Doughboys - Rockdoughberfest: Margaritaville with Mike Carlson

Episode Date: October 15, 2015

The Doughboys sit down with actor and Jimmy Buffett superfan Mike Carlson (Conan, UCB) to discuss the rocker's flagship restaurant, Margaritaville. And, a new edition of Drank or Stank.Want more Doughboys? Check out our Patreon!: https://patreon.com/doughboysSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I like mine with lettuce and tomato, Heinz 57 and french fried potatoes, big kosher pickle and a cold draft beer. So goes an excerpt from Cheeseburger in Paradise, one of many songs fixated on food and drink by Jimmy Buffett. It's a running theme throughout the catalogue of island-inspired country rock he calls Gulf and Western, in which he expanded into the beginnings of an empire with the opening of his first retail store and restaurant in Key West, Florida in 1985. Call him a branding innovator, call him a shameless self-promoter, either way, Buffett, already

a successful recording and touring artist at the time, built a $100 million a year business out of his adopted beach lifestyle. His holdings are so vast that he has not one, but three, different restaurant chains, in addition to selling retail versions of his spirits, frozen foods and beer. And it's not all just deep-fried appetizers and sugary cocktails. He's also one of just eight authors to have New York Times' number one bestsellers on both the fiction and non-fiction list, a group that includes Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck and Dr. Seuss.

But his largest, most profitable venture, the one that most defines Buffett's personal brand, is the tequila-soaked chain of destination restaurants, some with attached co-branded hotels and casinos, which attract his legions of sunscorched fans who self-identify as parrotheads. This week on Doe Boys, we're wasted away again, in Margaritaville. Welcome to Doe Boys, the podcast about chain restaurants. I'm Nick Weiger, alongside my co-host, the Spoon Man, Mike Mitchell. How you doing, Spoon Man? Doing alright.

Just want to give a big, uh, to Spoon Nation. What's going on, little wags? I'm on board with the Heidi Ho now. I think I'm fine with it. You giggled. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You broke through my icy exterior, and now I'm fully on board with you saying Mr. Hankey's Heidi Ho.

I guess, yeah, Mr. Hankey. Is it Heidi Ho or Howdy Ho? Howdy Ho. I think it's like a Howdy Ho, but it kind of has an I character to it. Oh. We're gonna get you a little, uh, we're gonna get you a little catchphrase. I don't think I need a catchphrase. I'm Weiger.

That's terrible. I think that's pretty good. Is that what you think my voice sounds like? Yeah. Uh, you know, you sang every line, why didn't you just say, why didn't you just say, Good God Almighty, which way do I steer? Isn't that the last? I think that's where, I don't know the exact, I don't know the exact lyrical structure.

Is that what the line is, Good God Almighty, which way do I steer if I always just got it wrong? Our guest is a Jimmy Buffett expert. We'll introduce him in a second. He'll clear this up. Okay. Yeah, I think it is. I don't know.

He also looked confused, by the way. I isolated three lines, and I figured that was enough of an intro into the world of Jimmy Buffett, where so much of his songs are about things that you put in your mouth, either food or drink. Yeah, I guess you're right. I mean, you know, I mean, we were recently in, we're recording this episode on a Thursday. We just got back from Las Vegas. We had a bachelor party that both of us attended on a Sunday, and during that trip, we took

a little detour. We went away from the main party. We broke away and went to Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville. And um... Oh, what a bachelor party it was. Yeah. It got pretty wild. What's made the hangover look like, what's a, like a tame movie?

Um, Big Night. What? That's it. Isn't that the movie with Tony Shalhoub and where they have the Italian restaurant, and they think Louis Prima is coming to dinner? I don't know why that's what came to mind. Big Night? I've never heard of this in my entire life.

Yeah, it's a really good movie. It's got, like, John Turturro, I think, and Tony Shalhoub, and they're, they're, like, a... I thought it was Tony Shalhoub. I don't know how to say it. I don't know. It's a... But they've got, like, a...

You're probably right. They've got, like, an Italian... If you have an opinion on it and you think there's one way it's supposed to be said, I'm sure you're right, because I've just, like, read it and just assumed that's how you're supposed to say it. Um, Monk, right? Yeah, Monk. Okay.

Monk himself. And then there's one other guy. I don't remember what the exact cast is, but they've got, like, an Italian restaurant, and it's all based around, they've got the band leader Louis Prima is allegedly going to come, and so they're preparing this gigantic feast to impress him, and spoiler alert, Louis Prima never comes. So they just kind of bankrupt their restaurant, trying to put together this ornate, elaborate dinner for this celebrity client who would come and save their business, but they spend

all their money trying to put together this feast for him, and then it never actually manifests, and then it ends in their ruin. And actually, it's one of my favorite last shots of a movie, which is just, they're in the kitchen, and it's just, like, them sadly sort of making breakfast, and it's like, oh, that's a really cool, like, kind of poignant way to end this thing. I thought one of your favorite, uh, I thought your favorite last shot of the movie was, uh, Happiness. Well, oh, when the little boy is jerking off, and then shoots his load onto some railings,

and then a dog comes and eats it, it's the Todd Salon's film, very, very dark comedy. Well, you did know that I would know that, shot for shot, exactly what happened. I think it is one of your favorite last shots. Um, yeah, we made, uh, we made the hangover look like big night. Um, yeah, this, this hang, this bachelor party was so crazy, that if you check our Instagrams, Mitch took a picture with a Pee Wee Herman impersonator, and I took a picture with a guy in a Mario mascot suit. And Nick, I'll get, I'll give Nick credit.

Well, I gave, I had a big speech to Nick about how tipping and, uh, I had a big tipping speech to Nick, and then he gave Pee, the Pee Wee impersonator $20. I, I already know what, what big tipping speech, what are you talking about? I gave, I learned, like, I learned a lesson from you. You did, I gave you an inspiring tipping, uh, speech. No, you didn't. And you were kind of like, Scrooge-like before this. That's not true.

You broke your heart wide open and yet you gave Pee Wee $20 and you made his, you made his day. That's true. I'm a very generous, I'm a generous tipper in general. I had a situation where all the, the only bills I had in my wallet were 20s and I was just like, fuck it. I'll give this guy a 20. I'm not going to stiff him.

And yeah. He said, you made my day. So your tipping can make people feel good. That said, get off your fucking high horse and lecture me on the value of tipping. And that was the end result. You said something to me afterwards. You say, you inspired me. You said something like that.

That's not true. It is true. I swear. Little wigs, you're lying to our, to Spoon Nation. I think I said, you were perspiring on me. It was, it was Vegas, baby. Hot as shit. Hot as shit.

I will say that this is probably the only thing Nick did in Vegas. We took a party bus to Vegas. Nick got sick. I did. I got motion sick on the party bus. I got motion sick on the bus. Which is, which is so incredibly late. I think that's the lamest thing you can do.

I don't know. I think you've done lamor. He got motion sick on the bus. We got to the hotel. He went to bed the next morning. You were up at seven, I believe. I will. Yeah.

I woke up at seven both days. Went to the pool. Hung out. Then we went to Margaritaville. Then later we had dinner and you went to bed and that was your Vegas. Yeah. I got tired early. I could tuck it out.

I got early hours at my job. I got to be in at 8 a.m. every day. Hey, I'm not, I'm just, I'm giving the facts. Yeah. I don't know if you can see if you're a twerp. Tweet at us. You think Wiger's a twerp? All right, Jeff.

Twerp or not twerp. Twerp or not twerp. Sure. Let's see if that hashtag goes anywhere. I wonder how Spoon Nation feels about you. They give you a hard time sometimes. I don't know. Well, you know what?

Spoon Nation only gets on me if I say something that's a little antagonistic towards you. Which is probably like every third sentence for me on this podcast. They're like, hey, take it easy on Mitch. Kind of in the way they're like, you know, like at the, like, like at the playground, they're kind of like, hey, you don't pick on the slow kid, you know. What? Everyone's. What on earth?

What the fuck? When you look in the mirror, are you like a jacked cool dude? Man, I got to unleash and beat the shit out of you. That'll happen. It's how I expect to die at this point. Just being humbled into a big pile of goo by your big Quincy fists. Speaking of Quincy, my buddy Anthony, Anthony Tufo, when we were talking about ice cream, recently he told me to say, tell Nick ice cream sucks.

What the fuck is that? And then he said, I thought you were going to bring up Choco Tacos when I was talking about Brigham's ice cream sucks. That's an indefensible stance. Well, you know, I wouldn't a lot of fans in Quincy. I just want to let you know. Whatever. I don't want, I don't want Quincy fans if they're, if the local consensus is that ice

cream is no good. That's insane. You just like it too much. I think is what he's trying to get at. Well, the fucking don't say ice cream sucks. Say like take it down a notch, Weiger. Ooh, I wouldn't be messing with the Tufo's if I were you. No, I don't think I want to mess with any of your blue collar Quincy friends.

I don't think that's a crew I want to get mixed up in. Well, we had, we still had a good time in Vegas together. We had a great time. It was fun. Yeah. Yeah. A friendship was stronger. We went to Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville and that brings us to our guest.

I've seen him on Conan from the upright citizens brigade, one of the busiest commercial actors around a good friend, a funny guy. Mike Carlson is here. Hi, Mike. Hello guys. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for letting me talk about this dumb crap with you. I'm very excited about it.

That is not ironic either and you're correct. That is the line. That is the next line of that song. I was confused because it makes no sense. Is he driving? I don't get it. I think he's on a boat right? He's like steering a ship.

Yeah. He's usually on a boat. Sometimes in his songs, he's on a boat. I like mine with lettuce and tomato, Heinz 57 and french fried potatoes. What is it? Something kosher? Kosher pickle and draft beer. Good God Almighty, which way do I steer?

So he's either in a boat or a car while he's shouting out what he likes on a boat. I think you're reading into it too much like literally. He's a very abstract writer and sometimes he'll just sort of like paint a picture as like it's like John Lennon, how like I am the walrus isn't really about like a narrative. It's more just about trying to bring up these ideas in your head, really. That said, if this is like a literal recollection of what happened, it's a pretty fun stream of consciousness. I think this guy is just dictating what he likes on a cheeseburger and then is all of

a sudden like confused about nautical directions. He almost crashes a boat. Yeah. I also like that we immediately have compared John Lennon to Jimmy Buffett, the person we're talking about. Who do you like better, Lennon or Buffett? Probably John Lennon. Lennon's a little snooty.

I'll go Buffett. When you really go Buffett or is that like a kind of a winky answer? Yeah. Yeah, maybe a little bit winky. I guess Imagine's a good song. I'd probably like John Lennon more, though I'm not like if we're talking about the Beatles in general, I'm not like a Lennon guy and maybe more of a McCartney George Harrison guy, but I appreciate what Lennon brings to the table.

I think it gets a little bit of a pass for being a philanderer and a wife beater. I think those are bad things and I think people don't bring that up in terms of reference. People talk about, oh John Lennon, it's so tragic and everything and it was, but let's talk about how this guy is kind of a piece of shit, too. That's fair enough. Oh, I like it. Coming out swinging at Lennon. Why not?

How about let's make it easier. Warren Buffett or Jimmy Buffett? Oh. I got it. Yeah. I think I'd go Jimmy. Jesus Christ. I thought this would be easy.

How is it easy? I don't know. You really love Warren Buffett? I said Jimmy. I said I'd pick Jimmy. Yeah, but you thought about it. I thought everyone would just be like, Jimmy Buffett. Well, Warren Buffett is like kind of one of those philosopher kings that pulls the

lever of the world economy. He's a billionaire. He's an admirable businessman. His business practices are not particularly shady. Because one of those super capitalists goes, he runs things pretty ethically. He's concerned about the distribution of wealth in the country. Jesus Christ. I don't know.

I think there's a lot to admire about Warren Buffett. That said, I'd go with Jimmy Buffett because he's just out to have a good time. Yeah. Nothing wrong with that. You know what? We'll get into this, but he's a likable guy, man. I can't dislike Jimmy Buffett. You can't.

We were talking about that in the restaurant. I can't dislike the guy. Well, you know what we had? So we're in the midst of Rock Doberfest, which is our month-long tour of a rock-themed chain restaurant. So far, Sammy Hagar and Jimmy Buffett, two of America's greatest rockers. If you're building a Mount Rushmore of America's great rock musicians, the two of them are taking up two of those four slots.

Yeah. Well, but you know what? We just did Sammy Hagar's Cabo Wabo Cantina, and speaking of which, like, they are such similar guys, like Sammy Hagar and Jimmy Buffett, in terms of just like, they're just like, they have different types of music, but they're just like, hey, the beach lifestyle, kicking it back, sipping a cocktail, having some food, some sand between your toes. They're like, they're not the yin and the yang, they're like the yang and the yang. They're like just like two of the same guy, and it's so interesting that there's enough

room for two of them, you know? Yeah. I enjoy Jimmy Buffett more. I think he kind of is kind of a little softer, like, hey, you can have a little boat drink and relax, and he's kind of more tipsy, fallen over, drunk. I guess Sammy is, but he has a little bit of a harder edge. I feel like Sammy Hagar would annoy me more than Jimmy Buffett. Hagar's got a little bit of an edge, oh, just to hang out with?

Yeah. I could probably hang out with Jimmy Buffett a little bit easier. Yeah. I feel like Sammy Hagar would be yelling a bunch and stuff, and also this brings up a point. This is tough for me to do, but I have to make a revision to my review of Sammy Hagar's Cabo Abo Cantina. We went and reviewed that restaurant.

It was a good time, and I was enjoying myself because Julie was there, and I love Julie. Julie Brister, yes. She's fantastic. She's great. I gave it too high of a rating. I gave it three and a half forks, and this is the first time I ever will do this, but I get to give Cabo Abo three forks. I sat on it.

I thought about this all Vegas weekend, and I... Actually, most of your time was spent in your hotel room, contemplating. Just pacing around thinking about this, but yep, a revision. Now my ranking for Cabo Abo, three forks out of five forks, which was your rating as well. Actually, I think I might have been a three and a half forker. I'm standing by my three and a half forks. Oh, I think that's what you were saying. Yes, I'm standing by my three and a half forks, but if you're out there, Spoon Nation, if

you're maintaining the Doughboys Wikipedia, you can retcon the previous episode, three forks for Mike Mitchell for Cabo Abo Cantina, unprecedented, but I guess it's a thing we've got going forward. I'm going to call that the... I threw a napkin on it. You threw a napkin on it. Is the napkin out on the field? Is that what you were going for, or did I make something funny up?

I think you made something funny up there. I made something funny up there. I'm bored with yours. That's pretty good. Carlson, so I've known you for a while, and I know that you have a genuine, absurdity obsession with Jimmy Buffett. Where did this come from? I don't really remember where.

When Spotify came out, we could finally just listen to whatever you wanted. It was very easily accessible, so I would just get down weird rabbit holes of people that I had never really listened to, and I started listening to Buffett. My most people think Buffett, oh, he's just like, he's got Margaritaville, he's got some of these light, acoustic rock songs, and then there's these old assholes who go to a show and they get really drunk. But I didn't really know that he sticks to his brand so hard. He doesn't deviate from what he's trying to do.

Like he was talking about Sammy Hagar. He was in Montrose, which is an old rock band that was pretty hard, it was pretty dumb, but it was a hard rock band, then he went, he has some different shades. Buffett is just one, there's a one-lane highway, and he's just going down it at 25 miles an hour, and he's drinking while he's driving. So not too much, he can still, it's still okay. So there were two songs that I heard that I just was like, I cannot believe that he makes this.

I can't believe he put this out into the world, and he had no shame about it whatsoever. And the first song is called, I Will Play For Gumbo, and I have it here. I Will Play For Gumbo, and I just, I could not believe this. There's some power heads going nuts right now. Yeah, right. It's just like a sense memory for them. A little zydeco flair. Uh-huh.

I mean, it's fun. Yeah, we're having a good time. Sure. I don't smoke, I don't shoot smack, but I got a spicy monkey riding on my back. Oh my God. Jesus Christ. Oh my God. Oh my God.

I gotta know, was this book pre or post Cheeseburger in Paradise? Post. It was post. Okay, that makes more sense to me. It's a little like sex, you should never know when you're gonna get it next. Yeah, right, right, right. So he's saying there that gumbo, much like sex, it should be unexpected, it should be a fun thing that just pops up once in a while.

I'm now picturing Jimmy Buffett just randomly fucking in like a bathroom or something in Key West. He was just randomly eating gumbo in a bathroom somewhere, I didn't realize he was gonna be doing it. He's just striding down the boulevard and someone hands him a little craft with gumbo in it. Yeah. You know what's great, also about that, there was a moment in there when he threw out Taekwondo

and you know he just was like looking at a rhyming dictionary and leaves like a rhymsome.com for like gumbo because he was like on this third verse and he was looking for something and landed on Taekwondo. Uh-huh. It doesn't matter. It's such a strange. He doesn't give a shit. He doesn't give a fuck.

Literally the first lines of that song are, I don't smoke and I don't shoot heroin, but I like gumbo. But he's got a spicy monkey up riding on his back. He can't say like he doesn't drink because he does drink. Yeah, a lot. So he's talking about like oh I don't have these vices although I have a serious like a clear problem with alcoholism. I'm always drunk.

That also feels like such an attempt at like another cheeseburger in paradise, we're gonna open up some gumbo restaurants. He's got so many other attempts at cheeseburger in paradise. Hey, I love food songs so I'm on board. He writes about food more than Weird Al does. That's what's so crazy about it. It's so much more. It's everywhere.

It's in his books. It's in he, it's like just like well you know it went down better than a crème brûlée. Like that's the line in his book and it's just constant. It's crazy. It's just an ad for his restaurant sort of. Man, Dr. Seuss wrote nonfiction. Uh-huh. I don't know which one that was.

I just saw it in the Wikipedia that uh- He's in an earnest Hemingway. Uh, that's so crazy. Alright, I'm gonna play one more. You tell me when we need to cut it off. It does sustain as being unbelievable though and I think this- This one? You will be amazed by this.

I'm excited. The last one. Do we need to know the title? We're just gonna go in cold. I'm just gonna say this song is about how he doesn't care for math. Okay. Right now your sunburned uncle is bobbing his head. Yep.

And he's getting ready. I don't know if I know this one is what he's saying. But I like the sound of it. Yeah. If necessity is the mother of invention. Oh my god. And I'd like to kill the guy who invented this. The numbers come together in some kind of third dimension.

A regular algebraic bliss. Bliss? What the? Bump? He's sitting like he's a high school student. He's sitting like he's a high school boy. This is like a kid box song. Yes.

Christ. All right. I think we got a taste for that one. That sucks. Burgers. Rock. Like he loves food. Yeah.

He hates math. That's so confusing. The last part of that is math sucks. Math sucks. Math sucks. Big one. Like it's like a taunting like a child. It's crazy.

What grown man has such an issue with math? Here's my theory about it. He's at a restaurant. He's trying to calculate the tip and he's having a tough time with it. And he went, you know what? Math sucks. And then 10 minutes later that existed. That's what I think happens.

That's how he probably operates. He doesn't think about things too much. He doesn't worry about anything. It's all surface level observations. Something occurs to him. He shits out a song. That's crazy. Math sucks.

The song is called Math Sucks. Yeah. And it's spelled S-U-K-S. You know what's weird about that one is in the verse leading up to the chorus, he really isn't building a case for why math sucks. He talks about algebra as being bliss and then he advances that one plus one ain't three and two plus two ain't five. And three?

Yeah. I can't tell if he's having trouble understanding those concepts or if he's just like, alright, that makes sense. I can follow this to a certain point. But then he lands on math sucks so hard. That's such like a bizarre island song. If you're in the Bahamas or something and then math sucks came on, I'd be like, what? Do you think that's some sort of dog whistle thing?

That's some sort of like a coded message towards the 50-something parrot heads who definitely didn't vote for Obama. It's just kind of like math, so you know what I'm really talking about when I say math. No, I think that he's not that, he's not even that clever. I think he's just upset with math. I looked into it. I'm trying to find hidden meanings for all this stuff and nothing. There's nothing online about it.

There's nothing known as a theory. How did he build a business empire if he just doesn't understand simple arithmetic? Maybe that's a part of the problem is he has to deal with all this math stuff. Maybe they bring him numbers of how the restaurants are doing and he's like, I don't know, man. What is this? Horrible. I hate it. He just turns his real life into art is what happens.

No one can get behind that song like if I was in high school or in even middle school and then I was like, I hate math and they're like, oh, you hate math? Well, how about this song? And they played that for me. I'd be like, I don't know, I like math, all right, I don't hate math that much. Even in that way, he's doing a valuable public service. Maybe everyone's relating to like, hey, yeah, this is that uncle I hope I don't see at Thanksgiving dinner who's basically singing this song.

