Doughboys - IHOP 2 with Danny Jelinek

Episode Date: August 3, 2017

The ‘boys welcome director Danny Jelinek (Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, Comedy Bang! Bang!) to the studio for a lunch & dinner focused revisit of breakfast chain IHOP. A new varietal of Keebler fudge stripes are under review in Snack or Wack.Don’t miss an episode! Subscribe @ hyperurl.co/doughboysLike what you hear? Check out Drinky Fun Time @ smarturl.it/drinkyfuntimeOh! Check out our survey @ smarturl.it/feralsurveyWant more Doughboys? Check out our Patreon!: https://patreon.com/doughboysSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Only when the tide goes out do you see who's been swimming naked. This quote, famous in investment circles, is from billionaire Warren Buffett, the chairman and CEO of multinational holding company Berkshire Hathaway. Buffett's vivid quotation is meant to illustrate that during periods of growth it's easier for a business to hide its weaknesses but during a decline, its deficiencies are laid bare. Berkshire Hathaway, under the leadership of Buffett, an admitted fan of junk food, has taken control of numerous food brands including Heinz, C's Candy, and Dairy Queen.

Many of America's most popular chain restaurants are in fact owned by these kinds of conglomerates like Brinker International and Sun Capital Partners, with names that sound pulled from dystopian science fiction. And among the largest of these is Dine Equity, whose crown jewel is a breakfast-focused sit-down chain founded in Toluca Lake, California in 1958. For years, Dine Equity was led by one of the most powerful women in corporate America, Julia Stewart, who got her start working as a waitress for the griddle joint at the age of 16.

As CEO, Stewart vastly grew the company by bolstering franchising, increasing the diner chain's franchise rate to 99% and by expanding the chain's lunch and dinner options. In 2007, Stewart took on heavy debt to engineer a cash-only takeover of chain restaurant Apple Bees, turning Dine Equity into the second biggest restaurant group in the country. But the success would not last forever. After a decade, as economic inequality led to working families opting for budget-friendly fast food over more expensive sit-down chains, Apple Bees and its breakfast brothers saw their sales decline, leading to a net reduction in locations.

The tide went out. Stewart was ousted in February of this year, but with over 1,600 restaurants worldwide, the eatery where she waited tables as a teen and evolved into a global juggernaut as an adult is set to await another rising tide. This week on Doughboys, we return to iHop. Welcome to Doughboys, the podcast about chain restaurants' reproduction of Feral Audio.com. I'm Nick Weiger, alongside my co-host, Hollywood Skunk Ape, the Spoon Man, Mike Mitchell. Hey, a little shout out to our buddy, Stony Sharpe, who was on a couple episodes ago.

We did a lot of Skunk Ape talk about the Sasquatch of Florida. You know what I'm going to say, I'm going to go to a limb here. Not enough Skunk Ape talk. You think we should have spent more than a half hour on it? I think we should have spent a good 45 to an hour on it. This should have been the bulk of the episode. That was courtesy of Allison at Extra Millennial. If you've got a roast you'd like to use on Mitch on the top of the show, roastspoonmanatgmail.com.

Oh, thanks, Allison. Thanks a lot. There's an underscore in there, too, between an extra and millennial, if you're looking for that Twitter handle. Allison, extra millennial? Extra underscore millennial. Ugh. You're repulsed by that?

I am repulsed by that. Extra millennial? Yeah. Ugh. That's like asking for what? Help me out here, Weigher. Extra. You're saying you don't like millennials, aren't you saying?

Yeah. I was going to say extra trash, because I'm dumb. When do you ask for trash? Extra trash? Sometimes I say, hey, I was a garbage man. Sometimes I'd ask for trash. You wouldn't ask for extra trash, though. That gives you more work to do.

No, sometimes I'd be like, extra trash, we want to fill this thing up. The dump truck. You never said that. Anyways, how the hell to Spoon Nation in here is a little drop right now. Ugh, fuck this world. No, I like this show. This is fun to do. Huh.

I have a good time. I genuinely enjoy our time in the studio. Huh. Huh. It sometimes becomes a little bit of a drag, like any sort of ongoing obligation that reaches a point where you're sort of like, all right, we got to do this again, back to the grind. Huh. But I think, huh, on balance, huh, it's a pretty, huh, huh, huh, huh, huh, huh, fun activity.

Huh. Little chip tunes in there. Yeah. Some chip tunes. You know what happens? They always, their follow-up song always plays. Anyways, that was from Michael Ficus. I think I'm saying your name wrong, F-I-C-U-S.

Isn't that how you say it, like the plan? Yeah. That's a Ficus. That's how you say it, right? Michael Ficus at giant underscore rat on Twitter. Hmm. That's what I'm talking about. There's a Twitter handle.

Giant rat. That's like asking for giant trash. A giant rat is what goes after giant trash. You're right. That was good. Get that out of there. That's like Splinter. Who is their favorite turtle?

I'm going to guess Donatello. Or Leonardo. Well, I liked Raph's attitude. That's such garbage. But honestly, I think I did like Donatello because he does machines. And also, he was the best character in the arcade game because that bow actually gave you an advantage. Because that bow, you got some...

You got some serious reach. You got some length with that bow. They didn't actually... That was, I think, an issue with that game is that they didn't really balance the hit detection on the different weapons. It feels like they should have each conferred some different advantages, but it really just ends up that Donatello is slightly better than everyone. And then Leonardo's second best.

I went with Mikey. You know that I'm the party dude. I'm the Michelangelo of the podcast. You love pizza. I guess they all love pizza. They all love pizza, but Michelangelo very much loved pizza. I think it was almost over the top. You're the one who'd get in trouble with Master Splinter and he'd make you do some backflips.

And then he'd catch you just jumping because I can't actually do a backflip. Wu Tang used to do backflips. I think I've said this before. You've said this story, yeah. Oh, never mind. You can say it. Say it again. He used to do backflips in high school and everyone thought it was cool and then I'd

get a big laugh at my attempt to do a backflip. Right. You'd act like you were going to do one. I act like I was going to do one. And then everyone'd be like, there's no way this oaf can do a backflip. Yes. Which they were right about. And then as time went on and Wu drank more beer, Wu Tang, and got heavier, he would

do a backflip and his head would be dangerously close to the floor. Oh, man. It would be like half an inch from slamming his head into the ground. That's one of my least favorite genres of fails is someone trying to do a bad flip of some kind and hitting their head. It makes me hurt. It just causes me physical pain. I agree.

It's great seeing that. I'm just saying heavy or like became a, you know, he's becoming a man. He filled out. That's not what I, he listens to this podcast. Oh, by the way, he blossomed. There were, I hope he kicks your ass. And one, I hope we punch you in the head and that does a backflip. My friend, Ramon, he said that he told me to give you a special fuck you.

Why is that? Because he saw you on Twitter. You sold us out today because I was, I on Twitter, I said that none of my friends, voted for Trump. Yeah. And then you said, none of them voted. And Ramon, he saw and he said, fuck you, he's turned on you. He hates you.

Oh no. He had a great time with Ramon. It was good fun. We were hanging out. We were having a blast. Ramon, it was good fun. We threw back some Brutals. He also did the gesture to like, like the throwaway hand gesture.

No one could see it. What is that? Like you, you like put your hand out to say good. It was good fun. Yeah. Like no big deal. He can't see you doing that. That's what I'm trying to tell you.

Well, that's why I'm saying it. I want to convey that emotion with my voice that I'm doing the gesture. Well, Nick, we're in the, you know, I feel like today is a dog day of summer. It's a dog day of summer. We're dogging it too. We're done. We recorded an episode earlier, then we went to get dinner and now I feel like we have no energy.

But you know what? Our guests got energy for, for weeks. Oh man. We got a good guest. Did I not hype you up like that? Real quick. This guy is like the Micro Machines guy. This podcast is about to get turnt, if you will.

Quick plug. We'll be at the Now Hear This podcast festival, September 8th through 10th in New York City for Info and Tickets. Go to NowHearThis.net. Now Hear This Fest. Now Hear This Bus? Why are you? What?

Okay. Let me, let me try this again. Take two. Quick plug. We'll be at the Now Hear This podcast festival, September 8th through 10th in New York City. Info and Tickets. NowHearThisFest.com. And now our guest, a director whose credits include last week tonight with John Oliver,

Chris Hossville, Comedy Bang Bang, and Dan Herman's Good Game, which is on YouTube ready, Danny Jelenick. How you doing Danny? I'm good. Welcome to the show. Wow. I just ran around the room, I hyped up everyone else in the room, and you guys are all excited now.

Right. And it's electric in here. I can feel the listener out there. Oh yeah. Getting excited too. The listen, the gentle sound in my head. Sometimes you can, even though this is released in about, what, a week's time, you can still feel the excitement coming through the headphones.

It's palpable. What do you guys imagine when you close your eyes? Who's listening to your show? Weiger. I don't listen to this show, I don't listen to this shit. It's electric. You remind me of the electric, we were talking about summer songs on our, on our, on our double that came out on Tuesday, yeah.

It's electric is kind of like, like it reminds me of just like a school dance song, which it just reminds me of like getting close to summertime. Is that weird? What is that? What are you talking about? You know, it's electric. Boogie, Woogie, Woogie. You don't know that song?

What is that? What? You don't know this song? No. Oh yeah, I know that song. What is that? You can't feel, no, you can't see it? It's electric.

Are you doing doot doot doot doot doot? That's the hustle. That's the hustle. No, no. It's doot doot doot doot doot. Doot doot doot doot doot doot. It's electric. Doot doot.

No? All right. No, I think. No, no, I'm wrong. It's electric. Wait, but now I'm saying maybe you are right. No, I know what you're thinking of. It's doot doot doot doot doot doot doot doot doot doot doot doot doot doot doot doot doot

doot. It's electric. You don't know. I don't know this. It's electric song. No, I don't. The electric slide. I know the dance, the electric slide.

I didn't know there was a happening song. Yeah, that's it. Oh, does it go doot doot doot doot doot doot doot doot doot doot doot doot doot doot I wasn't sure that you were fucking with me and now I'm positive. Weigar, you don't know this? I don't know it. I know the electric slide. Yeah, I don't know it.

Well, you know what? You should have gone to school dances instead of staying home and plotting revenge. Hey, you know, I went to my share of school dances in middle school. I have you now. Cool. Did you have a good time? No. Did you go home and plot your revenge?

Hmm. I don't think I was really ever much of a revenge plotter. Yes, I'm joking. I wouldn't expect you to actually plot revenge. I think I was too apathetic to extract revenge. I've never plot. I've never plotted revenge, except you might be my first. Yeah.

