Jordan, Jesse, GO! - Ep. 712: Flip a Tire with John Flansburgh

Episode Date: November 15, 2021

John Flansburgh (They Might Be Giants) joins Jordan and Jesse for a discussion of how drinking coffee when he moved to New York may have changed his life, the miniature taxidermy figures that John and Jesse share an affinity for, and the story behind the incredible TMBG song Robot Parade. Plus, John tells us all about the new They Might be Giants album out called BOOK and the accompanying art book that has art by Paul Sahre that was hand-typed on an IBM Selectric typewriter.  They Might Be Giants’ new music and incredible art book project BOOK is OUT NOW!! Check it out here!Check out the video for the new song "Part of Your Wants to Believe Me" here!

Give a little time for the child within you, don't be afraid to be young and free. Undo the locks and throw away the keys and take off your shoes and socks and run you. Oh, it's Jordan Jesse Goh. I'm Jesse Thorne, America's radio sweetheart. What? I'm Jordan Morris, point detective. Bring in some new energy to the intro. Yeah, when we come on microphone, we should have a perspective. Right.

You know what I mean? Like, where were we? Where are we going? Right. What are we up to? That's kind of what I'm thinking. Anyway, my whole thing is that I'm refreshed because I took an hour-long nap at 9 a.m. So when did you wake up? Isn't that just falling back asleep?

When is it a nap and when is it waking up and falling back asleep? I woke up at 6.30, 6.45. I mean, this is the weekend. I get to sleep in a little. So I woke up 6.30, 6.45. I got up, took a quick shower, had some breakfast, drove a kid to an appointment, called my wife and said, I'm sleepy. I'm coming back home to sleep.

So I came home and went back to sleep. God, it was tremendous. It was gorgeous, Jordan. I feel fantastic. I could beat Jesse Owens in a race right now, and not just because he's dead. I could dig up Jesse Owens. I could find where that asshole's buried. Dig up his corpse.

I'm coming for you, Flojo. So this is great you could you could potentially with this schedule you could nap eight more times today before you fall asleep i would love that you know that's what benjamin franklin did he napped eight times every day and electrocuted himself twice and that's how he became the greatest president we ever had didn't he didn't he also take like nude dirt baths isn't that like the ben franklin fact that people love i mean it's either benjamin franklin or hamsters right um i can't remember if it's chinches yeah or benjamin have you ever read the autobiography of benjamin franklin Jordan? Our founding chinchilla?

Yes. Our greatest founding chinchilla. The famous chinch? Yeah. I took in college at our alma mater, the University of California at Santa Cruz, I took a class called American Autobiography. Fight on, sweet slugs. Come on, Jesse, join me in the fight song that we both totally know. Fight on, sweet slugs. Fight on, sweet slugs. Come on, Jesse, join me in the fight song that we both totally know. Fight on, sweet slugs.

Fight on, sweet slugs. Hurl discs, sweet slugs. Hack sacks. Have a drum circle at an inconvenient hour. There you go. That fight song that we both definitely know. In my American autobiography class, shout out to Professor Forrest Robinson, real cool dude. We read the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin.

And I was read, look, as you know, Jordan, you're a book lover. I'm a book. Love him. Liker. You know, Jordan, you're a book lover. I'm a book... Love him. Liker. You know, I like books. But Jordan, you'll read... You'll post on Instagram, oh, I read these novels.

I read these comics. I read this book about learning things. And I'm like... And I, you know... Definitely, I want to just say, if you want to fucking blow up the internet, if you want to really get that engagement jacked up your tight little ass, if you really want that, you know what fucking does it?

Novel recommendations. Ooh, I just, I'm bathing in engagement like Benjamin Franklin bathed in dust. I'm just, ooh, the engagement. They're like, what? Tell me more, guy whose podcast I've listened to a couple times. The book that I generally want to read is a book by, say, past guest Susan Orlean or Mary Roach, Sarah Vowell, who was on the show recently. I want to read an amusing, but smart and informative nonfiction book as a general rule. I'm not a great men guy. You know, I'm not like into biographies of legendary figures of the past or something. I'm not,

I don't read a ton of fiction. I mostly like to read that kind of fun, informative nonfiction as a rule. And I also don't like old books. Too old. They talked boring then. You got to blow dust off the cover before you open it. Exactly. You know about my allergies, Jordan. I got to tell you, the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin rules so hard. It is so fucking great because he was fucking insane. He kept a chart, Jordan, where he listed all the types of virtues.

his virtue notebook each day at the end of the day he would check off points for which virtues he had displayed that day and then he would he would tally how many virtue points he had and chart it graph it put it in a graph and he really loved turkeys like this guy was the number one turkey guy out there and i'm not talking about he wasn't a turkey this guy was the furthest thing from a turkey that's not what i mean he just loved fucking and he didn't love fucking turkeys i don't want to give people the wrong idea fame don't defame our first chinchilla president jesse no he he loved fucking french women that he met in paris in baths but he didn't love, he was not, anyway, the moral of the story is the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

from, you know, 1800 or whenever he wrote it is a shockingly fun and readable book. That's all, that's all I got on Benjamin Franklin. You really get caught by surprise. Not a lot of florid language, Thomas Jefferson style, just a lot of charts of virtues. Well, if my Instagram postings are any indication, this podcast where we recommend books is going to blow up. It's going to be huge.

Blow the fuck up. It's going to be monstrous. This is going to be fucking believable, Jordan. Listen, and if people were blown away by these book recommendations, you know what's seriously going to fuck their shit up? I don't know. Today's guest.

Holy shit. So you're talking about, on the internet, there's three levels of cool. Base level of cool, that's going to be videos of dogs. Number two, if you really want to blow your shit up, it's going to be novel recommendations.

But number one, the number one thing that's going to blow you up is demonstrating that you have the email address of an alternative rock celebrity. That's the top. That's the top of the mountain in Jordan.

That's what we're doing right now. This man, a legend of rock and roll music. This man, a legend of charm. He's in a charming recording area right now. I think he's in some sort of mountain chateau. I couldn't tell you exactly. He's got a brand new record and tour out with his band, a little outfit called They Might Be Giants. The record, by the way, called Book, which is interesting, Troy. Hey, fun. Given our, yeah.

All right. I guess we're about to find out what book it is. John Flansburg is our guest. John, what an honor to have you on the program. Happy Halloween, troublemakers. How's it going? We meet again. Well, I've got some trouble in my plans. I'll be slipping some razor blades into some, what are those called?

Tootsie rolls. Apples. Thank you. Coming in hot. Hey, fellas. John, that's actually something I kind of wanted to ask you. I mean, I think this episode will be released a little bit after Halloween. We have the day before Halloween.

But what's a John Flansburg Halloween? I thought, yeah, I blew the whole, this could be a bottle episode, this could be a perfect episode, and now I've ruined it. You've dated it. What is, you know, in the era of COVID, I think my typical Halloween is nothing at all. Probably a good policy, honestly. Yeah, I was actually talking to my partner, Robin, about if we should just have

at least one thing standing by. And she was like, let's just turn off the lights. So when you say one thing standing by. Like, you know, some kind of of candy it's like some kid comes to the door but it couldn't be just anything it would have to be a candy treat you said just have one thing like you know like some you know some kind of wrapped chocolate something that's you know proven we got a kid at the door give him a fucking toaster

yeah here's this uh old Cusinart. Be careful with it. Hey, Frozen, you want a Cusinart? Don't stick your icy little fingies in there. I'll tell you that right now. Yeah. Look out, Frozen. Use that to make slaw.

But I don't know. I mean, I've spent most of my life in new york city where halloween just kind of doesn't happen or if it does i think kids go to specific places where it's like they go to an i know some people go kids go to apartment buildings where like it's you get a lot of good stuff but like they don't go free range trick-or-treating in new york city so wait is that what you imagined? Do you imagine that on Halloween, we set our children free to gather candy from across the land?

That's what I did when I was, you know, I'm incredibly old. And like things were very simple when I was a child. I mean, you're still pretty limber, John. It's hard to find parts. Gotta get them shipped in from Japan. Yeah. Looking back on your childhood, do you have a Halloween costume that sticks out as like, oh, this is the year that I nailed it, or this is the year that I was my true self?

You know, I think I was so lazy about that stuff even then, you know, the whole costume thing. I remember just wearing my dad's clothes a lot and trying to figure out how to backwards engineer that. Did your dad have any like, like, I mean, I've told the story many times on Jordan, Jesse Goh of the time in the boys club costume contest that I made a really, really beautiful costume and got beat by a guy who was wearing his dad's police clothes. Did your dad have like was your dad a paramedic or something where you could wear cool stuff that he had or was it just too big for you?

