rejecting this transgression. We're scared, but I have a death grip on this microphone. My hand is turning red. Well, I thought we had to because Emma told me I had to hold the microphone really tightly.

Otherwise they make weird noises, although I think they're making the weirdest noises, but I fixed it. Oh, okay. Good. Of course, mine makes the weirdest noise of all. I was just loose on the inside. Oh, but I was going to say about, like, classes, I was driving up solo through this misty wintry mix, and all of a sudden, these two massive, basically abandoned ski jumps emerged

over the horizon. Wow. And I felt like I was playing, like, a weird video game. That's great. It was intense. That's terrifying. Relics from the Olympics. No, no, they were just built last year.

Oh, they're just there. What do you think the story is? Oh, my God. Sorry, Jesus. You're going to rake me over the coals. I thought maybe they're there for hobbyists, maybe they're there for vacationers. They may still be used, but they felt, they felt very Silent Hill. Right.

I got you. By the way, I don't know. I've never played Silent Hill, but you know what I'm talking about. That vibe. I know it. I do know it. Do you know that my least favorite Sky Club member has left, so I'm much more relaxed. The guy who was giving us a look.

Which one was that? He came in late, and he was kind of, I think he was more, like, confused by what this was or anything. I think that's, I think that's probably the majority of, even, even if people, like my mom knows that we have a podcast, she's still confused by it. It was kind of a look like, like that, but he scared me more than anyone. You know, Lake Placid, I saw the movie with my friend Joe Tormey in the Braintree Cinema. Is that the one with the big Gator?

It is with the big Gator. It's a lot of fun. Paul said one of the, I kind of feel like one of the last Bridget Fonda movies. She retired from acting. I know. Yeah. I am in love with her. She's a great actor.

And if she's listening, I think my wife will be fine with my saying, I will leave my family for you. Your wife will be okay with that? Yeah. Well, we're both big single white female fans. Okay. All right. She, she, she was so great.

If I had to guess, definitely listening to the dubois podcast. Probably. My friend Joe Tormey, we, we snuck some rum in. We were, we were, we were maybe not of age, not a good thing to do. And we watched Lake Placid and we had a, we had a, a ball. We had a great time. We were some, oh, maybe though, like two or five people in there. I don't know.

I'm not sure how it holds up. They still make it. They made a sequel just recently. It's a CG Gator is the thing. It's like, so I think like the 1999 CG may not have aged well. Yeah. Betty whites, Betty whites got like a fun partner, right? Yes, she does.

Yeah. She, she, she basically, should you spoiler alert? I will never see this movie. She at the end is like feeding a bunch of baby gator. Like she's like feeding the gators. Oh, she's like mama Voorhees. She basically, but I don't think she did. She meant for them to kill people.

I don't know. She could still be in it. She was the little old lady in, in, in Lake Placid when it came out. She could still came out like 20 years ago. It's incredible. It's incredible. It's crazy. Betty white is incredible.

Really. Yeah. Right. American treasure. I've never seen her on an airplane. Have you ever seen a famous person on an airplane? Yeah. I told Nick this when I was back for Thanksgiving.

I saw, uh, should we, should we, should we pause for a moment? Yes. I think, I think we should. All right. You know, yeah. Hey, everybody. I was suggesting we pause so that I could shake out that garbage bag a few more times. I thought you were just taking in this cool, uh, jazz groove we've got going.

Well, I'm going to say this. There's Dave Rubeck. It is a Dave Rubeck vibe. Yeah. There's, there's jazz music, but it's also times Christmas meet because we got some holiday music. Oh yeah. That's what it is.

It's just not a Christmas song, but it feels like it's turned into a jam of jazz. Do you have a favorite Christmas song? I just, I said one of mine today to Nick, which is mine is, uh, do you hear what I hear Bing Crosby's version of it? Oh yeah. I just, you know, I was at, I was at this wedding over the, over the weekend up in Solvang, California. I've been there.

Yeah. Which is a, which is a wacky town. It's a little Danish. It looks like an old timey. It looks like an asterisk comic book up in there. It's bizarre. The, the UCB's West coast comedy, like the ultimate comedy festival for that, which never repeated.

Look, some people have misophonia. They don't like to hear the sound of chewing on the mic and everything else. I cannot stand the sound of this guy shaking out garbage bags. He is rustling it like crazy. He is rustling the hell out of that. I feel like this might be a stealth tactic by Delta Marshals. Like, well, you know, they're not doing anything wrong. I like the fact that we, they're technically not breaking the rules.

Yeah. They're wrestling garbage bags so loudly that they can't talk. No one tells us, no one tells us to, I would like it if no one told us to stop doing what we're doing. But you told the guy working to stop wrestling the bags. Are you just slammed the top of that garbage belt down? He's really mad at us. Well, all right, we're getting there.

What were you talking about? Now we are. Now we are favorite. Yeah. Bing Crosby. Do you hear what I hear is one of my favorites. Specifically Bing Crosby. Yeah.

Oh, I heard. I heard that. On the PA while I was shopping at the Sockloft. Oh, all right. Another sponsored content moment that I shouldn't have given away for free, Sockloft, give me some money. Oh, wow. Sockloft.

Insolvent. Insolvent. Just only Insolvent. Give Hodgman some money. You don't give any money to us. This episode of the Doughboys is brought to you by two completely comparable organizations, Delta Airlines and Sockloft in Solvang, California. Maybe Sockloft has the same amount of the Sock sector that Delta has of the airline sector.

You never know. Sockloft is just a funny visual, too, that all the socks are up in the loft, basically. Yeah. I guess it works. No, we're laughing very hard at this visual. So you. So you, I liked it, too. I like it.

I like it. All right. Loft. What are the other things, so there are huts in terms of store structures. Yeah. You got your radio shacks, your sunglass huts, your pizza huts, your Sockloft. There's a ski chalet that's near my place. Oh, right.

I've seen that a little bit. Or there's also, wait, isn't there also a sports chalet? Am I wrong about that? Swiss chalet is a brand of sneakers, I feel like, or maybe a fondue dip, Swiss chalet. Yeah. There's also, there's always your houses, the International House of Pancakes or the House of Nanking. Right.

Right. Oh, House of Nanking in San Francisco. It's fantastic. Which is taking me there. I brought him there for the first time. Oh, fantastic. See you there at Sketchvist. Oh yeah.

Hell yeah. Well, Nick, you'll go again, right? Oh my God. That would be a blast. There is, I can think of one pit. Yeah. Wait. What pit are you thinking of?

Pita pit. Oh, yes. Pita pit. Which I saw, I know there are more than one of them, but I saw it at the Mall of America. What is it? A Swiss chalet? Oh, that's not. It's not.

It's a rotisserie and grill. Rotisserie and grill. We should know that. We fucked that up big time. No shit. Wow. We really messed that up. You know what?

That's the point of coming to the airport. You're living between worlds. We're learning more than that. You know that everyone, when you, if you fly into a place and you have a layover in that state. Yes. Arizona, Missouri or whatever, you are not officially in that state. You cannot say that you have visited that state.

Right. So, airports are at a dimension unto themselves. I agree with that. I agree with that. They're a good thing. I agree with that. This is a good time to expand our knowledge and learn about Swiss chalets and other things. I agree with that.