I might plot some revenge against you. Danny, have you ever plotted any revenge? No, I don't think so. I probably have like flashed to some revenge thing, but I haven't plotted it. Yeah, I've had like nothing on paper. I think in my mind of like had a dream where a guy who gave me like a hard time like pants fell down and then everyone said Mitch is king or something. You had a dream this happened?

I've had like a George Costanza. Oh, I should have said that back. Hmm. Right. Oh, I've had a lot of those to this day. Yeah. A new mate who loved the movie Gladiator, like just loved it so much and he loved it because it was a guy taking revenge for his family being wronged.

It was just like, like, if that ever happened to my family, like, that's what I would, like he was just so like passionate about, like that was what that's what you're supposed to do if someone goes after your family. So weird thing to be passed. I mean, I guess it makes sense to be passionate about protecting your family, but we're to have that revenge fantasy like preplanned. I'll say I'm going to keep this very light spoilers, but spoiler alert war for the plan of the Apes kind of a revenge movie.

Sure. It's a revenge movie in a lot of ways. Hey, if we were in the planet of the Apes universe, Mitch, do you think you would be a donkey? Would you be one of the apes like winter who turns to help the humans for their own survival? Hmm. Who I mean, it depends on who the ruler was. If you if you were Caesar, then yes, I would, I would turn on you.

But if I was like Woody Harrelson, no, then I would not help. So you just want to be on the opposite side of the conflict. 100%. I think you would be the opposite of a donkey. I think you would be a human who goes to help the Apes. You know what? I would be. Yeah.

And you know what? That's the most justified side that there is. Right. And they would make they would they would like maybe I would still be like one of like the human slaves eventually, but I would maybe be treated better than everyone else. Right. I do that. And you made mistaken for an ape too.

So you could just sort of slide right in. I would sell out I would sell out the human race for just a little bit more comfort. It's weird. The kind of Denny. Have you seen these movies? You seen the Apes movies? A big fan. It's weird that they kind of are you.

I like the Apes. I like them too. I like the Apes movies. We're Apes for Apes. Oh, fuck you. They're nice. They're nice, like calm movies. Right.

They are. They're just like it's like it's ridiculous that there's a movie about this in a way like they take it so seriously, but they're like good and well made. Yeah. But in a way what you're kind of rooting for is following the arc of the movies as you know the human race becomes more marginalized. It's kind of weird that it's that it's just the idea of you're getting the audience to be on the side of the side against humanity.

It's very contra to what you'll see in a lot of Hollywood movies. You're rooting you're rooting against humanity for sure. We're the bad guys. We are. And which is true. I think it is true. But also the Apes movies, I said this to you, Nick, that's like I feel like the worst, like the worst Hollywood movie like that should be like the like that should be the bottom

for like that should be the baseline. Yeah. That should be why aren't all movies as good as the Apes movies, right? Like they should all be as good as the movies. We've come a long way. And you know what? The Apes movies look pretty good. Like the, the, the, uh, the CG looks great in them.

Right. Like, uh, and I, and I know that that guy, what's his name? I know that I give JJ a hard time on this podcast, but, um, circus. You got it. You praising circus? No, uh, the director, his name is, is Reeves. I think is this. Oh yeah.

Matt Reeves. I believe Matt Reeves. Um, he directed the, the two, he was a JJ guy, but I, I, he doesn't, he, I think he does a good job. How do you feel, Danny? I think the, um, the CG in him is, is very impressive. Like you, you, it's totally immersive. And I mean, you know, you're looking at CG, but when I watch it, I'm like, oh yeah, that's

so nape. Yeah. Right. Except for, um, bad ape. Oh, bad ape. Yeah. He's kind of funny. Yeah.

That was, uh, Steve's on. Yeah. He's very, very funny. Bad ape is like the one where I'm like, oh, he's not really an ape. That's a little, that's a CG guy. Yeah. That's fair. But I, um, but I enjoyed those movies.

They're very like relaxing, strangely. They're tense. Yeah. They get tense, but you can kind of just sort of zone out while you watch it, which is, uh, which is ultimately what everyone wants out of a movie going experience. I think it's just a zone out, calmly zone out and think about what, what they did that day. Not be, not be, uh, like thrown into the world of the movie and be, like, be interested

by it. Yeah. You don't want to be too immersed. Yeah. You don't want to be immersed. That's what I want to take a little walk in your mind and then be like, oh, oh, they're fighting now. Right.

Cool. A Force Awakens fan. Um, I only saw it the once in the theater and I, I, I, you're a great director. So I just, when I walked out, I was, I was pumped and then, oh, I, I mean, I've never felt the need to revisit it really, but, um, I don't, I, I, I'm not like the biggest. I don't really, I don't think it's like the best movie or it's definitely not as good as the prequels. Wow.

Wow. Wow. Wow. So a very talented, gifted director. I'm on the, uh, I'm on that. I think Bug Main made many, um, persuasive arguments about that. Bug Main. Hey, say what you want about Bug Main, like that he's insane or, uh, and if anyone's just

jumping at the podcast, Bug Main is a, is a, a guest, a guest to use a pseudonym who's appeared on some previous episodes. That's what you're worried about. You're worried about people that are. There are always, Pete. We are, our audience grows with every episode. We have new listeners every time. Well, guess what?

They're just listening. They're hearing a, they're hearing a drop at the top of the show. They don't know what's going on. They're just oriented. Someone just throws out Bug Main. I'm giving it a little bit of context. It's completely reasonable. I'm going to say, we, we.

Listen to professional programs. People say. Who? Me? Yes. Listen to like a professional show. That's what people do. Are you yelling at me for not listening to professional shows?

No, I'm saying that that's a fine thing for me to say to explain something to people who might be unfamiliar with it. It's my fault. I shouldn't have brought up Bug Main. No, it's fine. It's not your fault. It's my fault. Bug Main gets, it gets, it gets steeped.

I kind of wonder to see what happens. I like Bug Main. Oh, you do? I like Bug Main. He's my friend. I heard stories about what would happen if I brought up Bug Main and if they're all true. We are friends.

He's my friend. We are friends. He's like, you're trying to defend. Like, this is like you saying you like fry. We used to work in adjacent cubicles, semi adjacent cubicles. We are, we are friends. I like him. We see eye to eye and a lot of things.

He's a difficult man, but I was saying to people that he uses a pseudonym in case you're confused by the word Bug Main and you say, what is that? Is that a band? Is that a guy? Is that a product? Yeah, it's a band, man. Whoa, I like to get stoned and listen to some Bug Main records. He's doing his peace signs with both hands again.

Nick, speaking of Bug Main, we announced that we were going on tour. Yes. We don't, all right. So hold on. We should just quickly get into this just for a second. Danny, I think you will agree that it's a bad idea for two men who can barely stand each other in their own state, you know, living in the same city to go on, you know, on a plane and then have hotel rooms next to each other and go on tour.

I think it's like, it is a mistake. And you said, cause I talked about, I was like, Hey Mitch, maybe we could get like one hotel room to save money. And you said, no, Nick, I need my jack shack. So before and after the show, I need to get them Jackson. Hey, everybody needs it. A hotel room is a great, are you, are you, are you a fan of having a nice hotel room to yourself?

Isn't that one of the pleasures in life? Oh yeah, great. Yeah, everyone loves that. It's one of the best things that there is. Our buddy, Jordan Morris talks about that hotel room, AC is just delightful when you get in there and it's just like nice and chilled. You can just take that in. Bring it down.

I'll put, I'll put that thing all the way down. I love the cable. I don't have cable. Oh, wow. Apple TV, Netflix. That's it. Yeah. That's an interesting pleasure these days.

Yeah. It's like, oh, a little cable. Right. Do you think they'll ever get rid of cable in hotels and then you can just plug in your fire stick? I hope not. No. That's one of the reasons I love hotels.

Yeah. It probably depends on if it becomes more cost effective. I feel like right now probably they probably have deals with providers to get like a good rate, the per room rate on their cable packages is probably very reasonable and they make a lot of money off of pay per view. And I would guess that the Wi-Fi cost, like the cost of bandwidth for streaming all that video would be like more greater than that. Interesting.

Okay. That would just be my supposition. I don't know. I don't work in the hospitality industry. I'm just guessing. But you have listened to a bunch of professional programs. I have watched TV, I have watched like TV shows. I have listened to the radio.

I have listened to better podcasts, which are all of them. The people like there's that's like, this sounds like another one of your human tests. No, that's like a habit. I have watched television shows, I have listened to the radio. This is all true. This is all factual. I've been to the cinema, damn it. I've seen your movies.

I've seen all your movies. On the poster, there's a little shout out to Bug Main. Yeah. There's a little bug that's a little Easter egg. There's a little couple of bugs. That's fine. Bug Main is nearby. Right.

We don't need to dwell on this. Does he release bugs? I don't know. I mean, it's fun to dwell on it for a second. I think we spent enough time on it. Danny, speaking of hotels, you just got back from Japan. Oh, yes. Fairly recently.

Yeah. A few days ago or five days ago. Five days ago. Okay. That's a few days ago. That's less than a week. You can still call that a few days. Are you still tired to go Nick and I are dragging ass tonight.

We're dogging it. Yeah. We're really dogging it and I'm the energy. I think everyone can agree I've brought everything up one notch. But no, I, yeah, I was just in Japan and it was terrific. I went to Tokyo and I went to Kyoto and I went to a beautiful little island called Naoshima, which is some of the greatest museums I've ever seen. That's cool.

That's awesome. But yeah, and I ate a lot of great food while I was out there. So let's, let's, let's hear some cuisine highlights and no, no, I know that you were your big, your huge ramen fan. I really love ramen, which was part of the reason I was so excited to go out there to try the real favorite food, would you say, or up there? Oh, in, in Japan? Yeah, probably.

I mean, it is basically like going to America and saying, I love hamburgers. You know, it is fast food, but I love fast food and I love ramen and it is like kind of a fun thing that every, every single place has a different style and we kind of would just run into random places and they were always terrific and totally different from one another and nothing like anything I'd had out here. I mean, and there's fantastic ramen in Los Angeles, but so like, what distinguishes it from what you'd maybe get in the States? Well, like one of them had like a, I think the broth, I think, I think each broth I had

was sort of like totally different and more just different flavors. I'm not, I love food and I love thinking and talking about food and eating it, obviously, but like I'm not like the greatest at sort of dissecting exactly what flavors are different, but like one of them had like chicken stock broth, which I'd never had, I'd never had out here. And I was like, oh, I didn't even know this was like an option. I didn't even know that was on the table and I loved it. I loved everything I had out there, to be honest.