And that was the it was just it was just too big. But he had everything he had sort of left over everything. was really my dad was really thin when he was a young man and and they just didn't throw any of that stuff away so i he had like a spare tuxedo he had a spare like a crazy overcoat that looked really extravagant like a like a with a raccoon collar oh wow you know it's like this real old-fashioned stuff i i'm 120 years old jesse was your dad a college student in an ivy league university in the 20s he was a college student in the ivy league school in the in the late 40s yeah wow which is probably not that different um i saw i kind of an amazing Halloween-related thing yesterday. So yesterday was Friday.

So the elementary school near my house, the parents were all walking the kids to school, and the kids were all wearing their costumes. Oh, sweet. And I saw something amazing. I saw a parent holding the hand of one kid. This is important. It is one kid. A parent holding the hand of one kid. This is important.

It is one kid. And the one kid was... Their costume was Luigi. Nice. Seeing a Luigi without a Mario is so jarring. That's my fucking guy, Luigi. That's my fucking guy. It's like just seeing a Garth. If you just saw a Garth walking around without a Wayne, it threw me off.

It made me, it made me, it was a kind of a glitch in the matrix feeling for me. What are you for Halloween this year? Ricky Ricardo? Yeah. It's like, anyway, but I like, I like respect a kid who's like, you know, I'm, I'm more of a Luigi, you know, at eight i realized that i'm i'm the luigi i think my halloween respect as a kid and adolescent and even now i think as an adult is to a kid who who has a good setup and just locks it in and you're like you're a you're in

your dad's police uniform again this year and they're like yeah it's fucking good it wins the fucking contest i got all those carnation instant breakfasts didn't i you know what i mean like a kid who doesn't need to reinvent the wheel every year they got it set and they're just keeping it going john's just wearing his dad's old tuxedo for the third year in a row. Hell yeah. You got to hit record. You got to close with it.

You know what I mean? Like when it's there, you got to do it. You can throw some filigree on it, Jordan. I mean, you put a top hat on. You're the Monopoly guy. Yeah, you get a little martini in your bond. Sure. Yeah.

You know, a child martini. Just get a little kid's martini. Little child's. A teeny, teeny. A little gin in there. Jesse, what are your kids doing for Halloween? What are they dressed as? Is there a, you know, reasonable trick-or-treat thing that they can do?

Yeah, they're actually over at the los angeles arboretum right now doing a little trick-or-treating um with i guess the peacocks there and um but there's a you know it's very classic it's a very classic setup um gracie my oldest is freddie krueger okay she's really come she's really come to love and admire freddie krueger a real role model yeah there's benjamin franklin and fred Freddy Krueger. A real role model. Yeah. There's Benjamin Franklin and Freddy Krueger are the two. Freddy Krueger also kept a list of virtues.

Yeah, exactly. She has been pitching me this sitcom she created called Frederick and Hockey Mask. called uh frederick and hockey mask and it stars sort of sort of young sheldon-esque versions of jason and freddy krueger and then they just go on different you know they have basics it's basic sitcom setups um like they'll like go to the mall and they and they run into pinhead or something i mean she could probably sell that to paramount plus now i know um so she's gonna be freddy krueger but we had to we had to set rules as to where and when she could wear the claws we're like you can wear the hat and the sweater to school but you can't wear the claws to school. It's too much. It's too much for the kitties.

Okay? Yeah. There's kitties there at the school. What are the claws made out of? Claws. You know, they're made out of, we glued knives together and, right? Yeah. They're small claws made out of larger claws.

I mean, it's just like ski gloves. Yeah. I mean, we didn't have the exact right gloves. So we, you know, but we found enough knives. We went down to the Goodwill and got some Gorilla Glue, you know, put that together. They're made of plastic, John. And then my youngest, my middle child

is going to be the Grim Reaper, Oscar. He's the Grim Reaper. He got himself a cape and a scythe. They had a Little League game that was costumes optional. So it was either you wear your costume or just come as you are. You know what I mean?

He decided to wear his cloak and he spent 15 minutes, I'm going to say, trying to figure out how to incorporate a scythe into a little league game. He's like,

Dad, Dad, can I bat with my scythe? I'm like, no, you have to use a bat, honey. You can't use your scythe. He's like, okay, okay. That would be my first instinct. I know.

Then he goes and he comes back and he's like, can I use a scythe instead of a glove? I'm like, no, you can't use a scythe he's like okay okay that would be my first instinct i know he goes and he comes back and he's like can i use a scythe instead of a glove i'm like no you can't use a scythe you have to you have to leave the shot there's no and he's like they don't the ball doesn't get hit to me that often i'm like right but that's not if it does right you're holding a plastic scythe and be encumbered by a scythe uh and my youngest isn't my youngest frankie is a ninja just likes ninjas you know yeah he's at the ninja age you can't bring swords to the arboretum though that's the only thing so i had to leave the swords in the car yeah it's good leave the sword in the car you know about that jordan you've been in that position sure yeah yeah it's the same on the Sony lot. You can't bring swords

into the Sony lot. You gotta leave them in the car. Sure, yeah. John, you mentioned you mentioned earlier being a New Yorker. Yes. I grew up in Southern California and the first inkling that I had

that New York was cool is when I learned that they might be giants were from Brooklyn. For me, it was when I saw Ed Koch on 60 Minutes. Yeah. So you've like, you've been a, you've been a, like, have you been a, are you a lifelong New Yorker or did you, you know, like move there to become a, you know, rock and roll musician? I moved to New York to go to art school. I basically kind of like did the full belly flop out of multiple colleges, wipe out, lost routine.

You know, like year 17 to 21, we're just like working in as a busboy or in a parking lot and, you know, just wasting a lot of time. And then I finally thought, I'll straighten myself out and figure out, you know, a legitimate life in the fine arts. So I went to the Pratt Institute, which was actually sort of this weird creative boot camp for me. And it actually, it really straightened me out. It's a weird story, because you don't think of like art school as a place to like, get your scene together. But I totally get a haircut. Exactly, exactly. But but in a lot of ways, like, you know,

I grew up, you know, kind of with all the all the sort of suburban privilege and confusion that you could have had growing up in like the 60s and 70s. I grew up in the suburbs of Boston and I just was a mess, you know, school didn't work and I didn't know how to do anything. And yeah, coming to Pratt was like, you know, I mean, Pratt is in many ways like a it's just like a studio school. Like they have a foundation year that's really tough and designed to kind of teach you how to become a disciplined person. So it's just it really helped. It really helped me, you know, get my scene together.

And I started drinking. I moved to New York and basically started drinking coffee about a week later. my scene together. And I started drinking, I moved to New York and basically started drinking coffee about a week later. And that, and, and, and it's, those two things are so conflated in my personality. Like I, I, I went from being kind of like a mildly depressed kind of teenager to being like a very excitable young adult. And, and, uh, and I've never looked back dear mother i've moved to new york i've been here 10 days and i find myself walking here uh yeah we before before we started the record um john you got two coffees you not only have a mug of coffee but you have a thermos of coffee yeah you this is a this is a lifestyle for you podcasting is not for amateurs my friend

are you a car are you what kind of coffee man are you are because like jordan is a has been a coffee enthusiast to varying degrees in our time together, from a cup of coffee in the morning to sweating coffee in the mid-afternoon. And Jordan has always been a very democratic coffee drinker. Just look, I'm drinking a cup of Joe kind of coffee. The coffee in front of me. Yeah, exactly. kind of coffee the coffee in front of me yeah exactly my wife Teresa is a coffee person but she's the kind that is extraordinarily she's a very laid-back easygoing person but extraordinarily careful and specific about her coffee she's got a burr grinder the special pour over thing she's got

a a water boiler a kettle she's got an electric kettle that, you know, that heats to a specific temperature with a long gooseneck so it doesn't change on the way out. You know, she's got a whole setup. So where are you on that coffee spectrum? You know, I have toured with people who have like very elaborate coffee deals and i feel like i can i enjoy taking advantage of their obsessions um and those coffees sure taste great but i don't have that kind of time uh you know i'm i'm gonna be drinking coffee like all day long so i don't even i i buy i buy ground coffee because it's like i'm going to be blazing through it. You know, that bag's going to be gone in three days.

You just eat it straight. Yeah. You know, it's also my first coffee experience was Cafe Bustelo, which is also a very kind of Brooklyn bodega reality. And sometimes, you know, sometimes you wonder you wonder like are they just adding dirt to this stuff because it doesn't it doesn't really it's just a little dirt in there like when they had to make laws to preserve white bread because people kept making bread and selling it that had sand in the sand in the flour that that's a that's a that's on on Wikipedia? That was like a big thing.

Like in the early 19th century, late 18th century, like a big thing was you would go and buy bread in the city and it would be made with a combination of flour and sand because flour was expensive. Right, right. Like to cut costs, they would just mix a little bit of sand in there. To cut costs, they would just mix a little bit of sand in there. And that's like one of the reasons that white bread is a phenomenon occurred. Because the whiter it is, the less you can fake, less you can get the sand in there or whatever it is that's not actual grain. Right.

I mean, I always wonder. There used to be a restaurant when I was living in Williamsburg. There was a restaurant that served the most garlicky food imaginable. And I just, at a certain point, I was like, when's it stop being food and turn into something else? Become garlic. Yes. Eating garlic off an index card. I feel like, just as sometimes I imagine myself as an alcohol. I don't drink. But I imagine that if I drank beer, I would drink Miller High Life, the champagne of beers. I just like the idea of it. I like that lady. I don't know if it's good. Never had it before.

I just like the lady who's reclining on a moon and everything. I feel the same way. Like if I drank coffee in New York, 1,000% it would be from Chocfulo Nuts. I just think the brand allure of Chocfulo Nuts is so overwhelming to me that I would give up any flavor preference just to get that Chocfulo Nuts can. The first couple of years I lived in New York, there was more evidence of what New York was like in the 50s and 60s than like ever since then. Like it all left almost right away.

Like there were, what do you call them? Like automats? There were actually still a couple of like Dubros and Horn and Hardart, these really old fashioned. It was like all like sort of like, it was the kind of place you could like film a Woody Allen movie basically. And the Chock Full of Nuts, in Midtown,

there were these enormous diners that were called Chock Full of Nuts that was run by the same company. And in the mid 80s, they literally were like Chock Full of Nuts. I mean, it was it was like basically a lunatic asylum that you could hang out in for an hour if you had a dollar fifty. I'm curious. So I am in a couple of days, I am going to go to New York for a wedding. It's the

first time I've been to New York in years and years and years. I used to go out there to work once in a while, but I haven't been in forever. I am wondering, what are the John Flansburg New York must-dos? Oh, man. I wish I got out more. I mean, are you going to be in the East Village or the Lower East Side? I'm staying in brooklyn uh but would be happy to travel to other parts where in brooklyn uh at at the best western really yes that's fascinating i believe it i mean yes let me see here i'll get you that's a great call jordan last time i was in brook, I stayed at the worst Western and cannot recommend it. Yeah, bad move.

You're like, this will be kitschy and fun. Oh, I love it. Okay. I'll pull it up here. I'll pull it up here on Google Maps. I have it in my calendar. I am staying in, let's see, it is on 4th Avenue. This will come out after I'm back, so no one will show up and kill me, although that'd be nice.

I am on like 4th Avenue and I'm next to a place called Luigi's Pizza. That's fun. It's a fun little connection. Bring your costume. Yeah. What kind of sauce do they use there? I don't know, Jesse it probably wario sauce just red sauce it's probably just red sauce you know what i mean yeah uh that means you get your liver you're like somewhere near park slope it seems like oh yeah let's see sunset park is sunset park something oh sunset park oh that's further out

i have no i i think that's a very sort of up coming, very groovy area. I'm sure you'll be taken for a ride. John, Jordan, why are we talking about neighborhoods in Brooklyn when we could be listing restaurants in Los Angeles? This is a podcast, guys. Let's talk about things at the Grove. Let's talk about things at the americana i want to branch out i feel like there's two kinds of podcasts the list things in la podcast the list things in new york podcast and then star wars complaints that's the third kind yeah i um anybody else anybody have any star wars complaints i i feel like what i feel like you could put together a tour of things in New York that just never changed from 1956. I think that would be great. Yeah. In San Francisco, there's all these storefronts that say play fascination. And when I was a kid, they were operating. And I think they were like a chock full of nuts in that just if you were just a drifter who lived in a local sro you know you'd

go down and do whatever play fascination is for a day with a dollar and then you'd wander out and buy a tuna sandwich from a vending machine i don't know like these are things from things that seem like they're on the periphery of the mixed up files of mrs basilie frank weiler you know what i mean yeah sure yeah john john are there like things in new york that look like stood the test of time like oh this this has been there forever i don't know why it's still there how does it still exist i always just sort of center around east village stuff i mean there is like cats's and and you know great like deli food if you're if you're a meat oriented person i am yes i am you know yes i am a meat-based man

yeah i've i've been i've been to i've been to cats's like a thousand times and you know it's always it's super great and uh it's very low-key i mean it doesn't it's it's like i mean they sell hot dogs there so it's just like but they also have better stuff and you know you have a like a pretty good chance of of uh seeing robert crumb while you're there which just kind of makes it makes it worth it i hope he's carrying his banjo exactly yeah my interest in deli food has skyrocketed over the over the past few years i have it has gone from like something i would have if it was close to like something i will like drive a long way for yeah it really very interested in deli food right now. Yeah, it fits in with any weight gain program you

might be on. Yeah, I am. I'm trying to make weight for wrestling, so trying to get into a new class. I learned about a thing. I really love this cartoonist from New York named Ben Katcher, And he makes these comics that are kind of guys wandering through – the most successful of them is called Julius Knipple Real Estate Photographer. And each page is just Julius Knipple kind of wandering into like an abandoned and somewhat fantastical New York building or storefront. And it goes on a kind of weird journey through the past that doesn't quite make sense. And Ben Katcher wrote this whole nonfiction comic, long nonfiction comic, about this thing called a dairy restaurant. Oh, yeah. Of which there are still a couple in New York.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. No, I think there's more than... I mean, if you go into any sort of orthodox neighborhood, there's dairies all around. I've actually never heard of... John, what is one of those? It's the opposite of a deli. Like a kosher deli doesn't have mayonnaise.

It doesn't have any egg products. and a dairy is all the opposite stuff like it's it's the kosher thing of separating foods um so yeah and they're you know i think i think the whole thing about kosher restaurants is that the idea is that they're they're super clean uh and getting back to the whole sand in the bread callback that everybody's been waiting for. It's there is this thing about, you know, there were so many health issues, you know, 150 years ago, a hundred years ago related to like eating in a restaurant, like if things weren't refrigerated or things weren't fresh, you know, all of a sudden like you're just in the hospital dying of, you know,

cause you ate a sandwich and it's and uh so way to go though yeah so so yeah but no they're still they're kind of everywhere i think i mean i i don't know you get you get a blintz a blintz is a real dairy restaurant absolutely yeah oh i want a blintz i'd love a blintz right now would absolutely love a blintz. I'd love a blintz right now. Would absolutely love a blintz. I mean, there's some things that have hung around Los Angeles, right? I mean, the French dip is a Los Angeles food, and there's two competing French dip restaurants in Los Angeles. Is it like Frenchie's best French dip and world's greatest French dip? And then Bestie's French, yes.

Yeah. Yeah, there's a weird Los Angeles phenomenon where there will be two places close together who claim to have invented something and then i think that's a classic restaurant yeah maybe that's every yeah maybe every every big city has that version and yeah and one of them is philippe's which has remained largely unchanged which is still you know is one of those places where you walk in and you're like oh this is like this is probably just like it looked in 1972 and there's like wood floors and also just like it looked in 1938 yeah like there's pictures of it like it truly philippe's philippe's

the french dip uh is just one of the great treasures of Los Angeles. I love, I could not love that place more. Every sign is sun damaged. Every sign has been. Yes. Literal sawdust on the floor. Like it's a hanger with sawdust on the floor. Table, counter order, a giant line, counter order, pickled eggs. Love everything about it.

Philippe's the French dip. But in Kohl's is downtown that's the rival yeah so Kohl's is one of those things that's like it's such a mixed bag phenomenon in that like a beloved a beloved local institution closed down and then like a hipster

restaurateur who you know may or may not have a lot of love for it like buys it up and then kind of like makes it into the buys it up and then kind of like makes it into the hipster version of what it was. And yeah, it's weird because it's like, oh, I'm glad that place still exists. I'm glad this isn't like apartments or a poke place, you know? Yeah, it's pretty good. Yeah. And the food is fucking, I mean, that sandwich is still really rules. It's like, you know, it's a little bit of a weird scene and, you know,

maybe a couple bucks more expensive than it has to be, but like the sandwich is great. Yeah. It's a little bit like if you could get a really good sandwich at the restaurant in the New Orleans part of Disneyland. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. But now, did you guys track this story about the popularization of Thai cuisine as we know it in the United States coming out of like some kind of not commissary food in Hollywood, but somebody who is doing a catering for movies in Hollywood? No. Yeah. Tell us more. Oh, it was like a couple of years ago, the son of the, I guess it was a couple that basically introduced Thai food to LA, as it's known, told this story, sort of told his parents' story. And I guess he's in the

restaurant business too. But what's, you know, of course, like all, a lot of like, faraway cuisines are sort of modded out. Just the same way that Chinese food in the United States has nothing to do with Chinese food from China. It's triangulated in some way that makes sense to our palate. And the stuff, the gelatinous foam has been taken away. And like the stuff that the gelatinous foam has been taken away. Yeah. Or to the palate of like guys with know, movie with a very sad ending.

And everybody was just like, yeah, bummer of an ending. And and people were like, this is this is my favorite kind of food like this. I love this more than any other kind of food. But it was just an LA thing. It really was an LA thing. I mean, I've never been to Thailand. I have no idea if you can get tofu pad thai in Thailand. And maybe you can.

And maybe it tastes exactly the same. I have no idea. I mean, I know there's some specific things that are in uh the pad thai we eat here and i'm sure that the more obscure things are directly from thailand but uh yeah it was uh it was an idea that's straight out of la it's like it's part of la's you know film history basically my i don't know anything about Thailand. I was there for eight hours once. But I've seen all I need to. I had a lot of fun. I get it. I get it.

I rode on the back of a taxi motorcycle. That was horrifying. But my dad used to work in Laos. And a lot of Lao Americans have Thai and Vietnamese restaurants. There are Lao restaurants in the United States. But largely, like our friend Kulop the Lysak, who's been a guest on this show many times, Kulop's mom ran, I think, a Thai restaurant, and she's Lao. And there's a restaurant in Springville, California, no, Porterville, California, which is this sort of central California ag town, uh,

that is the last, the last place of any size that's on the way to my cabin, 7,000 hours from Los Angeles in the mountains. Um, is this, you know, it's maybe 50, 75,000 people, something like that. Uh, and there's this restaurant there. We were looking for a place to eat because it's like, it's the place to stop before you get up to the mountains. And we were looking for a place to eat. And there was a place called Vientiane Cafe. Vientiane is the biggest city in Laos. And I thought, man, wouldn't this be great if this was a Lao restaurant? You know, it must be a Lao restaurant. And, you know, Lao people, a lot of people came to the United States in the 70s when they're, obviously when we were bombing their country. And so,

you know, they're spread out, like many people in Minneapolis area, but besides that spread out. And so we went to this restaurant and this restaurant was like, it was like what you imagine the menu of a Chinese restaurant was in 1940. Like they sold just a list. They sold sushi. They sold, they sold chow mein. They sold chop suey. They sold chop suey. They sold potstickers. There's just a list of every type of Asian food.

And the people came to the counter and I'm like, I'm just curious because the place is called Vientiane Cafe. If you or the folks who run the restaurant are Lao. And she's like, yeah, we're all Lao. Do you want Lao food? And I was like, yeah, sure. And they like brought us Lao food. And it was like, this restaurant's doing business just selling sushi to one person

and chow mein to another person just because it is the city's Asian restaurant. You know what I mean? Like want food from this continent? Well, good news. We've got you covered. Have you guys heard about this thing? I don't know if this, I think this might even exist in a different way in Los Angeles and on the West Coast. uh the lockdown the food delivery there are all these kitchens all these fake restaurants on

the seamless and grubhub that actually or or kitchens that are supplying food for other restaurants like you'll get you'll get a food delivery and it won't have your name on it or your address on it or whatever it'll have the name of the restaurant it's supposed to be from, which is like a really easy tell. It's like, guys, this is just a big old fake, right? I think you're describing Jordan's Instagram, right, Jordan? Yeah, this is my – I got on Instagram kind of recently. I got on Instagram kind of recently, and the only thing the algorithm thinks slash knows I want is photos of places like this that have kind of this crazy... And yeah, and they all... And this is...

And I don't know, but this is the LA version. They all have some sort of punny, suggestive name. It'll be like, my neck, my back, my kimchi, and my crack or something like that. Like they all have some sort of like meme-y name. What's the story with all restaurants now having a dish that's named crack something? Oh, yeah.

That seems a bit much. That's one of our greatest national tragedies. There was a place that did that that recently issued an apology for that, which I thought was very cool. Oh, that's great. You know, it's a milk bar. Oh, yeah. Yeah, they had a famous crack thing, and they're like,

eh, hey, sorry. Which I'm like, yeah, I get how maybe you would casually do that because you thought it was... So yeah, I also hope that the, like, crack this is on the way out i i think it is yeah i'll say this jordan now that you mentioned that 15 years ago in new york when that shit was new i went to that motherfucker and ate that crack thing it was hella good yeah sure

it was hella good yeah and now it's called heroin pie and we can all enjoy it a little bit more. Really helps my jazz albums. But on the West Coast, they also have this thing now that I've just heard about, which is there are these restaurants that are just fulfillment places for non-existent storefront restaurants. have a virtual restaurant now and and they are one kitchen will be you know presenting the food of crusty the clown cafeteria that only exists online i love kkk like what really right right no no actually there is there is a youtube influencer who's 22 years old who has started a burger shop in Los Angeles. Yeah, he's like called Beast Mode or something like that, Mr. Beast Mode. Yeah, Mr. Beast. Mr. Beast. And it's hugely successful.

Kids love it. Kids ask for it by name. Yeah, I feel like I've heard that phenomenon, that there's just 10 different restaurants operating out of this one kitchen. I think that's what happened to Chuck E. Cheese's. I think Chuck E. Cheese's were that. That was their solution for no one can come in here because they're germ factories now. Well, they also changed their name.

They changed their name to something else. Yeah, right. They were like, yeah, Pasquale's or something like that. Like one of the deep cut characters. So like fans will know this is Chuck E. Cheese. I didn't know there were other characters besides, isn't Chuck E. enough? Oh, there's a Marvel Cinematic Universe's worth of characters in Chuck E. Cheese. Wow.

Somebody's got to play percussion in that band, you know? Sure. Right. There's even more nightmare fuel than you thought. Yeah. How about an iguana that makes a weird clacking sound when it blinks? Gosh, I have to say, like, I have not had a lot of upsides of the pandemic. It's been a mostly downsides for me. I don't know if that has been your experience, guys. But for me personally, yeah, for me personally, it's been mostly downsides. But I guess now that I think about it, one upside is I have not stepped foot in a Chuck E. Cheese, the worst place in the world. Oh, yeah. And you're in the crosshairs. Yeah, with a four-year-old, an eight-year-old, and a 10-year-old. Chuck E. Cheese has me in his sights and is ready to throttle me with his robotic nightmare hand.

You're getting frequent sire miles out of that. I did go to my first indoor kids' birthday party. A classmate of my son's had a birthday party with just kids from their class. So it's kids that are together all the time. I'm like, this seems pretty safe. And it was in Glendale, California, which is a real all-American suburb. My dad spent his teenage years there, just a real classic tree-lined streets. Now about half Armenian. Most of the Armenian Americans in the United States live in Glendale. But other than that unusual demographic quirk, completely average suburban place. In this laser tag arena.

And it was like, it was tiki themed. But it was tiki themed in the sense that someone went to a party store and was just like, well, there's not enough fucking skeleton shit to make it skeleton themed. There's only like four different skeleton things. What is, where is there 12 different things of, and just bought tiki shit for this laser. It was the greatest thing in the history of the world. Just a weird office park building, not a big one, a small one, with a tiki theme, like 70s bricks, probably one pop-a-shot machine, a little snack bar that sold uh pizzas that were definitely cooked in an oven under the counter and uh dip and dots the ice cream of the future and then like three

arcade machines birthday that was it and three insolent teens just three teens who did not want to be there at all uh it was awesome they went and played laser tag every every kid got a an animal that they were in laser tag so they could check their standings at the end of the game there were uh two teams of eight each uh and out of those guys, you guys want to guess where my son Oscar finished? Could he use his scythe? Yeah. I didn't shoot anybody, but I hit a lot of people in the head with my scythe. I think he got the same, the same number of points he would have gotten had he used a

scythe. He finished 16th. There you go. The, the part that impressed me the most was that number 15 got number 15 got 3,500 points for shooting people with lasers. And my son somehow got 1,500 points. So my son got less than half of number 15. He's a pacifist. He's trying to solve problems through nonviolent means.

He has a vibrant internal life, Jordan. to solve problems through nonviolent means. He has a vibrant internal life, Jordan. When we were talking about the animals, the sometimes terrifying animals at Chuck E. Cheese, I noticed, John, do you have some taxidermy behind you? Is that a taxidermy bobcat? What am I seeing back there? I do, I do.

Just give me a second and I'll bring it forward. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Great. Yeah, we're going to want the at-home audience to be able to see this. Yeah. This is going to be pretty great. This is why you got to tune into the live streams, people. The funny thing about taxidermy is a lot of people don't like it.

Yeah. Now this, oh, John. now this oh john you know and it's like including including my wife who hate who hates this and and what's her problem that thing's great and hates me for liking it now i'll tell you let's describe it let's describe it for people well so this is a tiger john but it's not it's not the size of a tiger no i think it's sort of the size of a squirrel. And I think the idea is you learn your taxidermy skills on little kind of fantasy objects like this. Because with this, you have to put in eyes. You've got to put in the fake teeth.

You've got to put in the stripes. It's all to just basically help you figure out how to perfect your craft in in taxidermy but the thing is nobody wants to live with this stuff so um you know no one wants to like wake up and like at 3 a.m yeah and like have to get a drink of water and then first like see yeah i just i when i got this in the in the junk store in ithaca new york i figured this would just be like right by the front door of our house yeah and it would just be like greetings like we're we're colorful and interesting people and now it's just like i gotta hide this when people come around basically. Yeah, so that's a junk store find.

Yes. Yeah. Does it have a name? No, it does not have a name. It just kind of hangs out. And my cats don't mind it, which surprises me. Oh, interesting. I would think that they would think of that as a competitor.

No. Or an enemy. No, I found them resting alongside it. That's really adorable. I think Jesse is coming back. Jesse, I think, like resting alongside it. That's really adorable. I think Jesse is coming back. Jesse is, I think, has something to add to the taxidermy conversation. Look at this, Jesse. Wow.

And Jesse, you have a tiny mountain goat or something? Yeah, this is Rosie, short for Roosevelt the goat. In this episode of Cake Toppers, Jesse Thorne. Yeah, I mean, I just, John john i just didn't want to let it slide when you said nobody wants to live with this stuff okay this this goat was this goat was three feet where i from where i was sitting as you uttered that phrase i feel you brother i feel you brother i appreciate it i appreciate your love for the things that are unjustifiable. And also, what exactly, where is that from?

Why did you get it? What's it all about? Because what is that made out of? This is, I think, made out of a sheepskin, I would say, probably. So mostly they're made out of deer skin, just because people, you know, hunters shoot deer to eat and then there's just deer skin around. You don't, you don't doing much with it. Uh, so if you're a taxidermist, that's what you'd practice with. This, I think is a sheepskin and it's got these weird horns. I think I bought it at the flea market one day. I mean, I got a lion over at the office. I got a lion that's like this

too. I love them because what's great about them is they're not, you know, it's not like awful taxidermy style where there's something like horrifically grotesque about them. They're not horrifically grotesque to me anyway. They're like, they just have a sort of odd, charming naivete to them. Like they're sort of, they're sort of sweet in their oddness. It's fanciful. You know, I don't think, I mean, this could just be a form and this fur could easily, I mean, it could just as easily be fake fur as real fur,

which would mean that nothing about the thing I'm holding is real at all. So, and that would be fine. What really is, John Flansburg from They Might Be Giants, new album's called Book. What is real? That's an interesting question. That's a good question. John's got the mouth of this tiger right up in the camera right now.

So we're really looking down its gate. I don't know what you're talking about, Jesse. I don't have a lot to contribute to this conversation. I think the closest thing I have, and I don't have it on, I can't hold it up right now, but I have a Spider-Man bobblehead that I think was made from a real Spider-Man. Okay. Let's take a break. We'll be back in just a second on jordan jessica

it's jordan jessico i'm jesse thorne america's radio jordan morris boy detective now jordan every episode of jordan jessico is supported our supporters, the folks who've gone to MaximumFun.org slash join to join Maximum Fun. We're grateful to them, profoundly grateful to every single one of them. We're also supported this week by my breakfast this morning, Magic Spoon. You know, Jordan, I'm sick and tired of boring high protein breakfasts you know what i would eat previously if i wanted to have a high protein breakfast 524 soy rice yeah god it was a pillowcase counting them out just so many almonds oh boy but now i can just enjoy a magic spoon in the amazing flavors that i love zero grams of sugar 140 calories 13 to 14 grams of protein and only

four net grams of carbs in each serving gluten-free grain-free soy-free and low carb uh and you mentioned all the great flavors jesse uh boy howdy there are some great flavors now jordan i'm a midnight toker but you're a midnight snack and got it if you've got a if you've got a sweet tooth like jordan morris you got to know when to hold them the magic spoon that yeah boxes that holds the box and then open the box and then reach in and get the magic spoon and put it in your mouth. Give it there. Have a little tasty.

We're talking about cocoa, fruity, frosted, peanut butter, blueberry, cinnamon, cookies and cream, maple waffle. Cookies and cream and maple waffle. Recent limited runs that were so popular, they had to make them permanent. Yeah. Both very delicious. You should try them today. There's a build your own bundle feature uh which is really fun here's what you do you go to magic spoon.com slash jj go to grab a custom bundle of cereal and

try it today and be sure to use our promo code jj go at checkout to save five dollars off your order and magic spoon is so confident in their product, it's backed with 100% happiness guarantee. So if you don't like it for any reason, they'll refund your money, no questions asked. That's magicspoon.com slash JJGO. Use the code JJGO to save $5 off. Thank you, Magic Spoon, for sponsoring this episode. This podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp Online Therapy as well. Now, Jordan, these are tough times. Oh, yeah. But you don't have to be going through the worst of times to benefit from therapy. Often when you're going through even the most regular of times, that's when you can make the most impact working on the big issues that are hiding in the shadows. Yeah. Think of it like taking your car to get a tune-up. The brain is just a car of the mind, Jesse. The brain is a car of the mind, as BetterHelp likes to say.

Yes. They've asked specifically that we say the brain is the car of the mind as better help likes to say yes they've asked specifically that we say the brain is the car of the mind they said it's sweatshirts that have that on it it's good because it's cold you know it's going to be winter so it's nice to remember that slogan the brain is the car of the mind but seriously uh you don't have to be in a grand crisis to benefit from therapy. You can also benefit from it just as a simple tune-up. And BetterHelp is one way to access therapy. You can do it all kinds of different ways, video, phone, live chat, if you want to. You don't have to talk to anyone.

You don't have to make eye contact with anybody if you don't want to. You don't have to talk to anyone. You don't have to make eye contact with anybody if you don't want to. If you're like uncomfortable with the whole prospect, there's a lot of ways to get it that can make you more comfortable. And as far as I'm concerned, anything that gets you there is a net benefit to your life. So we're glad that they have so many different ways to do it. And it can be more affordable. You can start communicating with a therapist in under 48 hours. It's a really great way to access therapy, which can be monumentally beneficial to your life. Not the only one, but one of many and a really good one and an accessible one. Totally. And we love that they're sponsoring the show.

And if you go to betterhelp.com slash JJGO, you're going to get 10% off your first month. That's B-E-T-T-E-R-H-E-L-P dot com slash JJGO for 10% off your first month. This podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Jordan, I also want to mention something because the holidays are around the corner. Yes, please. I have my own store. It's called Home Depot. So if anybody out there is looking for just strings of lights or inflatable snowmans... Can I still get the 12-foot skeleton or is a halloween only kind of thing no we carry that we carry that year round a lot of people don't realize that we carry that uh year round but uh

you know it's we adjust it a little bit for different holidays just throw a santa hat on that dude you know yeah or put a tree on there for arbor Day. Sure. You know, tree hat? Yeah, Lincoln hat. Skeletons love fucking tree hats. Yeah, skeletons love tree hats. I'm actually the proprietor of the Put This On Shop. It is a vintage and antique store on the internet at putthisonshop.com. We sell all kinds of wonderful things for fancy lads and for others. So I'm looking at the store right now.

There's a couple of really beautiful blankets from long ago. There is a lot of pocket knives, got a lot of pocket knives going on in here. I have some, oh gosh, something that i really love is this uh mirror that advertises american fashion hats it's like from the 1930s 1940s this thing's beautiful put this up in your house people are going to be people are going to be loving on it all day long just rubbing their just rubbing their bodies all up and down it like a like a um uh like a chamois cloth yeah chamois is the word i was looking for but yeah i mean everything from uh everything from jewelry to uh little house things um if if there's somebody in your life that needs a gift uh i i would love for you to go to put this

on shop.com and grab something for them. Jordan, if you're lucky, maybe this year is the year that you get this t-shirt I have in the store that says Laguna Beach on it. And then it's just got a steam train. Wow. You know, the universal symbol of the Orange County beach town that has no trains in it and is notoriously hard to get into and out of Laguna Beach. There's a train that goes to Laguna Beach. Is there really?

Yeah. We've, we did, I did field trips there as a kid. Okay. Well, that's what the picture of the train is then probably. It's fun.

It was fun. It was a fun, you could get on it at San Juan Capistrano. Oh, well then go to, go see the swallows. Then go to the, put this on shop.

I put this on shop.com. Uh, then ride the train down to laguna beach and visit my aunt bally sounds like a fun day yeah well it's probably a you're probably gonna want to have an overnight you want to spend the time with the swallows yeah see what see and with bally see what they have to offer because what you know bally and art you know her her partner art they're gonna probably want to have you over for dinner yeah that's i mean yeah and it's just it's polite they cooked you know yeah and you know you her partner, Art, they're going to probably want to have you over for dinner. Yeah. That's, I mean, yeah. And it's just, it's polite.

They cooked, you know? Yeah. And, you know, you just bring them something from the Put This On shop. We also have ALF cards. PutThisOnShop.com. Buy your holiday gifts there. That's it.

Okay. We'll talk to you more in just a second. I'm Jordan Jessica. Love you, love you, love you. Love you, love you, love you. Love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, I'm Jesse Thorne, America's radio sweetheart. Jordan Morris, boy detective. And this is excitable John Flansburg. He is. He's pumped up on bean juice, folks. Glug, glug.

Mr. Excitement. Coming in hot. Throw it down. I have to say, John, you've got a classic thermos there, but you're drinking out of a standard mug, not the top of the classic thermos. It's in the dishwasher. Okay. Fair enough.

Ooh, it's in the dishwasher. Oh. You've got a... Coming in hot. We've got a request from Johnny at Lompoc. He wants to hear classic mug dedicated to Sally

somewhere on the outside. Hey, Drew Barrymore, are you babysitting? Do you like scary movies? And also, where's the thermos cap? Yeah. You have to heat up the inside of the thermos before you put the coffee in there so it'll stay hot longer. Pour some boiling water in.

That's my tip to you on love fm i don't know remember remember when the goth lady from our college radio station got like a two foot tall black rose made out of toilet paper that was sent to her by a fan who was in jail yes that was amazing i do that was one of the most that was sent to her by a fan who was in jail. Yes. That was amazing. I do. That was one of the most, that was the best thing that happened to us in our entire college career, I would say. I'm really trying to catch up with that imagery.

It was gorgeous. I mean, it was spectacular. It was stunning. A black rose, 18, like literally probably 18 inches tall. Right. Gorgeous black rose. Her name was DJ Victoria, if I remember correctly. Came to her from an inmate who had made it for her because he listened to her at night

in his cell. They had transistor radio or whatever, picked up our signal. And presumably the prisoner was himself a goth. And he made this, it was one of the most spectacular things i've ever seen uh it was under glass that was made out of plastic that i don't know what it was from but something but the rose itself was made out of toilet paper colored with colored presumably with markers like moistened and colored with markers maybe um and it was absolutely beautiful it was totally amazing it was in the lobby of our radio station for years thereafter uh an extraordinary achievement we never got any jail mail while we worked there i know on a single piece of jail you'd think that that's what prisoners would be into listening to at 7 30 in the morning just our bullshit

whatever the fuck like oh great they're interviewing dick dale the king of the surf guitar everybody gather around oh and then some clumsy prank calls afterwards yes please thank you very much uh when something momentous of prank calls yeah when something momentous happens to you give us a call 206-984-4FUN or or just send us a voice memo at jjgoeatmaximumfun.org. Someone who has done that is this person, Brian Fernandez, our producer, who's going to press play on the call at this time. Hi, Jordan, Jesse, Jess, and Sunny D. This is Bailey calling from Seattle with a momentous occasion, which is that I found out that my friend Ellen from CrossFit listens to Jordan Jesse go. She said she doesn't understand why people like all those smart podcasts.

She likes stupid shows about nothing, like this one. And it was perfect. like this one and it was perfect and if our performance ever returns we now have someone to go to a live show with together get dressed every day bye hey Jordan Jesse sunny G and guest I'm gonna guess one well then this is our one calling from Seattle Washington with the Momentous Occasion. I just met another Jordan Jessie Go fan in the wild. We've actually known each other for a little bit now, but I didn't know she was a fan of the podcast, too. Turns out she did from finding my tweet exchanges with Jessie, but I had no idea. So I'm super excited to have found another fan of the show because the last

time you guys were in town, I had to go see you by myself. Maybe now I'll have a friend to go with next time. You guys can go on tour. Thanks. Love you guys. Bye-bye. I got to tell you this, Jordan. Yes.

Would you say that the number one quality of our show, Jordan, yes, you go. We've been doing this podcast, what, 12, 13, 14 years, something like that? Yep. Would you say the number one quality of this show is its non-recommendability? I mean, I'd say the number one is it's to get people pumped for CrossFit. Right. Okay. So the top two that we have

a certain y'all ready for this quality there's no question about that we are a high nrg podcast but beyond that would you say that the main thing about this show is that if you were going to see us live rather than introduce someone to it you would just go by yourself yeah jordan jesse go live shows where most of the audience is there by themselves um john i feel like i've had this i've had this experience being a they might be giants fan like when you learn that like a friend that you've known for a little while also likes they might be giants it's a pretty fucking mind-blowing experience. And then you're like, well, now I like this person forever.

But lots of people like They Might Be Giants. There's only 30 or 40 Jordan Jesse Go fans scattered across the CrossFits of this great nation. Just whipping those ropes up and down. Everybody else is listening to Rogan. But yeah, but I have had this. I have had this i have at this it's a it's it's one of those things where it's like oh you can like i don't know it brings you together with the person a little bit more you guys like rogan too oh yeah hell yeah bro yeah

i i know very little i know very little about about rogan but the little i hear it sounds yeah he was good on news radio i think i as podcasters, we are kind of obligated to at least acknowledge Joe Rogan. Right. You have to kind of... To diss him is to destroy yours. That grenade is going to blow up on you. Yeah. Yes, exactly.

I actually found myself trying to say something just sort of trying to frame something cultural while talking about adele the other day and realizing that i'm like alienating 80 of the people listening to what i'm saying that you know they're just like most most thoughtful people just have fond feelings for Adele. Yeah, right. And that's how she enjoys the total incredible success that she has. It's like, you know, she's just a likable, extremely talented person. Yeah. And so to say something about, you know, that kind of thing, like Adele, is just like,

sort of like show business suicide, you know? Adele is just like, it's sort of like show business suicide, you know? Like if you say things like Adele, what you're referring to is things that people range on a scale of one to 10, liking six to eight, just things pretty much everybody pretty much likes. Yeah. Yeah. And they're very, but they're very few things like that in culture in general. Like most things are, you know, the spicy mustard equivalent. You know, I think that's the thing that you were saying about They Might Be Giants. It's like, you know, I think one of the things that's good about the project that we're in is that we are not for everybody. But it's not to say we're against most people.

It's just we're just doing the thing that you know we do uh but uh but joe rogan man sounds like that guy's a nut i mean yeah guy's a little bit of a nut a real a real nut i like i like i like that that's like the kindest way to describe his effect on society. He's like, this guy's a little nutty. He's got a little true loose. You know, short time, no time. I've never heard a word the man said except that he has COVID, but he's treating it with joke medicines, so everything's going to be okay. He's treating it with flipping a tire back and forth. Yeah.

Sorry, not to insult our CrossFit fans fans of whom there are apparently many yeah um yeah it's one of those things too it's the two and they just uh yeah it's one of those things where it's like i i realize we kind of have to like but like he will he will be a topic of joke that we can and will have to end up making on this show. And there's a point to where I'm like, boy, should I listen a little bit for more joke polls? No. All my Joe Rogan joke polls are just based on having a friendly acquaintance with his old producer in 2012. Everything else since then, it's really just a vague awareness of his, the shininess of his head and the fact that I think he's like 60.

Yeah. But isn't there a component to his place in the culture that in some weird way he, not to make a tortured vaccine analogy but he's kind of inoculated himself from a lot of uh criticism from culturati people because he's so in the same world as a lot of i mean he comes out of stand-up comedy right like he basically is i think he has inoculated himself from criticism by being the classic i'm just asking questions guy uh right he is a true i'm just asking questions guy i'm open to all ideas guy doesn't do a lot of advocacy just does a lot of inviting evil people on to just hear what they have to say.

That's the main, like, I don't know that he is necessarily personally pushing for that much evil stuff as much as he is, um, as they say, platforming, right.

Platforming. But John, I think that I do think you have, you have an interesting point in that, like there is a class class there's a class of like you know pop culture fan a certain class of nerdy pop culture fan that will just always have a warm feeling about him because of news radio because he was on this classic like comedy nerd thing but you know it's like you know the people listening you know to him now for

ketamine advice like you know it's like how it's like how like the world's breaking bad fans probably never watched mr show and just know bob odenkirk from that you know but there's always you know breaking bad is not a bad thing it's a good thing so yeah it's not a perfect analogy but like i would listen to i would listen to bob odenkirk's ketamine podcast sure yeah be funny if he would periodically yell in a funny way or sing in a way that's like not that good but you still like it i took some salvia and went into the center of the universe in just five minutes remember when i came on screen in little women and it blew the mind of two people in the theater that blew my mind yeah i did basically do one of those

like three stooges run around in a circle when bob odenkirk came on in little women yeah we were all we were there was a class of like you know late 30s white guy who we all did the leonardo dicaprio point at the tv meme right but little women but uh but do you feel like bob odenkirk is now testing us with like he did that action movie where he got all ripped and stuff that was amazing oh nobody maybe yeah yeah Maybe, yeah. Yeah, I mean. That was really like, does he have conversations with his agent that are like, okay, the little women thing,

that shook people up, but let's take it to the next level. When, I loved being in Little Women, but I don't think I punched enough throats. Right, that only took me a week. I need to commit to something, you know, months of training for something that

will completely confound all the people who have supported me for so long it's i mean that that's amazing when greta gerwig was on uh bullseye for little women um i asked her i mean i basically said like how'd you end up casting bob odenkirk in that part? Like, did this make it to air? Yeah, it felt off the wall to me, but he was great. You know, I was like, wow, well, he was perfect. So, and it occurred to me like, oh, he's actually pretty famous now. So it's not that off the wall. It just feels that way to me.

But her response was basically just like, don't you wish he was your dad? And I was like, oh, good like oh good point yes i do of course yeah 100 uh brian we got another call in there hi jordan jesse and i am pretty sure the um raised corpse of pope john paul ii yes j JP2. I have a momentous occasion for you. I actually owe you an apology. I should have called this in a couple of weeks ago. That's my bad. But a couple of weeks ago, I was waiting in the drive-thru at Taco Bell,

and I was right in front of a bus stop, and a guy in, like, construction gear got off the bus, and then right in front of the bus stop, there was, like like a cement divider with a box of donuts on top. And so anyway, the guy just gets off the bus, sees the box, opens it, takes the donut, closes the box, and then walks away. I think this guy just found a box of donuts and went for it.

And I think he's my hero now. And I kind of, that's how I want to live. I just want to accept the donuts as they're given to me. Anyway, that's it. It was an amazing thing to watch. Love you. Bye. I understand wanting to transform that into a philosophical moment.

Because it really, if that's what was actually going on, it would be a beautiful metaphor for accepting the gifts that life offers us. But I think this is something called geocaching. Right. Yeah. Also, I think worth mentioning that I think this is our second recent call that happens in the drive-through of a Taco Bell. Yeah. I mean, fucking get dressed every day, you know? Yeah. I had to get dressed. I had to get dressed every day. Just so you know, John, our motto for 2021 is get dressed every day. Oh, I'm a firm believer in that. Make your bed, get dressed every day, pretend it's all normal, even though it's the same.

I have to relate this story. I don't know why this speaks to me after hearing that story. But years ago when I was living in Williamsburg in Brooklyn, Williamsburg was not the Williamsburg that it is now. Williamsburg is basically like an extension of the St. Mark's cultural destruction system. But it was at a time when if I saw somebody under the age of 40, I would stop them as they got off at the Bedford Avenue station and say, maybe we should be friends. Because there just wasn't anyone around. It was the most low population density. It was half industrial, half immigrant population that didn't move in and out of the neighborhood. So it was just a very, very low key place to live. And one day I'm coming home from work on the L train, and there's a guy wearing, I can't remember if it was like a yellow suit or a white suit,

but he basically was kind of in that Tom Wolfe uniform, that most impossible, unlikely Tom Wolfe uniform. And I was just like, who is this man? Like, what life is he living that he's wearing white clothes in New York City where white clothes don't last? Like, you can't do a full subway ride in a white suit and expect to get away clean. And so he's going, you know, we're going like 3rd Avenue, 1st Avenue. And then it's like, oh, we're off. We're, you know, underneath the East River. we're going like 3rd Avenue, 1st Avenue. And then it's like, oh, we're off. Underneath the East River, we're going to Brooklyn. The guy in the white suit's going to Brooklyn with me. I'm like, OK, cool.

And then he gets off. And then Bedford Avenue, I get off the subway. He gets off the subway. He's going up the Driggs Avenue steps. I'm going up. I was like, oh, my god. Who is this man? And, you know, he looks like the guy in the, what is it?

Like the Curious George book, you know? He's the man with the yellow hat. Yeah, yeah. It's like, and so he goes into the, he goes, like, he's going into the deli. I'm going into the deli. And sure enough, he buys a six-pack of Zima. Yes. This is like the one year that Zima is commercially available in stores. I mean, it was a startup thing.

And he gets that. Like, I'm getting my little piece of mozzarella or whatever. And then I follow him out of the store. And it's in the brown paper bag. That's the only thing he got. He pulls one of the bottles of Zima out of the thing or a can or whatever, cracks it open and just pounds it back. And I was like, this is like the complete package. This guy is living in a novel of his own creation.

You know, like white suit, not enough. Got to get day drunk on SEMA. Wow. Did you even, at the time, did you even know that it was Rudolph Giuliani? Like,

did you recognize him? I, I did actually meet Rudolph Giuliani once walking. I was running down sixth Avenue, in the guitar district of New York that no longer exists. And I was doing the psycho thing. This is such a psycho thing. I was trying to just get through. So you walk right alongside the building, and you can pass all the people.

And I'm coming around the corner on 6th Avenue to some street. And right in front of me is Rudolph Giuliani, who's running for mayor. And they're doing the same thing. They're doing like him and his security guard doing the psycho running along the side of the building. And to get around him, I did the thing. I did the shake the hand and then pull him to the side. There you go like that which is which is like such a politician thing to do and i did it that we don't you know it's like

you know nice nice nice to meet you mr giuliani like and now i'm going to carry on and then you both and then you both pounded a zima yeah yeah exactly high fives, 206-9844-FUN. JJ Go at MaximumFun.org for your voice memos. We'll be back in just a second on Jordan, Jesse Go. Hey, I'm Dan McCoy. I'm Stuart Wellington. And I'm Elliot Kalin. Together we're The Flophouse.

A podcast where we watch a bad movie and then talk about it. Movies like Space Hobos, Into the Outer Reaches of the Unknown and the Things That We Don't Know, the movie, and also Who's That Grandma? Zazzle Zippers, Breakdown 2, and Backhanded Compliment. Elvis is a Policeman. Baby Crocodile and the Happy Twins. Leftover Potatoes?

Station Wagon 3. Herbie Goes to Hell. New episodes available every other Saturday. Available at MaximumFun.org or wherever you get your podcasts. Bye! MaximumFun.org or wherever you get your podcasts. Bye. Bye. Hi, my name is Graham Clark, and I'm one half of the podcast. Stop podcasting yourself. A show that we've recorded for many, many years.

And at the moment, instead of being in person, we're recording remotely. And you wouldn't even notice. You don't even notice the lag. That's right, Graham. And the great thing about this. Go ahead. No, you go ahead. OK. OK, go ahead. And you can listen to us every week on MaximumFun.org. Or wherever you get your podcasts. Your podcasts. Hey, gang, this is Jordan. Some folks have been asking me if they could get signed or personalized copies of our bubble graphic novel for the holidays.

So I was able to find a way to make that happen. I am partnering with the good folks over at Book Soup, a great local indie here in LA, to get out signed, personalized copies of the bubble graphic novel. They ship anywhere in the world, so no matter where you live, you can get one of these bad boys. You just go to booksoup.com, click on signed, and I will put whatever you want to in your book. Jordan, Jesse, go inside jokes. Cotton Candy Randy inside jokes. A heartfelt personal message to a friend or loved one. Anybody you think might like a little sci-fi or comedy in their life for the holidays, Bubble's a good choice.

BookSoup.com, click on signed, or it's my pinned tweets and it's in my Instagram bio. So if you got a little holiday shopping to do, consider a signed personalized copy of Bubble. All right, back to the show. La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la. It's Jordan Jesse Goh i'm jesse thorn america's radio sweetheart jordan morse boy detective and silent john flansburg jordan you interviewed john for the public radio program bullseye yes i interviewed uh john and his bandmate, John Linnell, for Bullseye.

It was a great thrill. I hope I kept my cool. I'm basically a lifelong They Might Be Giants fan at this point, and I wanted to be a professional music major. When you say that, do you mean that death is nigh for you? Oh, yeah. Here it comes. Sweet release, baby.

The tiger's coming. there it is it's it's john's it's john's taxidermy weasel tiger and jesse's jesse's kid here with the scythe uh yeah and i and i was so so so thrilled to to get to talk to you guys for Bullseye, and I'm actually thrilled to get to talk to you now in this more casual context. So yeah, I hope I didn't seem like a total, just like fawning dork. I didn't want that to be the case. No, you held it together perfectly. But yeah, it was a lot of fun, and we talked about your new album and art book called book which is like both the album and the accompanying book are fucking awesome and people really need to check it out i don't i don't think i can do a good job describing the book that comes with book can can you describe it really

quick because it's uh yeah it's kind of a miraculous fantastical thing. All my taxi driver pitches are kind of just fully descriptive. It's a 12 by 12 hardbound cloth covered book with 144 pages of art photography and lyrics. The art photography is by this super talented young guy named Brian Carlson, who's a street photographer in Brooklyn and went to my alma mater, Pratt, actually. And the graphic design is done by Paul Sayre, who is a superstar in the world of graphic design. And he did it all on an IBM Selectric typewriter by hand. And he actually was alone in a house that he had just purchased but had not had any furniture put into it and i had a number of conversations with him over the course of the month that he was typing up the book uh where uh you know i wondered if he had a little framed portrait of jack nicholson shining

sitting next to him can i recommend something jordan because i think probably yeah in our listener base it's primarily going to be uh girlfriends from uh crossfit but there's probably a few college radio hosts out there just i'm just guessing there's a few people doing college radio in our audience safe guess yeah can yeah. Can I just recommend? They might be giants have a parallel career making all ages music or children's music. So you got your alt-rocks legend career. You got your goofy music for kids and their family's career. And from my experience, you need to fill some time on your college radio show,

throw on that song about robots in the future time, children will work together. Robot parade. Yeah, robot parade. Fucking love that shit. Cyborg. Continue to eat up two minutes of time on your college radio show. No situation where robot parade isn't appropriate. Drop that in. And it's sort of like how you can play Love to Love You, the 12-inch of Love to Love You by Donna Summer if you need to go to the bathroom. If you just need to get from 58 to 60

on your hour-long show, just drop Robot Parade. Just fucking throw the mic on the ground and walk the fuck out. Let the next host come in. Jesse Thorne, I've got to ask you a question. You know, I did some personal research for this show before coming on it. First of all, I got to say that opening music, I remember that from my childhood. I can't remember the name of the vocal group that did it. Love You by the Free Design?

Is that what we're talking about? Yeah. Free Design, Free Design, yeah. I found that song creepy when I was a child. I find it creepy now. It's extraordinary. But I have to ask you, you know a lot about all sorts of different kinds of music. And I completely respect that because I also have very lowercase c Catholic tastes. But I have to ask you, Catholic tastes. But I have to ask you, how do you have the working knowledge of the extended Insane Clown Posse musical universe? Well, I think Jordan and I both read an entire book

by Nathan Rabin that was 50% Insane Clown Posse content, 50% fish content. Yeah, Nathan Rabin, a great podcaster and culture critic dude, he wrote a book about what he considers to be the two most joked about, you know, tribes in music are Insane Clown Posse fans and fish fans. Right. And I kind of like, kind of sort of like I mentioned with Joe Rogan in that like I realized at a certain point that like Insane Clown Posse was a fun area to joke around in but I didn't feel like I had enough pulls so I'm just being a fan of Nathan's I'm like well this is great I can

read this book by a great writer and also get some pulls get some ICP pulls um but yeah I don't know it's fascinating yeah I get I don't put on icp music a lot around the house but like no it's very bad to me to my taste it's very bad it's a fascinating subculture but the fact that they're they're like their planet is strong enough that they have there's 20 other bands or like 50 other bands yeah that are doing a kind of similar thing that's just as like horrible and wrong. I mean, it's just, you would think like that little thread would die right there. You know, like there is no next Insane Clown Posse, but I guess if you're running a music festival and you got to fill up

five days of... Right. So, okay. So I was going to give an example of a reference or a pull of the Insane Clown Posse that I have, probably because I was at least inspired to look at their videos on YouTube because of Nathan's book. It's a song called Juggalo Island. It's sort of like a fantasy about what if there was an island, a tropical island that only had juggalos and jug lights on it. But I was worried. I was pretty sure it was called Juggalo Island, but I wasn't 100% sure. And I didn't want to say it wrong. We have some juggalos in our audience, not as many as CrossFit people, but some, and I didn't want to, I didn't want to get it wrong and, and offend those people. Um, but I, so I Googled insane clown posse Island just to make sure I was not getting the name wrong. This is what people also ask who search for insane clown posse island

where do juggalos live that's the first one um and it says in your heart yeah uh the next one is what is wrong with juggalos? That says, if you click the little arrow to expand it, it says, tendency for violence against law enforcement, innocent civilians, and other members of their group. Just throwing that out there. And then the next question it suggests is what happened to john kick jazz i don't know what happened to him he got out of rapping and switched over to being a dj and doing shows at clubs around detroit if you're wondering that's from that's from uh the hatchet

pedia the juggalo uh the juggalo wiki um so that's what happened to John Kick Jazz. I mean, what's crazy, we've talked about this on the show, but what's crazy about the Insane Clown Posse is, you know, the Insane Clown Posse, from the perspective of a person who likes rap music and like rappers, their rapping is barely competent. Like, their spirit is extraordinary. Their community that they've built is extraordinary. Their spirit is extraordinary. Their like community that they've built.

Is extraordinary. Their rapping is not strong. And you know the idea of them is incredible. Like the makeup and the whole deal. It's all really something else. It's an extraordinary achievement. But they're not good at rapping. But what's interesting is.

Because they have this world. Just. And they like know about good rappers. Like there is a world of like. what's interesting is because they have this world just, and, and they like know about good rappers. Like there is a world of like insane clown posse rappers who wear face makeup and are like on their record label and stuff. And then just when they do their things, they'll just bring in, you know,

the DOC, uh, legendary gangster rapper. And just all of a sudden the DOC will have like a long career as a guy who knows the Insane Clown Posse. Like gangster rap fans won't buy tickets to the DOC concert, but Insane Clown Posse fans will.

And that is kind of amazing and wonderful. Like that's really great that like these like, you know, seminal gangster rappers from 1989 Cincinnati or whatever get these careers behind the, behind the ICP. That's kind of awesome. It's a world. Plus, you know, we have a friend who's a professional wrestler who wrestles with them

sometimes. So that's fun too. Wow. John, I do want to back up to Robot Parade for just a second before we end. I know we're wrapping up. Don't want to skip Robot Parade. But Robot Parade is now kind of like a TMBG signature song, right? Like, I feel like I've heard Robot Parade live.

There's like a hard rocking version of it, isn't there? The original version we did was not for kids. It was actually we, you know, we, for a while when we were doing incidental music for Malcolm in the middle, the sessions were really, really long. And we would be in with the band working for eight hours or something like that. And at the end of it, we would just kind of goof off and just make stuff up. And we had the vocal going through the effect that's on the record, the really crazy sort of like, it's an octave, it's a fifth below and like a fourth above or whatever. So it's just making this crazy chord of everything that I'm singing.

And everybody was listening to that. So the robot sound was informing everybody's mania. And that turned into this super... Our guitar player has the ability to shred. And Dan Miller can actually do that stuff that there is no place for it in anywhere in the world uh so it's like so uh the fact that he just finding him a vehicle where it was safe to be himself and and share his inner shredding person was yeah that was you helped him during the robot parade exactly exactly so it was you know it's sort of like you know the same way you know it's like it's a fellowship you know i fucking love john i love robot parade so fucking much yeah i love that shit so two two two little instructions for our listeners moving forward check out the various versions of robot parade the one for kids

and the one that has shredding on it yes both very good yeah um and check out the album book and the accompanying book both are totally awesome i've had the album on uh basically since i've got it and uh yeah it's just been brought me a lot of joy it's a terrific album and they might be giants is one of my favorite bands of all time yeah i would also say ask around at crossfit Just see what podcast people are listening to just in case. Just in case. Put it on. You listen. I know people.

What are you working out to at CrossFit? Probably Lizzo. Probably Lizzo's on the CrossFit playlist. Possibly Lizzo. Yeah. Machine Gun Kelly probably on there. Throw on Jordan Jesse Go. