Doughboys - Pizza Hut 3 with Brendan James

Episode Date: July 28, 2022

Brendan James (Blowback Season 3), joins the 'boys to talk Gru, Groot, Goop, and Grunty before a review of Pizza Hut. Plus, another edition of Slop Quiz.Sources for this week's intro:https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063462/?ref_=nm_flmg_dr_11 https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mel-Brooks https://www.newsweek.com/spaceballs-star-wars-mel-brooks-star-trek-rick-moranis-629230 https://www.mtishows.com/show-history/1677#:~:text=The%20Producers%20is%20a%20musical,Glen%20Kelly%20and%20Doug%20Besterman https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/70987/15-things-you-might-not-know-about-pizza-hut    Want more Doughboys? Check out our Patreon!: https://patreon.com/doughboysSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What's up, everybody? It's your boy, The Spoon Man, and I want to talk to you about today's sponsor, UberEats. At UberEats, we've helped more than 400,000 restaurants across the U.S. reach new, hungry customers and deliver growth quickly through new orders. Uber's global platform can help you grow, reach new people, get valuable sales data, and unlock ways to expand with flexible delivery options. Put your business on UberEats. Get access to the UberEats platform, including valuable sales data to grow your business.

Dig into your data. Really dig in there anytime to monitor your performance and customer order trends. Wow. Wow. Why is restaurant owners enjoy 0% commission for the first 30 days on all orders, offer subject to change per the terms of the restaurant agreement? Wow. 0% on the first 30 days.

Coming up today, that link that you want to click on is down there in the episode description. Right down there. Check it out. There it is. Move your cursor. Go ahead and click, or if you're on your phone, use your finger and click that link. Click that link in the episode description. In 1968, writer-comedian Mel Brooks released his feature directorial debut, The Producers,

a film where stars Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder produce a play meant to intentionally fail at the box office's ploy to scam investors. While the film about the bomb wasn't exactly a hit, it did win Brooks and Oscar for best original screenplay and established the Sid Cesar protege as a singular comedic voice. In the next decade, Brooks would write and direct multiple comedies, two more of which would become pop culture touchstones, Western spoof blazing saddles, and another Gene Wilder collab, Young Frankenstein. But by the 80s, Brooks' status as the Sultan of Spoof was ceded to the trio of Zooker,

Abram Zooker, who burst onto the scene with the Leslie Nielsen vehicle Airplane, just as Brooks' history of the world part one bombed critically and theatrically. In 1987, Brooks released the sci-fi spoof Spaceballs, starring Bill Pullman as Lone Star and the late John Candy as his sidekick Barf. Contemporary reception was lukewarm, though today the film is fondly remembered, thanks to a quotable performance from Rick Moranis' Dark Helmet. Without pleasing sound effects work from the one and only Michael Winslow, and a crime based based off of the Return of the Jedi villain, Jabba, and named for a pizza chain

founded in 1958 in Wichita, Kansas. Today that chain is part of the Yum Brands Triforce along with KFC and Taco Bell, and by number of locations it is the largest pizza restaurant in the world. After limited success in the 90s with films like Life Stinks and Dracula Dead and Loving It, also starring Leslie Nielsen, it was a Broadway adaptation of the producers that breathed new life into Brooks' career, the must-see Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane fronted production becoming the Hamilton of the early 2000s. Still alive and loving it at age 96, Brooks published a memoir last year and has an upcoming

History of the World TV series in production, a capstone for a comedy career unmatched in staying power. At the end of Spaceballs, the Jabba-inspired villain made of sauce and cheese has found his grim end by eating himself to death, but is the actual chain's fare so delicious that it would inspire autocannibalism. This week on Doe Boys, we return, once again, to Pizza Hut. Welcome to Doe Boys, the podcast about chain restaurants. I'm Nick Weiger, along with my co-host, Hunger Biden, the Spoon Man, Mike Mitchell.

Wait, what? Like Hunter Biden, but for Hunger, Hunger Biden, that was courtesy of Wet Beef on the Doe Squad. Great name. Forgot Hunter's name for a second. I didn't forget. The Doe Squad is coming after Spoon Man's emails. Release the sweet tooth tapes, roastspoonman at gmail.com.

I, uh, you're getting a lot more roasts than I'm getting drops. The drop mailbox is looking pretty thin right now. I think you gotta shout out the address again. I think we make that a weekly practice of like, hey, send in your drops, and I might use them, and also nudge the drop king. Yeah, maybe I have to nudge the drop king. Also, I guess like you have to make a drop, kind of sucks. It's a little bit more work than just coming up with a strained pun and emailing it in.

I've got a surplus of roasts. Hunger Biden? Hunger Biden. I mean, maybe you should slim down the mailbox. Hunger Biden won out. Hunger Biden. I was so confusing. Hunger, Hunger Biden.

More like Hunger Biden. Like Hunter. Yeah, he's got a fucking hog. Jesus Christ. Where do we land on Hunter Biden? We're fans of his now, right? He's fun. We're pro Hunter.

We're pro Hunter. We like Hunter. The best Biden. We should, I want to recap something that happened with the two of us, involving the two of us, a couple months back as of this episode's release, but we never talked about on the podcast, which is the two of us went to a wedding, and this was at a, in sort of a rural location, and two notable things happened at this wedding. One is, and you know, in this guy's defense, there were some like celebrities in attendance,

but an old guy at the wedding thought I was Johnny Depp. That's right. Well, you were a bad mouthing Amber Heard. That's true. Very loudly calling her a liar. Man, we get so many more listens if we, if that was our angle, we're just a Johnny Depp truth podcast. And, but that happened.

Gotta take a plunge. Yeah. Yeah. You, you, you, you, someone thought you were Johnny Depp at a wedding. Great. The other thing that happened involved you, which is there was a, so again, this was in rural California. I thought you were going to make a joke that someone thought I was whatever, some fat character.

Right. Zorba the Hutter, whatever. Uncarplut. Yeah. I would never, Mitch. Mmm. Mmm. The Sasquatch.

The, no, what happened was you weren't mistaken for anybody. What happened was this was in a, this was in rural California, and there was a horse there. A miniature horse named Rodeo, who was just on the grounds of where this wedding was being held. Yeah. And you came up to me, I was the first person you did this to, you came up to me and you said, the parents of the bride yelled at me.

Very plausible. So I believed it. It was like, oh man, what happened? And what you said was, yeah, that they caught me sucking off Rodeo. They got mad at me because I was sucking Rodeo's dick. Is that what I said? That's what you said. Now look, I was delighted by this as anyone would be.

And then I watched you tell this, do the same thing, the same bit, to no fewer than six different people. Mmm. All of our friends. All of your, all of our friends. Mmm. But I was sucking off Rodeo the one-eyed horse. Yes.

Pony, one-eyed pony. Oh yeah, yeah, that makes like a world of difference. I sure told you. It's a pony, not a horse. Back off. I sure told you. I won't say which celebrity it was. You're in a doctor.

All right. Then we'll bleep it out twice. Okay. Great. You would have loved it. Mitch, has that covered enough? Has that filled enough time? Do you have a drop at the ready?

That's what you, you were trying to kill time by telling the story about how I was telling people that I sucked the horse's dick. It was very funny. It made me laugh. It was fun. Yeah. Yeah. You get to amuse yourself at weddings like that.

We just had Scoop's wedding, Gwiges. Congrats to Scoop. Scoop and Caroline are married. We talked about this earlier. Congrats to Caroline. We've already talked about this, didn't we? We've recorded, did we record already this week? We did.

Yeah, we did, yeah. We're doing a barrage of records because of your shooting schedule. We recorded, I went to New Hampshire, saw Dave Matthews band, Two Nights in a Row. DMB. I'll get Mae Fonda for that, but it's the truth. I saw DMB, texted the Doughboyz group chat that I was on mushrooms, and then saw the show. It was a good time.

I don't know why I go to you guys immediately to tell you this. It's weird. It's like telling my parents I did something or something, but- Well, yeah, because you're in trouble. Especially not you, Emma, why specifically? Emma had a reaction to that. Yeah. No, you know, I'll scold you.

I said, hell yeah, let's do more mushrooms. Yeah. I know. Great venue there, Bank of New Hampshire Pavilion. Wow. I just took one square. I didn't go nuts. They're pretty, it worked pretty well though.

Mushrooms come in squares. Well, there's chocolate bars now. There's chocolate bars. I sweated up a storm, sweated up a storm doing it. Boy. It was, I had quite the reaction to it. Second night was the better show. Why?

Because if you were wondering. Went out on like, went up to Saki, didn't get her brain to me, but we talked about this in the double, but I had, I had, I had a, I had a great time. I'm just tired. I've been so chaotic. I've been going all over the place. I just, I need to slow it down. Well, Mitch, get your energy up because we have a fantastic guest.

I know we do. And you know what? And I have a great drop in Wags. Here's the drop before we introduce the guest. We got to make them listen to this bullshit drop. Here we go. Maybe that's why people don't submit that much. Wags here is a little drop.

Wow. Wow. What the fuck? Wow. Great sample there. That was a good sample. What's up, Doughboys? Heard this song by Leo's Sonship today.

I'm back for more. That's a song. And knew what I had to do. Keep up the wows. You're giving Owen Wilson a run for his money. Excited to see you at your next live show. Thanks. Chris Vale in Seattle.

So he maybe did. I don't know if I should read his whole name, but I did. He probably did see our live show if he was in Seattle. Good job, Chris. Wow. Leo's Sonship. Did he send a drop for... Before we introduce our guest, keep sending in the drops.

SpoonmanDrops at gmail.com. There you go. That's what it is. SpoonmanDrops at gmail.com. And before we introduce our guest, Wags, I got a million-dollar idea. You ready for it? Yeah. Groo meets Groot.

Yeah, it's a home run. People love that shit. I mean, you just have to work out the universal and Disney of it all. Because the idea you're owned by different companies. But if you can sort that, sort out the legalese. Yeah, it's a fucking home run. People love that. I could do that.

Groo meets Groot. It's good. This is what we want in movies. People would fucking love it. What are you? Some sort of big tree? I am Groot. That's like the type of dialogue we're talking about.

And then he'd say, I am Groo. And he'd be, you know... I am Groo. Yes, I know you are Groot. I am Groo. And then the Minions are talking Minionese to Groot. Yeah. That's fun too.

Yeah, that would be fun. Well, maybe you'd hear them, like one little, like they'd be like, I am Groot. You know, because there's a little bit of English in there. Yeah, that'd be great. That's good. Yeah, this is all good. Emma, let's edit this out because this is too good.

We keep this for ourselves so we can pitch this. Emma, you don't edit it out, but we are trademarking it officially right now. Yes, verbal trademark. This is our idea. We're going to mail this episode to ourselves. Groo meets Groot. I'll send a reminder in the text chain when I edit this.

Perfect. Great job. Now we can introduce the guests. Our guest today from the podcast Blowback. Season three, the story of the Korean War is available now at blowback.supportingcast.fm. Brendan James is here. Hi, Brendan.

Hey, fellas, how's it going? It's going great. Thanks for making time for us. No, can I just jump in on the Groot idea a little bit? Please. Sure. You could, I don't know if you're thinking a feature or a series, but if you wanted it to be like a running thing,

it could be sponsored, Groo and Groot, sponsored by Goop. That's great. Like Gwyneth Paltrow. That's really good. Yeah, and then Gwyneth has a little cameo, maybe as a new Despicable Me villain, slash Marvel crossover villain. It's the perfect time for her to get back into acting as well

with this property. She's established in the MCU as Pepper Potts. She's an Iron Man, right? Does a little Pepper Potts cameo. And there we go. Yeah. I think just recently, though, didn't two people get blown up at a Goop store because there was like a Goop accident at the store?

Jesus. Is that true? Oh my God. Let me see. A Goop explosion? I might still have the tab open. You could have a little scene where Groo is like, let me get a whiff of this candle.

Oh, what is that smell? Oh, seriously? Yeah, yeah. It was two men hospitalized after explosion at Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop store because I guess they were just doing some, like some alcohol got spilled and then it collided with the Goop. But that sounds like a, it could be a fun adventure for the Groot or Groo.

I don't know what Groo is. Groot doesn't want to catch fire. I like the sponsors. Yeah, Groot is afraid of fire. I was trying to say that Groo smells the vagina candle. That was what I was trying to. That was my little sketch I did, is that Groo smells the vagina candle.

Right. Absolutely. I think you cracked it. They smells that, and a minion smells that scent and it's near a fire hydrant and he's like Bella falls in love with a fire hydrant. Ha, ha, ha. He thinks it's a lady minion.

He smells that smell, sees a hydrant. It's like a pheromone. He connects them. I got a question. Is Groo, sorry, I gotta get this out. No, yeah, let's keep going with this. Is Groo a virgin? And is Groot a virgin?

Groo is not. I don't think he's canonically a virgin. I mean, you can assume he's maybe, I think by the time, because he gets married at the end of Despic will meet too. And, you know, I guess you can say, Groo is not a minion. Groo is the leader,

like the human who has SuperVillain who has the minions. Is that Steve Carell? He's a Steve Carell character. Yeah, that's Groo. Steve Carell. Okay. The minions are his charges. This is the sort of thing I'm going to ask Carell if I ever meet him.

Is Groo, was Groot, until his marriage, was he ever, I think maybe until his marriage he was. It's possible. You know, Steve Carell, the 40 year old virgin, is he playing another late bloomer? Because Groo we know was born in 1965, as of minions the rise of Groo. That's his age is established as 11 in 1976.

So then that means that he's 45 when Despic will meet one comes out. And it's possible he's still... So he's maybe a 45 year old version. It's very possible. Yeah. What's next? Steve Carell is going to play Mitch and the story of Mike Mitchell. Brandon, thank you so much for doing the podcast.

I'm curious a little bit because you had very strong feelings about what chain we're going to cover, which we're going to get to in a bit. But was this a chain that you were into growing up? Like what were your favorite chains when you were a kid? I would definitely say Pizza Hut was my top chain because it was just the treat of the week when I was a kid. I lived with my Nana for a bit in rural Pennsylvania

and she lived right down the street from a hut. And for me it was, you know, you would go in, there would be a little arcade game in the corner. You had obviously, we'll get into all this, the salad bar, back then they were kind of nice and pristine little restaurants. And it had the charm of being, you know, a dining restaurant with the, you know,

clinical post-modern reliability of fast food and always ordering the same exact thing within like a chemical decimal point of exactitude. And that was pretty great. And then when my mom and I moved to New York, still there was, you know, dining pizza. It was kind of like the special place to go. And so I have very fond memories of it.

Otherwise, I'm really not that opinionated about too much fast food. I'm pretty basic. I like my, you know, McDonald's or Taco Bell's fine. I probably stay away from like the long John Silver's end of things. Sure. Just because it seems a little dodgy,

but I don't know if you guys have done that on the show. Yeah, we've talked about long John Silver's back in the day. Yeah, it's a, it's a, dodgy is a good way to describe it for sure. Probably depends, you know, store to store a bit as well. Maybe for sure. I just pray that your, your grandma didn't live next door to Bam Margera

and those in that, and the Bam crew, famous Pennsylvania residents, Margeras. She hung out with them, but she didn't, they didn't, he wasn't in the pizza hut, you know, seeing. Yeah. He wasn't messing things up there. He has respect. Yeah, but, but it was, it was, it was a big part of my, you know,

like, like the, the touchstones of, of what's fun about being a kid. And that's why, you know, I kind of got older, you know, and hut was sort of out of sight, out of mind. When I saw a dine in pizza hut, I would definitely go in, but suddenly, you know, I got out of school and I moved to the city. I live in New York now. And I looked around and realized that all the pizza huts were

suddenly kiosks or whatever, you know, these Taco Bell, Dunkin' Donuts pizza huts. And I, you know, I just thought, what is this shit? Because the hut delivery stores, the kiosk ones are, you know, a hollow imitation. So behind my back, pizza hut was dying off and, and the world had moved on, as they say in mid-world. And so hundreds of dine in locations, I guess,

closed across the country while, while I was kind of, you know, not paying attention. And that includes, as I learned a year or two ago, the hut that was down the street from my Nana, which was a big blow for me. So it's just one other one of those things, another one of the decaying elements of our, of our society, of our post-industrial dying empires, the hut.

Yeah. We talked a little bit about, on last week with our, with our friend, Sean Diston, we talked a little bit about how, you know, you don't really see the, the dine in pizza huts anymore, but you still see the architecture of like, this used to be a pizza hut and now it's a chase bank or whatever. Yeah. And there's a lot of those that just like a new corporation

has just come and inhabited it's shell, like a hermit crab. But it's, but it's so, like, I'd be curious, and if any of our listeners have one in their, their neighborhood, if there is a, like a classic sit-down pizza hut that's still operational, there was one that was still going on the west side of LA until like 10, 15 years ago that still had a dine in area, but it wasn't that old like form factor. It was just still a storefront that just had a dine in

and a, and a salad bar and a, and a pizza bar for lunch, for the lunch buffet. But those of, those of, I don't think there are any left. I'd be surprised if there were any left. I think the Quincy one, it does have a hermit crab in it. I think a hermit crab just over. He's living large. I'm picturing like in, in Banjo-Kazooie, there's a boss that's such a giant crab. Oh, it's a great boss.

And that, it's a great, one of my favorite bosses. And then, you know, that's like this, but I think that's about the size of a pizza hut. So one of those guys is living in, is using a pizza hut as a shell. We were talking about how grunty, grunt, how grunty is hot. And after the transformation grunty is kind of hot. Sure. That's the whole point.

She's, that's her goal is, that's why you play the game. You want to lose, you want to lose the game. The game should. Yeah. It was, it was a, it was sort of an ulterior motive where it's just like, could I have made that jump? Or am I just trying to get the game over screen where I can see hot grunty? You know.

I love hot grunty. I wish I could marry hot. I wish, I watched, I wish hot grunty was real. Why? Cause I wish it was a real lady. Yeah. Now we got, I'm sucked in looking at the Banjo-Kazooie OST trying to find the Treasure Trove Cove soundtrack.

Find some hot grunty picks for God's sakes. Not safe for work too, if you'd like. I know we're working, but I want to see some, I want to see some nasty grunty picks. Man, I didn't think it would necessarily get to hot grunty this quickly into the conversation. I guess that's a, that's, that's fine by me. Usually it takes me about 30 seconds to get to hot grunty in any conversation. Sure.

I'm really sorry about your dad passing away. Anyways, have you seen hot grunty? This will cheer you up. Let's see. Here's a, here's a gruntilda gallery. We really do. Let's see if I can make this larger. A grunty gallery.

I love it. Some of these, it's tough cause some of these on the image search, the Bing image search are like, you know, it's, it's like fan art or it's like this was, this was a steam mod. Hey fan art. I ain't mad at it. Let's see that fan art. Let's see what they got. That's definitely going to get salacious.

This took me to a quiz. I clicked on the thumbnail and it took me to how well can you remember gruntilda's poetry quiz. I don't want to take that. Jesus. I'm going to just share some of this. We can just get a glimpse of some of these ones I'm dealing with here. You know, I'm going to change it up like Spoonman drops.

There we go. Spoonman drops at gmail.com. We now also take grunty fan art. Next line from sexy gruntilda. I'm much prettier than tootie. Yeah. Oh yeah. Remember tootie was tootie or sister?

Tootie. That's who she steals the cuteness from. Banjo sister is a, you know, like, I mean she's a little kid, but she's like thought of as like a very pretty bear who's full of, you know, vitality and everyone likes her. And so grunty tries to steal with her machine, steal the beauty from tootie tootie and that's what happens if you fail the game and then tootie is turned into like an ogre. An ogre. Yeah.

Got it. You don't remember this? I, hey, I finished Banjo-Kazooie. I didn't finish Banjo-Tooie, but I finished Banjo-Kazooie. Banjo-Tooie is hard. But a lot of this lore just like exited my brain. Yeah. I felt like Banjo-Tooie was a little bloated too.

I did finish the Donkey Kong 64. I finished that, the rare, the rare Donkey Kong, 3D Donkey Kong. I finished both. 100% of both. 100% of Banjo-Tooie. That's right. I'm impressed. Yeah.

That's real cred. Yeah. Telling me to get good. Yeah. Get good. How dare you. I've never seen the losing screen for Banjo-Kazooie. Piece of shit.

Yeah, you have. How did we deal? What are you talking about? I believe you, Brandon, I believe you brought up the crab boss. Oh, the crab. Yeah, yeah, that was me. Banjo-Kazooie. Yep.

I'm not saying we should get out of it. I'm just saying I was really curious. I'm usually good at keeping track, but I really didn't know how we got to hot grunty images on the screen share. Well, that's always at the forefront of Mitch's brain, as he was saying. Yeah. Do you have a, were you like, were you a big N64 guy? Was that your system?

Yeah. I spent a lot of time watching my friends play it for a while, but then eventually I got one and I, you know, I had like Mario 64. I got Banjo-Kazooie, Smash Brothers. I wasn't, I wasn't like, you know, and I, and I remain not all that hardcore of a video game guy, but I definitely had the classics and I still have my N64 actually. Wow. And I can boot it up anytime I want and play and play the, the hermit crab or the, what's

the level? You can get that grunty ending if you want to. If I need to, I have it on lock. And that's all I'll say, you know, if you, if, if people need it, I have it. Toss on some play fighters, 63 and a third. Treasure Trove Cove is the level. Wow. Yeah.