But there was not a meal I had out there that I didn't, that I didn't like truly like walk away me like, well, that was different than anything I've ever had and totally delicious. You know, that's fucking cool. Yeah, that sounds great. And on that note, one thing you mentioned to me before we were recording is that you went to some 7-Elevens in Japan. Oh, yeah. What was that experience like?

Well, 7-Eleven's really interesting out there. It's a lot, it's really a food source, I think, for people more than it is here. Here's kind of like beverages. And I mean, I think people do get food there, but I think a lot of people getting meals there. Usually people who are like, either like you're really broke and you just need something cheap or you just need to get something really fast, but I think people, it's a more common dining option there.

I think it's still the principle of it being like a fast thing that you grab is still there, but there are so many options. Got it. One thing I learned when I was out there was that we were always sort of looking for breakfast until we realized, oh, people are kind of just making this in their own kitchens. It's not like the United States where you're able to just go get a breakfast at a million places. Right.

Nothing we could really find was open and we didn't really know how to eat in the morning until at one point we're like, oh, when we were in a 7-Eleven getting money, we were like, oh, there's like people grabbing a lot of these like rice cakes there. Got it. And then we're like, oh, that's how we get through the morning until lunch, basically. So we started eating some of those for breakfast. And what I really loved there was they had like an array of like bread-based like sweet treats.

Like there was like this pancake sandwich with red bean curd between pancakes, which, and they had like a million like little interesting things like that. And I was like, oh, I would just kind of, if we were jumping on the bullet train, I would grab a few of these weird looking things that I didn't know what they were going to be or taste like. And sometimes they were amazing. And sometimes I was like, oh, this is like a big crouton or, you know, like, I wasn't ever sure what I was getting, but it was awesome.

I feel like it's probably a lot better. I mean, 7-Eleven's out here, we talked about this name. There's some that are like immaculate and like, like I wouldn't mind having food from it that are like immaculate and very clean and right, like, like I feel, but I feel like it depends on the 7-Eleven. But yeah, I feel like so many 7-Eleven's in LA are just like, like, there's a lot of variants. There's a lot of sticky, like they're sticky parking lot.

I love 7-Eleven for a lot of reasons. But I will say, I do see a lot of people, I think that in the U.S., there are a lot of people who use 7-Eleven for breakfast, like, you'll see a lot of people getting coffee and like fruit. I've done that before. And sometimes like some, and then also like, I feel like you'll see like, like, I'll see like cops or like, like ambulance drivers or like, I guess EMTs is what they're called, having like, like big gulps and hot dogs.

Right. So like, I think there is still a number of people who do, do kind of use it as a lunch spot. It's, I mean, it's just super fast. That's the value. You can just go right away and you can spend like $4 and get a ton of food or $2. What's a good hashtag for luncheon at 7-Eleven? 7-Eleven, never forget.

Oh, God. Sure. That works. Cause I wonder, I wonder, I wonder how many people out there do, cause I never use it as a lunch. I never get a lunch. Yeah. Getting a meal there.

It's like, I've, I've gotten their pizza before and I've gotten their big bites before like, and they're, I just like, but as a lunch, I feel like it's never quite satisfying. It's more of like a snack place or a slurpee place for me. Yeah. Or a late night. Or a big gulp. I love a straight up big gulp. Yeah.

I love just running in and getting a little sleeve of donuts, those little donuts. Oh yeah. Wait, you'd like the 7-Eleven brand donuts or are you talking like a hostess kind? They're, they're right next to each other and they taste exactly the same. Got it. I think they're spelled D-O-N-N-E-T-T-E-S. Like the donuts. The donuts.

Yes. Okay. I go with your name. They're like the little white powdered donuts. Or white powder, yeah. Or the chocolate covered ones. But you're saying there's a 7-Eleven brand as distinctly from the hostess brand. Yeah.

Yeah. I like how Amazon makes batteries. Hmm. I wasn't aware of that. You know what's funny is that I think that forever, it was hostess donuts at 7-Eleven. I kind of like always like, was like, oh, that's where they are. And then I think 7-Eleven is like, why don't we make these? I think it was one of those situations and then they, because we can make money off of

this and then just put their own brands out there. Do you remember when they made the 7-Eleven's? Classic Amazon battery situation. Classic Amazon battery situation. They got those Amazon lockers in 7-Elevens now too sometimes. Mm-hmm. But. Do you get shoved into them constantly?

Like I'm getting bullied by adults into an Amazon locker. No, Mitch. That's not what their purpose is. That's exactly what I meant. What were you going to say? I'm sorry. Do you remember when the 7-Elevens were changed into the Quickie Marts? That was a fun little promotion.

Yeah, that was a fun time. I remember that. Like 10 years ago for the Simpsons movie. Mm-hmm. A lot of fun that was. Some of them also, don't they do a yearly promotion where you can like fill up anything with a Slurpee? Yeah, we've seen people do that.

They like bring in like a little, they bring in a weird like a punch bowl. Yeah, yeah, yeah, all right. Oh yeah. They, they, they. Kitty pool or something. They're still doing that. So long as it's a thing you can hold in your hand, I believe you can get it. So there's a strong, there's probably a strong man out there who can hold a pool in his hand.

Uh. Like an above ground pool? No. A small swimming pool. Like a child's pool. Yeah, like a child's pool. Yeah. I think I've seen that.

I mean, also like, what are you going to do? Why are you going to get the pool? Why are you doing that? Why are you doing that? Get the pool out of there. Don't, don't get the pool out of there. Don't bring a pool into a 7-Eleven. Don't bring a pool into the fucking 7-Eleven, you idiots.

What are you doing? You're carrying a pool around. You're going to bring it into a 7-Eleven? Come on, you goober. Get that pool around anyway. Get that pool out of there. I think it's chill. We like, we like to have counterpoints in this show.

Right. It's true. Danny also a Chicago man. Sorry, what were you going to say? I was going to say, don't you like carrying a children's pool around with you? Like as a lure? No, Mitch. I don't do that.

Okay. All right. Go on to the Chicago man. Danny a Chicago man. Yes. Home of the hot dog. Home of the hot dog. Hey.

I think Boston's home of the hot dog. What are you talking about? Why not? It's East Coast. Do you think Boston's the home of everything? Everyone knows the hot dog was invented in Northbrook, Illinois. Is that true? A suburb of Chicago.

No. Oh. I'm sorry. You liar. I don't know why. I just, I felt compelled. You really sold that for a second. I really believed you.

I believed it. It sounded just specific enough. I'm going to guess that the hot dog is a New York convention sadly. I think we both lose. One from the movie The Founder, which is about Ray Kroc, that the McDonald's I grew up thinking was the first McDonald's. Yeah. Is not.

Right. Because there was a very famous McDonald's in Chicago. Yeah. We would drive to the Ray Kroc McDonald's and that's like a little on a display. That's one that has, it's two stories, correct? I don't think that one's two stories. It's little. It looks like the ones in the movie.

Oh, okay. Oh, all right. It has like plaques and like statues of people, if I recall, like pretending to work at Ms. Founders. What the hell, what is it then? The first one? No, no, what is this one? The second one.

But the movie, but Ray Kroc sort of like rewrote history a little bit and claimed that that was the first one. Gotcha. But the McDonald's brothers really invented it out here in California. That's right. Yes. Those fucking McDonald's brother got scammed. Yeah.

We reviewed this on the podcast. Yeah. We reviewed the founder. A good film. I liked the founder. I think it was not perfect, but had some very good performances. Michael Keaton's great. Michael Keaton's great.

Keaton's great. Hey, how about that John Carroll Lynch? What an actor that guy is. He's great. What a talent. He is great. But you're a big, to be more specific to Chicago, first of all, you got the cheeseburger, cheeseburger, Billy Goat Tavern.

Yeah, I like that. Which for those who, if you wear the SNL sketch from. Tom Belushi. I'm going to say the very funny SNL sketch that doesn't seem dated at all. 1975. Where they say cheeseburger, cheeseburger. Just like how you said it. Just like how I said it.

Cheeseburger, cheeseburger. That's Chicago. That's Chicago. Yeah. Al's Beef you talking about? Al's Beef is my personal favorite. I think anyone from Chicago knows Al's Beef. You're a big Portillo's fan.

Love Portillo's. We have a sandwich called the Italian Beef in Chicago. Which I, it's kind of, you can find it. You can find it in LA. Right. You can probably find it in other cities. In Taste of Chicago. But in Chicago.

But in Chicago. Speaking of the 7-Eleven Simpsons, Joe Montaigne has a, he has a. He owns a little place. A little Chicago spot. Yeah. Yeah. And it's just a great sandwich that I, understandably it never caught on really outside of Chicago. Like the Philly Cheesesteak or whatever.

Right. But it's a great, it's just super heavy. And you can't do anything after you eat it. For hours. Let me hear. Can't really move. Let me hear besides, besides Al's Beef. Let me hear your pizza ranking for Chicago.

Oh. Do you have one? Yeah. Okay, good. For Chicago style. I would, I mean, really there's just two places for me. Wow. Lou Malnati's number one.

Wow. Geno's East number two. Wow. Yeah. Those are the two. Oh, wow. Okay. How about you?

You got some? I mean, I like Lou Malnati's a lot. And I like, oh, Pizzano. I liked Pizzano's when I had it. You don't like Pizzano's? Maybe I don't know what that is. Wait, am I saying it correctly? Is that a famous place?

Am I just making up Pizzano? Sounds to me though. No, I'm pretty sure Pizzano's is one. Pizzarello's? I went on the Chicago pizza tour. Mm-hmm. It was one of the, I'll say this. Wait, what's that?

I went on the Chicago pizza tour and I will say it was one of the best moments of my life. When you drive around Chicago and you stop off at different, what do you get to say, Tiger? I see the fucking, I see things, I see the wheels turning. No, what? No, go on. I went on the Chicago pizza tour. I went on the Chicago pizza tour.

We went, we went to Lou Malnati's. We went to, we went to Geno's East. And I think Pizzano's was the other one we went to. Yeah. Pizzano's was great. I'll have to try it. Then we went to like a couple newer ones, like a wood fire one. So you just go to like, they just take you on a bus and you just go to different pizza places.

They took us on a bus and we went to different pizza places. So are you having like a slice at each one? Yeah, you basically have a slice at each one. You go to like five places. Mm-hmm. You don't have to eat a whole slice. Right. I mean like it's kind of like a smaller slice.

It's more like a wine tasting, but with pizza. Yeah. Exactly. That spit it out. I ate every damn slice I could. It was great. Chicago's got great food. Chicago's got great food.