Who's drunken singing math songs. So Carlson, we had those two examples of Jimmy Buffett's songs. What else about the man do you find compelling beyond those two individual things from his catalog? Well, I mean, just like the whole shameless sort of nature of him and the fact that it's like he's his own mascot for a lifestyle brand and he's a musician. There's not many musicians like there is Hagar and then there's I guess kisses like this, but guys who are like their own mascot for their own brand.

So like it's like, like, like most musicians don't like John Mellencamp doesn't have like Jack and Diane's restaurant. They don't they don't have like everything's not licensed off. But like with Buffett, it seems like it's all part of this bizarre like he's his own one man Disney empire. And it's bizarre. Like it's strange. It's fun and strange.

And I'm fascinated by like how he doesn't give a shit about it. Like, yeah. And it's such a weird subculture. Like I'm amazed by how big it is. Like there's so many people who are parrot heads and like his shows like sell out his albums just like go to the top of the charts when they're released. I think he has like 28 or 38 studio albums, some insane amount. I just don't know how I don't know what the I mean, I get what the appeal is, but it's

just like amazing that there are that many people who are like just super into it. He's got hotels and multiple hotels, casinos. He's got like there's like convention centers in the huge ones, but like you can rent out different rooms that are named after his songs. Yeah. I was reading. That's bizarre. When I was looking at his Wikipedia in advance of this, I was like, I was reading about a

Jimmy Buffett like Margaritaville hotel they'd been they built, I think maybe in Key West. And I was like reading it and I was expecting to be like, okay, this opened in 2011. It closed in 2014. But no, it was like it opened in 2011. In 2013, they expanded it and then like in 2015, they're planning on building a second one. Wait, where? What is it?

It's a hotel. Margaritaville and which in Vegas, which has an attached casino, but there's like a Jimmy Buffett hotel as well in a different part of the country and those are just like they're doing gangbusters. There's they can't they can't keep a vacancy. Just so many people want to go there. I want to stay in the math suck suite with a two plus two doesn't equal five on the bathroom door.

I mean, so growing up, my my mom and dad, they they they like I don't I want to call them parrot heads, but they enjoyed Jimmy Buffett. And every time we went down to Florida, we would always we would listen to a little cheeseburger. We I mean, that whole album that has cheeseburger and paradise and has boat drinks and all the changes in attitude changes in latitude, although I know all those hits and I I've always enjoyed them. I think there's that that thing like we were like, he does just seem like himself like with Sammy Hager, I'm like, oh, there's there seems like there's a business guy about like

behind that. And with Jimmy Buffett, I'm like, I picture that you must be like shoeless and on a boat a lot of the time and drinking like I feel like it is a lot of what what he is is this kind of like friendly drunken guy. And I enjoyed that. I think it's fun and and you get that vibe when you're when you're when you're in his casino and restaurant, there's a shark chasing another shark. It feels really Disney-ish and it's a big cave and there's these big frosty drinks.

I kind of it's fun. He's an authentic man. Like it's kind of like that whole thing of like Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys famously like never went surfing. But you know, like like Jimmy Buffett is doing all this shit that he's talking about. Like that's that feels like that's his persona. Before we get into Margaritaville, the restaurant, Carlson, I think it looks like you brought a book with you.

Is that correct? Yeah, I brought two books. Okay. Let's talk about these. So you've got I know that Jimmy Buffett is it has written a number of different volumes. So it looks like you got Tales from Margaritaville. Is that his is that his memoir? No, his memoir, a memoir is called a pirate looks at 50, but I don't have that one with

me. Gotcha. These are just two of his fiction books. Oh, okay. And there's some real life sprinkled any lets you know. And I got these used. The first thing this is not necessarily related, but there is a in the in here it says somebody because so the book was obviously like a gift for someone and it says for Captain Dangerous

Dan happy reading January 1993 God bless your little craft love Deborah. So like I think that's saying right there who his audience is like it's a guy who likes a boat and like he's this guy might be dead. I mean, we don't know, but like this says it right here. That's who his audience is. I'm guessing that those two aren't together anymore. Yeah. Oh, something happened between Captain Dangerous Dan and Deborah where that was too painful

to hold on to. He gave that he put that one up at a used bookstore and then ordered another copy up of Amazon. So we could reread it. He could have just ripped the page out. That's true. What does it say the craft in your little crap? What is that?

Your little craft. Was that like a little sexual innuendo you think or no? I'd imagine it was a boat there. There's a picture of a boat. A drawing of a boat. Watercraft. No. I mean, it could be an innuendo.

My head was in the gutter. Could be a double entendre. Yeah. Yeah. So, so these books my review of them would they they're like, you know, they're meandering crap for the most part. Did you actually read both these books? There's some sections where I just go, I can't even but like I've read pretty big chunks

of both of the books. So like I have this. I'm just amazed because he writes a book like he writes a song and like his characters like there's a character. There's characters named Aura and Bora Alice. Wow. And like and the main character. So there's these the first one is Tales from Margaritaville which is short stories and he

debuts a character in this called Tully Mars and Tully Mars is like a ranch hand who is just really tired of ranching and he gets someone wants to get away from the snow. So his evil like plastic surgery it up boss tells him that we're closing the ranch down and we're going to raise poodles and he says hell no and he punches out like her right hand man picks up her massage table throws it through a window and confidently marches out into the snow and then looking for his island paradise. And then we pick up with Tully in the book A Salty Piece of Land which is a full it's a long 500 page book about the adventures of Tully Mars.

It's like a Norman Mailer novel. It's crazy. And it's by Jimmy Buffett and that's and that's also like the title of one of his songs correct? Yeah. Salty Piece of Land. Yeah it's a line in one of his songs. It sounds like a thing that would have come from a Jimmy Buffett.

It might as well be. You're right. Yeah. You can see that a Salty Piece of Land here is written in comic sans. The worst. It's like very dignified Jimmy Buffett in this red thick the font and then the title of the book in little comic sans underneath. Yeah.

That was amazing. That was probably one where Jimmy put his foot down where like a graphic designer was like please like we have we have this other font. It looks great. We've designed this custom typeface. He's like comic sans buddy to Tully Mars wouldn't write in anything else. Jimmy Buffett is more like weird out than I ever imagined him to be like I like I never I've never I've heard I feel like I've heard some Jimmy Buffett deep cuts but I've never

heard anything like that before. That's that's impressive. Like the thing about Buffett I'll go right back to the books in a second but the thing about Buffett is I think what makes him so endearing is you go hey Jimmy this is some lazy crap and he'd go haha yeah it is and then like we just go do like have a beer. I don't even think he cares that much about even like his like his critical reception or anything. Maybe he does.

That's why he's such a likable guy. It just seems like he's he's having fun with it. Who can who can not like like an island like lifestyle like like being on the beach and drinking a tropical drink. It's great. I mean it's great. It's it's amazing and I remember like I talked a little bit about this where my trip down to Key West when I was younger and stuff like that and my my godfather and my my dad there

was like the 50 bars and Key West or whatever and they try to get like a drink from each one and they like would stop after like 15 or something like that and they were like a sloppy mess but I'm like that's so fun to like run around like a like a beach paradise and be drinking all these different cocktails like a was that the trip where you were sexually assaulted by Dalton actually it is it is the same trip. That was a more pleasant part of the trip rocktoberfest will also be the month where every episode we reference being attacked by dolphins yeah but that that that is that's fun it is fun you're right it's so fun like how can you how can you not like that it's right I know

people like are like oh Buffett is corny but like how can you not have why who wouldn't want to have fun he's bullet he's sort of bulletproof yeah what I'm trying to say and I guess what you're saying like yeah like what are you gonna and also too I think there's something and you know something uniquely American about being a guy who like just doesn't give a fuck and I feel like that's kind of what you get from Buffett of just like you know you know if you're someone who has a job you're not super into and you kind of doing a half ass job and just sort of getting through your shift so you can go have a drink at the end of the day you can maybe relate to Jimmy Buffett who's clearly doing the exact same thing but

just on a much bigger scale he's like yeah I gotta play these 10 hits for you know like an audience at West Palm Beach but then afterwards I can kick back and have a fucking margarita you know I mean like it's it's I don't know it is it is very relatable and you're right bulletproof I think is how is a good way to characterize him it's like baby boom like the ultimate like man baby boober fantasies sure I think I think that was something that like yeah a certain generation was like man I'd really like to ditch this job and just go live on the beach and sell some hot dogs or something like just some stupid like not work for the man anymore idea and like because I never had that I just wanted to like hang

out with the Ninja Turtles or characters that didn't exist I didn't give a shit about the beach but I wanted that too I had both because there's there's something where did you grow up Carlson Schaumburg Illinois okay see that I'm surprised by that because I think a big part of a pro like you know grown up in the Boston area and stuff in like like the cold terrible winters you have I think there's so it's like oh man I can't wait till we go on vacation to like Florida or the Bahamas and this is like such an escape and it's an escape from this terrible hard winter that like kills people every year you know it's like yeah beautiful beach paradise and I think I think that's why like so many

people I mean I honestly I would go work in a bar and bought the Bahama that sounds like a fun life I don't even know why I'm not doing that I should be doing you said something this is weird that I remember this like four years ago during what's going on you told somebody that you thought it was gonna be Pelican weather in California I did and I knew exactly what you meant because I did think I would come to California and would be like never be cold I thought it would be like a Jimmy Buffett right and I was fucking wrong and it bummed me out actually I was like I'm gonna go to California and it's gonna I'm gonna get off the plane and math sucks is gonna be playing like it's gonna be a little

beach paradise now and I love my ties my time my tie is one of my favorite drinks I I I've always like I loved those kind of like Smith family Robinson Island movies where it's like oh it's a truck I was like I'd love to be stuck in a tropical island and there's lagoons and there's treasure and and it seems so it's it sounds like such a fun little life to me as you wanted to search for treasure there's gold coins but you don't even need them because you're in a paradise you swim right by him it doesn't even matter like that that that to me is it's always been a little fantasy I meet some island lady we have a family we live in a tree house and it would be it would be an amazing life I there there's

something about that that seems and I mean I think those those movies are like oh these kind of snooty or like uptight people get trapped in the on the paradise and they learn to relax and get golden brown and they're in their hair turns blonde such an elaborate fantasy for you there's there's something really about and you know like I liked lost when it had that parts of it where there was like a waterfall and there was like that remember that part where it was like the one and then the smoke monster and all that stuff came along I didn't like it anymore but like you just wanted people hanging out on an island having a good time I kind of yeah I mean like right is that's that was that's what makes me feel

like I mean I I don't know how I would do this but imagine just working in a bar in the Bahamas holy mackerel that would be great that would be great that would be a great life I feel like there is I do have a fantasy like one somewhere you're like well you just move up maybe even northern California where you're just like it'd be nice like there's no pressure there's no weird like there's no expectations you're just like sort of living you're existing in the moment you're not worrying about the future yeah outside of this sort of show biz sort of culture we're at where there's so much pressure for it feels whether it's self-imposed or not it kind of feels omnipresent you know on that note we were so this party bus that we took

up to Vegas at one point it broke down it was this whole ordeal and we won't get in the full details of it but we were like stranded at the side of the road for a couple hours we had to be taken by the California highway patrol to a gas station true I was in the backseat of a cop car yeah and then we and then we were waiting at this gas station in like the middle of nowhere for a couple of SUVs from Vegas to drive out an hour to pick us up and take us the rest of the way when one of the SUV drivers got there he was just like and we were there with like a bunch of like sketch comedy assholes it was basically like you know it was basically like like two sketch groups worth of you know white males

and so we're all like people who fuck yeah we're all people who do like comedy and and you know that's kind of like what we do professionally and one of the SUV drivers showed up and was just like a funny guy and was like he's like oh this guy is like I just felt like oh this guy is like funnier than any of us and he's just a guy who drives an SUV he was clearly very happy with his life like was just like hey it's a Friday night at midnight I'm driving an SUV from you know an hour out to Vegas but I'm just having a great time and that was the sort of thing that just made me go like man why the fuck am I dealing with the pressure of like being such a dork of like oh I'm gonna make a joke and fucking I'm gonna be funny

on purpose like it just so it's so much pressure and it's so stupid it's so fucking dorky and lame and this guy is out here driving a car having the time of his life he doesn't give a fuck and he's cracking jokes and he's making a confident guy he's a confident guy and like these like sniveling like comedy nerds well don't worry weigur you're not good at making jokes that's true I get you I mean like oh man that's why I was confused when you were giving me a sideways look when I say I want to be on an island I don't want to be sitting next to you in this doughboy's booth either this sucks I wasn't giving you a side I mean I was giving you a sideways look but it was because you just seemed to have it like you

had to you seem to have it sketched out beat for beat it was like a like we were hearing you pitch your outline for a movie starring you I well I really just like I've never been to Hawaii and I and I picture that's what it's like and my mom said there wasn't too like that but like some sort of like Tahitian very tropically place I want I want to check out I I I I'll do it at some point in my life but maybe I'll stay when I go down there I don't I don't know but I am also offended that you're making fun of us so much all white comedy guy fuck off I was looping myself in that group alright yeah you're bad I'm funny I was funnier than that driver I made everybody laugh I want to return real quick so what

happens to Tully Marge and a salty piece of land well I had I don't really a lot there's all again there's like a lot of detours so yeah his whole thing is that he is working for a like a 100 year old woman who wants to be buried in a lighthouse so he becomes a lighthouse keeper oh my so most of the book as what I said meandering crap there's just like if it goes back in time to be very honest with you I don't remember the resolution of his story I know that's heartbreaking but I think he just I what I recall is he just he's on the island he's just living his life in that like dad fantasy there's a couple other quick things I just wanted to say about the book a couple actions just other names

it's just names I enjoy there's a character named Tex sex great there's two characters named lard ass and balls and then there are two like a bunch of guys called the breakfast boys it's not like a fictional yeah which is a pretty good breakfast boys are spin off podcast yeah actually okay so I looked up the end of a salty piece of land on wikipedia it says that Tully Marge goes to an island sees some treasure and swims past it because you won't need gold coins Mary's an island girl wait a minute this is just mitches you just plagiarized a salty piece of land fuck you poo-pooing my island fantasy and what did I have to do that where we were all white is there you're really making us seem like

a bunch of bad guys and we're we didn't make us bad guys but it's true demographically are you really sensitive to that like late night race thing that's going on like why do you what is it because he just made us seem like a sniveling bunch of a I had fun on the Vegas trip it was a good time I had a good time too was a lovely you know I'm gonna move to a fucking island you want to move to an island you move to a shitty island let's get into margaritaville so this was my first time to a margaritaville Mitch had you been before I had yes I went to a margaritaville the first time I ever went to Vegas which I think was like 1995 or yeah 1995 or 1996 so that location's been open in the flamingo for a

while this is my maiden voyage to the to the margaritaville and Carlson how many times have you been I've been twice I've been once in Las Vegas and once in Orlando gotcha and how recently was the was your most recent visit well I visit I know I went there a couple weeks ago I did not eat there I just went in the casino but then my when I ate there was a year ago and Orlando was 2013 okay so you got you got a couple of pretty recent data points on the margaritaville on what we're gonna say a second ago Mitch what about margaritaville yeah I was probably gonna just yell at you again so we went to the margaritaville and I was just really and let me let's know of your previous experiences square with this Carlson I was amazed we're there

in the middle of the day on a Saturday probably around 2 30 p.m. of how fucking packed it was like that casino was just hopping and then we got to that there's like a retail store that leads into the restaurant in the Vegas location we got into the restaurant proper like that whole lobby like every seat in that seating area waiting for a table was just filled and then you know there's this little sidebar where me and Mitch put our names in and then we sort of set up shop at this little sidebar but I was just like I was so amazed by how how like packed it was and how long our wait was it wasn't bad they were moving things along but there were just so many people there uh when I went I don't think it was as crowded at what time did you go we went like a

2 30 on a Saturday yeah we okay yeah it's probably the Saturday yeah that must be it because I think we went on like a Thursday at like one and that we had a great uh we had a great bartender and uh do you eat at the bar no so we we we put in our name and and the the wait was so long that they had to give us they couldn't even give us a buzzer we had to check back in they were out of buzzers they were out of buzzers yeah we got like a receipt and then we took up the receipt up like 20 minutes later and they gave us a little buzzer and then we sat down we'd already been seated sitting at the bar and they have like the it was actually really nice they have this like little lobby sidebar in this sort of cave aesthetic um where they've got like like just four seats and um they're just basically

just serving frozen drinks uh but yeah we sat there with our bartender was a I don't we didn't catch his name but he was a great guy he was great yeah he and he he gave us tastes of all the kind of frozen drinks that they had there and there was uh uh there was a frozen margarita and there was a frozen kind of lemonade thing and then there was like a purple people eater one that was like the strongest one of all and we went with the strawberry uh sangria yeah sangria strawberry frozen margarita we both got one of those um it was good it was good that was actually a really tasty frozen and I'm not a frozen drink guy but I was like oh I'm on board with this this is really uh this is really flavorful had a little bit of a punch to it that purple people eater which

we had a sample of was just like a little too boozy for me even though I like a boozy drink and a frozen uh if you're getting it frozen it was just like a little too much for me but that strawberry sangria that was really well balanced it was very very satisfying yeah it was it was it was really it was really tasty we also walked away we walked away from a bachelor party to go over to margarita for three hours what were the what was everyone else doing they were just hanging at the pool cabana it was it was well timed we went back people were still at the cabana no one was upset or those sniveling white nerd just because you hate yourself doesn't have to mean you hate the whole group for god's sake that was my issue um uh yeah they were sniveling away but uh we we uh

we we went over there um and yeah it was it was it was it was really packed and we came at the right moment the guy said and I was like really but then it truly was the right moment because right after that there were just lines and lines of like it got even more packed it was crazy people were just coming in and out that that that sidebar and and our bartender was such a cool guy he was giving us a little taste of the drinks uh if he made too much he'd he'd well so we were I'd say close to drunk I think Jimmy Buffett would be happy with our experience we were close to drunk before we even went and got our table yeah it was the kind of thing where like because I love the show Bar Rescue you ever watch Bar Rescue it's one of my favorite shows I fucking love Bar Rescue and

like like John Taffer the host of Bar Rescue if you're not familiar with the show it's basically Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares but with bars and instead of a British guy it's like a big Brassy New York City guy um and uh so John Taffer is like so obsessed with like giving away product like like over pouring and this was such a thing where this guy was like he was clearly over pouring he was making these drinks too big and then the leftovers he just gave to me and Mitch and like a little side cup and I know if Taffer was there he'd be like he's over pouring he's giving away money he'd have like a calculator to show like how many hundreds of dollars he gave to us for free um but I feel like if Jimmy Buffett was there he'd be like gotta love it you know that's how we do

it here at Margarita there's no way that they weren't making a profit on those things anyways like oh sure the the the profit margins were probably gigantically huge because people were literally there's like a plastic blender that you can get a drink in and that's I'm not even kidding around there there's a drink that's a a blender sized drink and it's a little souvenir cup and I think he was just trying to and I think I think also he was trying to hook us up I think yeah it was a cool move of him but he was trying to hook us up and I tipped him well I didn't need a little a little speech to to gear me up to do it I gave him a little I gave him a tip initially I gave him a nice tip when he uh gave us our first round and then I think that's why I gave

us some stuff for free and then at the end I gave him a little extra on top of it oh so you think he gave us some stuff for free because of your first tip huh that's bullshitting the wheels no I'm sure he just gave it to you Mitch because you're such a cool guy I like to think so uh but you know just the the entire aesthetic in there I liked yes it was this big cave-ish feeling place it felt like it was dug into the dunes or something of a beach and I really really enjoyed it and I I like frozen cocktails like that I like the vibe of of uh tropical obviously you guys know of tropical beaches Florida and stuff like that we heard about it and the Disney vacation of it I was I was all on board with it was it was fun and and we were