Oh, it's Treasure Trove Cove. Yeah. Definitely. No, that music, that, that game has great music really. And, you know, there's lots of fun levels. Oh, sorry. That's a little alert. That's my grunty game over screen alert.

Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, you know, Banjo-Kazooie solid nine out of 10 for me. Great game. Very good game. Yeah. Rare kind of, it was one of those weird relationships, Nintendo and Rare, then Rare, and then Nintendo made Rare feel like a, didn't they, didn't they, didn't Rare like, they were like, we're

never going to make a game for Nintendo again. Isn't that where the path that went down? Something like that. And then they did a horrible. Most like Perfect Dark. Yeah. And Conker's Bad Fur Day. They kind of had those, those two games that kind of were, you know, they spent a lot of

development time on and released to relatively, you know, I think critical acclaim, but, but not as much commercial success. And then I think they, then they ended up going with becoming Microsoft partners. Yeah. And, and they did a bad sequel to Banjo-Kazooie. They're like a weird one where you drive cars or like you make cars. It had nothing to do with the whole spirit of Banjo-Kazooie. Yeah.

Banjo-Kazooie nuts and bolts. I think that was an Xbox game. Yeah. Then there was, there was a crowd, like a, like a crowd, a go fund me for, wasn't there like a gecko one that was like the same people from Banjo-Kazooie or something that they were trying to do? Yeah. Yeah.

I don't know if any of these ever got released, but I never played it. It did. It was called, it was like another like play on words. It was called like ukulele. I think it was called. Yeah. Ukulele came out. Yeah.

Yeah. Ukulele was, was, was released. You mentioned gecko. I was thinking of geckos. Yeah. Exactly. I played a bit of that too. And he was, he was played by Dana Gould from the season.

Yes. Yeah. Wow. Dana Gould was geckos. Yep. Dana Gould was geckos. Dana Gould was geckos. Gould was geckos.

Dana Gould was geckos. I did not know that. No. That truly is. That ever comes up in trivia. That is wild. Yeah. Gould was geckos.

So, so, okay. So you, so the sit down pizza hut, here's my thought on this. Yeah. Because they, they're leaning into the nostalgia right now with the Craig Robinson campaign. And I'm a Craig Robinson fan. And, and, and I think he, I think the ads are fun, but they have him in like the old school pizza hut and they have the, like the, you know, the, the big, the, the pizza hut dome light.

The glasses, like they, they're, they're embracing that aesthetic. That's the light that goes on when you're getting dome. Exactly. Yes. And so he, they, they're like, like he, they've got all, they've got that whole, you know, setup, but they're not like bringing back the parlors. And I feel like there is a demand now. I think there's, there's nostalgia from adults who are going out to eat again, where if they

opened up, like maybe first as a pop-up, maybe we're, hey, we're going to pop up a few old school pizza huts. And if it takes, maybe this concept is coming back because they got to do something. I do feel like their delivery model is very stagnant. Their, their, their sales have been totally flat lining. I mean, have flat lined for several years, whereas Domino's and even Papa John's and little Caesars or whatever. Yes.

Especially during the pandemic, those I think kept going up and pizza just hasn't. And you're right. And that's what I thought, Nick, was that, you know, it's like the stranger things era now where everything is, you know, nostalgiaized. But if I'm not mistaken, I think I was talking with, I think another friend of the show, Libby Watson, the other day. And she said that. I love me.

I love me. She's not on the call, but I will tell her that you said hi. I don't know. It sounded like he thought she was here. She's not here? No. Libby, are you there? Libby.

I'll get her. I'll get her. Let me get her. You weren't weighing in on the Banjo-Kazooie stuff. Are you there? She has, she has strong opinions on Banjo too. He actually should ask her stuff you probably couldn't say on this show. You know, you might want to beep it out.

But yeah, she, she was telling me that I think stranger things actually already did a, like a cross promotion with Domino's. That's right. Or something and not Pizza Hut, whereas Pizza Hut would be the actual like good choice. The Domino's, Stranger Things box, Mitch and I both got at just to like get it and like it was like, it was like, this is great. They should never go back to the old branding. The old Domino's like box looks fantastic.

It's like, and it was, yes, it's the kind of thing that, that you'd think Pizza Hut would be doing. Yeah. And they just seem to, I, you know, I feel like a lot of it is that, you know, they're part of that young brand's umbrella. You mentioned the hybrid restaurants that you see it as a part of. So it's KFC Taco Bell and Pizza Hut. And then now the habit is the newest, the fourth member that they've added to their

Mount Rushmore. They've like, they're so sprawling that I feel like they kind of like lose, they lose some sort of vision for some of their brands outside of Taco Bell. I think Taco Bell is maybe the only one, but even Mitch Taco Bell has had its issues. It's just weird when these brand, these like gigantic corporations and brands are like becoming a hundred years old and stuff. And they're like, oh, these places are like, like, I mean, I know Pizza Hut is younger than that, but still Pizza Hut is like, what now?

1958. It was founded. Yeah. Oh, shit. Yeah. Yeah. Dear Lord. It's pretty old.

Over a while. Um, coming up on 65 years. 65 years. Here's my thing with Pizza Hut. I, uh, it's just gone like, like not only the downsizing just hurt them so much in a way of, I was trying to find a, and this became a big fight, Wags. Even though I didn't even start this fight, I said, I will go to Pizza Hut. And you said, God forbid you have to drive like nine miles or something or some bullshit

like that. And I was like, I said, I would go. I said, I would go to Pizza Hut. There just are none. There are none around. That's all I was. You're in Quincy, Massachusetts, and there aren't any nearby. I'm in Quincy.

I'm only in Quincy for a week when everyone, not, not, not even a week. My time got, my time got cut short. So I'm, I'm, so I'm, I'm here and I, and I am, and, and there are no Pizza Huts around. And is that related to you moving to LA? Did they all close up shop after that? Dear God. They did. That's what happened.

That's what happened. I got it. The Hermit Crab moved in. I've always, I've always been upset about the Pizza Hut buffets closing down the sit-down Pizza Hut shutting down. I think the issue is, so when I use the Pizza Hut app to try to find Pizza Huts, there was all I could find was like, was Pizza Hut Expresses. That's all the, and those are in targets.

I don't even think they count. I really don't think that they count. It's just a different thing. It's, it's, it's, it's insane. I'm not going to count the Pizza Hut at a target, and that's not where I was going to go and get it. But that's like everything that showed up on my, my Pizza Hut app map. And then the place I ended up going was on the way back from New Hampshire, Micas and

I, Micas, Frailbott and I, my buddy Micas, my buddy Creel, Frailbott, people, you know, we used to go to Pizza Hut together. We used to, we'd skip the last class of the day and go to Pizza Hut, which was great. Maybe Dumber and Fatter, but we, we, we went there and we left New Hampshire, we were at the New Hampshire house, Ramondi's New Hampshire house up near Lake Winnipesaki. Wow. And let me tell you this, Ramondi, there's, Ramondi's a great host. He's cleaning up in the morning, but I think he takes such joy in like getting you up and

getting him out of that. Yeah. You know, do you have friends like that? He's so excited. He's so excited to have you like wake you up and tell you to get up and leave. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. To get you on your way.

Yeah. It's, it, there's, there's a gracious host quality to it, but there's also an element of like, all right, now I want my Sunday to myself. A fantastic host, but when he's ready to go, he's like, get up. So he woke, we, we, you know, we were out last night till, you know, we were up till about two AM or so. And then at, at nine o'clock on the dot, he was in my room. He pulled up the shades and was like, get the hell out of here.

So we drove, Mike is frail bot and I drove immediately to Pizza Hut. Wow. And it opened at 11 and when we finally got on the road, probably nine and 30 or so, we got to the Pizza Hut in Methuen at exactly 11 AM. And you know what? It was a sit down Pizza Hut. Wow. I ate at a sit down Pizza Hut.

It was not, it was not like the Pizza Hut of olds. It was modern, sure. And I, and, and, and you, you just go in there and you're like, what is this? This is like a, it may as well have been a storefront window because it just is basically rates. Um, and there's even like, there was like a picture of an old car and then on the car it said like Pizza Hut one on the license plate and frail bot was like, someone already had Pizza Hut, like he had to get Pizza Hut one.

It didn't even make sense. Uh, and I took a picture of that, but like it just, it just was, it was just such a, here's the other crazy thing. We got there at 11 AM, like the door was unlocked. We walked in, ordered three pizzas and then there was a guy who came in at like 11, like right behind us at 11, like, oh one, like walked in like seconds after us, probably like just be it to go to Pizza Hut and then have three people in front of you ordering, having a huge order and this guy's trying to get something, which isn't, it's felt insane, but it felt

like they were getting orders pretty early at 11. So I, I don't know what the deal is that the downsizing of it is, is, is just crazy to me because who doesn't love the sit down Pizza Hut? I, it's great. It's, it's purely, it's purely a cost thing and, and you know, I think the, the, this, this is one of those things where people would probably be like, Hey, you guys are like looking at a collective, you know, general age range and being like, this is just nostalgia. Like this is a case where it's not, this isn't like, I'm like, like, oh, the masters of the

universe and GIO, those were the cartoons that were, that were good. Like, I know those cartoons sucked. They were, they were, they were awful. They watch them now and they're like, they don't hold up. But the sit down Pizza Hut was its own experience that deserves a place in the, the, the chain restaurant world. Yeah. Yeah.

I think, and I think that really what I miss about it, cause I'll be honest, I couldn't get to a sit down Pizza Hut. There just aren't any in the city. I had to order. Yeah. Same deal with me. And the, the, it's a catch 22 because the reason they're doing so poorly is because they did not, they were not prepared for a post dine in pizza landscape as all their competitors

were. And, and it was probably doomed from the start. You know, even if they had been a little bit, I did a little cursory research as to like what, what the recent, you know, travails of Pizza Hut have been. And it seems like there was other stuff, like they, they really didn't even try to retool the menu. They, they, they missed a lot of key steps that would have kept them even a little bit more relevant.

I did read that salon.com in 2014, the company attempted a huge makeover and attempt to appeal specifically to millennials. Pizzas began to include more upscale or trendy ingredients, like, uh, asiago crusts, sriracha, honey, drizzle, Peruvian cherry tomatoes, unsurprisingly, the play didn't work because I mean, you know, I mean, why, why get that from Pizza Hut? But I guess they made it. They made the Pizzone look like an ass for millennials, hopefully. I wasn't there, but, uh, but, but yeah, I mean, that's, that's, uh, it's, it's sort

of, there was no way that they were probably going to make that jump and Domino's had their number from the very beginning. So it's, it's like probably, but you know, if the delivery versions, if the express ones were as good as Dine and Pizza Hut used to be, I would still at least be, I would still probably order it because I, I, you know, I, unless I'm completely, you know, off base, I remember it being pretty tasty, but the, the express stuff and the delivery stuff is just not good. It's just not good.