I was trying to think of the ones that aren't used or should be used. Like should there be like the chocolate crib or the, the, uh, well, like crib. Chocolate crib. Chocolate usage pretty recently is like a, as a new, as a new slang term for house. Like that's within the past 20 years. Right. I didn't mean it that way. I meant it as a little crib, but maybe that's weird.

Oh, like a baby's crib? Yeah. I don't think you should be giving me infants chocolate. The chocolate cradle. Chocolate cradle is good. Yeah. That's good. Like I'm in line down in our chocolate cradle and you dumb baby.

That's good. Cause there's lounges used, I'm trying to, porch. Is there, is there, is porch to use often? Porch. My heaven rather. Turkey porch. Turkey porch. There you go.

Why not? You know what? TM. Too, too much? No. Trademark. We'll take a break. We'll be back with more Doughboys.

Welcome back to Doughboys. We're with John Hodgman in the sky club of an unnamed airline now at Los Angeles international airport. LAX. Thank you. Thank you for fulfilling in that detail. I just want to point out that this is, John, have you, have you, have you, have you ever always had like a hard time getting to and from it?

It's a very, it's a tough airport, I'd say it's up there with JFK as yeah, but because JFK is my normal experience and I've traveled through LAX quite a bit. I'm used to it. Yeah. Yeah. I hate, I hate coming to this airport. You know what? If you ever, you ever like think about, you just go to one of those peripheral LA area

airports. You go to like, I think you go to Bob Hope. I do Burbank occasionally, but then it's always so much more money. I like to do, I'll fly out of Long Beach and that's, that's a lovely airport. Wow. Very SoCal surfer of you. Long Beach is, Long Beach airport is great because they've only got four terminals. That's right.

It's very modest and you can get right, just get through security so quickly. It's a breeze. And the only carry on is your longboard. Exactly. Yeah. And baggage claim is outdoors. Yes. Which is nice.

You've been there. Yeah. I've been to the Long Beach airport. Wow. Okay. Well, you know, I am, as I'm established earlier, very elderly. And there was a time when I think it was only flew into Long Beach. That was how JetBlue was established.

I remember that. Yeah. You know what? That, that actually reminds me because you asked if you, if we'd ever seen celebrities on flights. Yeah. I have. I've seen the biggest one was Margo Robbie, Nellie, Nellie clocked.

She saw and refused to let you look. Yeah. She covered your, she covered your eyes. But the other, the other celeb, Benji Madden and Cameron Diaz on JetBlue in sitting in JetBlue Mint as a couple. I was like, that's very exciting. Alumni of your high school. Alumni of my high school, Cameron Diaz.

I, I, I said this, right? I told you that I saw KC Affleck at the baggage claim for Ed at Logan, uh, after, after Thanksgiving. And then, uh, I've, no, I've seen someone else. I've no, I've seen someone else famous in first class on a flight and walked by them. And then, but I forget, I forget it. I, I, the biggest one for me was Kurt Russell. Whoa. That's exciting.

Not, but it was, I was being, it was when I was doing the Apple commercials. Right. In first class, which was insane. Yeah. And I didn't understand what was happening. Right. And it was even more surreal that Kurt Russell was on the flight. That's amazing.

And at that time in first class on American Airlines, there were two, four, six, eight, nine seats in first class. So two, four on each side. And then one right in the middle. Oh, weird. And that's where Kurt Russell was in, in basically in like the, the enterprise captain's seat. Right.

And boy, oh boy, was that dude handsome. Yeah. That's a hell of a sighting. But then I was, I was reminded because of Long Beach. I was a long time ago, probably the early 2000s, I was flying back from Long Beach and I was checking my bag in and I was behind, um, Barry Williams in line, Craig Brady. Very cool. That was not the first time I had seen him.

Wait a minute. I think I saw Barry Williams on a flight too. Really? I think I saw Barry Williams. Were you on the same flight, Nick? Yes. No, John. Yeah.

No, no, it wasn't the same flight. This would have probably been 2003 or four. Not the same flight, but this, this would have been later. You would have probably been five at the time. Yeah. This is hard for me because the joke with me is that Nick is always, is, is an old man. I am older than Mitch. He is.

A couple of years old. A couple of years older than Mitch. Yeah. A few. I'm, I'm 38. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not a young man. I'm, I'm happy with my age, but I'm not a, I'm not a youthful man. That's fine.

You act like I'm a Korean War vet. I'm, I, I'm, uh, Howard, like you, I'm an, oh yeah, I wouldn't immediately cover myself with a dead body. No, yeah, I'd be in North Korea doing propaganda very quickly. You know what? You, you could still do that. That's my fallback plan at this point. It's still a career choice.

Yeah. Hey, look, I got broadcasting experience. I got a suit. I look like a young Republican. You could, you could, you could probably go into North Korea and claim to be a third Trump son. Right. You know what I mean?

They'd buy it. Yeah. Don Jr. Eric and Nick Trump. If I turn on the TV, if I turn on the TV one day and you and Dennis Rodman were staying next to Kim Jong-un, it would, it would make my, it would be a dream come true for me. I think I'd get to meet Rodman. Man.

Yeah. You'd meet him. Of course. The worm. Yeah. Let Hall of Famer. This is your chance to see Rodman on a North Korean plane. So who do you see?

You saw Barry Williams. I saw Barry, I'm pretty sure I saw Barry Williams. Also maybe, I don't know, I was, it's too far to say it was on a jet blue flight, but I, I pretty sure I saw Barry Williams on a plane because I was, I was thinking it was a Brady Kid and it wasn't the, it wasn't the other one, the middle one. Mike, Mike, looking land? Yeah. It wasn't him.

It was that Bobby. I can't remember. It wasn't Christopher, right? Isn't Christopher one of them? Christopher Knight. Christopher, it was not Christopher Knight because he was on the surreal life. Right. That sounds right.

No, it was not him. It was the other one. The, the eldest. The eldest. Yeah. Barry Williams break. I saw, we both saw Barry Williams on a plane. On airplane.

Well, you're exciting. That's how he travels. But I had seen him before because I worked at the video store when I was in college. Okay. And I had rented movies to him. Wow. Because he was in the touring company of the musical City of Angels. Right.

Okay. And he came in. Did he rent anything good? We can at Bernie's too. Do you think he's listening to this? Um, no. Do you think it's like 70, 30 that he is? Do you think Barry Williams is pouring a glass of wine for Bridget Fonda right now as

they listen to the Don't Boys podcast? In a Swiss chalet somewhere? Wow. He came in. He was really nice. Uh-huh. And I'd gotten a call from some woman that I'd never met, a young woman. Like we're in our late teens, early twenties.

And, uh, she calls and our, our, our, this was in New Haven. I went to Yale. Yes. And, uh, the video store was called Film Fest. And I answered the phone. I like Film Fest. And the, the young woman goes, Film Fest, this is Sam Goody. And she worked at Sam Goody down the road.

Right. Record company. And I'm like, oh, okay. It's very cool that you're, it's like, this is Galactica actual. And I'm like, how can I help you? She said, uh, Craig Brady's on his way. And he had just been there and asked where he could write movies. And she had given them directions.

Wow. A heads up. And so she called to give me a heads up. And sure enough, a few minutes later he came in. That's interesting. And he's like, where is your, where is your classic section? And I said, over there. And he went and.

And then he screamed. The Brady Bunch is in here. He turned the shelves over. The Partridge family, mother fuckers. And he rented the Oxbow incident. It's the only reason I know that there is a movie called the Oxbow Incident. I've heard of the Oxbow Incident. Yeah.

I don't, anyway. And he's like, do I, I guess I need to open an account. Do I need to show you idea? I'm like, no, you don't. And, uh, he's like, oh, okay. I get it. And I was like, I really like your work. He said, thank you very much.

And he was kind of looked a little uncomfortable. He's like, um, yeah, also is there an adult section? And I was like, oh, no, oh, no, Craig Brady, I understand your urges. Shattering the myth. But it's not that. It's just we didn't, I had to explain to him that we had had one. Right. We moved up the street.

It just was not, we weren't making any money off of it. Yeah. And I told him to go over to best video, which I think is still in business probably because they have porn. Um, but it was, I just felt so like what, what it would be like, this was obviously way before the internet. Right. That's the only way you had to get pornographer.

You had to go to a store. If you were a known person. Yeah. Wow. You had to go into a video store and just humiliate yourself. Right. Wow. That's a bad form.

Yeah. That's rough. The Cox O incident. All right. That's pretty good. I think that's pretty good. You looked at me with a double pun in there. I would say that you looked at me very angrily.

I was trying to remember the name of the original movie as a thing. I was trying to like, like, what was it? It was an ox, ox, bow incident. The ox bow. Yeah, that worked. Yeah. Cox O was good. Yeah.

That's good. The ox. Oh. Oh. And maybe incident I should have changed. It almost sounds like a 90s band. We got to talk about the Sky Club a little bit. So I've been there.

I guess so. I've been there. I just like hanging out with you guys. I'm having a blast. I'm having a blast. I'm having a hoot. But you know those pedants on Twitter are going to lose their minds if we don't actually live the format of the episode.

I would say that Nick has kept the same volume. I feel like I've come up a little bit. Yeah. You've kept the same. Am I still a little muted? Yeah, for sure. But I think that's okay. Yeah.

I'll say this. Nick, there are showers here. You mentioned that. Yeah. You mentioned that. Nick mentioned that he was maybe going to shower. I was going, ideally going to get here early enough where I could take a shower and review that.

Have you ever taken a shower at a Sky Club? I have. Yeah. And it's good. Yeah. It's an okay shower. Yeah. Yeah.

It's good. I mean, you know. Step up from a gym. Yes. I would say so. A shower room. That's huge. The water pressure is fine.

Mm-hmm. Temperature good. You have the bright feeling of profound transgression that you are taking a shower at an airport. Right. That none of this should be happening. That's very true. And, you know, the downside is that if you're doing it sort of on an impromptu basis, maybe you don't have something fresh to change into.

Right. You know what I mean? But if you're a season traveler, you bring a robe and pajamas with you at all times. Yeah. That's a good move. So, boy, I don't have to learn. But, you know, like for, well, that's, maybe that's why you brought that carry-on bag. Yeah.

Do you have a spare J.Crew suit in there? No. No. All you got in here. More sponsored content. I just realized. J.Crew sock loft. Delta.

You're out of business, but you lost money. Barry Williams. We're hitting everything. Cameron Diaz. Every, every Bridget Fonda. Bridget Fonda. Every place in person who won't pay us a single cent. And we don't want it because the dough boys can't be bought.

Well, the Judge John Hodgman podcast is available for sale. But are you going to do it or are you going to take a shower? I don't think so. It's pretty amazing. I would like to. I took it because I didn't get a great shower today. I took a shower at the pool after I swam some laps. That pool shower is not great.

I think, I think Nick should go in and shower in his suit. Yeah. Then see. Even then, even then you wouldn't be kicked out. I could walk out soaking wet. Imagine what they've seen here. Exactly. Imagine what they've seen here.

Right. Yeah. Barry Williams drunk out of his mind. Reciting lines from the oxbow. I mean, it would be funny for him to hear that someone revealed that he got a porno, 20 or something years ago. Right. And for him to be like, what the fuck?

Like to be pissed off about that. You were supposed to keep your mouth shut about the Cox O incident. I'm going to write about it in my new book. What's the new book? It's called Medallion Status. It's very early stages. I imagine that's the final title. Yeah.

You might need to work on that pitch a little bit. I mean, it's a good title. I don't already sold it. Asshole. What the hell? Oh, Jesus. Okay. I'm sorry.

Get the showers. Can I remind Nick for just a second here? Nick, you're a guest up here. You don't belong in this place. That's true. Well, we should talk about part of the- No, no, no. You have a gold American Express card, not to reveal too much of your privilege.

I do have a gold Delta card that I used to buy my way in here. But you get two guests in for free because of your status. Until the end of this year. Until the end of this year, and then they're changing their policy a little bit. The thing is, I have not traveled enough this year to maintain my diamond status. Are you going down to platinum? I'm going to go down to platinum. Wow.

Wow. And I may show myself. I mean, don't do that. That's too far. I know that it will probably traumatize my wife and children. I mean, definitely. But on the other hand, what is there to live for if I'm a platinum? That's terrible.

Terrible. You might as well shred the card itself. I think it's an overreaction. You might as well shred the card as hang yourself in the shower in the sky club. Again, they would be fine. They'd be unfazed. They've seen it before. They've seen everything here.

Because you understand that airports exist, I would say 70% to be a place where airplanes can land. Yes. And 30% to be a place where people can drink at 8 a.m. in the morning. Right, exactly. It is a place of transgression. One of the few socially accepted places where you can have alcohol that early today. It's cuckoo. Yeah.

Well, let's talk about this a little bit. Food, right? Yeah. So we got, I've been to the sky club once before. I went to the one at SFO, which is a little nicer than this one. It's very nice. They have a bar service, which is a big part of it. They have bartenders, which they don't have here.

This is an interim situation. It's not ideal. I'm aware. Well, that'll be a caveat. Nick is in his hustle mode right now. He wants to get all the information out. We're doing fine. We're doing fine.

We just got to touch on a couple of things and get to our critique. But I would just say, I do like that this drinks yourself serve. There's a lot of options. There's hard liquor. There's every type of wine. Not every type of wine, but there's, you know... There are 500 bottles of wine here, everybody. You got your cab Franks.

You got your cab... I couldn't even say a second type of wine. Second type of cab. They have a couple of reds and a couple of whites. A couple of reds, a couple of whites and a rosé. They have a tab with about five different kinds of beers. Five different beers. They get coffee tea.

What'd you say? Coffee tea. They get some hard liquor. They get some soft drinks. You got your whiskey, your jins and everything else. There have been times in here when I've seen a bottle of Frenet Bronca. Oh, that's nice. Yeah, right?

I'm a lover of Frenet Bronca. I love Frenet Bronca. It's one of my favorites. Do you ever have it after dinner as like a little dessert drink? Yeah, that's what it's supposed to be. That's ideal. I love that. Settles your tummy.

Yeah, for sure. That's nice. Yeah, I like that selection. I got myself a glass of rosé, which was fine. Just a totally solid... Just like all rosés. Exactly. There's not a lot of variance there.

Mitch, you got yourself a Diet Coke. I got myself a Diet Coke. I want no booze tonight. You got myself a little glass of... That's my goal. You're driving. You're driving. Of course.

I got myself a little glass of... And this nice little... You're not trying to slowly obliterate yourself so you can sleep for an hour and a half. And this... But I also got a nice little fancy glass here. It makes me feel... It's nice to drink a Diet Coke out of a real glass cup like this. Yeah, they get real glassware, which goes a long way.

And you got yourself some whiskey, John. I got... You have a Jack Daniels whiskey. Right. I have to say that the ice service means a little bit of more refreshing. You can use some more ice. Or just a straight-up ice machine would make a difference. Most of the...

I mean, since this is a... As you may know, this is a podcast where we review chain restaurants. Yes. And this is a chain. There's one in many, many... Right. And airports. And this is a little bit of an anomaly because most of them in major cities will have a full

bar with complimentary bar service. Obviously, everything that's complimentary here would be complimentary there. And then you have some upscale stuff that you could get at the bar for a little bit of an upcharge or you pay with miles for some of the top shelf stuff. But this is fine. Yeah, it's fine. It's totally... I mean, it's totally serviceable.

Gets the job done. And if you can get in for free, I mean, it's great. If you can get in, I think, at the threshold that I paid where you have the card and you can get like a bit of a discount, I think I paid $29. It's still a pretty... It's a pretty good value because like the food's not like... Three drinks and some food, I think. Three drinks and some food.

You're sitting pretty. You're getting in for cheaper than you would if you were sitting down at the Chili's too. But I think if you have to pay full price, I'm not... Which I'm not sure what it is. But it's pretty... I think it's about $50 a day worth. I'm not sure if it's worth it there. I think that might be the point where maybe just hang out in the terminal unless you really

need to get away from it all. Well, if you were going to be held up, like if a plane was canceled or you had a delay of three or four hours... That might... This would be a much more comfortable place to be. Exactly. That's a big part of it. There's no doubt about that.

The restrooms are a little bit more private. I didn't go on the ones here, but again, I went on the one in SFO. And yeah, it's just a little bit more tranquil and you got that smooth jazz playing. So as far as food, I got... So they have an array of composed salads. Let's start there. I got myself the shredded broccoli slaw, the shaved celery and Asian pear, and the kale and strawberry.

I'd say they were all solid and all tasted the same. There was maybe a little bit of... They were just very different takes on a shredded salad. I would say maybe the shredded broccoli slaw had a little lighter dressing. But overall, they were all just like the same sort of mushy shredded greens that had been sitting in a sweet dressing for a sweet vinaigrette for a while and kind of soaking that up. What did you guys think of the Cabo Salads?

I got myself the California Cobb. John, did you get that as well? I did not. I got... Well, I didn't have any of it until just now. You talk while I try this some shredded broccoli slaw. The California Cobb, I got an egg in there, I got some beets and then some lettuce, but I didn't get any chunks of blue cheese, and then I didn't even see the dressing until

I went up there the second time. Was it on the side? It was on the side, which was kind of confusing in that. So that kind of... A little bit of a let down on that. Then I had some of the quinoa, Nick, and I thought the quinoa was good, it was tasty. Not bad. Yeah.

It's all an array of sort of fairly trendy, healthy foods. I appreciate it as someone who does not like to eat a lot of carbs, that there's a lot of low carb options. Yes, there really are. And one of the secrets of... And I will also say that, again, compared to other Sky Clubs, this is a fairly limited offering. Right.

And I'll be blunt with you. As a Diamond Medallion Mender, I can afford to be. Food's gone a little downhill in the past five months, I would say. Yeah. Because there was a time when they were killing it. Right. It's basically like a soup plantation, but one little stall, one little hut. And you've got...

They're giving you an intentionally modest plate so you don't over serve yourself. But the secret is that they do offer a lot of condiments. Yeah, there are a lot of condiments. I'm not sure if you saw the Mushroom Mamami seasoning or the Herb seasoning that they had there. They have a big... I've never been in one of these things where they did not have a big thing of sriracha and Tabasco.

I noticed all the hot sauces. As well as chopped up scallions and cilantro. So you can... There's a lot of doctoring opportunities, but there's what have really livened up both of your disgusting composed salads. There's one thing that you took advantage of that I did not, that we'll get into in a second. I also had some carrots and hummus.

The hummus was good. I mean, it was standard, but good. Yeah. There's a lot of stuff you can just sort of dip and eat. Yeah. And let's move on to soups. So why... I didn't get any of the soups.

I didn't have... Well, John took advantage of a very interesting... Yes. I did the tomato bisque. Yeah. And you also got a cup of the tomato bisque as well, right? I got a cup of the tomato bisque, and I topped that off with some of that Herb seasoning I told you about.

Mm-hmm. And... But then you did the very interesting thing of the create your own soup. Right. The sky... I think the Sky Broth. The Sky... I think it is called Sky Broth.

I think it's called Sky Broth. Wow. Yeah. Essentially, it's... I mean, and I gotta give them credit. Like, you would not think a major airline that is servicing all parts of the country is going to essentially be putting forward a foe for you to make for yourself. Yes.

Right, exactly. So they have a heated broth with... And then you can top it and put into it rice noodles, chicken, cilantro, and then basil or spinach in this case. Yes. It should have been basil, but it was spinach. Right. John, your enemy came back and stared over us.

Yeah, he does not. He does. He's really thinking about dropping a dime or wrestling another loud bag. It was very... Like, he was making a pursuit. I thought he was like a step away from saying something, and I was like, oh boy, this is going to be our first, like, conflagration. Nick looks like he went into the showers with the suit on because he soaked from sweat.

I started sweating and trembling. I'm doing okay. I recovered. That is very cool to me that it's basically a make your own fah. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah. That's very interesting. I thought, what do you think of the tomato bisque, by the way?

I thought it was tasty. I thought it was good. Now, I mean, there was a... And a quid. There was a spicy Thai chicken soup that they were doing for a while, and I'll be chasing that dragon for the rest of my life. Yeah, that sounds like Danny Lane. That's really good.

Yeah. With rice, and then when I was in New Orleans some time ago, that was a pretty modest sky club, but because it was New Orleans, they had a gumbo, and you could tell that that gumbo had been marinating there for about five days, and in this case, that made it even better. Whoa, I love that. It was a really good gumbo. It's kind of slow, slow burning off.

Exactly. You want that down in the bayou. You want that sort of... Soups had always been like a thing that I really would tell people about. Yes. You know, the tomato soup was okay. I think it was okay. It was okay.

I feel as though an eye has been taken off a ball. Right. Yes. Yeah, but it's interesting just that whole cart over there, the entire food court there. If there is a theme to it, it is kind of Asian fusion. Which in itself is kind of weird and surprising. Yeah, they're kind of leaning on that. You're right.

It is an odd direction. Yeah, it is very modest. It's like the size of a continental breakfast station. There's not a lot of options, and it's a pretty small food court. Like John said, a lot of different interesting things over there, which I can move on to some of the things I got here. So like you were saying, running with the Asian fusion theme, some of the other things that some of the hot items they had.

I got the Asian pork meatballs, the kimchi rice, that was right next to another salad, which was the cucumber gochujang salad. I'm probably butchering that pronunciation. No, that's correct. And the glazed ham sandwich, which is a La La theme. Yeah, that's not. No. That's strange.

Yeah, that was its own thing. I thought the meatballs were pretty good. I did too. Savory? Yeah. And I have to say, they weren't meatballs. Yeah. They were chunks of pork.

Right. Yeah. And it's rare that I've been at any kind of buffet or restaurant where the chunks of pork are that tender. Yeah, they're pretty good. I liked them. I think, yeah, I think they had kind of been stewed for a while. They had a nice seasoning to them.

I think they maybe were meatballs at some point, but were divided into six. And now they look like just sort of chunks of... I'm going to look at one. Chunks of pork. You keep talking. I'm going to examine that. Take a look at that. There's a sphere on the exterior.

Oh, yeah, you're right. Yes, I see your point. Right. It's been sub-divided. Why kid them up is my question. They should just keep them as meatballs. I think they're trying to get people to eat less. Yeah.

I think that's part of the whole scheme here. Right. I got you. I will say this. One of the downsides of this meal, I pulled a long hair when I was basically at the buffet out of my meatballs. It was a very long hair. I don't even know if it was actually a human.

It might have been some sort of some other thing. Well, an employee did come over and tell you, sir, just so you know, that is a pube, which was, I thought, very odd. And then why tell you? Then weirdly took it and put it back in his pants. Yeah. Just very... Do you...

Do you... Every mind, may I? Thank you. Every part of that interaction was odd. We've forgotten that. I think that hair is the most excusable thing, weirdly, because I actually think that if it was a bug, it would ruin my entire meal, and that is almost even probably just as likely to happen.

Right. And bear in mind, it's hard to blame that on the employees, because this is an open trough of food, with the most meager of sneeze guards above it, that is being visited by hundreds of people from around the country and the world. We are all very sick now, I mean, truthfully. Nick and I welcome that. We welcome a great plague to our battle of humanity. Yeah.

Sure. Why not? What is the Steven Soderbergh film? Contagion? Oh, Contagion. Yeah, we use a Contagion. I more lean towards a Simian flu. This is a soft reboot of Contagion.

Yeah, this is a Contagion sort of thing. Backdoor pilot for the Contagion the series, the podcast. I like the Simian flu from Planet of the Apes where the apes take over. I like that end game. Oh, yeah. Well, let's let a Caesar sort of have an ape renaissance for a new Planet of the Apes. Yeah, that new trilogy. That's good.

Check it out. Check them out if you haven't seen them. I saw the second one. I haven't seen the most recent one, which is Everyone Loves. The realest, recent one is good. Yeah. I mean, they're insane movies. They're absolutely insane.

They're enjoyable. But they still work somehow. The Simian flu broke out. You'd be swapping spit with every monkey in the zoo, I'm sure. I'm trying to understand because I don't know the plot. Is it that he would want to get the Simian flu so that he would die? Yeah. So that he would be inoculated to it so he would live or just so that he could kiss

apes? Oh, no, because, well, I mean, I guess that is a part of it too, but I just, I think that Nick wants to die. Yeah, that's a bonus. That's a bonus for Nick. But he wants to die. No, yeah. I want to die and then let the apes grow super intelligent and take over.

So the, I will say that the meatballs were nice. The rice, I thought was fine, maybe a little, maybe a little on the sour side. I mean, that's just like the nature of its flavoring. But that was fine. I think the fear with that rice is just always that it can dry, you know, it can dry out. It wasn't a little dry. Right. That was actually probably if anything a bigger issue.

And I would say a little, a little under-seasoned too. Yeah. That's, I think all of it, because this is going to be a lowest common denominator situation. Right. It's all going to be under-seasoned and I only give them credit for giving you the option to really up-season it. Right.

But if, in that case- Basically, I put two gallons of Sriracha on everything. Oh, yeah. That would have helped. I mean, like, to be honest, I think if they're going to go that route, I would have rather had some just white rice and a rice cooker and let us just like, let's just, let us like, it's a goddamn whole food. Exactly.

Yeah. I got you. I don't know. Glazedham sandwich, I thought. Yeah. That was the one I wasn't going to try. I didn't want to eat that bread. The bread was not great.

It was like a little dry. It's like a, kind of like a, what do you call it? Focaccia. Yeah. Like a focaccia sort of bread, cut into real small sandwiches, American, just straight up American cheese on the bottom, which I like American cheese. I'll go and get the American cheese out of all those sandwiches and leave the rest behind. I love American cheese, but in this-

Just leave the skeletons of sandwiches behind. Exactly. I'll go and buy the trail of my dead. But it was trying to exist between worlds where it was both like this. It was like a, sort of like this plus-up, like higher end glazedham sandwich. Yeah. There was an interesting, there was an interesting aioli on it or something. Yeah.

Yeah. But I didn't think it was terrible. I thought it was fun. Yeah. I think maybe. Yeah. Good call. I didn't think it was terrible.

It was terrible. It was kind of odd. Yeah. And then I got, I got, they have like a little cheese and nuts plate. I got myself in a little Oshago cheese, some dried apricots, nice snack stuff. I think the grapes on that, on that plate looked a little grim. They were a little suspect. Yeah.

I avoid those grapes. That means a little attention. Yeah. Yeah. Was that, was that what the cheese was? It was a- It was an Oshago, yeah. Okay.

And then I also got some, because I got some of that. And then I also, the Oshago, I wasn't going to try to say it, Oshago. I think I made one too. Or Ikea too. Or Ikea. Or Ikea. Oshago. Oshage.

Oshago. Oshago. Oshago. Oshago. Oshago. Oshago. I got some of the Oshago cheese and then I also got some of that cheese spread that had black beans in it.

That was a weird spread. Yeah. That, I couldn't figure out what that was. I'm going to say it because that, because there were little pieces of pita basically over there. Yeah. Right. I took a piece of that pita, put some of that spread on and then the, what the rest

of the pita ate the Oshago cheese, but what the spread was, the spread was, the spread was good. Wow. The spread was actually a nice surprise. So those, for a minute I thought that there were blueberries in there, but there were black beans. That's what it looked like. I thought it was sweet.

Yeah. In like cream cheese? Cream cheese and chives, I believe. Bizarre spread. I've never heard of such a thing. It was, it was, it was a strange spread. You liked it? I did.

I enjoyed it. Do you think that's something that someone just sort of improved in the back? Sort of kind of seems like. It may have been, they've never, they may be having their own Del Closed Festival back there where they're cooking up crazy ideas. Can I get a suggestion for something to mix with cream cheese? I heard black beans. Okay.

I'm going to figure this out. I enjoyed it. It was good. Tasty. Tasty dip. It looked bananas. Or spread. But I'm glad you liked it.

I tried it and I, I didn't care for it. Oh, okay. Because, because even looking, looking at it close up, I had taken it on my plate. I'd scrutinized it. Still didn't know. Put it in my mouth. Still couldn't figure it out. Was it just overwhelming?

There's too much ambiguity. Overwhelming cream cheesy taste or? Uh, well, you know, today I tried, uh, for the Judge John Hodgman podcast, someone wrote in, uh, someone's favorite snack is cheese with peanut butter on it. Oh. And. I've heard of people doing this. And the, the, the dispute was whether that was good or bad.