Nick and I were we're getting a good buzz going and yeah I was really really enjoying it I'd love that there's these huge blenders with water bubbling in them and stuff it's just it's a lot of fun over there it's a lot of stuff that's kind of corny but also it's like kind of like you can tell it's a little tongue-in-cheek it's like a little like yeah we know there's a little corny there's a little silly but it's all in good fun you know and I like that a lot what about let's talk about the uh because you've been to the Orlando location you said is it pretty much the same vibe there is the Vegas one well I would say it's totally different oh wow I would say this is the thing so the first time I ever went was Orlando and I don't know if it was just like I was on

vacation with my girlfriend Lindsay and we had been at the hard rock hotel at Universal Studios in the pool had some cocktails in the pool so I don't know if you were just maybe in a better mood or something but the Orlando one fulfills my idea of what Margaritaville should be got you and I know that sounds very lofty but that's but really it's true like the one at in Orlando is at City Walk but it's sort of like more of an open port there's a porch there you can sit and eat on there's guys playing music there is Jimmy Buffett's playing hemisphere dancer just sitting there right by there there's water there's like a man made lake oh wow oh wow yeah so you can see it so you're looking yeah when you're if you're eating on the porch you can see the water you can see

you know the beautiful Universal Studios Islands of Adventure theme park in front of you great theme park by the way great theme park you should definitely go I'll check it out this guy is a he's a California Disneyland man and I tell him that Disney world is better than Disney well I disagree with you on that and damn we could have a full conversation about that but I don't want to sidetrack here I'll kind of push a future doughboys of we're gonna do a Disneyland we should we should get into this I mean it's like it's it's kind of walking the line of not quite being I guess it is a chain but like it like talking about the food of Disney is its own thing but yeah let's let's not get completely derailed there yeah yeah it's Disney world better than the

Disney no not true anyway margarita fill in Orlando so so when I went to the one in Vegas it's like the the scenery is less good the vibe is a little bit less authentic to what the vibe of the song is so I'm just trying to what my expectations were from it is that yeah you're gonna get transported into that magical Jimmy Buffett place and in Orlando I was like this is it man like there's some 20 year old kid playing like Jack Johnson covers on the porch and like I'm just like eating like I was so happy in Orlando I didn't dislike Vegas but Orlando had like put my expectations so high that when I get to Vegas there's there's no water around it's just there's the big there's the main Las Vegas drag there's a bunch of crappy stores next to it there's

no outdoor seating certainly no outdoor seating yeah there's no water around at all there's no water at all baby yeah there is there is a plane inside there is like a suspended plane which is which is nice but yeah I was actually like you're right that it didn't quite have that laid back feel the Vegas exterior I was like surprised by how dark it is like I guess they're really going for the cave thing I kind of liked that though I was very dark very moody yeah I like I like that little cave vibe is it was kind it was cool in there they had the AC blasting but I will say that it it felt dated when we were down especially in the casino part one I was shocked that there were so many people in this margarita vill casino section playing blackjack in a bunch of different

games two I was shocked that there were tons of people in the margarita store buying margarita vill stuff and uh in in three I was shocked by like we already said how many people there just were there in general like trying to eat there we waited probably 45 minutes yeah we did before we sat down but it is it's it's fun that big plane that's that that's hanging up in there I think maybe it used to make noises or something like that but there was there was we we had a live band playing I thought there was a little bit of Disney stuff going on with it but we had a live band playing there it was a little much for me that that live band was pretty pretty intense see that sounds too much in that spot because on the porch when there's just a kid playing the guitar that's

exactly how much you want no this was like concert level volume and it was just like we were kind of having to shout over a little bit we were seated pretty far back from the band which I liked but yeah it was it was just like a little too much and and I you know I feel like if I was like a little hungover and I just wanted to have like a little hair of the dog to take the edge off I was getting like a bloody Mary and that band was playing I'd be like oh Jesus you know I think it was a little much speaking about the plane that suspended in there you texted me about this Carlson and I found this really interesting so apparently at some point one of Jimmy Buffett's private planes was shot at and possibly shot down by the Jamaican government it was shot at but not brought down

Buffett was not on the plane at the time like he loaned the plane to some people and they were flying close to like Jamaican airspace and the government tried to shoot it down and they didn't do it so Buffett with his like just amazing wit wrote a song called Jamaica Mistaca Jamaica Mistaca and that's the plane is the hemisphere dancer which is in Orlando oh that's the plane yep oh that's insane so like that's the authentic plane like it's not the fake plane sitting in Vegas like that's the one that Jim based Jamaica Mistaca was based on like Jamaica Mistaca you know what he's the best he's the best I want to hang out with him so bad maybe we'll get him maybe maybe he'll hear about this I doubt it but uh maybe we can fulfill your wish um the the Vegas one see I don't

know when I think that the first time I went there was when I went to Vegas it might have been Orlando now that I'm thinking about it but I can't I don't I just remember I was you know like 12 or 13 or 14 or something but uh the Vegas one does especially in the casino part it did feel a little smoky it felt a little kind of rundown downstairs at least upstairs with the casino area the casino area so I get I get the vibe you're talking about maybe it downstairs felt a little rundown and maybe not the ideal Buffett experience yeah they're doing their best in Vegas but I think here's what I think Vegas is the wrong town for it interesting because Vegas is like if you like when I think of a drug to associate with Vegas it's cocaine because like it's just like it's very there's a lot of

pressure like there's a lot of intensity like you gotta walk everywhere there's nothing that's relaxing other than maybe just sitting by the pool in Vegas there's just a lot of smoke there's a lot of people yeah Vegas kind of sucks in a lot of ways in a lot of ways yeah I like Vegas but yeah it's there's a lot of things where I'm just like not like I'm not relaxed by the end of it yeah there's just so much like if you want to go just a couple blocks you take a cab and the cab's $25 and it takes forever to get there and you're like why can't we just walk but you can't walk because stuff like it's just like there's stuff that just annoys you and irritates you about Vegas yeah Mitch and I walked from the Bellagio uh through Caesars Palace across to the Flamingo to get to the uh

the the margaritaville which is probably which is probably like an 11 minute walk it wasn't particularly long yeah but just like even those three minutes spent in that sun was just so punishing yeah it was steam coming off Nick and I because we're so white like it's too hot to walk outside like we purpose purposefully cut through the casinos uh and Nick was wheezing the whole time and like a margaritaville you shouldn't have like been like harassed by people trying to give you prostitute cards yeah pretty good and there should be prostitutes around but they should just be having fun with you yeah it shouldn't be some sort of a thing where you're just like forced to hand or forced to take cards from these poor people who can't get a better job I'm not the

biggest Vegas guy uh and it runs in my family I I we're all not Vegas nuts but uh I like you're right and you know what though they do a good job they give you still that you're pretty I was relaxed when we were in there yeah and I was enjoying the drinks and everything we had going on and our our I will say our we'll get into the food in one second but I will say you know we had a great service at the bar uh they were clearly slammed in the dining area but our waitress uh was great she was fantastic great the service there we that really we raved about this the the service was so good they got our apps and our food ordering so fast our app came out fast our meals came out fast it was really really impressive for a place that was completely slammed I was saying this to Nick

also it feels like Buffett has like uh has really benefited from like this style of music kind of like sticking or like kind of like dumb fun country music is his like come around and it's like even more popular than it's ever been and he and he feels kind of like a forefather in that area for whatever reason and and I actually enjoy his music more than than some country music but like the the bands that the band that was playing there when Nick and I were eating at Margaritaville was kind of like save a horse ride a cowboy sort of just shit and uh and and I think people really love that and I think maybe that's a part of the success of his restaurants is is is the popularity of that kind of like southern fun music yeah he had a he was on Alan Jackson's song it's five o'clock

somewhere which like gave him a little bit of like a boost I think it was like 10 years ago or something when he dueted with him on that and that probably reintroduced him to like a whole country audience and Toby Keith has a new song that sounds just like Jimmy Buffett it has like the steel drums and everything it's crazy and Red Solo Cup is clearly like a Buffett style like we're just having a party and it's like quirky and when like yeah like I think that that definitely falls in that same kind of lane with all of those guys like having those fun party songs keep it simple I was a little irritated with my uh my fellow like sort of a west coast uh coastal elites if you want to whatever you want to call them like kind of like the kind of snobby

sort of liberal folk you uh you interact with a lot out in in a place like LA um when Red Solo Cup was out they were sort of reacting like kind of like oh this is so stupid what a song about a Red Solo Cup and it was just be like no this guy he gets that it's a stupid sort of joke party song like that's he knows that that's what's going on behind it you know give him a little bit of credit this isn't some like total hick hasty hick who's saying that like oh it was sincerely doing an ode to a Red Solo Cup it's kind of tongue-in-cheek have some fun with it yeah well uh I guess this I'm just gonna be bragging that I agree with you uh it was we were my girlfriend we were watching like the country music awards and he was playing that song and for the first minute we were like

this is bullshit this is garbage and like by the second chorus or something we were like this is actually this is pretty good it's a lot of fun it is like really like this for some reason like this is very good he did a very good job with this is that also Toby Keith yeah Red Solo Cup yeah so he's so he's maybe he's positioning himself as a spiritual successor to Jimmy Buffett he does have his Toby Keith I love this bar and grill now so he's kind of not far from Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville in Vegas oh there's one in Vegas okay all right good to know it's right in the same it's like within like a couple blocks we could have done a two for Mitch yeah whatever I spent enough time with you um speaking of five o'clock somewhere that was

actually the cocktail you got Mitch yeah I got the Bahama Mama you got the five o'clock somewhere and Carlson if you have any uh if you want to talk about your recent experiences in terms of food or drink feel free to interject at any point um so uh you had the five o'clock somewhere which was a a rum-based passion fruit tequila a bakardi 151 orange and pineapple juices um served on the rocks my Bahama Mama which was a coconut rum a dark rum creme de banana pineapple and orange juices also served over rocks um both I thought like kind of very similar in terms of color and flavor but both I thought pretty satisfying pretty good I had a taste of yours I drank mostly mine yeah satisfying strong as anything I very strong I enjoyed the frozen frozen cocktails a little bit

more but um we were already buzzed and then having those on top of everything else was I think I drank half of it and was like oh man I'm like my feet were starting to swell from so much sugar yeah uh which might mean I have some sort of medical issue uh and uh and I have someone said I might have a goat but uh I don't know if that's true or not but uh just like a random bystander yes I I kind of explain that to someone like oh you might have a goat oh wow whatever you get that checked out yeah yeah don't worry about it you would know if you had gout by now you know what yeah are they still swollen yeah um it I it was just a really strong drink uh drink and and really tasty but uh but uh it if I if I drank that whole thing I I would have been falling over all over the place

but the appetizer which uh which we got was really great I really enjoyed that uh lava lava shrimp yes the lava lava shrimp yeah which sounds like such a made-up it sounds like Buffett named that himself it is made up though right it's kind of like the whole thing of like this isn't an actual cuisine that exists no this is like a fabricated like okay you know actual island cuisine is its own thing uh you know that's like the uh that's like it's it's whole a whole different kind of genre of food this is like oh we're gonna have some island elements we'll have a little um what was the aioli they had in this uh it was a uh a line a chili and lime spiked aioli but you're really just getting deep fried shrimp so it's kind of like something that's palatable to american audiences

uh to american appetites to american palates but with just like a little bit of of the caribbean or a little bit of hawaiian lava lava is so funny because it sounds like it's trying to be like a hawaiian phrase that's like hawaiians don't just say like lava lava yeah like like pizza pizza or something like a hamburger like a hamburger yeah that's like how you name a mario kart course like yeah lava lava falls yeah uh but uh yeah it it was really tasty i like a sure it was deep fried shrimp and a bunch of sauce but i i i i i i liked it i thought it was really satisfying i thought that you got a lot of lime in it which was good i mean it kind of like you know what i appreciated about it this is this is maybe a dumb thing but it's a thing i like sometimes with an

where they didn't give you like a little cup for dipping which i like doing i'm finding to dip in a dipping cup they just had a little that aioli kind of just like squirted over the top of it and so you kind of get a bite and then we kind of have that sauce kind of already in it in in the right proportion and and that's kind of fun you know it's just kind of a change of p change of pace i liked it like uh if you know the people whine about the sauce on the side it was it was great it was great i i like to sometimes be like hey this is how it's served and that's it and i'm like okay and then it's good it and not an overwhelming portion like you can sometimes order a shrimp ax appetizer and you're going to get this like a huge basket of shrimp that's going to fill you

up but no this was like a nice like uh i felt like a reasonable portion for reasonable price nice flavors to it yeah that was a the lava lava shrimp was a highlight for me they were knocking it out of the park at that point carlson so let when you go to a margaritaville what have been your go-to uh apps and entrees in the past well the the vegas time i remember i ordered from the appetizer menu for a meal oh gotcha so i ordered the key west chicken quesadilla which was plenty like it was not i don't know why it's even on there because it's chicken quesadilla so you get some protein in it but it's a full-size quesadilla yeah uh and then i got the hold on i wrote it down because i had to look it up to remember um do you wrote this in your jimmy

buffet no i didn't at the time i just went back to the menu and tried i'm pretty sure i had the who's to blame margarito which is like the normal margarito oh gotcha uh because i didn't have a fruity drink so i think it was that one fun name yeah who's to blame a woman's to blame but it's not true that's from his famous margaritaville song uh there's a lot of tie-ins which is great for fans like easter eggs i guess is really what it's it's margaritaville it's like the hidden mickeys at disneyland except it's just like the margaritaville branding is just everywhere like it's so in your face like i was just like hidden about it there's nothing yeah it's not like the hidden mickeys at all it's just like overt signage all over the place

at margaritaville on your napkins on the thing that holds your napkins all over the walls it's just a drastic world it's an isla nublar yes well speaking of which uh uh the isla nublar uh thing so jimmy buffet has a his margaritaville is featured in Jurassic world um and he also has a cameo appearance as himself where he like tyrannodons are attacking and he grabs a couple of margaritas to kind of save them because he's just like that into it it's not instead of saving uh some innocent child or someone else he grabs two margarita do you think that was jimmy buffett's pitch like if do you think he was like he's like ah i think this would be fun i have a first uh i i looked into this a little bit so i have some some theories about it he uh frank marshall is a

producer on it frank marshall's produced millions of movies he's in his 60s he produced uh the other drassic park movies he worked with spielberg i think he's a producer on et and all these like whatever he's married to kathleen kennedy who now runs lucas film um but i believe he's rich guy buddies with buffett oh that makes sense because at the after party buffett played chris pratt was on stage with frank marshall who also had a guitar and buffett and they're all doing margaritaville so i'm guessing because he's hanging out in like the cayman islands with buffett or whatever st barz wherever they are that like it just sort of organ you know organically came up of like yeah we you know we should put your put my restaurant and blah blah blah and then like he was like this

will be really funny and it was really funny i thought it was pretty great i mean some people were a little critical about it but i thought actually like mar it made sense because the whole movie was kind of like a like however however you think whether you thought it achieved it achieved it or not it definitely was like kind of like this critique of a thing becoming too corporate and so it made sense that a margaritaville would be there like of course a margaritaville would be in this easily and and and there's just like a fun little thing of just like it's not a huge distraction it's just like hey there's jimmy buffett and he's grabbing some margaritas maybe it's him as himself maybe it's a bystander jimmy buffett's playing either way it just kind of works it's like a fun

little a fun little moment it is a fun little moment i would i also probably would be disappointed with that one because i doesn't look like there's any water around it it doesn't look like it probably gives you the full margaritaville experience like rilando does and it's on an island like it really should have more of a right more of that island feel i won't get into the pros and cons of callin travaro but i will say that i think that if an i rex saw jimmy buffett i think he'd let he'd give him a pass oh yeah that i rex that's a chill dude he'd nod at him he'd nod at jimmy buffett just like he they not the dinosaur is not in the movie he'd let buffett run off and if he did eat him he'd immediately die of alcohol poisoning there's extra footage of buffett if you

go on the margaritaville website they have when there's all the locations there's one that says this is la nublar great and if you click on it there's footage of buffett behind the bar and like clowning around with some like young female customers like just like like i think he has like a little dinosaur puppet or something and he's like just getting in their faces and they're pretending to like it i would love i would love to see that movie from the jimmy buffett's uh perspective uh-huh i think that would be a lot of fun a Jurassic world guy dan where you kind of see a a different angle on the same story i tweeted i tweeted a picture of a cosplay a jimmy buffett cosplayer at comic con from the movie and frank marshal retweeted me oh my god oh wow and

then i like followed up and i was like hey how about more buffett in the next Jurassic park movie and then no response uh carlson i'm starting to think that you're like a weird uh jimmy buffett freak more so than uh fan i mean yeah that's fair how was that chicken quesadilla uh it was good i remember it just like it was a it's like as good as a chain restaurant quesadilla there's nothing like particularly special about it the guacamole was good it tastes like everything was was warm but it wasn't the most memorable thing in the world yeah i would say that's uh you know i i liked my so i got the fish sandwich um which was a uh it was a catch of the day an ambiguous fish that kind of had a panko breaks around in the las vegas yeah it had like a panko crust to it um

and uh some uh some coleslaw on it uh a little bit of uh they call it jalapeno tartar sauce so just a little bit of kick i thought it was pretty good you know it was on a nice uh a nice bun one of those nice like i don't know if it was quite like a potato roll but it was a nice bun um the good christmas to the fish sandwich it tasted very like the freshness of like kind of the uh uh the the uh the condiments on it as well as the that that cilantro lime coleslaw kind of gave it like a nice sort of like refreshing character uh so yeah i thought that was a pretty pretty good fish sandwich and mitch you got the cheeseburger in paradise which is named after his second most famous song i did the classic cheeseburger in paradise i kind of pushed you towards that fish

sandwich which i which i felt bad about no you didn't know about about it well because i was like weighing whether or not to get a salad because i had eaten like a very heavy breakfast and the previous night i just like punished my body um and so i was just like if i could i need to get something a little lighter i ended up getting the fish sandwich with a side salad with ranch and i think that was a good call that side salad was totally fine just like you were saying about the chicken quesadilla just like a chain restaurant caliber uh side salad nothing special but yeah talk about that cheeseburger in paradise well let me say start with the fries the fries were pretty good they were decent you had i think a couple of fries and they were they were they were good yeah

they were fine nice restaurant french fries the cheeseburger in paradise i liked it i do i do think it's it's it's not a bad burger the bun was kind of the part of it that that and i don't know if you had a but i think you try to bite of it too it would the bun was kind of where it was a little bit of a letdown because it was kind of like a dry-ish bun now here's the thing when i went there when i was younger there was Heinz 57 and there was no Heinz 57 to be found i think it used to be on bottles on the table and it i don't believe it was on the burger and i couldn't see any of it anywhere and it kind of let me down the everything else was just like how kind of how the how how the song goes and it was it was it was it was a d and it was it was a really good burger if

it had been on like just a little less of a dry bun if it was a better if it was better bread i think i would have been really enjoying it and i was i was just bummed out that there was no Heinz 57 around because i want it just like how the song sings it you know i mean the lyrics of the song which i gave in my preamble i like mine with lettuce and tomato accounted for Heinz 57 absent and french fried potatoes of course that's the price um why why not have the Heinz 57 why like why they have like kind of a thousand it was like a thousand island dressing on it right it's like a big mac concept why not go with the Heinz 57 it's just like that's i feel like that's what people are i don't know i feel like a buffet fan wants to like i want to experience what the

song is someone's gotta be someone must be able to get to the bottom of this whether that maybe they had a deal and it fell through or do they not make Heinz 57 they they still must make Heinz 57 because that's its own distinct sauce when i first heard it i was like oh Heinz 57 that's just like ketchup right but no Heinz 57 is its own sauce that kind of is i don't even know how to describe it it's it looks a little different it's kind of like a little bit browner yeah and then ketchup yeah it's oh i feel like it's like a little closer to like barbecue-ish shots a little tang to it yeah what what is after Heinz 57 french fried potatoes right what is it kosher dill pickle big kosher pickle and a cold draft beer okay see yeah yeah i don't know why they

because they do have big kosher pickles on it yeah comes with pickle and um and and that's sliced the long way i like it it covers the whole burger but yeah what and the Heinz 57 would have 100 helped with that kind of a stale-ish bun which was the the only letdown of my entire day because i had a lot of fun at that place it must be a branding thing it must be like some sort of ad sales issue because the the sauce that they have is identified as Paradise Island sauce to me it was just like oh this is just Thousand Island they're calling it Paradise Island um you could probably buy it on the website oh interesting because there's so many different food like food and food accessories in spite like different like they sell margarita salt they

sell sauces like maybe a bunch of shit maybe there's something that tastes like it that is a different branded that makes sense because you know back in in Buffett's days when he composed Cheeseburger in Paradise he wasn't prescient he wasn't looking ahead towards the future when he had a chain restaurant empire where he was selling versions of this these same menu items in the stores at retail and he maybe just was like oh i'll say what i actually like on a burger but he should have said like oh with a little bit of Paradise Island sauce and then later on he could uh brand it and associate it with that song he should do like a George Lucas and go back and add it out that part and whatever the sauce is called and no i agree with that he should do he should 100% do a George