Totally agree. This is, this is, this is where, this is where I think that this downgrade hurt them more so is that I feel, I, I've, look, I don't know what happened in the, in the creation of these pizzas. And of course this is a big chain. They were getting a lot of stuff shipped in their dough, their sauce, whatever. Um, but there's just a different taste to it now. They're like taking away, making them expresses.

I think there are like a lot of conveyor belt ovens now when I'm like, I remember specifically the pizza hut I used to go to had an oven and they, and they cooked their pan pizza in a pan that they put into a big open oven in the, in the sit down pizza hut. And I'm like that, I do not see that anymore. I do not see an oven at all, uh, at this place. And you know what there wasn't also today's at 11 AM, the fryer wasn't going because we were going to order some sides and they were, I was like, can we, can, like, can I get like mozzarella sticks?

And they're like, no, the fryer isn't on. So I had to go, everything had to be put through that electric oven. I also say this, I felt kind of bad for the guy behind the counter because we got, got up there. He was like, she's asking for more money again. And then the lady behind the counter was like, have you met her yet? And he's like, no. And he's like, are you going to, and she was like, are you going to dump them?

She's like, are you going to dump her? And I was like, man, this guy's getting fucking. Being spammed. I think he is. Jesus. He kind of knew it too though. You know what I mean? Yeah.

No, he's doing it as part of fetish. I think the world is so depressing right now that you're like, yeah, I'm still in this relationship that I know is like a scam for money because why not? But the guy was sending a bot Bitcoin and this is emotionally fulfilling somehow. So just keep going. I'm ordering fucking Pizza Hut Express, you know, for like, yeah, it's depressing out there. Sending a bot Bitcoin is, it's, it's kind of parallel to subscribing to the Doughboys

Patreon. We got a lot more thoughts on Pizza Hut. We're going to take a break and as we're going to break, how about the wonderful sounds of the Banjo-Kazooie soundtrack? Here we go. Wow. Yay. Oh yeah.

This is a shit. Give me that grunty. Oh God. You know, Mitch, you're about to take a little trip abroad. You're going to Costa Rica. That's right. Why? So I'm going to Costa Rica with the family.

It's going to be a lot of fun. Going to maybe see a monkey. Oh, that's fun. Going to maybe see a bird. Just that. Just a one monkey, one bird. That's it. Hey, that sounds like a heck of a vacay.

And you know what? Mm-hmm. Knowing some Spanish might be helpful down there. Nice. And if you have an upcoming summer trip abroad, my go-to travel hack is Babel. Whether you're a seasoned traveler or embarking on your first adventure, communication is key to fully experiencing a new culture. That's where Babel comes in.

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That's code Doughboys50 at FactorMeals.com slash Doughboys50 to get 50% off your first box. Do it. Welcome back to Doughboys. We're here with our guest, Brendan James from Blowback. Season three, available now. Pizza Hut was founded in 1958 in Wichita, mentioned the year earlier. Part of the young brand's triumvirate. And it is, despite its recent foibles, domestically, still the largest pizza chain in the world.

That's wild. Yeah. I think in terms of international locations, I think Pizza Hut thrives in India. I think I believe I read that before. So it just has a huge number of international locations. And people still need to place order pizza from. Sometimes if it's just the closest option, I think people will default to Pizza Hut. You know, I was going to say one of the, is if I can't catch a break already with my Pizza Hut, you know, support or fandom.

I was once in, I studied abroad in England, junior year. And I was in Oxford and I walked down the street kind of my first night there. And, you know, you're far away from home. You want some, some creature comforts. And I saw in, you know, the little Harry Potter-esque, you know, main square or whatever, or, you know, streets, there was a Pizza Hut. And it was, it looked really fancy. It was not an express. It was like, there was a winding staircase going down into like this whole, like it was like a club, almost.

And I went in and I'm like, well, this is going to be great. You know, it looks different, but it's Pizza Hut. How different could it possibly be? And it was so bad. It tasted so bad. It was so gross. I actually said that, like, my order was slightly wrong. And that I, like, oh, I just can't finish it.

Like, I didn't like, you know, I didn't want to tell them it sucked. So I was just like, oh, you know, it's fine. I think I'm just going to leave it. And I, you know, paid and left and I, it started to rain. And I, and I did, I did feel like, like rain, the rain was mixing with tears a little bit. I actually, not really, but you know, when you're a kid and like, you're really excited for a meal. And then, you know, like someone puts in front of you and it's not what you expect. And you kind of feel like crying because you were really excited.

And, you know, it was, there was an echo of that. I wasn't actually going to cry, but it made me think maybe I will, maybe I might cry. It was that bad. That sums it up. Yeah. No, it's, it's, it's, that's the, the, the bummer of this podcast, beside it, it just being like a bad show is that we have to eat a lot of bad food. And sometimes it's like, sometimes the bad food, it's like, that's exactly what you want, right? It's like, just like, like when I want, want fucking Del Taco or McDonald's or in and out burger or Carl's Jr. Hardee's.

And that's just like, it's like, that's exactly what I want right now and I have it and it's hitting. That's like, that's like, hey, that's perfect. That's why, that's, that's why these, you know, the, we have nostalgia for these chains. But when you have to get the like pizza hut and you kind of know, like, like, like, either, either, you know, it's going to be bad going in or you think there's a chance it might somehow be good. And then it's just like, you're just eating bad food that's also bad for you. That's going to make you feel like shit. Yeah. And it, and it, and it tastes bad too.

It's just like, that's the worst fucking feeling. Yeah. It's like, it's like playing like around a band of Kazooie. You die game over and it's just a game over screen. You don't get the, you don't get that full cut sequence of grunting. Right. You know what I'm saying, Wags? You got to, you got to pull up the MPV, the dot MP4 and do it yourself in more ways than one.

Yeah. Honestly, that made, that made me realize, you know, we'll get to the review and everything, but eating it, you know, I didn't enjoy myself and it made me realize how much I respect you both because, you know, look, so many people have gotten in this medium. Well, no, let me make the case for you guys because, you know, I'm a, I'm a fellow podcaster and there's many people trying to do it and, you know, they have different shows doing different stuff. And, but what does it really demand of most of us?

You know, you sit, you talk, maybe you read or write a little bit. I put myself in that, but you two, what you do to your bodies, you will, you know, more than likely, more likely than not never recover. And you just, you just keep doing it, you know, week after week, which to me is so admirable, is very admirable. Yes. You know? They say, what is that?

What is it? Oh no, Siri came up again. Siri came up. Oh boy. Siri came up. What is, what is the thing when you keep repeating itself is like stupid? Insanity. Insanity.

Insanity is, yeah. But it was that guy, it wasn't, I'm sure you've got, you've probably gotten this, but there was that movie, Super Size Me with a guy just eats. Morgan Spurlock, yeah. He ate fast food for like a couple months and in the middle of the movie, he's like, we have to stop. I, like my body is rejecting it. Like, like a bad skin graft.

You guys are just still at it. You know, like he looks pathetic compared to you. Oh, he's, first of all, he's a liar. That's, that was the big thing with Morgan Spurlock. Oh really? Really? Yeah. He also self-metooed, which was.

That's the only thing, that's the only thing he didn't lie about, I feel like. I feel like, I feel like the Super Size Me thing of like where it was like, then there was also like someone who was like, I lived to a hundred. I ate a Big Mac every day. Like that's like, like that's like another side of McDonald's. It's like, look, people got, I didn't let that talk, I hated that documentary. But just because it was clearly like, we get that eating like fries every day is bad. I get it.

And I also get to the podcast. Yes. But you love the sequel, Super Size Me 2, Holy Chicken, right? Yeah, I love Holy Chicken. So good. Does he self-metoo mid-movie? That's like one of those, those, when the documentary gets real. Like, oh wow, we weren't expecting this when we started filming.

I honestly, the only thing I remember him about, I guess I'm kind of remembering, he styled himself a little bit as like a, not like a myth buster type guy, but like some kind of documentary personality around that time. But that's all I remember. I didn't know he remained relevant enough to me to himself. He made a, he like, well, I think it might have been an effort at kind of like, hey, get myself back in the spotlight. I think there's a craven possibility.

But yeah, he was trying to do like a Gonzo doc thing for a while. He made a, he made a Bin Laden movie where he tried to go like track down Bin Laden and then was unsuccessful. And we're giving McDonald's and eat, eat food, eat fries with him. What was his plan when he got him? What was he going to offer there? Imagine a world where you just see like Morgan Spurlock get fucking beheaded. Or just, I like this fattening up Bin Laden version.

That's like, hmm, becomes pro-western. You got to try everything. You got it. There's an alt universe where Morgan Spurlock, Osama Bin Laden, B has Morgan Spurlock. I mean, there's a lot of the butterfly effects scenarios, you know, that are out there. And I think that's the one at the forefront of my mind is the Spurlock Osama alt history, you know, like Elvis meeting Nixon. What if the, so, so the, so let's talk about our food a little bit.

The, the, yes, to your point, Brandon, well, I will say when you look at, when you look at Mitch, because we used to take photos with the guests when we recorded in studio. And if you look at our year one, like Doe Boys back in 2015 versus us now, it's like we've both gained a noticeable amount of weight. And sure, that's not just the podcast, but it has to be related. Like it's like we look positively spelt. You guys look good. I mean, I'm not one of those people.

I'm, I'm, you know, but, but, but body positivity. I'm not saying you guys. Sure. Yeah. No, no. I'm just saying it's got to be horrible. It is, it is bad. There is definitely a toll on our, on our brains and bodies from, from eating so much garbage

food, including this week's meal. I tried right now. They have. I'm planning on getting buff wise. We talked about this. I love this. I love this buff Mitch vision. I love the idea of you getting jacked.

Yeah. You should, you should just become a huge like fucking juggernaut of a man. Cause you're already very strong. And you already have a juggernaut sized head with the helmet. Fucking come for you once I get jacked. So the, I got, right now they have the edge pizza, which is a, which is an item I remember from my youth that they brought back. Not, not an item I remember from liking as a kid, but remember existing.

This is one there. I'll read their copy. A large thin crispy crust loaded to the edge sprinkled with garlic and herb seasoning and cut into 16 pieces. So it's kind of that tavern cut, a square, square, square slices. And it is very thin. And I got this with, look, here's, here's my main, here's my, one of my main issues. And I not only didn't have pizza with me, but she had some of the leftover pizza and

she was just like, the sauce is fucking terrible. Yeah. And that to me is the big issue. They described their marinara as sweet marinara. It is, it might as well be ketchup. It is so loaded with sugar. It is so syrupy sweet that it's just a distraction from all the other elements. I loaded a bunch of toppings on there, peppers, jalapenos, chicken, onions, and aroma tomatoes.

And I threw on extra cheese. And I just thought like this, they keep, my thought here is cause their tagline is nobody out pizzas the hut. My thought here was like everybody out pizzas the hut. Like I would put this at the bottom. This would not finish in the metals versus those, those other ones that you, that you mentioned, Brendan of, you know, little Caesars, Domino's, Papa John's. I'd all put over pizza hut in terms of pizza quality.