Kuma's Corner. There's Geno's Kuma's Corner. Not. Am I out Chicago on you right now? I haven't lived there in many years. I don't know what this place is. I mean, I might need to go back and try Pizzerelo's. Mm-hmm.

Raviolian Sons? Oh, yeah. Gotta go to Raviolian Sons. I love their Ravioli. Oh, Michael Jordan's Pizza? Man, what a spot that is. There is a Michael Jordan's restaurant, right? Oh, he's got like a steakhouse, I think.

Michael Jordan's Steakhouse and Casino? Is it still there? There was one when I was growing up called 23. Oh, that's cool. And they had, I think it was his mother's recipe for mac and cheese. Hmm. And I would order that. I went there, Nick.

You know what's crazy? Yeah. The steak? It's got the texture of basketball. Wow, really? Like you can sort of feel like the grooves and everything on it? The orange skin. Yeah.

Wow, that's crazy. It's like a chicken fried steak. Mm-hmm. But beneath that, there's like a basketball coating on top of a steak. You know the thing I heard is that you get beverages there. You can't ever drink them because they serve them to you in little nets. Doesn't retain any of the liquid. It just falls right through.

Jordan, you're great at basketball. You're going to use your fucking head. Man, I've also heard that the waiters, they have to dribble their trays to the tables. And if they don't, they get called for traveling. I've heard this too. Boy, I've heard that there's a weird age restriction there. Mm-hmm. You can only be 23.

That is very, because that's not necessarily even basketball related. It just has to do with his number 23, which he wore for the Bulls. On certain days, he can be 45. Right. Yeah, he can be 45 later. Yeah, I think in some days, he can be 45. Chicago, a great city. My kind of town.

It is your kind of town. But what do you think? Do you like L.A. if you're a big ramen fan? I mean, I define myself in other ways as well. That's all I know you. I know you as the ramen man. You said Mitch was like, we're getting that ramen guy on the show, right? He called you Ramen Jelenik.

Do you prefer L.A. food to Chicago or what? Tough question. I think I always say this. I would probably weigh 450 pounds if I still live in Chicago. Because I love to eat. You guys, we just ate together. I can't not finish what's in front of me. I love eating.

I got that issue. You get about putting better for you foods in front of you or whatever. So I think if I lived in Chicago, I think I would just eat everything I ever wanted. I think about that too with the bars are open until 4 a.m. I'm sure that would be trouble for me. I mean, I love Chicago food and I was raised on it. So it's like, oh yeah, sometimes I just have a craving for that kind of food. But I'm very thankful for the variety of options in Los Angeles

and the quality of everything. I just feel like the city has any kind of food and a great version of it. Sure. And everything there, it seems like. And I've never been. It's broadened my horizons. Everything there seems like very happy. Are we going to go on tour to Chicago?

I don't know. Are we going to go to the Midwest? We'll see if anyone comes to these fucking shows. I don't think anyone, like no one should. Wow, you sound so negative about it. Well, I don't know. We're going to listen to the whole thing. We're doing a few shows to see if anyone comes to live shows.

I'm guaranteeing a Chicago leg of the tour right now, here on the podcast. All right, whatever. You don't care? No, we'll do it. If we'd make sense, we'll do it. We got to one step at a time. People are going to come out in droves. It's going to be great.

I think people are going to come out in droves. Yeah, droves. I've heard that word before. Droves. Yeah. No, I'm using it. All right. And I like it.

I think I'm right. You get like a word of day calendar. Is that what's going on? Yes. In my today, it was droves. I got the shittiest word of day calendar there ever was. All right. Let's talk IHOP.

I was going to say, speaking of basketball covered steak, you got a chicken fried steak tonight. Oh, God. What? It worked. I'm trying with this podcast, you sick fucker. You know what? No, it's fine.

You know what? You have a bad attitude today. It's fine. And I'm happy Danny's here to see it because I'm trying. You could have just let that, what I'm saying is that we could have let that go because we just moved on. All right. Let's talk IHOP.

Yeah, but it was a good segue. I had to go back to it. I don't think you had to go back to it. I'm on Spoon Man's side. It was a great transition. Also, we were talking about, you describe a chicken fried steak as a basketball covered steak. I joked about that with the Jordan thing.

Yes. And then joke about it. I told the story out. You told the truth. I told the truth of the basketball covered steak. I told the truth that Jordan does want you to hear. I was going to ask you. Yeah.

You know, there's some, you were talking about the 7-Eleven. Mm-hmm. The Simpsons Eye 7-Eleven. Right. This, here's a controversial topic. I shouldn't bring it up, but I think since there's three white males here, we should discuss it. Yes.

A poo. There's a true TV documentary coming out on a poo. Offensive. It is the offensive, an offensive character. I guess we can't really even speak to it. I think I have heard from Indian Americans who find it offensive and I can get that. I mean, like, to me, that makes sense. I, it was a thing I never really thought about, but I think it's the kind of thing of like,

when I saw Hank Azaria do it, do the voice live in a couple of situations, I felt like, oh, that's a little weird when it's not, when you're not here seeing this ascribed to a cartoon character, there's a white man basically doing an ethnic stereotype. Like that's, that's a little weird. So I, I understand it. I don't know. I mean, like, again, it's like a perspective I didn't have, but hearing that perspective, I'm very much like, oh yeah, that's probably right.

It's probably the sort of thing that maybe when it, the show started in 1990 or whenever it was or 1989, it was a little bit of a different world and that wasn't viewed as such a weird way. But nowadays it's like, you know, because you look back on something like Amos and Andy, and those were white guys doing cartoonishly black voices. And that's like, like blatantly offensive to pretty much anyone these days. And so I think it's the same, it's the same sort of ground to me. Yeah.

I mean, I don't think I can argue that it's not an offensive character because I, because I can't speak to that, but I will say that makes me, it's, it's, it's a bummer because I think he is a good character. I think a poo is a good character. Like, I think that they fleshed him out with a lot of stuff that makes him like an inter, like a likable character, a character that you care for and you like, I guess is what I'm trying to say. What is the documentary I'm covering exactly?

About how a poo is offensive. Okay. I honestly don't even know what you're talking about. So I don't. Oh, okay. Yeah. But I believe you that something exists. I've heard this, I've heard this discussion outside of that context.

So I was, I was, I was just, hey, why not? So we're trying to mix stuff up. We got to hit, we got to talk the hot button issues on here. Sometimes that's why people come to the podcast. They want to hear our take on social justice when I was younger. I remember when the Angus movie came out and I was very afraid people were going to call me Angus. Right.

So I get when, when I get with people being, I don't want to be called a poo, but you know what I mean? Like, now what if that had been a white man or like a skinny white man in fat face instead of like a actual little fat kid? Yeah. So I look kid in a fat suit. Yeah, that would suck. A little bit of a, you know, that would, that would suck.

Right. And I did get called Angus. And then I got killed. King Ralph. I got called all the fat fucking stars that there are. Yeah. People still compare. I mean, I love John Candy, but people say I'm like John Candy all the time.

Yeah. It is kind of a compliment by me. It also means I'm a big fat guy. Right. You know, people call you young Santa a lot. I hear that. You call me young Santa alone. No one else calls me young Santa.

I think people also call you a Tim Allen sidekick on tool time. I've heard that thrown around. Al Borland. Yeah. Al Borland. Richard Karn. Yeah. You know, I'll take them.

I've heard people call you a slender Ralphie may a slender Ralphie may. Yeah. You couldn't even, you couldn't even go the other way. Yeah. I guess that dude, I guess that's less, that's less insulting. I fucked that up. Let me try that again. No, it's still kind of.

Whatever. I'm proud of being big and it's with my big powers that I can toss you into lockers still. Amazon lockers. Amazon lockers. All right, Nick, let's, let's talk about the restaurant. Do you not want to anymore? I was trying to remember that another.

Are you trying to remember another fat guy that you can compare me to? What the fuck is wrong with you? It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It's not important. The moment's past. Oh, I know what I was going to say. People say you look like Frank Caliendo's been stung by a bee.

I couldn't remember the name. But I can remember his last name. I work with Frank Caliendo and he's great. Yeah. I've heard he's a good guy. He's a great guy. All right. Let's talk IHOP.

Great to Nero. He's got a great to Nero. He's got a lot of good impressions. I hope you get stung by a fucking bee. You know, I did get stung by a bee as a kid. I got stung by a bee in the hand. I did get stung by a bee. I got stung by a bee.

Dot, dot, dot as a kid. And I went home to my dad. I was like six. I went home to my dad because I got stung by a bee in the hand and I picked the stinger out and I went home to my dad and I was like, I was like, I got stung by a bee at school and he was like, oh, did you cry? And I said, I said no. And he's like, oh, because I usually cry.

And I didn't realize he was trying to make me like, he was trying to make me feel better. Like, oh, you're a strong, like you're a strong kid. But I just took it at face value and it was like, all right, dad, like, cried from a bee sting. What are you talking about? You know a remedy to stop the sting? Dad jizz. Fucking hell.

What's the matter with you? I think that's an appropriate joke to make. My dad's dead. Don't let me remind you of that, Nick. You don't get to play that card. You ascribe some sexual perversion to my beloved father. Stop bringing up fathers. You brought it up.

Dad jizz. And then he started crying. What's the matter with you? He doesn't listen to the father. Yes, he does. He does? Yes. Oh, we'll edit it out.

We're not going to edit it out. It's fine. It will be a nice memory for him to hear. All right. Anyways, on to IHOP. OK. Nick, speaking of jizz, that gravy on top of your chicken fried steak. What is this rut we're in?

This is your fault. This isn't my fault. You're shutting down. Talk about the episode. All right. We went to IHOP. Do I need to bring things back up a notch? You need to inject something.

Daddy, take a lap. Get us going again. All right, yo, boys. All right, here we go. All right, Nick. IHOP. So here was the gimmick we forced ourselves to follow. Dinner only.

We've reviewed this before. We've done breakfast items. We said we're going to stick to dinner, the dinner side of the menu, the lunch and dinner side of the menu. Breakfast off limits. We actually did. If you get breakfast, you're out. You stay on the breakfast lines.

Right. Breakfast on the breakfast lines. Dinner in play. Right. You stay in the pot. No coffee allowed. Do we say no coffee allowed? No one got coffee, so we can say it.

OK, we said no coffee allowed. No coffee allowed. No breakfast of any kind. I even wanted to get a sandwich of eggs on it. Nick, you said no way. He slapped his hand. Yeah, I said that wasn't an option. Because I feel like you can have an egg-based dish,

but they have an egg dish on the lunch menu. They have a ham sandwich with an egg on it. And they also have a burger with an omelet on it. But it's like, those are still kind of breakfast-y. The idea here was to see how they fare as a diner doing dinner items. Yes. So we got a, from a beverage standpoint, I got myself one of their splashers.

The Tropical Island Twist, which is a blend of lemonade, lemon-lime soda, and tropical mango syrup. Here's the thing, they started offering free refills on this. They didn't used to. These used to be a one-shot deal. Now they'll fill you up as many times as you like, which is nice. They were really coming with the refills the entire night. They gave you like two of them, two refills on that strawberry lemonade you got.

They were there. They were there. They were right on top of things. And I would say, you know, here's my thing with the splashers. I don't necessarily see a reason to get this over a conventional, a normal beverage. Like for me, I just would have rather had an iced tea. I guess except for the, I can't have caffeine that late at night,

which is a side issue. But just as something that's just sort of generally sweet, I was like, I'm not really sure what this mock, what purpose this mocktail serves. I don't know. What did you guys think of your bevs? I remember you accidentally, they accidentally gave you a caffeinated beverage and your eyes started like going off in different directions.

And you bounced around the room for a couple of minutes. Right. Is that why you get too hyped up? I don't try to have no caffeine after a mid afternoon, like I try like a 2pm cutoff. Like sometimes I'll have a cup of coffee at like two and then after that, because then I can't get to bed at night. Very close to a gremlin-ish rule.

Right. No coffee after, don't give him coffee after 2pm or else he has a restless night's sleep. And you have sleep problems anyways. Yeah, I do. So caffeine is the one. It's a villain in that situation. But Mitch, you got a strawberry lemonade. You got a strawberry lemonade.

You sang also got a strawberry lemonade. He came in eight with us. Accidentally given it because he wanted a lemonade iced tea. Oh yeah, they fucked that up. Yeah, they fucked it up there. But honestly, that was kind of the only, that was the only fuck up I saw in the entire meal. Right.

You sang is nodding. Yeah. And I liked the strawberry lemonade. It was a little sweet, but they were chugging along with those refills. Yeah. The strawberries very much felt like cold, frozen, big chunks of strawberries. Right. They were kind of getting the syrup on the bottom.

They were okay. You sang. How did you feel? So-so. Yeah. It was so-so. Did you catch that in the mirror? I did.

Wow. That was cool. I see everything. You see everything? Of course. Just to throw in on this, I had an unsweetened iced tea. That's right. And I accidentally thought the spoon, the tall spoon,

and it was a straw for a second. Yeah, we saw that. We saw it. That one's going on the blooper reel. Yeah. And also I saw that you like, you kept using it and your drink went down. How did you manage that? It was like a magic trick.

A little parlor trick. But yeah, it was great. It was a classic unsweetened iced tea. Hey, you know, that'll get the job done. Hey, you gotta- sometimes you gotta review the classics, and I think that's important. Yeah, it tastes just like every other iced tea. Hey, speaking of classics, we got ourselves a classic of sorts.

A chain restaurant staple, the appetizer sampler platter. That's right. The appetizer sampler they give you at IHOP. Monster matzah sticks, onion rings, chicken strips. Now here's the thing. You song thought the matzah sticks weren't mozzarella, but matzah as in matzah balls. And he was like, I've never had matzah sticks.

And we were like, you've never had matzah sticks? Dude, you gotta try it. You gotta try these. And then we- then he figured out that they weren't matzah. They were matzah. And then we said, you fucking idiot. And we beat the shit out of him. We beat the shit out of you.

We should get- that reminds me. We should get you song to urgent care. He's bleeding out on your floor. Yeah, right. You song would be the shit out of both of us. Easily. Appetizer sampler platter. And we can rub our faces in the mozzarella.

Two things are ranch. I asked if they were both ranch, and she was like, yeah, they're both ranch. She did say that. Also come with some honey mustard and a little bit of marinara. I think a good array of dipping sauces. We didn't seem to run out of that dipping sauce. Yeah, three.

Three different types in four different containers. So there's an apple amount. And a bottle of ketchup right there on the table. Right? Yep. And a bunch of syrups if you still wanted to try something crazy. Well, if you're a mad man. None of us were.

Mm-mm. You know, I hear it at Michael Jordan's, the steakhouse. They've got, in those syrup containers, they got different flavors of Gatorade. This is syrup in those. Can I show you how weird you are that if I had said that, you'd be like, okay, let's move on. I liked it.

I liked the Gatorade joke. Right. Not only that, at the end of your meal, you're supposed to dump them on your waiter in celebration. But you finished the meal? Uh-huh. Yeah, go on. Oh, I was just going to pitch maybe for later some sort of chalk joke.

Right. Yeah, we could do a chalk thing. Well, you know what's funny? The matriot-y is a worm. Whoa. Like Dennis Rodman, the worm. But it's a literal worm. It's a literal worm.

So it's like a nod to it. But it is wearing a suit. Oh, wow, that's weird. That's very strange. A worm in a suit. Did Sesame Street do that? Probably. Uh, that's funny.

It is funny. It's a funny image. A worm in a suit is a funny image. I'd like to see a worm in a suit. That would be funny. See, now we're running you back. Yeah, things are going good. The mozzarella sticks, you know, they're very standard, a little chewy.

I didn't love the flavor of the cheese. I feel like they were a little under, I feel like the breading too was a little under seasoned. Not any rings were good, very heavy, piping hot. I hop babe. I got some, I got a little advice for you babe. If you're going to make, if you're going to try to, you know, if you're going to, if you're going to try to master mozzarella sticks, try to master the mini size before you master the jumbo size.

Okay. Yeah. These are big ones. You didn't need those monster size. They should have gotten smaller ones. I would have rather had four smaller ones than three big honking ones. I agree. Because we had, we had a party of four.

There were only three. Yeah. There were only three. What the heck? Yeah. Three wasn't, that was not cool. Yeah. It was also strange.

You, you put the mozzarella stick in your pants and opened your fly. Oh my God. I can't even do it. I'm afraid of you. You made me afraid. And I said, check this shit out. Check this shit out. And then I'd like suck my own dick to the mozzarella stick.

But your dad likes listening to that. Well, it's not directed at him. That's my boy. Sucking his mozzarella dick. Yeah. The chicken strips, I felt like were kind of okay. The mozzarella, the, the, the dip and sauces went a long way because I think the whole thing, there was just like kind of all kind of bland and just generally salty.

I don't know what you think, Danny. But yeah, like everything I had kind of reminded me of like, including the mozzarella sticks, like remind me of like the, like the freezer version of it, like the after school snack version. Yeah. It's like, oh, it tastes like a mozzarella stick, but it didn't taste good. It just tastes like a mozzarella stick. Right.

That's funny you say that because for the most part, I mean, we gave IHOP respectable scores last time with this. Nick, you gave it four forks. I gave it three and a half, which seems like the better ranking. That was literally our third episode too. We were still feeling everything out. I feel like a lot of what I ate tonight, I do, and I think IHOP does do a good job of breakfast, but a lot of it just tasted like kind of, there was a lot of like, like cafeteria,

like there was some diner side to it, but it did feel a little cafeteria-ish. Well, I feel like they probably, my guess is that the evening crowd for IHOP is either maybe people working late and they're getting breakfast because sometimes when I work the night shift, I like to just sometimes get breakfast tonight. I mean, lots of people like to do that. If you work a regular schedule, people like to get breakfast tonight, but I think also too, I would guess a lot of seniors who maybe want like some of these more conventional staples that are kind of used to that sort of diner sort of way of getting it, but like maybe

as far as the options you can get, you can get a lot of takes on diner food. I'm not making this point in a clear way, but it's like, I feel like these are kind of like standard sort of takes on classics and they kind of tasted like, you know, stuff that you might get from a hospital or like a cafeteria. They weren't anything particularly mind-blowing. There weren't anything particularly that had any reason to distinguish them from the conventional preparation of them. Yeah.

I don't know. I agree with that. Not that I, should we talk about what we got? Well, I mean, we already talked about appetizers, but I'm going to talk about what I got, which I got a patty melt. And I actually thought that it was actually pretty good. I got a patty melt with fries. The fries were decent.

Danny, you had some of the fries. Yeah, I had two. You had two. Exactly, two. And Nick, you had one of the fries. You said, did you have any fries or no? No fries were you saying. Okay.

And then I ate the rest of them. They were good fries. They were good fries. They were good. I like their hash browns there too. I know we're not talking breakfast, but they have great hash browns. Nick, no breakfast. Breakfast stays on the breakfast.

Yeah. Breakfast lines. Oh man. Am I going to get a timeout? Yes. How come you had a big grin when you said that? How's the patty melt? The patty melt was very good.

The patty melt was good. You took it home, right? I took half of it home because we've eaten a lot today, Nick. You still have it in front of you. Are you going to eat it during the podcast? I'm not going to eat it during what the fuck? Put it in the fridge. It's just to my left.

Put it in the fridge. I don't want to make it too cold. What do you mean you don't want to make it too cold? It's not going to get infected by bacteria. Are you going to eat it tonight? Yeah, I'm going to eat it tonight. Oh, okay. All right.

I had another roommate who would, he would bring home leftovers and he'd like leave them on the counter overnight and then he'd just eat them in the morning. I always want to be like, man, just put those in the fridge. Well, it makes sense that you fucking crashed out at me thinking that I was your ex roommate. No, I was concerned about your well-being. Like, you don't want to catch a bit of bobtulism. Put that in the fridge if you're going to have it out for a while. It's sitting under my copy of Splatoon 2.

It's fine. You don't want to play too much? I have not played it yet, but I'm interested in playing. I mean, you're going to play it too. It looks fun. Yeah. Maybe, you know what? Maybe we'll play together at some point.

You think? Can I see that? Yeah, of course. All right. We're going to check out the box for Splatoon 2. We'll be right back after this break with more Doe Boys. Welcome back to Doe Boys. We were talking at iHop Dinner and the Splatoon 2 box art.

What do you guys think? Can I see that? I give it a thumbs up. I think I got to refresh my memory. It seems very... Oh, this is wild. You know what? It seems like something that you would see in Japan.

It seems very geared towards Japanese audience. Oh, I actually saw an ad for this. Yeah, this game looks really cool. It also sold Zelda in Japan. Yeah, it's very popular in Japan. I got myself a Switch recently. And I'm not going with any physical games. I'm going with all download.

No. I don't like the physical games. You know the thing with the Switch games? I think I maybe said it on the podcast. But if you lick them, they're very sour. Yeah, you said that. They have a tart taste or something. Right, you like to put games in your mouth for some reason.

I don't put games in my mouth. Switch games are tiny, so I think that a lot of people have been choking on them. Okay. You know, you're on the couch. You got a bowl of popcorn. You accidentally reach too far to the right. You throw Wind Waker arms in your mouth. Wind Waker.

Wind Waker is not on the Switch. You fucking idiot. You throw arms or breath of the wild in your mouth. Right. Or Mario Kart. Right. You start choking. But you know what?

It has that bitter or sour taste or whatever it is. So you know immediately this isn't popcorn. You spit it out and you're good to go. No. Hey, you know what? Speaking of a bitter or sour taste, I had a salad with Thousand Island dressing. It wasn't bitter or sour at all. Wait.

But I tell you this, they've changed up their salad recently. I'm going to say this. Your tomatoes look like salsa. Yeah, so they've gone with a very ultra-diced tomato. They used to have the cherry tomatoes in there. They used to have a much more conventional iceberg lettuce. Maybe a little bit of a romaine thrown in there with cherry tomatoes, carrots. They used to have a very conventional dinner salad.

Now they have a little bit of a, they've classed it up a little bit. They have like a field greens, more of a mescaline greens. And they've got like this diced tomato. And that's basically the entire salad and croutons, just those three elements. Yeah. Can I talk about tomatoes for a moment? Please do. I just recently got into heirloom tomatoes.

Yeah, I like heirloom tomatoes. Why isn't everything heirloom tomatoes? I think they're pricier. And I think they're harder to grow at scale. They taste so good. They do taste good. But yeah, I think the ones that have been like kind of engineered to grow easily in, you know, highly treated soil on factory farms are just not heirlooms can't do that. That's my supposition.

I'm not a food scientist, but that's kind of what I've gathered. If you're out there like me and you haven't tried one of these, you've got to try it. Oh, heirloom tomatoes are great. I just got into them. I don't know where they've been my whole. I think I was kind of scared of them because they looked, they didn't look like tomatoes to me. Right. Yeah.

Like it's kind of the, it's kind of paradoxical where they went from the heirloom tomatoes which is like more of what a real tomato is to kind of breeding, crossbreeding them until they had this uniform looking red tomato because that was more appealing to consumers. And now as time has passed, people have realized they want more of the original thing. And so it's just swung back the other direction. All this mixing of tomatoes that just scares me. You know the movie attack of the killer tomatoes, correct? I know of it.

I've never seen it. I'm just afraid of some situation like that happening. That was like, well, that was in a school. The Apes treatment for that. That would be great. It'd be nice to see where those guys came from. Very gritty, very serious version. I would like a killer tomatoes reboot.

George Clooney famously. Was he really? That was one of his first big roles. Speaking of Clooney, Casamigos, his tequila brand sold for a king's ransom. Really? What I would say, if you're a celebrity, use your cachet to have an alcohol brand because that thing is going to be a cash cow. Like Dan Aykroyd has one.

Like Dan Aykroyd, Sammy Hagar made more money from his Cabo Wabo tequila than he did from and now his beach bum rum, I think it's called beach bum rum. Did Paul Newman have a? Paul Newman had a salad. I don't have yet an alcohol at any point, but let me tell you, there's so much exciting announcement. Dough poise has just backed a new baking soda. That's coming out this summer, right?

Right. Very exciting. It's like Arm and Hammer, except it doesn't work. And me and Mitch's faces are on the box. It's kind of disappointing that it says on the box, it says like Arm and Hammer, but it doesn't work. Right. It was nice to Arm and Hammer company, though, to like not sue us for using their trademark

in that marketing material. They're like, yeah, it makes us look better and people will pick us still. We could be in trouble. I don't know how we're going to do. If you guys were going to have a liquor brand, what would you get? Like what would you have? I know where I would go. Keg out.

Keg out. I got worst. Light beer. Light beer, okay. Like a good, I was a light beer. Like a factory, like a Pilsner macro brew. That's fun. I'm going rum, baby.

The fat Irish guy has the island booze everybody loves. I would love to do a nice rum. Right. I think rum is going to come back around soon, right? Yeah. I think I think rum is having a renaissance. Oh, is it? Yeah.

I love rum. I love rum based drinks. Nick, you know this because I brought it back for a dough boys. I got some rum from Columbia. Right. That was Cuban rum. I have a couple of bottles of Cuban rum. Yeah.

It's great. Yeah. You're a big rum guy. I'm a big rum fan. Your favorite movie, right? Is the rum diaries. The rum diaries. What's your favorite?

Nick, what I think. What would I do? Are you a vodka man? No. Vodka is a fine mixer, but I just, I feel like it's kind of boring to drink. I do actually really like rum. I would potentially also say rum if I was going to say a spirit. I also like gin.

I feel like bourbon is kind of overdone, but I do like whiskies. I do maybe like a rye or something. How about absinthe? No, I wouldn't do an absinthe. I'm hedging. I'm hedging. I have a bunch of different options. How about light beer?

All right. I'm going to go with light beer. All right. You're both doing light beer? I'll do a light beer. Jesus Christ. No, you know what I mean? I'd say vineyard, but I feel like celebrity.

And why am I saying celebrity? Because I'm not a celebrity. But I feel like people who have vineyards are kind of like, that's kind of like such a cliche. And I feel like that person also, like there's never anywhere as good as like real wines. But I feel like those celebrity. I thought Coppola has a good one, right? I guess so. I don't know.

Some people make fun of the Coppola wines. Is it respected or not? I have no idea. I don't know if it's respected. I don't know if it's respected. I would guess that it's like not as respected as others. But I've been to the Coppola vineyard and it's very nice. And I believe that there is a, there's some sort of Oscar in the, in like the vineyard display case.

There's some Oscar for something. Yeah. Yeah. It's weird too, because they have also who works at the vineyard is the kid who is the inspiration for Jack. The very, he's very old. Yeah. He's 13.

He looks very old because he's got that fast aging disease. For real, there is a Nicholas Cage thing. I forget what it was, like a picture of him and then like some little thing, like in a little display case. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. It's his face from face off. They use that to like uncork bottles of wine.

I couldn't think of any more Coppola references. That's why I just went with the honest one. I mean, Godfather. I know, but I was, what does that say? Conversation. Conversation. One from the heart. Oh, there you go.

I had nothing funny to say about Godfather. Yeah. What is it? It's all been said by Mafia, the movie Mafia. Right. Jane Austen's Mafia. Jane Austen's Mafia. Thank you.

Yeah. That was, no, that was the definitive Mafia spoof. And now that closed the door on Godfather references. I got this. Does he put a big watermelon slice in his mouth? Is that what happens? Yeah. It's like too big.

Yeah. He's like a big watermelon. It's not orange. It's an orange. It's an orange. Oh, he like. No, but in the spoof. Oh, I'm sorry.

Yeah. In the spoof. Doesn't he put a big watermelon? No, I don't. And I guess like a huge mouth. Was that the no goods? Was that the Zuckers up to no good again? No, I don't think those are the Zuckers.

I think that was in the spoof Renaissance. Oh, hot shots. Renaissance. Yeah. That was that whole era. And I think that was a, it was derivative of the Zucker, the Zucker collaboration, but it wasn't one of them. That was the quote unquote zany 90s.

Right. Classic zany 90s. And no one direction fans. We don't mean the zany 2010s. That's not the zane we're talking about. Jesus Christ. Why do you know the shit? So I got myself a country fried steak,

broccoli mashed potatoes. Here's the thing. It didn't come with broccoli. It had broccoli on the menu, on the menu, but it actually came with a side of corn niblets, which were fine. But I was kind of anticipating that broccoli. The mashed potatoes were good, but no gravy.

They ladled on that country fried gravy, that sausage gravy that they do, that country style gravy on the chicken fried steak. What do you think of that gravy? I liked it. The texture I think was, you know, it's like, it's very solid. It was a very solid version of country fried steak.

It looks pretty gross. It did look gross, but it always looks gross. I feel like that's how that looks. The kind of gravy that you get with like a biscuits and gravy looks disgusting. And the kind of ones you ladle on a chicken fried steak. But I thought the texture of the fry on the steak was good. I thought the meat was good.

It was very well seasoned. And I liked the gravy. I just wish there had been some gravy on those potatoes. It also came with some garlic toast, which was just excessive. But overall, a very solid meal. And as far as chicken fried steak, or country fried steak, rather, on this menu, which is one of my childhood favorites,

I felt like it definitely satisfied that particular itch, scratched that particular itch. Danny, how about your entree? Well, I had the roasted turkey and fixings, which is... Thanksgiving on a plate. Yeah, I happen to love Thanksgiving. And any chance I get, I try to have a Thanksgiving dinner

any time of year, no matter how hot it is outside. I love that. Whether it's the dog days of summer, the leafy days of fall, the jumpy days of spring, or Thanksgiving itself in the middle of winter. Is that a winter holiday? Yeah, I think so.

Yeah, that's a winter. November is winter, right? Yeah, we've moved. I think Thanksgiving is the first sign of winter. What would you say the season borders are? November, December, January is winter? Look, after Halloween ends, the ghosts have gone off. Right.

I think that the winter starts sending in. What do you think? November 15th? I mean, there probably is. I think it probably is. I'm sure there's a winter solstice that finds it. Yeah, solstice. Yeah, I think it is around November 15th or so.

Sure. Anyways, it's harvest season. I like to remind myself of the harvest whenever I can. Right. That's what I did today-ish tonight. We had an early dinner? We went to it. It was an early dinner.

It tasted like a TV dinner, but I like TV dinners. I don't eat them these days, but it was like a nice deluxe TV dinner. Right. Man, the days of the TV dinner. I actually liked it. I thought it was good. I ate most of it. It was good.

It was turkey and stuffing and broccoli. Right. The broccoli was kind of nothing. Yeah, the broccoli looked nothing. But I ate it because it was the only thing that was relatively good for me on the phone. That's why I wish I would have gotten instead of that corn. That was promised in broccoli. Yeah, look at the picture off the menu.

There's corn right there. You seem upset about this corn. That's not corn. No. I mean, not broccoli. There's broccoli right there. Yeah. Sometimes I get the words broccoli and corn mixed up.

Maybe Nick does too. Maybe that's what happened. Maybe you asked for... I did. Why would I ask for corn? But yeah, it was good. I liked it. I was going to say that the days of the...

I agree with you that I like those TV dinners. Like the Hungry Man? The Hungry Man. Those days are kind of gone. I feel like the TV dinner days are kind of gone. I walk by them and wistfully look at them. Oh, I remember you. Yeah.

In the grocery store. I don't buy them anymore. I remember kid cuisine. But they look good on the packet. Oh, yeah. I remember kid cuisine. But do you know what I liked about them? Is that you cooked...