Lucas version of his song and i mean if that's what he intended i don't know if he i don't know maybe he did right we don't know we're speculating we're speculating i i i do want to get to the bottom of it though i want i want to know uh because because it's that's such an interesting i mean the Heinz 57 part of that song is a it's a really catchy yeah part of that tune if the island sauce was in that song i don't know who would be as big of a hit to be honest with you but i will say though though like we're talking about the restaurant they need to give you a bottle of Heinz 57 or have it on the table i just need to be like i know this is part of it here you go here's a little Heinz 57 in case you want it it needs to be offered

and the fact that it's not present is like a little bit of a letdown for a menu item called cheeseburger in paradise i agree like i just just give me the cheeseburger in paradise um i agree with that jim come on man yeah just i and it's just a simple correction it's just you have some that you have your way to bring it by it i think it would have make everything go a little bit more smoothly um uh overall i guess this is now the point where we should get to our assessments of margaritaville i know we could keep we go on about jimmy buffett the man all day who knew that this would be the podcast that we would probably go like two hours we're not quite at that threshold there but we could keep going i mean but i mean i think we

we should we should rein it in and and focus our assessment a little bit and talk about jimmy buffett's margaritaville and give our overall assessment of the chain restaurant experience so uh carlsson you've heard the podcast before what we'll do we each take a turn sort of give our closing argument and end with a fork rating from one to five forks and um we'll start with you um here the the problem is is i sort of have different ratings for the different restaurants that i went to oh that's fine is that fine do we do it in average or i would say you got to give an overall i'd say you can land on an overall but you know give us as much info as you like okay well the infrom so yeah i was on cloud nine in orlando are you going to write every one of them

i do have a list i forgot to do the talk about this i have a list of all vocations and if they're near water or not and almost all of them are except for like nashville oh my god and uh since an addy and isla new blur uh but anyway uh so so i would give my orlando experience i mean and i didn't even talk about this like i had a cheeseburger paradise it was great i think i had the last mango in paris drink also uh very good um and my whole the whole thing uh was great so i i would probably give that like four and a half forks now we go to vegas and i'm enjoying the meal but it's such a letdown and the meals good it's a very it's a it's a b me b minus meal and i'm going to probably give it three forks so let's average that i guess

i let's just do four i think i got to do four because orlando is so great and i was looking at pictures of the other ones some of these are in mexico some of these are just on a beautiful landscape like i can't imagine not having a four to five fork experience if you go to some of these other locations that's a good point is very location dependent yeah four forks is a good so i'm going to give it four because of how good orlando is and how i how much i assume how great the atmosphere must be in other places and and locales spoon man go ahead i love that island lifestyle i've i've made it abundantly clear um i i wish i had some hinds 57 uh with my burger but i i like jimmy buffett i i he's a good time and you know what i think that

a lot of flak that he gets is for like kind of his shittier fans that aren't as cool as he is and don't know how to party like he knows how to party um and and and the guy's fun i want to give it four forks but i don't think i can i don't think i can the drinks were so good though and i this this is really i'm kind of torn on this uh because the drinks are really good it was a fun atmosphere it was a fun time the food the appetizer was great but then the burger is pretty middle of the road and that's your that's your that's like the dish i feel like everyone wants to get when they're there so i'm gonna give it i haven't tried the orlando location maybe we'll we'll we'll revisit this and after i go to the orlando spot um what the f*** you tell me i'm gonna go to orlando

to go with jimmy buffett's barbecue i was gonna propose much like evan susur did that we should probably all go to a different location maybe in mexico we don't have to go to orlando put somewhere close to the boys on the road we go to orlando we try out margaritaville you and i together in a car i'm not gonna drive with you to orlando florida can't you get like can't you get a tv show in like destination america or something where they'll pay for the at least there'll be some sort of dough boys show uh before it's all said and done i guarantee we're barely 20 episodes in but this is already promising a television show that sounds pretty good um i would say uh yeah i mean uh what we're talking about they're talking about like a financing

a uh a trip just real quick there was a guy fieri special i saw that i was just like and i'm a guy fieri apologist so they think it's pretty cool um and he's a little bit of a he's a little bit of you know he's eccentric he's his own thing but i i kind of like what he does and i like the kind of the joy that he brings to food um but he had a uh he had a special on food network that was just guy's family vacation and it was just him him and his him and his family on a cruise ship and it was just guy had just pitched a food network hey i'm gonna take a cruise with my family why don't you guys shoot it and then he probably just got a free vacation out of it i was like that's great that's a fantastic move i feel like all those food travel shows i'm like oh cool you

get to travel around and eat everywhere yeah yeah they know what they're doing a lot more than we do i guess uh but still i think america would love to see doe boys the show i agree just take it easy i think spoon man's on to something i think people i think i think it's about time we'll tweet at food network i don't think no i think this is hubris i i think we've done no i think 22 23 episodes of doe boys at this point where the podcast is not even six months old let's just focus on this let's not go crazy all right well you know personally i think we're unstoppable well i'm i'm unambitious that's the thing about me we could we could we could make the wire of food network shows um anyway do we get to your rating i'm sorry i would be in a tangent uh my rating

is three and a half forks jimmy come on out uh is this you verse two that i think jimmy buffett will hang out with us uh i'm gonna try or maybe try that orlando location and maybe we'll boost up fun time i had a blast i'm not i'm not gonna lie i had a good good time and i was with wyger a guy who the thing he did most in vegas was be sick uh and i still managed to really enjoy myself so uh yeah three and a half forks with the possibility that it gets better at one of these water locations i've heard so much about this look beautiful they look so beautiful um with the preface this is my one and only experience at a jimmy buffett margaritaville um and then hearing this very interesting bit of info that there is quite a bit of variety at individual

locations of this chain and and keeping in mind this is an evaluation of the chain so they just have that uh in mind as you're hearing my review this is about the vegas location this is about by one experience extrapolate to the other locations all you like um but in terms of evaluating the chain it sounds like there would be some value in hitting some of these other spots and and comparing um so out there your mileage may vary depending on which uh which particular jimmy buffett's margaritaville you're frequenting but i did have a great time mitch i had a really fun time it was a hoot we sat down we had some great frozen drinks we had great service throughout the band was a little annoying but we were able to power through it uh the food was fine

i would say our kind of meal started at it was like at its best up top and then it kind of just sort of slowly went downhill but didn't go all the way to like the bottom it just sort of got a little bit less exciting with each step we had the great frozen drinks up top we had the rock drinks which i'd normally prefer but we're probably i agree with you probably not just the frozen drinks uh the lava lava shrimp was pretty good um better than our entrees which we landed on were true just kind of just fine to mediocre um but that experience is so unique i feel like you're just being welcomed into jimmy buffett's world and i feel like if i was by a jimmy buffett's margaritaville they're not everywhere but if i feel like i'm if i'm by a place that has a margaritaville

that's a place i'm gonna want to stop in at least have a drink maybe have a meal i'm gonna have a great time i'm gonna be immersed in that island lifestyle that said i'll take a cabalabal cantina over this any day wow and because i gave the cabalabal cantina three and a half forks for fairness and for consistency jimmy buffett's margaritaville three forks don't like that i don't like it either it's good though three forks is like i think you can you can go have a good time at the margaritaville i'd prefer a cabalabal cantina don't like it me and carlson don't like it i'm still upset with the taco bell your taco bell rating too oh yeah no five five forks let's mention jack we're right we can't just rate every chain

anyway sorry no you're you're right i'm still mad at him about it too amongst other things but look we just we like like the disney thing we just can't get in a taco bell now it's too hot we just can't sorry sorry no it's okay like i get the people are going to disagree with individual tastes maybe you line up more with mitch when you're listening to these podcasts if that's it then then listen to him you line up war with me that's fine listen to me i don't i mean it's fine these are individual opinions let's stop saying that people are wrong for saying that they like one place more than another place the meltdown is coming you're as fun as a big spoonful of salt uh you know uh you're wrong a lot what can i say and i'm on team mitch yeah we have different

palettes we appreciate different things we have different experiences we have different rockers that we are allied to you know some of us are hagar guys some of us are jimmy buffett guys we could all be friends have fun over there baby like i like jimmy buffett's margaritaville i don't like it as much as sabi hagar's cabalabal cantina and that's you knew that i had to change my whole rating because of how much more fun i had at margaritaville you retconned your rating i made my consist mind consistent like i think that's either approach is fine we're talking about a half fort we're talking about two times who gives a shit calm down who's the stuck up white guy now all right uh that'll do it for our our recent rock dober fest trip to jimmy buffett's margaritaville

it's time for a regular segment we've got a beverage and we're going to decide if it's worth pouring down your throat it's drank or stank that's right so uh while we retrieve this beverage from the fridge in the studio uh if you guys would vamp for just a minute i'll be right back got it so carlson i gotta ask have you ever been to a jimmy buffett concert uh in two weeks i that will be my first concert wow is he's playing the bowl oh i kind of want to go to that you want to go i don't take it yet you don't have tickets yet i'm trying i'm waiting for like the tickets to go down in price because they're very expensive are they really uh i feel like that would be a really really fun concert to go to uh yeah that's what because here's what here's what the thing is

and why i would appreciate this i want to go to cabo wabo at hollywood and highland walk up to the bowl i've heard it we so we go a lot of people do that which i think you listened to that last episode with uh with julie brister yes uh that's like a big thing that people do they i did it at this when i went to see the simpsons at the bowl i went to cabo wabo first and then so yeah i have not so yeah my buffett fascination is fairly new so all right i have not seen in the last couple years so i have not he hasn't been around so much so yeah and i think it's a 20 second maybe something around there oh great i might i might join you that would be fun i don't have to go with you necessarily if uh but if you go on me too but i will uh we have a few there's a few i

i mean i think i pitched it to weigur like four months ago to you won't have he won't have fun yeah yeah yeah what are you well let's hear your top three favorite uh jimmy buffett songs thank you nick uh if i'm being like music snobby about it like uh i like volcano a lot uh i like like come monday is probably his best song yeah i think uh and then there's a song called boat drinks that i like i love boat drinks boat drinks is a pretty good song we mentioned it earlier um and i'm also gonna invite myself to the hollywood bowl uh we mentioned it earlier but uh changes in attitude changes in latitude i really like that one i think that's a lot changes in attitude changes in latitude or is it is it reversed it's latitude first right uh it's just like kind of

fun it's like kind of like a laid back i'm looking up to make sure you sing i have a lovely voice i agree with that you should do it more often he was just happy about it i bet you jimmy buffett will stop the concert if you do that there hey hold on for a second gotta get him out of here uh i can't find it i think it's changes in latitude changes in attitude yeah that's it it's latitude and attitude it's it's come monday is the other one come monday yeah uh i also like coconut telegraph is one of the songs great fins there's a song called dream sickle where he says dream sickle big dill pickle that's pretty good it's like a minute long he loves the food he loves food and so do i good for him um all right here's our beverage this week we've got and i didn't

even know these existed uh until about an hour before i got to the studio i stopped by the 7-11 and i saw this it leapt out at me this is a cold stone creamery milkshaker and it's a cold stone creamery milkshakers brand and the flavor is chocolate fudge brownie um reading the description this is uh a it appears to be made with a finest high quality ingredients cold stone creamery milkshakers are packaged in convenient on-the-go bottles simply chill and shake which i did to enjoy the rich decadent flavors of cold stone creamery shake things up and indulge yourself not particularly illuminating but this appears to be kind of like a chocolate milk sort of consistency maybe a little thicker not quite a shake because it's at a fridge temperature not

frozen temperature but it's kind of like a a thicker chocolate milk is it supposed to be frozen or no no it came in it was in the refrigerated aisle and it is supposed to be served chilled it's funny because i don't think of drinking melted ice cream from cold stone like a i agree it's kind of strange and it smells a little like kind of like chocolate drink like slim fast yeah if anyone's ever had slim fast i'm the fattest one so i've tried it before but uh uh but it's like cold not hot chocolate it's cold chocolate cold cold chocolate i'm gonna give it a taste yeah you're right the smell is has a lot in common with like a any sort of protein shake like a slim fast shake or like any of those those things that you make with like a protein powder oh my god

the taste is different than that for sure i'm a little similar wow that is really rich that is super rich a lot of cream to it that chocolate fudge yeah it's really really strong this just feels like it feels like melted ice cream to me it tastes like it's it's very it has like a little bit of that chocolate drink after taste you know i'm talking about like the you who are whatever kind of like after i don't sleep quick yeah yeah yeah it has that strong aftertaste but more so than anything this just seems like something like ryan gosselin is gonna play like a fat character and he's gonna drink this every day or something like i can't imagine someone drinking this a cold stone creamery drink is like kind of like because cold stone

creamery is an indulgence that's not a regular thing that's like oh let's treat ourselves let's go to cold stone except for you loves ice cream and eats it all the time i do love ice cream yet but i don't eat it all the time it's like a once a week thing all right that's fair i don't need to i don't need it every day but no even someone even a cold stone a fishing out it wasn't gonna eat it every day but like this is an on the go drink it's like it's really a lot like a very it's a lot it's just a lot to take in and after like i haven't had it in like 30 haven't taken a drink in 30 seconds and it's just like a weird like dry like it leaves a weird yeah like kind of desert hole it's like kind of coats your mouth in a weird way and then feels you make leaves you

feeling dried out it's not a drink it kind of is like that milkshake quality of like you drink a milkshake and you're not really refreshed you need a little water same sort of thing here it's in an on the like a to-go bottle and on the go sort of packaging but i don't think you could just drink this and be okay you need like a bottle of water or something afterwards it reminds me of vegas it's dry and and uh weird and fake and a lot of sugar a little bit much actually the second ingredient is liquid sugar so they're not messing around here there's like a medicinal quality almost or like i guess that's what you were saying with like a fit like protein pot like something in there that doesn't like it feels like you're drinking because you have to yes and there's there's like that weird

taste of like oh this is like like um this is like a diet milkshake drink or something uh which i've i've had to taste a few times in my life but but i you know there's something still about it that's chocolatey and and is at its base is good but on this one i'm going i'm going stank this this does not get a drink from me yeah i mean we've got half the bottle left would you guys want any more no no that's that's exactly how i feel we've split half the bottle amongst three guys three adult men of larger than average size also you're very tall man was it i'll have a little bit more yeah there you go um but i mean like that like that is like a little too much for us and i think that's that's just a clear a clear stank i i get what they're going for it's an interesting concept the idea of

trying to give like a lot like an ice cream flavor to a chilled drink but it's just a little too much for me it's just it's just feels so much like a weird diet eat like even the bottle it comes in it's like kind of like medicinal and weird like i'm kind of bummed out because cold stone is obviously a really great ice cream spot right and and uh add a little silver seal on top of it like it was like you kind of really weird you think you're gonna get some sort of milkshake experience and it's not really what you're getting if you told me though that it was full of whey protein i would go oh this is okay i could have like if you if that had an extra element to it i would be oh that'd be that's fine yeah i would i would drink this but yeah if it were just if it's just a

pleasure drink it feels so much like the first taste i get of it when i take a sip of it is like chocolate like hersey's chocolate it almost tastes like like just do it like drinking hersey's syrup and then after that is like yeah when you get that like weird what whey protein deity after taste that is that's it's just bizarre yeah it's a little bit so carlson it sounds like you're on team i'm on team stank yeah all right uh that was thanks sorry sorry cold stone creamery you let us down with the milkshaker but you know keep at it maybe you'll land on something um that's uh that's striker steak uh just like a restaurant we value your feedback let's open up the feedback today's email comes to us from andy rine andy writes i love the show and was wondering is

their restaurant where you love one food stuff that they serve but hate everything else for example everything at little caesars is hot garbage except the deep dish pepperoni pizza which i could eat for every meal keep up the good work spoon nation versus everybody hell yeah um thanks for the email andy so uh what do you guys think i mean my my immediate reaction and this is this is not quite answering andy's question but my immediate reaction was uh jack in the box where it's not that i hate other things on the menu but i just favor their tacos so much over everything else like the jack in the box tacos are like oh these are great that's what i like yeah fine i'll get like a jumbo jack to go with that or i'll get some curly fries but these these tacos are what's what are driving me

there um but yeah i'm not i'm not sure if i can land on something where i i like one item on the menu and to test everything else but what do you guys think it's funny that he says that because i know exactly what he's talking about yeah i just can't think of any like clear examples well i mean i'm with him i love that little caesars deep dish pizza but i wouldn't say that i think the rest of it is hot garbage uh and i love this guy he's a member of spoon nation but i gotta say i don't like the term food stuff i know this is a little side uh a little side rant i did you know what i'm saying food stuff perfectly fine it's a clinical term i guess like it's kind of cold is that what you're reacting to yeah i don't know it kind of it kind of rubs me the wrong

way this is really passive aggressive because i say food stuff in the setup of each of our snack or wax segment i do it every every time we do so this is a really shitty passive aggressive way maybe that's what bugs me about it i love this guy he's a great member of spoon nation don't go over to the dark side with little legs um it's not a binary you can just like the podcast you don't have to pick one or the other no you should though um uh yeah i i know what you're saying with like jack in the box oh okay yeah like uh the the the jack tacos or something are good and and yeah there there's definitely a place like that but i can't think of something off the top of of my head right now like i'm trying to think of like even like sit down chains or something like uh maybe

at hard rock there's like some appetizer that's really great uh there's definitely think like uh we're gonna do a burger king episode and it's like oh we like the whopper is great you know like uh and that's the star of the menu but i can't think of a place like usually if i dislike like almost all the food that there's there's not usually anything that i'm like except for that one thing that i can think of right now how about you carlson the first thing to come uh yeah i don't have one i i'm not the pickiest eater like i can usually find a couple things that i like the first thing i know i'm not trying to get back into the taco controversy but del taco i do like the quesadilla like a spicy chicken quesadilla they do a great quesadilla and you and you're good so like i'll

get fish the fish tacos okay i like them okay but like taco bell menu i eat pretty much any it's all gold but del taco i end up yeah yeah five forks out of five uh but del taco yeah like i just i pretty much we're going to del taco i'll just basically get that quesadilla and that's i maybe i'm the problem maybe i'm not being adventurous enough but that's the only thing i've ever had where i go oh this is good like i i do like this try those deluxe chili cheddar fries those are a go to for me you get a chili you get this crinkle cut chili cheese like crinkle cut fries they put chili and cheese on them and then that you get some some diced tomatoes some fresh onions and a little dollop of sour cream it's a real treat i've never been to red lobster repeat some people love

those cheddar biscuits and then don't like the rest of the food yeah i think you could be i think that's kind of the the genius of red lobster is they've come up with this non-seafood side that people who don't like seafood can still go there to get so like like just like oh even if i don't really like shrimp or mahi mahi or whatever but i have this association with these fucking cheddar biscuits which are good as hell um yeah i i think that that really works in their favor you know i'm gonna tweet at us because i want to hear some answers to this one this is a good one yeah use the use the feedback hashtag yeah you got any opinions on uh any any food stuff if you have if you've got some sort of food stuff uh that you like it one particular chain

but you don't like anything else on their menu how about hashtag this one goes out to the one i love whoa okay all right okay and also hashtag feedback i think that that just clears it up between the other feedback ones who's uh wait who which song is that whose song is that r.e.m r.e.m okay okay for some reason i thought it was durand durand you know what i got durand durand on the brain because they were who were playing at the hollywood bowl last time when we went to cobble wobble canteen that's right yeah it all bleeds together um if you have a question or comment about the world of chain restaurants you can email us at doleboy's podcast statement if you have a question or comment about the world of chain restaurants you can email us at

doleboy's podcast at gmail.com as always follow us on twitter at doleboy's podge i got our facebook fan page doleboy's uh mike carlson your jimmy buffet knowledge is immense and impressive yeah you know it changed my attitude uh it made me a happy man yeah i thought you're gonna say something about latitude uh yeah changed my no just my attitude the latitude i think stayed the same our latitudes are maintaining course but our attitudes of oh i was already positive on buffett i'm a little bit more positive now i think you've made your case very strongly uh a great guest thanks for coming here is there anything you would like to plug oh uh it's my twitter name is fat carlson ph at carlson that was my backyard wrestling name and it's still my email and blah

blah blah uh also follow me on star wars card trader at that same name i trade a lot of star wars trading cards he's a good trader he's wearing a star wars shirt right now too it's pretty cool i thought it was actually a jimmy buffet shirt when you first walked in i almost wore a hawaiian shirt but then i thought it was too much you've given me some very favorable trades on the card trader app it seems like you have a surplus of cards and you're willing to spread the wealth around and i appreciate that i appreciate your appearance all right let's see what the crossover is on doleboy's listeners and star wars card trader app users all of our dorky friends i think there's probably close to 100 you know what i i now finally take your side we are a fucking white

loser dorks a fucking let's end this podcast right now uh on that note that'll do it for this episode of doleboys uh for the spoon man mic michael i'm nick weigher until next time happy eating see ya