This was just a bad, bad, bad slice. Bad pie. Devastating. A sub above is Jersey Mike's and pizza hut is a pizza below. Why? Cause that's how I feel about it. It's, it's a, it's a, that was good. That was really good.

It was really good. It's, it's just, it's just a, it's horrible. I mean, look, it was a real bummer. I'm going to say this. It did like as well as it could do today. Like for us going there at 11 AM, walking in when work starts and you're like, oh, like, I felt so bad for those, for the two workers in the restaurant who were like, you know, probably thinking that they have like an hour or an hour and a half until like

lunch orders coming and then we walked in in order to three pizzas right off the bat. Right. Meanwhile, like guys putting his hourly wage, like sending it directly to like a Bella Russian account. I know. She says she's having visa issues so she can't visit, but she will real soon. It's Morgan Spurlock cat fishing them. Well, I got the, I got the edge ultimate, the ultimate edge, the ultimate edge.

That's grunty. It's true cause she's not real. Yeah. So Not yet. So yeah, there's, you can, you can wise, you can change your sauce just so you know. Oh, I know you can change your sauce, but I got it by default because I was like, let's, let's try their default sauce.

I know. And but I don't think there are other sauce options are also all that appealing. There are other sauce options didn't look great. What were they Mike? I'm actually clicking on it now and I try to change the sauce and it won't let me. So I don't know. But so possibly they don't even have other sauces. I saw, but like, like you get like a barbecue sauce.

You can get, I think they're, they're wing sauce as a, as a, but I don't know if they have an alternate marinara sauce. I'll check the ultimate edge had pepperoni, Italian sausage, green bell peppers, onions, and Roma tomatoes. The crazy thing about this is that there was like so much seasoning. Like you could tell frail bot and Mike's made a joke that they like dropped too much seasoning on one part of the pizza and then blew it onto the rest of it. For something that had so much seasoning on it and for so many different toppings, it

was just so plain. It was like just like, it just tasted like completely unseen. It tastes like eating cardboard. That's the way that's, that's, that was Mike's thought. I agree. It just, it was such a bore. It was so boring. And I was like, there's all these toppings on here.

And I'm like, man, the Domino's thin crust is just, it's just a much better version of this. A much better version. 100% would rather have that 10 times. The toppings are better ever. Just, just, just a waste because that's, that is, that's what I was excited about today was this edge pizza, the edge pizza. Yeah.

Which what is the deal? What is the deal with the edge? It's just a thin crust pizza. It was a movie. It was a tie in for the Alec Baldwin movie. Another really, just really poorly timed as well in this day and age. You don't want to be branding yourself with the Alec Baldwin movies. Dear Lord.

No, I actually have no idea why it's called, why, where did the branding came from? But yeah, it's been around for a while. Much like Alec Baldwin though, Pizza Hut began as one of the most, you know, to me, beautiful things in the world, you know, and then has over the years become bloated and just unpleasant, you know, and greasy. But yeah, I couldn't agree more. I don't know what the edge is either. I guess it's just like, look, the toppings keep going up till the crust.

I think that's it. That's all it is. Yeah. I have the sauce options. Classic marinara, most popular one. It says creamy garlic parmesan, barbecue and buffalo. That is it. So it comes by default with a sweet marinara on the edge.

I'm not sure why they made that, but you can't sub in a classic marinara. I went with a sweet one, but yeah, I was not aware of the classic as an option. But is the classic marinara, is the edge comes with the sweet marinara? Okay. By default, yeah. Because look, Mike is, and for everybody, we got cheesy breadsticks, and that sauce was also sweet. Like they were like, what's wrong with the sauce?

Is it sweet? So maybe that comes with the side of that sauce too. It might be their main sauce because this is, Domino's does a similar thing. They had their new sauce, which they did post, you know, post like, like something's wrong here. We need to fix it. The new sauce, but they still have their old sauce that you can order as a classic. I think it's probably a similar thing with pizza.

Their default sauce might just be that sweet marinara. I do want to talk about size, but I'm curious, Brendan, what was your pizza experience? Well, I just sort of, it's good that you guys went with the kind of, you know, heavy topping route because I just went with what I would get as a kid, which was the thin and crispy medium cheese pizza with a side of breadsticks, not even the cheese version, just the breadsticks with marinara. And, you know, I got to say, I have ordered it. I have ordered pizza hut like maybe twice within the past year.

And this was the best one I got out of the local express version. It wasn't great, but it actually was hot when it got there. Normally, when I've like tried to say, oh, maybe, you know, maybe they've still, it'll be a good day, but it always comes like pretty much cold. I got to put it in the oven. This was already hot. So there was that. And the breadsticks were okay, although they weren't really seasoned enough.

I always remembered them being kind of the perfect mix of crunchy on the outside, but soft on the inside. They weren't like crunchy sticks. They were more like, almost like garlic bread-ish. And you're not going to get that from one of the expresses. The marinara sauce comes cold. And then the pizza itself, you already used the word cardboard, Mike. I definitely think that with the thin and crispy, it was less crispy and more just cardboard.

It was very lifeless and didn't have a whole lot going on flavor-wise. The cheese was more like a sort of sheet on top that would, you know, you could like move as one piece. It wasn't, you know, like a gooey, nice surface of cheese. It was sort of scaly, scabby. None of this is good. And it, and that was a better version, you know, of what I've gotten out of my nearest pizza hut in the past couple of years.

So man. It's such a bummer pizza-wise. I will say, and I'm curious about your guys' sides because my spicy garlic traditional wings were, I mean, they weren't, I would rather have wingstop, you know, every time, but they were okay. They were serviceable. I think their wings used to be, they used to have the Wing Street branding and then their bone-in wings were breaded and I think they've gotten rid of, they've dispensed the

Wing Street branding and now they're just an unbredded, much simpler wing. And I think they were decent execution. Those were fine. The other deep-fried item I got, the Cajun style seasoned fries were surprisingly good. Like they had a lot of seasoning. They were, there was no absence of flavor, you know, versus the pizza. They were just, they were, they were like a decent curly fry and they had a good fry to them and they held up decently well, I got them carry out and took them home.

That their ranch, I feel like their dipping sauces are pretty bad, but their ranch is okay. Their garlic is just like a pale limitation of the Papa John's garlic and it's also always comes cold, which is just not the right temperature for that viscosity and flavor. It just seems goopy and gross. But the Cajun style seasoned fries dipping those in ranch was pretty, pretty yummy. And for me, the highlight of this whole experience, and it shouldn't be, this is, this is a, this is, you know, maybe damning with faint praise, Pizza Hut is that the thing that I liked the

most was the Cinnabon cross branded item, the Cinnabon mini rolls. Those were legit delicious. I had, you know, like ooey gooey, so soft and chewy, I had, there's like 16 of those, mini rolls, something like 12 or 16. I had like three of them and I was like, I just need to throw the rest away because I will eat this whole thing. I'll take this whole thing to the dome because they just tasted like mini Cinnabons and then being in that pizza oven, they were nice and warm and just like a, just so much of that,

so much of that vanilla icing. But yeah, I feel like the sides definitely outshine the pizza, but you know, not a reason to go here. Mitch, you got the breadsticks and what else did you get? Uh, it seems like a waste thrown away, those, uh, ooey gooey, so soft and chewy. I didn't want to, but I was like, I'm just going to eat, I like, now he's not going to eat these. And so then that will just mean that I will eat all of these and I just, I can't do that

to my body. I want, I want you to be fatter than me at some point in my life, so. It'll happen. That'll, I mean, that'll be like a nice light, wouldn't we really are on fumes or just like, ah, what now? Okay. Nix the fat one? Nix the fat one for a bit, classic, classic sort of, you know, left turn in the, in the

late seasons, you know, of any, you know, you got to shake it up. Damn. I wish I had that grunty machine would just take it from me. Oh my God. That's what you need. That's a grunty machine. Um, I, I, uh, I got, so we got those cheats. I was looking up the exact name of them.

I had my Pizza Hut app open. Pizza Hut app, which is, it's a good app to find out that there's no pizza huts in your area. It's really good to do that. It's excellent at showing that. That's basically what it is. Yeah. There just is no pizza huts nearby.

Um, and all it is, the Pizza Hut Express is in, in, in your, in a nearby target. Um, but yes. Why? Cause you're right. I got, I got myself the cheesy breadsticks with some marinara dipping sauce. They gave, you know what? They gave us three, uh, cups of marinara. So they're officially called the cheese sticks and they gave us three cups of marinara, one

for each of us, which I thought was nice. Unfortunately, the marinara tasted shitty. Um, and then also I got myself wags. This is a, uh, Micah's was really hurting. He thought he was going to throw up during this cause we, we, we went, we went hard last night. Um, he got himself a, a, a, a cherry Pepsi. I also got one too.

It seems like a, I don't know if that's a pizza had exclusive, but I feel, I always, I always associate it for some reason. I don't know why. Pepsi, I mean, you know, Pepsi used to own young brands. So they still have all the Pepsi fountain drinks there, but your wild cherry Pepsi, that's no slouch. I'll get a wild cherry Pepsi when that's available. It was a while, we got a wild cherry Pepsi that was, it wasn't too bad, uh, frailbuck

got a root beer, a mug root beer, Micah's had a Gatorade cause he was hurting. And then we got ourselves, I tried to order wings, couldn't do it cause of the fryer wags. So the, the most I could get was, was those cheese sticks. So we got three different pizzas. That was the plan. We're going to get three pizzas. We got the ultimate edge, ultimate edge pizza, which was maybe the loser of the bunch, honestly, which is, which is, which is crazy to me.

And then we got the, uh, the cheesy stuffed crust pizza or the original stuffed crust. Um, and I got a pepperoni. I thought that it would come with pepperoni stuffed in the crust and it did not, that there was no pepperoni. That's a different item, I think. Yeah. Well, yeah. Well, it was, yeah, there, there, it was not stuffed in the, in the crust.

So, uh, there was cheese in the crust and that was, so this is pepperoni, extremely cheesy, kind of the mess, sorry, extremely greasy. This was like the messiest of the pizza. I didn't think it was that bad, honestly, except that stuff crushes really doesn't work. And this is like another thing I feel like of like, it's just like so manufactured and like chemically and Micah's took a bite of the crust and was like, ugh, that cheese, like, isn't right. It's just like too soft and weird.

He didn't like it. Was it ever good? No. I don't know if it was ever good. I never went for that because as, you know, like I was a thin, thin and crispy boy. So I didn't ever try to fuck with stuffing anything. And I always, I wasn't like into big gooey oozing cheese in any situation. Actually, I was pretty like, pretty light on the cheese as a kid.