We, we might say a snack or whack. For example. Right. Yeah. That is a very fair snack. And so I, I tried some and it was not good because it was just a, it was just pure. And I, all I want to ever eat is salt and fat, but there's like two highly like rich substances smashed together and then shoved into my mouth.

But like, thank you. Like those cheesy crackers with the peanut butter in between them. That's a classic snack. Oh yeah. Of course. Yeah. And the captain's crackers. Right.

Yeah. Oh, come on. That's good. We've, we've, we've talked about it before, but the in, in the old, like in the old, and this is, I feel like in like 1930s or something, the peanut butter and mayo sandwich, which is such a weird thing that they put mayo, mayo with peanut butter on a sandwich, which is right. Was it?

Some people mentioned that. Yeah. It's very strange. Because I can't remember what context. Or is it butter? No. It's, it's peanut, someone specifically said peanut butter or mayo. I don't remember something we talked about on the show or not.

Yeah. Or if it was something that we got from our, from our comments, but it was very strange. All right. I'm going to give that a try. Are you really? Yeah. Of course. I love mayonnaise a lot.

Me too. It's a huge mayo thing. I like it too, but the PB mayo combo scares me. It seems like a weird combo. Yeah. It's weird. I also say that Sky Broth is gross sounding. I meant to say that before, but Sky Broth sounds disgusting.

It sounds like a Zelda food. There's some brand, there's some branding issues here. Right. Zelda food. Yeah. Who are the, who are the, the Rideau people make Sky Broth for you and you go to visit them. He chose the, he chose the bird like creatures that he, he, he got it.

You got it. You got it correct, Nick. What they were called because they're the ones that are new to Breath of the Wild. Um, I also got the chocolate chip cooking the brownie, both fine, just completely serviceable desserts. Yeah. How about the brownie was all right. Just in very small pieces once.

Very tiny, very tiny portion. Yeah. I mean, I think that if you're a person who's looking for a meal, you're going to be disappointed. It's tough to fill yourself up at one of these, but you can get enough snacks to tide you over for a flight. Um, if you're, if you're a natural grazer, this is your spot. Right. For sure.

For sure. But, and I'm such, I'm something of a graze seeker. So. Let's get to our final thoughts on, uh, on the Sky Club for the sun named Erroline. I think we should keep John long enough so he can see his flight take off from here. Yeah. Wait a minute. Yeah.

We've got to get close to wrapping up here. Oh my goodness. Yeah. Okay. So let's get to our final thoughts and then we can get you out of here. Uh, it starts boarding in 10 minutes. Oh my God. That's fine.

Everything's good. So let's, so, so you know the drill, John, uh, we'll sort of give our, uh, give our closing arguments on, uh, much as someone would in front of a judge or closing arguments on this particular chain and then, uh, assign it a fork rating from zero to five forks. Uh, you're our guest. We'll begin with you. Oh, I have to start. Well, first of all, welcome to my house.

I've been in many of Sky Clubs. It's been a delight. Uh, I think we should do this out of diamonds, by the way. Okay. Zero to five diamonds. Zero to five diamonds. That's right. Diamond medallions.

Yes. Um, I have spent some, uh, meaningful time in these clubs over the years, um, because it is such an exclusive club. I can't always have my friends with me. I'm not, I'm not like I'm leaving them behind, but usually I'm alone and wishing desperately for company. So the fact that you guys came to join me here, uh, and you as well, Emma, it's very, very meaningful to me.

Thank you. God bless you. It's been a really fun experience. Had so much fun. And it was up to the ambiance dramatically. This is one of my favorite trips to the airport of any trip I've ever made. All right. I'll take that as an insult.

The faintest praise possible, um, but I also feel a disappointment because my house is not at its best right now. This is an interim version of the club. Yeah. I also feel, and I, and I say this with great respect, uh, Delta, um, please do not take all my miles away, uh, but the food has gone a little bit, the attention to food has gone a little bit down. Um, there's still a lot of innovation that I've seen over the 10 years that I've been,

you know, haunting these places like a weird middle-aged ghost. Uh, I think that the, like, the fact that they have a cucumber gogu-chung, uh, salad and that they're, they're, you know, they're doing their version of, uh, even though they're now calling it Sky Broth, which sounds like creepy and like, like an avian emission or some kind. Uh, I think, I think it's pretty, it's pretty remarkable for a, for a, uh, a multinational company and certainly a, uh, you know, a, uh, a major, uh, uh, corporation in the United States, um, to be sort of experimenting in that way.

They're taking some risks. Yeah. And, you know, I know that Sriracha is the law of the land now, but it's still, it's still exotic in a lot of places. Yeah. I think that's great. I really wish they would bring back that, um, that, uh, spicy, uh, uh, Thai chicken and rice soup.

Sounds delightful. I think they should take that gumbo and, uh, you know, just, you know, uh, price it to sell everywhere. Um, but, and I thought that those, uh, pork meatballs were very good. I went back to those and I had them again, but through the lens of you guys visiting, some of the stuff that I thought that I liked and now realize is kind of run of the mill. Yeah. And, uh, I don't think that this is either Sky Club at its best and even Sky Club at

its best is probably not as good as it could be. Right. So I'm going to go ahead and give it, um, I'm, I'm feeling two and a half, two and a half lower than I expected. Just for old times sake, two and three quarters, two and three quarters, diamond medallions. Wow. Interesting score from John Augment. Like I wouldn't, I never would have thought that, uh, I would leave this exclusive light

jazz paradise and go below to where the Morlocks dwell. Yes. And hit like Barney's Beanery. Right. Exactly. For a huge meal. But now after eating with you guys here, I feel hungry for more. Yeah.

Yeah. I'm a little, I'm still a little bit hungry. Yeah. Hopefully you can get some, some more proper, uh, entree on that flight. Yeah. I'll probably, I'll probably hit, I'll probably hit something on the way out on the downstairs. I'm, I'm probably going to get an outburger at Del Taco on the way out. Wow.

Yeah. I'll probably get both on the way out. Is that what you're saying? No, I said or. Oh, I missed it. It was an or, but it can be an ant. I can make that choice. I'm an adult.

Guys, I know that we talked celebs at the beginning of this. Yeah. Who's here? Who do you see? I'm pretty sure Common is in the, is in the, is in the lounge right now. That's correct. Is that correct? Yeah.

And uncommon sighting. That's true. So there we go. Very cool. What, what, what, what fun is that? That's amazing. How about that? It's Air Force One.

President-elect Hillary Clinton just got off and she's walking towards the Silverline train. Very cool. Very cool. Going. That's right. This is the future we've always dreamed of. Oh no.

She's getting, she's getting sick again. Oh no. Oh no. Oh, this is what we're afraid of. She's falling onto a conveyor belt. She's getting, getting put into the luggage of a Delta flight. Oh, this is a nightmare. She'll be fine.

Yeah. That's very cool. That's very cool. Yeah. All right. Go ahead, Mitch. We're running tight on time here. We should invite him over for a snack or a whack.

Yeah. And he'll say, we'll say, dough boys. And I'll say, of course, dough boys. This was a pleasure to come and see you. I can't believe it's been a year. I know. We always say that you shouldn't listen to the podcast. I think I'm going to repeat that again.

Don't listen to us anymore. You're such a smart, funny man. You have better things to do with your time. You have a family. I really don't. I mean, no, I really do have a family. Sorry, that was not my admission that I've been living a while this time. I got to say that comparatively, it's this beats downstairs by, like you said,

where the Merlox, Merlox live. More locks. It's a thousand times better up here. It's great. Yes. We can't beat it. I would, I would come here every time if I could, but I'm not allowed. But if I get a card, maybe I will be.

But the food could be better. The atmosphere is nice. There's showers, Nick, if you want to shower. Yeah, that's true. I do want to shower. There's booze over there. What more could you ask for? You could ask for some better food, maybe, and the quality's gone down a little bit.

But hey, I'm here with a friend. I liked coming to LAX for once in my life. I'm going to go three, three and a quarter diamond medallions. Too high. Yeah, three. Solid three. Okay, three. Solid three.

Solid three. Solid three. Three diamond medallions. But then also, I'm taking your word for it that this place gets even better. I would say check it out, as you say, in San Francisco. That's a nice one. It's in New York. JFK is terrific.

I will say, and I'll echo your guys' sentiments. It's okay. It's okay. What a delightful time we've had. Usually around this time of the podcast, people do start kicking at me. It's been voluntary. It's been cross my leg, and I accidentally kicked Nick. I've been kicked a lot on this podcast.

It was Nick kicked. Classic Nick kick. People's, God, these, shut the fuck up. Basically, everyone's internal monologue while I'm talking. I'm counting the listeners. Well, let's get on with it then. Don't make him cross his legs again. A delightful time.

I will say having been to the SFO-1. It's notably nicer. It's a tier above. The SFO-1 is notably nicer. This one is more like a, it has more of a public library vibe. I feel like I'm in a Santa Monica public library. You know what, I feel like I'm in like a college library. Yeah.

It's like, but you know, it's still nice. And the self-serve alcohol is a big plus, because I do like to get liquored up before I get on a flight. I certainly do. No, come on. Sorry. I'm getting like a shit face. But you know, I like to calm the nerves a little bit.

And the food, I agree, just could be better. Maybe some more sandwich options, some more things. You know, like you were saying, John, it's nice there's so many low-carb options. And I am someone who counts as carbs, but it would be nice if there were just a few more substantial things. If you did want to get a little bit more full, maybe some pasta or something. You know, which I know they have sometimes at these, but since more rice dishes. In a larger one, you would see more pasta.

You'd see a pasta dish for sure. Right. Or a macaroni and cheese. That would be nice. Just something a little bit, some more substantial options. But still overall, I think this is a great experience. It's a nice little enclave away from the craziness of the airport terminal. I think if you do have a way in, and if you're not paying full fare, absolutely worth it.

I'm going to say that we're ballpark buds on this one. I'm going to say three diamond medallions. Right in that sweet spot. John Hodgman, you got a flight to catch. Thank you so much for making time for us. I'm not doing snack or whack. Do you want to do snack or whack? Let's do it quick and give you a round.

Nick, explain what this is and I'll give us each an idea. So we bought something. We're continuing with our airport theme. We're up against the deadline here. We bought something from the duty-free store here in the airport terminal. Or downstairs in the airport terminal, rather. I'll just explain it. It's a bag of assorted...

Oh boy. That's me. Yeah, that's you. Wow. Here, eat one and tell us snack or whack correctly. Ritter Sport is a brand of European chocolate bars. It has a lot of stuff, different kinds of stuff packed into the bar. I love that it's called Ritter Sport because it makes it seem like chocolate bars are like a sport food.

Like just something you would eat while running a half marathon, for example. Right. I have the milk chocolate with praline and I've never had this one before, so I'm going to open it up. Tell me what you guys are eating. I'm having the milk chocolate with cornflakes. I had that as well. Let me eat a different one. I got to do it with chopped hazelnuts.

I like it. You know what? It's more of a textural element than anything, which I know what sort of cornflakes are. It just kind of reminds me of a crackle bar. Very akin to a crackle bar. I think the chocolate is better than... Yeah, the chocolate's a little better for sure. Give me a corner of that.

Cornflakes. There you go. I do not want to hazelnut. I'm going to take a marzipan real quick. So far, I've had three different tastes, three snacks. Alright, I can't get this one open. That cornflakes one is spectacular. Yeah, it's nice.

The praline one is kind of blah. I can't taste anything in it. No, I don't taste the praline. Thank you. Emma just had to open that one. I'm definitely not going to try a hazelnut because I don't like having the trauma of drinking coffee that has been filtered through the hazelnut. Anyone want a marzipan? Yeah, I'll take one.

There you go. Well, I didn't get it open. Emma got it open for me. Thank you, Emma. It's okay, I got you. Yep, that's cut. Definitely tastes like marzipan. If anybody wants it.

I like that it's dark chocolate and then the dark chocolate goes all the way. Oh, that is nice. Is that butter biscuit? Alright, I'll try butter biscuit. Thank you. Hand me over a butter biscuit square. Do you mind if I bite half of it, Nick? Yeah, I don't care.

Thanks, buddy. Yeah, I mean... That one's great. You have the simian flu, right? We all have the simian flu together at this point. Alright. I'm going to say, for me, on the snack or whack spectrum, praline, whack, marzipan, medium whack, hazelnut, beyond whack,

butter biscuit, snack, cornflake, super snack. And that's all I got time for. You guys got to find New York. I don't have time for the mail bag. I'll leave you a voicemail from the plane. Oh, I love it. Wow, so Hodgman just took off. He flipped off both of us as he was leaving.

He really did. Real power move. Nick, do you want to talk about just... I'm going to talk about the rankings of these for a second. Please do. My least favorite was probably marzipan. I just don't think I like the taste of marzipan. Second least favorite was hazelnuts.

Then the milk chocolate, the fine milk chocolate was good. I would say the praline comes as third to bottom. We didn't have a praline. Let me grab a praline. There's one over here. Fine milk chocolate, then cornflakes, and then on top is the butter biscuit. I would say they're all snacks. Where's the cutoff?

I would say the marzipan is a soft whack. Then hazelnuts is a soft snack. Then the rest of them are all snacks. Nick, how about you? Let me see that bag real quick. I'm not going to get as granular with my evaluations. I'll just say this... Fuck you then.

No, I'll give sort of a genu... This one's slam. I'll give sort of a general snack to these. This is quality chocolate. I think there's going to be one in this variety pack that is going to satisfy your palate, whatever it is. Favorite was cornflakes. That was delightful.

I think my second favorite I put up there is the marzipan. I really like that dark chocolate. I agree that the hazelnuts didn't quite work for me as well. Praline also is kind of an odd one. Wait, where'd you put marzipan? I put marzipan right up there with the cornflakes. Like second. You didn't like the marzipan?

I don't like the marzipan that much. Marzipan is a polarizing thing. But I think the dark chocolate just cut against it so nicely. I thought that was great. Oh wait, I didn't have... No, I did have the butter biscuit. I like the butter biscuit too. Yeah, these were all fine.

Fine milk chocolate, you know, whatever. If you're a... Someone who just like it is in the plane, I think that'll get the job done. Is this bag of 30 pieces of Ritter Sport Mini's worth $18 at the airport? Which is a discount. It's worth it, which is a discount. That's without duty.

No, absolutely not. So by that standard, this is a strict one. You know what I didn't appreciate? You went up to the guy behind the cashier and you said, I'm duty-full. Well, you didn't do it with my delivery justice. That's true. You talked like a baby.

I am duty-full. Those chocolates are a gift to you from us. Yeah, take them home. To me. I get stoned later and eat all of them. Hell yeah. And we'll save one. That'll be you songs pay for the week.

I'll use it to feed him on the way to pray in a while. Hey, that was Snack or Whack Airport Edition, just like a restaurant value feedback. Close up on the feedback. Good boys. Feed the bag. This week's email comes to us from Tongi from Paris. Oh, wow.

Tongi writes, Hey, an international email and an international airport. Yeah, I figured it was appropriate. There's an airplane theme here. I'm a huge fan of your dumb show, accurate, and if I listened to more hours, then I would feel comfortable admitting to the world. I was recently returning from a trip with a rental car

and having to choose between stopping at a rest stop for food or getting food at the airport before flying out. Both options were equally unappealing as they are, widely known to be both disgusting and vastly overpriced. Faced with the same dilemma, what would be your pick and why? I'm curious because rest stop probably means something different, maybe in France or maybe in Europe in general, than it does out here.

Because when I think of rest stop, when I think of rest stop, I think of something that's just like basically, you know, like camp quality restrooms, drinking fountains, like a gas station. But I think it clearly meant like, well, that's a good, I mean, if it's a place that's like a, like a convenience store with a bathroom, then obviously you're not going to get food there.

Yeah. And in my mind, it's probably just like a, like a Wendy's or a whatever. Right. Right. So, but here's my question to you. This is, this is, this is, this is, it's, there's a delay by the way.

Yeah. A flight has been delayed. Was that Hodgman's flight? No, it was a flight to Phoenix. Oh, okay. I feel like if you're in the rush to the airport and you're stopping at a rest area or a Wendy's or a McDonald's or whatever on the road, I'm not,

if I'm in a rush, I'm not going to stop there. I'm going to add your stress level. You're right. It's a great point. It's going to add your stress level. I'll go to the airport. I'll eat something before I get on the plane. Right.

Or I'm just not going to eat, Nick. I've talked about this before and just not going to eat. Which is bizarre for me. I mean, I know that's what you do, but for me, that's just like, I mean, for me, it's a six hour flight to Boston. So you'll be starving once you get to wherever you're going. Yeah.

I get so lightheaded if I go without food for, Oh, I'll get a headache or whatever. You can eat snacks on the flight and I'm going to, I'm going to be trying to, I'm going to try to be sleeping on the plane. I am a, I'm a plane sleeper. I can sleep on the plane. I sat next to a nice woman on the way back here from Thanksgiving. And I told her, you can wake me up if I start snoring.

We had the middle seat empty. About, I slept for about five hours. Wow. And she said, you didn't make a peep. Which was good news for me. So maybe if I'm sitting up, maybe someday soon I'm going to have to be sitting up in bed. Just to fucking not snore.

Right. So anyways, I would, I would just eat at the airport. That's my choice. Yeah. If there's not a rush, I got a little bit of time. I'm going to stop and eat and then get to the airport. I'm good. I, for me, it's airport every time.

It's 10 times out of 10 because I'd rather just get there early and not have to worry about like, oh, I got to rush through security. I got to worry about possibly missing a flight. And also too, like, you know, I, you can hang out at the bar. You can hang out. You can, you know, find a spot to just sort of like chill for a little bit by yourself or with your traveling companions. You know, maybe it's a little bit different if you got kids in tow.

Maybe you probably, if you get kids, you probably want to stop someplace so you can get them to get some activity before you get cooped up at the airport for a while. But yeah, I think as a, as a, as, you know, if you don't have that particular situation, get to the airport early, relax a little bit and enjoy some of the, you know, K quality food from some of the airport specific establishments. And hey, you know, that rest stop thing made me curious as to what people think of when they hear the term rest stop. So let us know with hashtag what rest stop means to me.

Oh God. One of our best hashtags. It clearly means different things to different people. That's true. We're starting out 2019 with a really good hashtag. Nick, just being in an airport makes me feel like I'm getting sick. Right. I think I just associate the two together.

Yeah. And if I'm not mistaken, I'm pretty sure I'm coming down with a Simeon flu. So we may as well wrap this show up. Yeah, we probably should. I mean, I think I have a touch of a Simeon flu as well. So, uh, I guess we should, oh, I want a banana. Get on with it. If you have a question or comment about the world of chain restaurants,

you can email us at dopeboyspodcasts at gmail.com, or leave us a voicemail at 830 Godot. That's Nick. 304636844. Your red tie now says DK on it. Yeah, it's turned into sort of a Donkey Kong tie, which is nice. You know, he is the leader of the group. You know him well.

He's finally back to kick some tail. Oh, God. We should get the dope boys double. Too bad we didn't bring that wrap up when Common was here. He could punch it up. I don't know if he could. I think he saw us trying to get him in the picture. I'm pretty sure he saw us to try to take it.

Well, spoiler alert. I got him though. It was extremely. We took a group photo and we got Common in the background. It was very conspicuous. And then he left immediately afterwards. As I was taking it. He might see it on Twitter and get mad at us.

Sorry. Anyway, to get the dope boys double or weekly bonus episode, join the golden or platinum play club at patreon.com slash dopeboys. Well, we'd normally let our guest plug something, but he'll leave us a voicemail and we'll include that here. And so you guys can hear whatever Hodgman wanted to send you off with. Probably his Judge John Hodgman live show dates sometime in January. So check if that's coming towards the city near you.

And Mitch, when we've got some live shows coming at you at SF sketch fest and at Winterruption in Saskatoon's Saskatchewan. So look for that. Nick, people have been saying that you're going to shut down like an iPhone when it gets too cold up there, which it might happen. Yeah, you better get a good coat. Hey, that's this. That's a little bit of some sort of dope boys.

Next time for the Spoonman, Mike Mitchell. I'm Nick Weigher. Happy eating and happy 2019. Happy 2019. See ya. Wow. Hey, multiple reads, multiple spoons. John Hodgman.

I'm waiting to take off the plane. It was a pleasure to spend time with you in the Delta Sky Club for our special subdued after dark episode. I just want to say thank you. And also I forgot to mention, I had to make a U-turn on sunset today and I realized the best way to do that was to go through the Arby's drive-in. So after a year of not eating Arby's, I had one more beef and cheddar sandwich and the cheese was still chemically, the bun, I left by the side of the road

but the meat was delicious. So that's my new review. One million forks. Good to spend time with you. And Nick, I trust that you're now showering in your suits, in the shower pod at the Sky Club. Take care, you guys. Vacation land out in favor back now.

Fifth dot please slash painful beaches goodbye. What's up, Burger Brigade? Hey, Spoon Nation. The Doughboys are coming to you live in 2019. CS in San Francisco, the San Francisco sketch fest on January 18th. In Saskatoon, Saskatchewan at winter option on January 26th. And in Portland, Oregon at Listen Up Portland on February 16th. For tickets and info, go to headgum.com slash live.

Do it.