You would cook like every... You would cook like your entree and your size and your like dessert brownie all at the same time. Right. You're cooking everything up at the same time. Yeah. Yeah. It was a lot of fun to have a little...

Have a nice day. Have a nice day. Have a nice day. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.

Bye. Bye. Hi. So you verdeidel had a little... I have a... Everything's planned out for you. Yeah, you get like a little chef when you had to like stop the microwave and peel off another part.

I love that. That was good. I was kind of child. I am involved. It's like putting together IKEA furniture. It's just as fun as putting together IKEA furniture. Mitch, that Paddy Melt you had... It was good.

I liked it a lot. It had like a diner feel to it. Right. It wasn't as good as like the best Paddy Melt you could have. But it was good. Good enough for you to take at home. It was good enough for me to take at home. All right.

It was very basic. It was basic. Right. It just like felt like a burger on rye bread that was grilled a little bit. I mean, that was kind of the meal overall I feel like, right? Like everything was very basic. But I guess that's our evaluation should be because that's what they were trying to do was present the basics as how did they do in that.

And with that, let's get to our final ratings. So Danny, you've listed the podcast. You know how this works. We'll go around. We'll sort of give our closing argument and then give a rating of one to five forks. We will begin with you. Okay. Well, like I was saying, it is like basically frozen food.

I don't know if that's what it actually is, but that's what it reminds me of is like food that you would buy and then heat up in a microwave. But it's the best possible version of that. And when you're a kid, you kind of like that. So I did get some sort of like, it did tap into that a little bit. This isn't, you know, if you turn off a certain part of your brain that's evolved to like fresh ingredients or whatever, you can enjoy a meal there. Yeah.

That sounds like written a little more edgy than I intended it. But, but, um, yeah, three forks, three forks. Go ahead, Mitch. Yeah, I feel like it's this weird situation where I'm like, am I judging this? I tried some of your guy's stuff. So I'm like, am I judging this because I liked, I liked this patty melt. It was good. I get that patty melt again.

When am I going to go and eat there for dinner? I don't know. It's tricky. I think I hop is like a three to a three and a half fork restaurant. Right. We're ranking dinner. And I think for dinner, I got to be a little bit more hard on it, but it's not terrible. I think it's like, it's like diner food.

And in some cases you're going to do better than you do at some diners and you're going to do much worse than you do at other diners. And I think with what I got, it's like, oh, I feel like that's like middle of the pack. Not bad. A decent patty melt. But, you know, do I hop? Do I hop? No.

Do I run? Do I hop? No. Do I walk to I hop? Maybe. If it's like I'm on the road and there's not much other things open, you know? I feel like it's not a bad choice if you're going to have some sort of late dinner and there's nothing around.

This is a hard one, Nick. Honestly, it's hard. I'm going to go with two and a half forks just because I thought the patty melt was good. But I honestly was like, should I go two forks? But that's not two and a half forks for the entire, we're talking dinner here. So I'm ranking this on dinner. I'm ranking this on dinner. Is that how we're doing it?

Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. What the fuck? I feel like we should rank based. I feel like we had just dinner just to try it, but I feel like we should rank it based on the whole restaurant. You're going to throw this on me right now.

Yeah. I think we should. We should do. Give another half fork. Okay, great. So you're going up to three and a half. I got to go to three. You're going three and a half.

You're going three and a half. Yeah, because I think that's the thing. Because the thing is, we went, okay, we went for dinner. But I never go there for dinner unless I was going on a podcast. Right. And if you were going to go there at dinner, you can always get order off the breakfast menu. They never stopped serving the breakfast menu.

Can I just say that you're being weird today? Will you be mad at me if I say that? No, that's fine. We're dogging it. We're talking about this up top. We're in a weird mood. We're tired. We're going to, at the end of this episode, just like the Snoop Dogg video, we're going

to transform into dogs. Oh man, that'd be awesome. Well, can you still give a dinner rating in a bit? I guess. Yeah, give a dinner rating. Give a rating in dinner plates. Three plate dinner plates. All right, three plates.

Three dinner plates. Three and a half forks overall. Okay, great. And I got two and a half dinner plates. Three forks overall, which is a half fork down from my original ranking, but still good. Yeah. But like, let's be real that you can go, you can get better food than IHOP. Yes.

I think that, here's the thing. I have had some better entrees from the lunch and dinner menu at IHOP. I have had a BLT that is very satisfying from there. And I've had a burger that's not bad. I would prefer both of those to the country of ride steak. I feel like their appetizer sampler is, I feel like their appetizers in general are nothing to write home about. I would stick with their breakfast.

I think their breakfasts are more exciting and more engaging. And I feel like that's the reason to go there. I think they're, if you want something savory, I would go with an egg dish with maybe some sort of protein. If you want something sweeter, you know, there's an array of pancake and French toast options. But their dinner options are very solid. And if you're just not craving breakfast, I feel like you could do a lot worse than what they have there.

I'm going to go with three dinner plates. And I see no reason to change my four fork rating from the first time we went there overall for IHOP. Wow. Because I think they do breakfast so well. And I think they have great service there and I think it's a fun environment. You know what? I feel bad.

You shouldn't feel bad. Three forks one time. Three forks one time. Okay. Three and a quarter forks basically. The IHOP in Santa Monica, but it's good. It's good. It's good.

There's an IHOP in Santa Monica that's a ground floor of a hotel and it closed down recently and then they opened up like a cool hipster diner. I was telling you this and that place is fine. It's good. But it's just another thing of like, oh man, I liked having an IHOP here. Yeah. And it's nice that you had something that was a little bit more budget friendly in the neighborhood.

Hey, it's your fault talking back and forth with extra millennial and all these people. What do you mean it's my fault? What are you talking about? You're having these Twitter correspondence with extra millennial, the person who gave the roast. What? You're supporting these millennial hipster takeovers. Do you think millennials are the people who are pushing for this?

Are millennials hipsters? I think they go hand in hand. I don't think that's what the issue is. I think the issue is that, I think the issue is older people with higher income who are able to go to these places that are more expensive, who are able to go someplace where you have a $22 brush. Oh, you're blaming this on the older generation. I'm playing this on those old fucks out there.

The old fucks were in IHOP with us. No, I'm not those old fucks. I mean the, there's, I mean like the yeti sort. Baby boomers? Baby boomers. Yeah. Baby boomers are now kind of old. Baby boomers and the Gen Xers who have like, who've benefited from the economy and have

a lot of disposable income. I don't know if I'm, I guess I'm, I'm probably existing that cuss between Gen Xer and... Are you a baby boomer? Yeah. I, I'm in the greatest generation. I exist in that cuss between Generation X and Millennials, but I don't think, millennials I feel like are broke. I don't feel like they have the money to go to these places.

I don't know. I wouldn't blame them for that sort of gentrification. I feel like that has more, more to do with the people who are high income, you know, working in Silicon Beach who are buying $900,000 condos. That's fair. Uh, but I don't know. Who fucking knows? Look, the economy in this country is fucked.

That was our review of iHOP. We've got a food stuff. We're excited. Yeah. Go for it. Sorry. Was that iHOP blue enough? No.

Oh yeah. They kind of did. They kind of toned down the blue coloring. I want more blue. Like the iHOP from my memory was blue everywhere. Right. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

They've kind of, they've kind of changed their aesthetic a little bit. It's not... I wanted more blue. Maybe I, maybe it's like going down, maybe, maybe Nick's rating should go down. I think Nick's rating should go down. No. I'm keeping my rating. It's four.

You think it's a gold? Yeah. It's four forks. You gave Taco Bell a three the first time. I've read Con that. Okay. That was our second episode. All right.

Fair enough. We, we are still finding our footing. Okay. Fine. Don't yell at me. We're still finding our footing. We've not, we haven't found our footing. We don't know what we're doing.

This podcast is bad. We've got a food stuff. We're going to decide if it's worth putting in your mouth. It's snack or whack. I'm very happy to throw these in the trash. We've been trying to just sort of be like, we've accumulated a surplus of food here for us to taste. People keep sending us stuff, which is very nice.

And then we've also bought stuff in preparation for episodes. So we have a backlog, but here we're going to go through. This comes from those friendly little elves over at Keebler. The Keebler elves. Oh, this guy, this guy who looks like Jeff Sessions. Huh? Is that Attorney General Jeff Sessions on the Keebler box? What boy, he's implementing white nationalist policies of the Justice Department.

And then he's baking cookies in a magic tree. What Jeff Sessions, the Keebler elf guy, get a load of Jeff Sessions, the cookie guy. Anyway, these come courtesy of Jeff Sessions is going to be so pissed when he hears this. Sessions is going to lose his shit. These are these fudge stripe cookies, but these are cinnamon roll. There's nothing fudging about cinnamon roll. It sounds like the last like 30 minutes of this podcast, you've just done this angry. Hey, you know, it's Sessions was like, Hey, get this fudge out of here.

We want to make these white. Oh my God. No politics. Okay. No more politics. Also, now I feel bad because I like the Keebler elf. I do like the Keebler elf. I think it's kind of unfair that the people keep comparing Jeff Sessions, who's kind of

a piece of shit to all these beloved sort of figures from high fantasy. Yeah. Like they're just like, Oh, hey, Bilbo Baggins. It's like, I like Bilbo, the guy who found Sting, who overcame those trolls. You're yelling this out loud to no one in particular. Yes. I like Bilbo. Bilbo is great.

Um, all right. So we got these fudge stripes. These are very like, these, these are very weird looking. Go ahead and take one of these Danny passes over to Jeff Sessions. Anyone could compare him to a she lob. There you go. The spider that doesn't look like him. It smells like, um, oh yeah, they, these are very cinnamon smell.

The second package opened, I smelled it. They really do look like cinnamon rolls. They are, you know, they are like just a basically a palette swap. Or you could say that they look like a cookie. Wow. Very cinnamon-y. Are you, are you guys going to chew right into Mike? I tried to lean away from the mic when I chew, but you know, whatever, it doesn't matter

that much. These are very, very cinnamon-y. Mmm. Kind of aggressively, kind of like that cinnamon toast crunch, like very cinnamon-y flavor. I'm honestly not getting a lot from the, I can't tell what the, like what the white coloring that takes place of the fudge. I don't, I can't tell what that's supposed to be. It's kind of flavorless to me.

Am I wrong about that? The, the fudge? Yeah. The fudge, like the white, like they're, that's normally where the fudge would be. But now it's just white. Mmm. I'm having a hard time telling what it is. Mmm.

Interesting. Like it's like, it's like, it would be, you would expect it to be like kind of vanilla-y or something. I guess what is it on cinnamon rolls? Is it vanilla? Yeah. It doesn't really have much of a, am I wrong about that? I don't get much of a flavor out from that.

I'm just getting like the heavy cinnamon from the cookie itself. Where are you going? What are you doing? I want to say it's dad just. Okay. Right. Well done. Good job, Mitch.

He's so sad. It's good. I mean, these are pretty good. I got, I got a, I got a story for you. Go for it. It's whack. Wow. Immediately jumping to whack.

Whack. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know if I eat more than one of these. It's like the cinnamon flavor I like. I do like cinnamon. It's just like, it's kind of a sweet treat, but it's just like. It's almost like you put like a spoon of cinnamon in your mouth.

Right. It's very cinnamon-y. And, and I, I maintain that the, the jizz portion of it just doesn't have much flavor. Like it's just, it's just sort of generally like, it's just kind of gives like a creaminess, but it doesn't really add much in terms of any sort of specific sweetness. I don't know. What do you think, Danny? Um, I think it's a snack, just barely.

Right. But it's, it's definitely the last snack in your, in your shack. Yeah. This is not making it to the, what, what, what do we just, what did we just start the snack at? Like you would eat these. Fuck, what the fuck is it called? I think I would eat these, like if, like, oh, oh yeah, I bought those.

Uh, yeah, I'll finish them, I guess. Right. If I had these and I was really hungry and there were any other options, I guess I might, I might have good news, Danny. I don't think I, I don't think I. They're yours. Yeah. Take the rest of these.

I'm going, I'm with Mitch on these. I think they just, there just isn't anything particularly exciting about them. And also definitely, you know, always the metric for me is how would I compare these to the default regular option. And if you can bear these, these regular fudge stripes, give me them regular fudge stripes. If I'm not, if I'm not, I take the calories and sugars and I don't know why I'd want the, the cinnamon roll version. Yeah.

I mean, the regular fudge shapes are great, aren't they? They're good cookies. They're good. Yeah. Not so much. Yeah. Nice try sessions. Yeah.

Take that. What is his name? What is the Kiebler Elf's name? I don't know. Does he have a name? The main one, the main one's got to have a name, right? Kiebler Elf names. Let's see.

Ernie. Oh, Ernie. Is that the main guy? Ernie is the main guy. Okay. That makes sense. Ernie, Jeffrey Kiebler. Oh no.

That's the guy who founded it. The elves are led by Ernest J. Kiebler or Ernie. Ernie. There's also. Ernie the elf. That makes sense. Yeah. There's also Zoot and JJ.

Fryer Tuck. Mock Kiebler. Elmer Kiebler. Buckets. Is JJ the one that directs the commercial? Yeah. There's Fast Eddie, Sam, Roger, Doc, Zach. What the fuck?

Flo, Leonardo, Elwood, Professor, Edison. Flo? Larry, Leonardo? Yeah. Flo from Progressive. They were so many of these weird elves. This is like a bunch of guys you went to high school with in Quincy. Yeah.

I don't know. I wasn't very excited by these. All right. That was Snack or Wack. Yeah. Just like a restaurant environment feedback. Let's open up the feedback. Today's email comes to us from Zina Kumak.

Zina writes, what was the worst thing you ever ate for money? As a kid sometimes needed a mashup of people's leftovers for money. The last time I did this was in seventh grade and I made $20. I can't remember what it was except that I had a stomach ache for the next few hours. Somehow I have a feeling Mitch has done this. God. Have you guys ever eaten anything weird for money? No.

I don't think I have. I'm trying to remember. I definitely know a kid who did. Yeah. Yeah. There's definitely a couple of kids who did that. It's funny because I don't. I like it.

Nick, you know this. Yeah. This sounds weird. I was going to say, you know, I have a gag reflex, but you do know that. Yeah. Like I have a hard time. Like in fear factor or whatever and they eat bugs or whatever. I could watch that show until the bug stuff.

The bug stuff is the bug. Like bugs or like when I was younger, I had like a couple issues with mold where I like bit into mold and so forth. Oh yeah. That's gross. Like I can't. So I can't do anything like particularly gross. Like I remember like, I remember, you know what?

You know, kids and twins, you know what they used to make me do? They used to make me drink this thing called the lineup, but it was just all alcohol. I think you mentioned this before. Yeah. On the podcast? Yeah, I probably have. Or to me, I honestly don't remember if it was on the podcast or not. Where it was a shot of Jaeger and then another shot of Jaeger and a Jaeger bomb and then

a Guinness and then a Bud Light and they would pay to make me drink. Like they would pay me to drink those and I would do it all in like under 30 seconds and they would pay me to do like they would give me money. That's a weird kid instinct to do. It's like, isn't it more fun to just like drink that with your friends rather than challenge someone to drink all of it themselves. And then like I would just feel like sick. Right.

The rest of the night. Sound like a whole Guinness or like a shot of a Guinness? No, a whole Guinness. Jesus Christ. And then a shot of Jaeger and then another shot of Jaeger and Jaeger bomb and a Bud Light. That's crazy. So they would pay me to do that at one point. And I don't even like saying this because I feel like it sounds like fratty.

Right. But that's the only thing I can like, and I remember like one time they paid me money to drink like duck sauce with a bunch of booze in it. That sounds gross. But I was happy to do it. Right. Like it didn't bug me. But like besides that, I don't think I've done anything like specifically gross.

You know what I mean? I mean, I guess those two are gross, but like anything that's like like mushing food together. I think I probably actually would say no. Yeah. I don't know. I have kind of a weak stomach. So I'm not someone who would step up for that kind of food challenge. But I did know a kid in high school who would eat.

He was like his whole thing is he would eat anything for any amount of money. And he would add that gimmick for just like a few months and then he abandoned it. But he like is the kind of thing like he would eat a worm for a nickel because he would just like he was just like any amount of money I will eat anything. And that was kind of fun. So like they, a bunch of kids collected a 25 cents to have him eat a plate with an apple on it that was covered in mud. And then he also had to eat the paper plate afterwards.

What the fuck? So he was just, I remember watching him for a quarter. So I remember watching him sitting under a tray for a quarter because that was a whole gimmick. It was just like I don't, I will do it for any amount of money because the money is a material. It's like me impressing you with a stunt. It was kind of like a jackass kind of mentality.

There's like people eat entire like cars and airplanes, right? Right. There's people have those weird, my weird or disorder or whatever. Michael Jordan's restaurant famously has the basketball challenge. Yeah. Yeah. If you can eat 30 basketball and a whistle and a whistle, um, they, they give you the deed to the restaurant and you're the manager now, but you transform into a worm.

Yeah. You transform into a worm and you're the major date. Um, but yeah, I remember him sitting under a tree just eating like a plate of like eating like a mud covered apple and like finishing the apple and then starting to eat on the paper plate, starting to eat part of the paper plate and then he just puked mud like back on it. Oh my God. And then dropped it and abandoned it.

That was the last one. I think that was the last one. I think that was the one that put it over the edge. And I think now that that guy's probably like a lawyer with a family. You know what I mean? Like it was just like people, people just grow into adults and they just have normal lives after that. The famous mud lawyer.

Um, now I just meet maybe a simple mud eating lawyer, not too accustomed to you city folk and your lawyerly ways. Sure. I eat mud covered apples for lunch every day. Um, that to me, that means that he liked to eat mud. You think you like to eat weird shit? Was leaving for justification. Yeah.

I think that might have been a part of it. Right. Like Chankton, my friend, Chankton, he always, uh, like I'd like, I dare eat this butter. Like we'd be at weddings and like I dare eat this butter and I would give him like 20 bucks to eat like just balls of butter. But then I was like, Chankton, like likes eating balls of butter. Oh, that. I did have a thing.

I drank, I drank like a, I was like a kid and somebody dared me to drink, um, like a little bottle of scope. Oh, wow. That's crazy. That was like, it was like at a family thing. Like at a, it was like the wedding brunch after a wedding. Right. Like the next day and at the kids table, we, there was like these like goodie bags with

things and there was scope in them and I like chugged the scope. That's pretty good. That is crazy. I remember when, you know, you know, funnels, you know, like people used to say, you know, like people used to funnel beer. Yeah. I remember we got a funnel when I was like in high school or something and I was teaching people how to funnel and I funneled like three Pepsi's in a row.

And then I feel like every time I, Oh, that must have like stung your throat. Yeah. That feels like it would make me sick. Yeah. By the way, that, that lineup is comes from a San Diego guy, Tim, the night train Kletzel. He taught me that. A San Diego guy?

A San Diego guy. What was he doing up in Quincy? He wasn't. I was down in San Diego and he taught me that and then I brought it to Quincy. Whoa. Wait, what were you doing down in San Diego? I was hanging out in Sinitas with my buddy Joe Aranda. Wow.

And we were, we were going to Juanita's, the best burrito place in the world, the best California burritos you can find. Wow. Very cool. Yeah. Do you think that is cool? Yeah. I think that's awesome.

Hey, Madam Duff ready wants to chill in SoCal. It's the place to be. Yeah. But I feel like outside of like dumb drinking stuff. I never, I never really, I never was big into food challenges. Yeah. I don't know. I, yeah.

I had nothing else to say. Hey, you know what? You out there, if you've got an interesting food challenge, hashtag food challenge. Whoa. I hope it's as interesting as the name. Let us know your food challenge that you did for money hashtag food challenge. One time I ate a burger. That's the type of things we're going to get to this food challenge.

Look, I think the, the parameters are pretty clear. Someone paid you something to eat something weird. Someone paid you an amount of money to eat something weird. If you've done that, if you've had that experience, let us know. We'll check out some of the best of them. If you have a question or comment with the world chain restaurant, she must have two boys podcast. Gmail.com to get the dough boys double our weekly bonus episode.

Subscribe at patreon.com slash dough boys. Denny Jelenik. Oh, can I add a hashtag to your food challenge? Please do. Hashtag paid to eat. Oh, yeah. That's great. Paid to eat is good.

Yeah. It's better than food challenge. I don't know if it is. I think it's worse. No, I like hashtag paid to eat. Hey, you know what? We got through this dog day of summer. Oh boy.

And we had a great guest at the same time. Oh, what a treat. Denny, do you have anything you would like to plug at this time? I am Atlas Generator on stuff. I don't post much, but check it out. And also that show, Good Game, check it out. It's going to be fun. It's on YouTube red.

You know when it's out? No. It's coming out in August. I think the end of August. I don't have the date off. And that's from our buddy Dan Harmon. Yeah. For Feral Audio fame.

Yes, sir. And many other places, obviously. And I'll do it for this episode of Dog Boys. And until next time, for the Spoon Man, Mike Mitchell. I'm Nick Weiger. Happy eating. See ya. Feral Audio.