So I always thought, well, sure. And I, I appreciate that most people like, there's a reason they came up with the idea of, of stuffing, stuffing the crust with cheese, but it still always looked kind of bad. It always was bad. And I think this is one where it's, it seems like, like, like it, it always looks better than it actually is in practice. I was, I'd always be excited to get stuff, cussed pizza until I got burned enough times

where I'm like, this is never good. This is never well executed. It's always just like, like the cheese belongs on the, on the, on the pizza proper. Because it doesn't even look like the same consistency or type of cheeses that's on the pie. And they get you with the commercials because when you see like hot, sexy models eating it like Donald Trump or, you know, similar people in the commercials, you know, biting into a big thing of cheese and it's dripping all over his face, like you want to have it.

And that's not, not actually the reality. It's not tasty. No. It is, it is wild that you sent us a couple of videos. We'll talk about this. I'm sure too. Well, yeah, let's, let's, let's do that. Let's do this now.

Cause you just referenced it. There, there is a haunted episode now. There is a Donald Trump, uh, Ivana Trump, uh, stuffed crust pizza ad from back in the day. Do you really think this is the right thing for us to be doing, Ivana? What do people think? Let them talk. Ivana.

Ivana. Ivana. Ivana. Ivana. It's wrong. Jesus. But it feels so right. And it's a deal.

It's wrong way. Crust first. Introducing stuffed crust pizza from Pizza Hut with a winged cheese bacon. He's such a, such a terrible actor. Yeah. Crust first. May I have the last slice? Actually.

You're only entitled to half. Large is 9.99. So that was that post-divorce it must have been because that's a divorce joke, right? Yeah. Wow. Yeah. The whole thing is a divorce joke. What's odd to that, what's odd to me about that commercial just on a script level is

that the first line Trump says is this wrong, like he's doubting they should be doing it. And then Ivana agrees with his anxiety about this and says, what will people say? And then Trump says, oh, let him talk. But he was the one who was bringing up the potential for scandal in the first place. So it's odd that then he's like dismissing it when she agrees with him. I don't understand. I thought they were on the same page. Yeah.

I'm with you. That is just fucking. It's gross. It's haunting. It is haunting. Like the first line of that assumes that Trump has a moral compass that like you would consider something being wrong or reason not to do it. That really weird, what a weird, he was getting the presidential daily briefing.

You're just like, I think I was just in charge. There's also this other one speaking of world leaders who are in Pizza Hut ads. This was the one you sent initially, Brendan. And this one I remember, I remember the Trump one like vaguely, but I remember the beats of this one a little bit more. This was the Gorbachev ad. Let's watch a little bit of this. That's subtitled, by the way.

Yeah. Seeing shots of Gorbachev in Moscow. Yeah. Family. Gorbachev is eating in a sit down Pizza Hut and the older kind of cranky looking Soviet guy is mad at him, but the young son likes him. Yeah. A shitty fucking Reaganite type yelling at his dad.

This Aryan 20 something is really. And then grandma said, Hey, he gave us Pizza Hut. And then they all smile and agree saying hail to Gorbachev. Yeah. Who would have thought when they made these commercials that like one with a Russian leader will be less problematic than the dummy fucking billionaire guy? It's also funny because that is, I mean, really, that's an amazing commercial in retrospect for so many reasons.

Because Gorbachev came in, I don't know, if you're on the side of the house that say we are at my show, you look at Gorbachev as kind of a pushover in wider historical context because he was like, oh yeah, we'll just open up and do what the Americans want. And hey, now we have Pizza Hut, like the commercial says, and it's like smash cut to a year later. They've sold their entire country to pirates and there's like no potential or future in Russia whatsoever. And Pizza Hut is a pretty good canary in the coal mine there for like what was going to happen for the rest of the 90s.

It was worth the trade off for the first Pizza Hut. That's what the commercial says. Like it's true. It's true. Yeah. There's not even a subtext there. It's just like, that's just what they're saying up front. It's bring back those sit down Pizza Hut, bring back the Pizza Hut buffet, let Trump

go again. You know what? Another term. If Trump brings the back Pizza Hut buffets, then I'm fine with him having a second term. If we can get Nixon to China, we can get Trump to a Pizza Hut. Yeah. I think that's Pizza Hut diplomacy, breadstick diplomacy. You got to do it.

Do you think Trump ever thought about the Pizza Hut commercial while he was in office? He probably had to think about it once or twice. Yeah. He was probably like, that was great. It was really good. I sold it. It's something that he probably had like chefs that could make the old good style dine in Pizza Hut too while he was in office.

They found the recipe and he was able to do it with the fish delight and the other stuff he likes. He just had it on call and just got the cheesy crust when he wanted it. I love his fandom for the fish delight, a non-existent menu item that you know, just his like, all is in an abler's like, yeah, we'll get you a fish delight. I'm pissed off that Anderson Cooper didn't follow up on that because it's like the other day when John Bolton said, we do coups all the time and then Jake Tapper was like, oh, that's interesting.

Anyway, how about this other stuff? It's like, you got to hold him to account. When Trump said his favorite thing, it's like, oh, okay, but no, stop him. Stop. Force him to like answer where he heard that phrase. It's not on the menu. Pull it up on your phone. Hold his feet to the fire.

There's no such thing as a fish delight. Why are you letting him say that? I feel like Anderson Cooper has never set foot inside of McDonald's as a vendor built air. He probably has no idea. Definitely not. Definitely not. Well, hopefully they sell fish delight, hopefully they serve fish delights in prison-wise. Yes.

Because once the beautiful Steve Bannon testifies. Once Liz Cheney, the just fiery Liz Cheney lays the hammer down, then finally some justice will be served. How dare you, sir? Did Steve Bannon already testify? Donald will be feeling the heat, but not from the brick oven cooking up a lovely thin crispy. He'll be feeling it because of the prison sentence he's about to get, the public beheading that's come in his way for sure.

That's right. Like when Morgan Spurlock went to Mito Sama in the earlier part of this episode, it all takes place in the same universe, in the MCU. That all happens. We love you, Steven. We love Steve Bannon now. We love him. Yeah.

We love Pence. We love him all. I'd like to get anyone's additional thoughts on pizza before we get to our closing arguments here. Any other, any menu items we've missed, anything we haven't talked about? Well, I just got one last, I got one last pizza and a dessert, which I could, I got the classic pan pizza cheese because I thought let's, let's, let's, let's get what they were doing.

No, let's get the, let's get the nostalgia juices flowing wigs and I'll say this. It was, it was the best version of everything we, I thought so. The original pan pizza, just cheese comes with that shitty sauce still, I guess, or maybe it comes with, I don't, I don't know. I can't figure it out on this app because this is original marinara and I can't choose the sweet marinara, marinara, but I don't know what the deal is with the sweet versus original sauce. Maybe both suck.

They might just both be bad. They might just both be bad. And it was, it was fine. It was the closest thing to it. Like it is, it was buttery, but kind of everything tasted like a little buttery, but at the same time not with a not enough flavor. But the pan was my bite of the night followed by, you know, what's really close is that big cookie.

We got one of those big Hershey's chocolate chip cookies and a Frill bot took that home to his kids. So hopefully with, you know, three little slices taken out of for me, him and Micah's. But it was good. The ultimate chocolate chip cookie, big cookie, kind of warm, little dry, but a little warm. I mean, look, it's just bad pizza. It's just bad. It's not good.

It's, it's a bummer. It's just, it's just, it's falling apart. It's, I mean, it's, it represents America in a lot of ways. I'll say this. I should have added. I agree with you on the sauce. I assume I got the regular marinara version, but I don't. It also confused me because I think not this time, but last time there were two different

marinara. There was like, they seemed very similar. And I just figured, like you said, they both probably weren't great. So I just went with the marinara. I'm curious if the other one was even slightly different, but it tasted like burnt and like way too tangy. And I think it, like it hurt basically, like within about 15 minutes, I felt like I had just drank battery acid because of how just needlessly tangy and acidic it was.

And it just, it was, it was, it was unpleasant. It was a bummer of an experience. And you know, it's, it's just, that's probably the, like bad pizza is probably the worst of all, like insult of all, honestly, like, yeah, like, yeah, you know, a bad burger is disappointing or, you know, like a subpar taco, but just like, there's something about bad pizza that's just like, man, I know what I want in this, in this ain't it. Well, let's get to our final thoughts on, on pizza. So Brendan, here's how this will work.

We'll each go around, give a closing argument, if you will, on this chain and end it by giving it a score from zero to five forks. You're a guest. We'll begin with you. Your thoughts, your forks. Zero to five forks. I mean, this is tough for me because I have a personal, a personal pan history with this. Thanks.

But, you know, if, look, if we were back in 1994 and I'm going home, I'm about to play the, you know, I'm about to play Martin, no, it's probably like 96, I'm about to play Mario 64, Dire Dire Docs level, maybe a little, maybe a little, what is the beach level I keep forgetting? Click clock wood. What's the Banjo-Kazooie thing we played earlier? Oh, that was a Treasure Trove Cove. Treasure Trove Cove.

I'm, I'm going to. There's like a TikTok clock or something though, too, I think. Or is that a Mario one? Yeah, click like wood. Yeah, click like wood is Banjo. And I'm in a good mood. I'm going to go, I'm going to stop a pizza. It's almost certainly going to be five out of five forks, but that's in 1996 and we've

come a long way. And I have to say just based on what I ate yesterday and indeed most, you know, times, although I will say I was, I was on the road a couple of years ago. We were in Michigan. I was, I was filling in for Will Menaker from Chapo and I went to a dinin. We all like got there. Is there for like a film festival and everyone's like, all right, what do we want to do? And I'm like already, I'm like smoke in Scooby-Doo cartoons where like this, it's shaped like

me, but I'm already at the Pizza Hut because I knew there was one there. And I went and it was great. It was just like it was back in the day. So I'm not going to say that you can't still find, that was Traverse City, Michigan. You can't, you can still find good dinins, but nowhere near me. And so with the Express, yeah, I had yesterday, maybe like one and a half forks out of five. Wow. The breadsticks were okay on like graded on a curve, but that's it.

Now Mitch, what do you think? Pizza Hut, Pizza Hut, Kentucky Fried Chicken in a Pizza Hut. Who would, who would think that that song would become a, a requiem and an, an, an, an elegy? Is that the same thing? Sure. Uh, what's the third one? A dirge.

A dirge. Oh, we got the dirge. Okay. What's the fourth one? Do you need it? Do you need a fourth one? I think that's it. No, no, I think that's it.

I think freeze. Yeah. The real comedy rule of fours. Four options. I think there's no other. I think there's no more. Three is fine. Three are good.

Wise. Who, who would have thought that that song would become a sad song? This is now a sad song to me because Pizza Hut's, Pizza Hut sucks. And today was actually not even a bad outing, honestly, especially for 11 a.m. Sit down Pizza Hut. It's just soulless. It's lost its soul. The soul is gone.

What are they doing? They try to save money. They try to get rid of the actual restaurants. They fucked up big time. You know, like one of the nice things about that place is going on there, sitting down. And maybe, maybe that, I mean, you know, it was, it was, it was, they were losing profits, I guess is what the deal was. They weren't making enough money on these sit down Pizza Hut's with the buffets and

the arcades and the claw to get a stuffed animal and actual ovens. So they decided, Hey, we're not going to do it anymore. And guess what? You lost it. It's gone. I can't even get it in Quincy anymore. I can't have it delivered to me. I have to drive 45 minutes to pick it up.

And if I do that, even most of the, most of the times it's going to be at a fucking target. It can be a kiosk at a target. That sucks. So to me, this place is just feels, it just feels like, and also what's going on at Yum fucking corporate. You know what I mean? Yum, Yum corporate is fucking, fucking up left and right. That's all, that's all I can say.

Right. Am I wrong on that? No, I'm not going to, I'm not going to defend Yum Brands. Yum Brands. I mean, I've said before Yum Brands is a rudderless ship. They really just don't, they've, they don't know what the fuck they're doing. And you know, they just, they have so much brand equity in these existing restaurants that they, that they still are able to, you know, retain an audience.

But like, like, I feel like outside of Taco Bell, what like, have we been happy with KFC's recent outings? We've never been happy with Pizza Hut. They made an okay chicken sandwich, but like, magic's gone from there too. Like, when you think, when you, when you have Popeyes mashed potatoes and gravy, they're just, it's a tier, it's a few tiers above fucking KFC. Um, anyways, Wags, Neil Campbell once reviewed this and gave it one fork. Yeah.

Correct. And that's, and it caused a shit storm. It was very early in the episode, very early in the podcast run when we didn't quite know what the show was yet and our audience didn't yet, people, when people heard Pizza Hut get one fork, they were horrified. And now I think at this point in the show, I think, you know, hearing Brendan's one fork, two times score, people will take it in stride because they're like, yeah, we know what Pizza Hut is.

You know, we've, we've had, we've had Pizza Hut over the years and have come around to it, maybe just not being as good as it was, as it was when we were kids. There, a big change needs to come to Pizza Hut. Yeah. Frailbot said it wasn't bad. He said three forks, which is, Frailbot was being nice. Mike has said about two, I think Mike has either said two and a half to maybe two, two forks, a two and a four to quarks, forks, two forks, one time, I'm going to go, I'm just

going to go flat out two forks because it's just so disappointing to me, two forks. That's all it gets. It's not, it's just, it's, it just could be so much better. It's just fallen so far from, it's fallen from grace and it feels over to me. So we'll see what happens. I think that's well argued and I have nothing to disagree with with either of you. Yeah, I'll go back to the kind of the thesis statement of this podcast, which is we're trying to determine how does this chain succeed at what it's trying to do.

And Pizza Hut, pizza, it's a pizza restaurant. I think their pizza stinks. I don't like their pizza. Like there's like the stuff that I enjoyed eating was peripheral to the pizza. It was the ancillary items and what kind of endorsement is that of a place that's just like, that has pizza in their name that you go to for pizza, that you're like, Hey, I'm going to order some pizza. I would, Pizza Hut would be the bottom of my list behind, you know, every local place

and behind the other big chains. They try to change it to the hut at one point, did they? They try to change it to the hut and that, you know, that branding didn't take. And that was another just sort of like, what are you doing here? You have your thing that you did well. I think they got to bring back those restaurants. I think I, I, I agree with Brendan wholeheartedly. That was the whole thing.

That was what was fun about Pizza Hut. For me as a kid, it was round table pizza. That was our parlor of choice. We'd go to the round table, play Cadillacs and dinosaurs arcade game and, and, you know, get a big pitcher of Coke. And that was just like the fucking thing you'd look forward to all week. But, but I would go to a lot, a lot of sit down pizza huts too. And, you know, that was fun too.

I think it's time for a parlor resurgence and I would love to see it. But for this iteration of Pizza Hut, I can't go above. I'll give it an extra half fork for the Cinnabon mini rolls. I'll give it one fork, two times. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Rough outing for Pizza Hut.

But, you know, you know what we did? Yeah. And how dare you try to go by the hut? How dare you, sir? Well, because they're not, the, the, the new ones aren't really hut like, are they? They're just like, no, they're not doing pizza well. So take pizza out and then I'm sorry, you got to take hut out as well.

Because you're not a hut. You're not a hut anymore. You're not a hut. Yeah. Fully. Jabba, Jabba or erasure. Well, that's hard to say. Jabba, erasure.

Yeah, there you go. Try it. Yeah. You try it. It's hard. Jabba, erasure. Sounds like the Lewis Carroll creature, like Jabba. There's a little literary spice for your show.

Fly right over. Listeners, listeners won't get it. Yeah. Don't say that. Of course they will. No, dumb. Um, let's, uh, let's, uh, let's take a break. Uh, and we'll go to break with the sounds of Click Clock Wood from Banjo-Kazoo.

Another great track. This was the level that, where it had all the different seasons. So like, you keep, you like hit a switch and we go from like spring to summer to fall. Absolutely. Um, very, very fun, very, very, um, metaphysical, you know? Yeah. Great puzzle design. Yep.

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Welcome back to dough boys. We're with Brendan James from Blowback. Check out the new season. And hey, it's time for a segment. I've got a food related exam and Mitch and Brendan must compete for superiority. It's slop quiz final bite edition. Wow. Our associate producer, Amelia Marino has compiled these.

Which food did each of the following famous people eat for their last meal? This is a last meal quiz. Okay. All right. Great. So just you guys can buzz in with your name. And this is multiple choice. So you know, if you want to let me read all A, B and C before you answer.

All right. First up. JFK blown away. But what did he eat that day? A lentil soup, B boiled eggs and toast, C creme brulee. Oh, God. Mitch. Go ahead, Mitch.

All right. Lentil soup. Not lentil soup. Damn it. What was A? A is lentil soup, B boiled eggs and toast, C creme brulee. B boiled eggs and toast. You are correct.

Okay. And I think timing wise, that lines up with when the assassination. No, I want my morning soup. Give me my lentil breakfast soup. Next up, going back to ancient Egypt, Cleopatra was her final meal. Was her last meal. A figs, B corn or C apples. A figs, I'm going to guess.

Sorry, Brendan. Oh, I didn't say my name. No, that's okay. I'll give it to you. You are correct. That does eliminate, okay. I feel bad now. Figs.

No, that's actually, you know what, Mike? I don't give a fig, whether I said my name or not. Wow. I am still going to give you the point. That is a very funny thing. Of course, the last meal is figs. I think it justifies my breaking the rules. Yes.

All right. Next up, great actor. Tony Soprano himself, James Gandolfini was his final meal. A fried prongs, B a pastrami sandwich. Let me read all the answers first. Or C, fettuccine alfredo. Mitch. Go ahead, Mitch.

Pastrami sandwich. Not a pastrami sandwich. Fuck. I'm sorry. Can you read them again? A fried prawns, B a pastrami sandwich, C fettuccine alfredo. I'm going to go A fried, Brendan, A fried prawns. You are correct.

You're killing it. Two fried prawns, his final meal. R.A.P. The great, he's great. It should have been something more Italian. And hey, speaking of R.I.P., speaking of one of the greats, Saddam Hussein was his final meal. A, chicken and rice, B, chicken and waffles.

Or C, chicken and mashed potatoes. Brendan, A chicken and rice. You are correct. Wow. How did you know that? Executed chicken and rice, that's what he had in prison. Did you cover that on the show or was that a bit of research that you that you looked into?

Not his last meal. We covered his execution, but I took a guess there because that's just a very, that's a very believable thing for him to him to be eating in the Middle East, but much like figs in Egypt, figs are there. Boiled chicken and rice with hot and hot water mixed with honey, which I know this sounds nice, some hot water with with some honey. Why not? That would take the edge off of your public execution.

I just remember from his execution video, that some of it they showed on the news. I just remember him yelling, like, is this the bravery of Arabs? Like he was just like screaming at them because someone was talking about a Muktada al-Saudar, yelling back at him. He got off kind of a good line as he was going because someone was like, he basically said, like, do you like the country now? Like, you know, is this going well?

And, you know, he had his own responsibility as part of that. But I mean, it was getting a lot worse. So he he he he got off a good one in his last moments. You don't get a dunk on the guys about to be executed. You know, the guy who was yelling at him first. Yeah. Yeah. You know, you don't get a turn. He's about to be executed.

You don't have to. You don't have to dunk on them. You don't have to. You've already nailed them pretty bad with the execution. That's enough of a dunk. Yeah. So that's the ultimate dunk, really. All right. Next one. Hopefully and hopefully that's what happens after the January 6th

Commission wraps up because that's our only hope for democracy. Yes, the hang the hang Trump. Next up, we can't get in trouble for saying that. Next up fish delight for his last meal and then he and then he gets. Next up, John Wayne Gacy, who I think was executed, but it couldn't be. Yeah, this, you know, these options read like they were they were last meal in a prison like he knew he was going to go. So I so I think he was executed.

Here's what we here's what options are. Well, it's multiple choice. We can guess. All right. Now go ahead. Get the multiple choice now. Now we're not going to get it, but I know it's fried chicken. Here they hear the options.

A. McDonald's lobster and blueberries. B. KFC shrimp and strawberry bitch to be. Yes. You are correct. I'll give it to you. KFC option to it is B. It is KFC shrimp and strawberries. He had he had a KFC fries, 12 deep fried shrimp and a pound of strawberries.

The third option, Burger King, oysters and watermelon. We talked about this in a previous episode, but I though the last meal that sticks in my head is Timothy McFay's two pints of mint chocolate chip ice cream. Sure, make a little stinky mess. All right. Next up, Michael Jackson, the king of pop. Did he have a vegetable lasagna, be a tuna salad sandwich or see a spinach salad with chicken?

Brendan, I want to say, I want to say B. Tuna salad. It's not tuna salad. Damn. What were the options again? The other options are a vegetable lasagna, see spinach salad with chicken. What is it? Okay. So I said kick cuisine over your first option as a stupid joke.

And I actually didn't hear it again. A vegetable lasagna, see spinach salad with chicken. Vegetables on your, hmm, spinach salad with chicken seems like what he would do, but I'm going to go, I'm going to go vegetable lasagna. Hey, no, it was spinach salad with chicken. I knew it. I fucked up. It's four, it's four to one, Brendan.

We have, we have two more left and they're both pop stars and both big musicians. Next up, the famously hung member of the rat pack, or one of the famously hung members of the rat pack, Frank Sinatra, old blue eyes. Was it a grilled cheese? A foot long. Oh, one eye, old third eye, sorry. A, a grilled cheese, B, spaghetti and meatballs, C, macaroni salad.

Mitch. Go ahead, Mitch. I got to go spaghetti and meatballs. He's got to go out. Not spaghetti and meatballs. Although he's a famous pizon. He's a pizon. That was too obvious.

I'm sorry. Can you say them again? Grilled cheese, macaroni salad. Uh, I'm going to, I'm going to go macaroni salad. It was grilled cheese, which I'm surprised by, because he, because he lived an old age way to go out. Yeah. It doesn't feel like a, it doesn't feel on brand for him.

And it also doesn't feel like an old man meal. I feel like you get a certain, you grow out of old, of grilled cheeses. Right. If you live in an old age, I don't know. Maybe not. Yeah. And finally, that is, that is, that, that stinks. That's, that's, that's, that can't be your last meal as Frank Sinatra Sinatra.

Yeah, you just can't, it's not right. Once you reach, once you, you're in that, you're in that, that set, like, like that, the grim reaper is looming. You got to be a little bit more conscious of your image of just be like, you know what, I better have an eggplant parmesan. Cause if this is the last thing I ever eat, I want that being documented. Cause if there's ever a podcast in which I'm a part of a question in the slop quiz, I'm going to want to be dignified.

It's the thing they talk about, they talk about other than my music, no, not my music career, but my famously huge cock. My hog. Yeah. Yeah. That's what that's, that's what he's, he was a singer. He was a singer. No, he wasn't just famously hung.

Who was, he was a singer. All right. Finally, another singer, Elvis Presley, Elvis in theaters now. Very much back in the zeitgeist. Did he have a ice cream and cookies, B, one of his famous bacon, peanut butter and banana sandwiches, or C, a burger and fries. A, Brandon, a ice cream and cookies. You are correct.

Four scoops of ice cream and six chocolate chip cookies. I don't know how I knew that, but I think I've heard that before. Yeah, yeah, that's beautiful. Brandon wins five to one, dominating fashion. That was slop quiz, final bite edition. I got my ass kicked. Yeah, you did well. It was tough.

Hey, it's time for the feedback. Just like a restaurant value feedback, let's open up the feedback. Today's email is from Michael. Michael writes, do you have a go to dish when you have a feeling that the restaurant you're at isn't going to be any good? Good question. A vote of no confidence, if you will. For instance, when I don't trust a Chinese restaurant, I'll order their

General So's chicken because at worst I'll get over fried two salty chicken with one stalk of broccoli. I mean, this, I feel like this had this happened. This, we, you'll run into this with, uh, with travel, Mitch. Like sometimes we'll be at a place where after a show and we haven't eaten yet. And we're just like, well, this is the one place that's serving food. Uh, what the, what the fuck am I going to get? And Emma, you can weigh in on this one too, because I'm curious what, what

your thoughts are, but like, I always feel like a, a, this meal isn't going to be horrible. It will be, it will be okay for me is like, no, it might be bad, but it's a bad I can tolerate, and at least I'm not going to destroy my body. For me is like a chicken Caesar salad. Like I get to feel like I could go to the shittiest airport restaurant and get a chicken Caesar salad and the chicken will be unseasoned and, and just, you know, basically just, just eat, just, uh, so bad.

I've had so many bad, I've had so many bad ones too, but it's like, this is just raw sustenance. Like I'm just like, this is fine. I can, I can shovel this in my mouth. So that like, if I, if I don't trust a place that, that's one of my go-tos. I don't know if it's the best go-to. No, I would do a salad too. That would be my choice.

Although I would probably go no meat because if I don't trust it, I'm probably not going to eat the meat. See, if I'm nervous about the place, salad isn't the thing that jumps out to my, when I, when I, when I was in New Orleans and I was like, just trying to get a salad, I ordered from like two or three different places and the salads all were bad. And I'm like, I just feel like it's very rare that you get food poisoning from a salad and it's more actually happened from like a beef or something.

This, this is one of my, why is it going to, is going to ruin this for you? Just like Adam, Adam Conner, let me make my hair real high real quick. Um, wow, look at that. My pompadour is going outside of the top of my, uh, my frame here from my web. Zoom can't even handle it. Uh, the, actually the, you're more likely to contract foodborne illness from underwashed produce than from undercooked meat. So a lot of times I'm going to be like, I got, like, I got food poisoning from

the steakhouse while it wasn't the steak, it was the salad yet beforehand. It was just poorly washed. That sucks. Not that that's always the case, but that tends to be that, that, that's, that's more like, here's my answer. Is chicken tenders. Yeah, that's the next one. Something deep fried is a, is not a bad, not a bad choice.

Well, especially like if it's a maybe shitty restaurant, a lot of the chicken tenders are going to be like frozen, like Cisco tenders. Yeah, they're going to be already cooked basically. Um, they just, they're just reheating them in a fryer. I, yeah, I think chicken tenders or something like that. Like I think a burger you can sometimes be, I mean, I'm not saying you won't get a bad burger. I was going to say burger.

I, I was going to say that safe. Yeah. Because I would actually agree with really all of your selections, but to say something different, you know, you might get a hockey puck, but again, none of those are going to taste bad. Probably the worst they're going to do is not taste like anything at all. Whereas you might be getting, you know, some really gnarly mac and cheese or something like that, that is just off, you know.

Well, like a mac and cheese, I feel like at a bad restaurant, they like make a big batch of it and then it just like sits in a pot or something and it gets like gummy and yeah, yeah, that's going to destroy your insides. So like it's like, it's, if it tastes bad, but you, because there's two things you don't, you don't want it to like, first off, it tastes as, as, as at the forefront, but also you don't want to like just destroy your body over a bad meal. I mean, that's the whole issue with pizza. Yeah.

Oh yeah. Definitely. I mean, sometimes, you know what though, sometimes just a cheese pizza too. I mean, if you want to talk about, I mean, like, you'll know, it will be not great, but you're like, what could go wrong? It's going to taste bad, but it's bread and cheese. Unless like, it's like truly the product is like gone bad or is moldy or something, you know, like that's like, sure.

But, but I'll, I'll, I'll disagree with you there, Mike, just because if, if I am trying to avoid like, you know, something, even if it isn't off, the cheese could be like really gross and like, I don't know, it's a lot too. Pizza is just a lot on top. Yeah. And that's what we learned with our order or our review today is like even from a place I used to trust, like a bad pizza, as you said, Nick, is, is pretty bad.

So actually that's the one thing I'd definitely avoid is probably getting pizza. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. I, Mitch, you just got your ass kicked again, like in the quiz. No, no, no, no, no, this is. Do it again, do it again. I'm gonna love this. Fuck.

There's no wrong answer. There's no wrong. Yeah. I, I, I agree. I actually agree with both of your reasonings because I was, I was starting to think as Mitch was saying that, I was starting to think like, you know what, if they're, if like, if I'm at a bar and they have like a quesadilla on their, their, their appetizer menu, quesadilla can be solid.

You know, sometimes they've got, they've got like a buffalo chicken quesadilla or just something very, or just something even more basic than that. And it's just like, I'll get a little bit of protein, some starch, and this isn't going to give me the wrong blaze. This will be fine. Or like a chips and salsa, something like that. Yeah, sure. Very safe.

You know what, I went out on a limb. I was, when I was on like, when a Pesachio, like I told you, ordered myself a grilled chicken sandwich and I'm like, that's always dangerous to me as a grilled chicken sandwich. Yes, yes. I had a, had a great grilled chicken sandwich at Anthony's right on the Lake Point of Pesachio. It was good.

Nice grilled chicken sandwich. Lovely. Let us know your, let us know what your no confidence meals are. Hit us up on social media, hashtag. Do confidence. That's good. D-O-U-G-H confidence. Let us know what your go-to dish is if when you, when you have a,

your options are limited. And if you have a question or comment about the world of chain restaurants, you can email us at doughboyspodcasts at gmail.com or leave us a voicemail at 830-go-to. That's 830-463-6844. And you can get the Doughboys Double Air Weekly bonus episode by joining the Golden or Platinum Play Club at patreon.com slash Doughboys. And you also can check out the new season of Blow Back at blowback.supportingcast.fm.

Brendan James, thank you so much for doing the show. Tell us about that. Tell us about your podcast. Season three is out now as of the Monday before this episode releases. Tell us what to expect and tell us why people should check out the show. Well, yeah, it's a history show in a lot of ways, but we try to make it, you know, as compelling as possible, make you feel like you're, you're listening and experiencing the events that we're talking about in real time.

We're big on, you know, drawn on a lot of old audio clips and, you know, music and media drops that place you right then and there. And the Korean War is often called the unknown or forgotten war in American history. A lot of people think of it just wedged between the good war and the bad war, World War Two in Vietnam. And we want to try and flesh out why that is. And then in so doing, tell the story of what actually happened. That's kind of what we tried to do with our other two seasons, which you can

listen to wherever you get your podcasts. Season one is on the Iraq War. Season two is on Cuba in the Cold War. And we're really excited. I think we were very happy with how season two turned out, but I think season three is the best one we've done yet, which, you know, obviously I would say that, but I wouldn't say it if I was actually nervous that it wasn't. So I think it is.

And it's, it was a lot of fun to make. We talked to a lot of smart people and we really hope that everyone enjoys it. So if you ever wondered what happened in the Korean War and maybe why you weren't taught so much about it, blowback season three is for you. And an easier link to remember might even just be blowback.show www.blowback.show. Click the big button that says subscribe. There you go. Blowback.show.

Check it out. Congrats on the new season. I hope people subscribe. I hope people sign up and, and hey, that'll be it for this episode of Doe Boys. Until next time. For the Street Man and Mike Mitchell. Yes. Why don't you take us out on some, some beautiful Banjo-Kazooie music?

Maybe something grunty involved. Maybe per grunty theme is good. The, uh, the spiral mountain theme is kind of grunty theme. It's pretty great. I think, I think I have the perfect track to send us out on. Okay. Good. We'll end this episode of Doe Boys.

A little something for the Banjo-Kazooie soundtrack. I'll do this episode of Doe Boys for the next time at the Spoon Man and Mike Mitchell. I'm Nick Weigar, happy. See ya. Damn it. God damn it. I don't even hear it.

Also, we can't hear it, you fool. Oh, sorry. I don't hear anything. I didn't share audio. I just see the, the gold 12th season, uh, logo. Emma can put that in a poll. Oh no, he's doing it now. No, cause I'm not cutting any of it.

I'm good at all this. And maybe I seem a bit confused. Yeah, maybe, but I got you pegged. But I don't know what to do with those tall salads and scrambled eggs. They're calling again. Scrambled eggs all over my face. What is the boy to do? Frasier has left the building.

On the next Doe Boys Double, we're opening up the Feedbag Life Advice Edition. Emma, Amelia, and YouSong join me and Mitch as we answer your What Should I Do's with What We Would Do? It's Life Advice. Let's make it worse. Get the Doe Boys Double every Tuesday only at patreon.com slash Doe Boys. Want to see the sources for this week's intro? Check the episode description.

That was a headgum podcast.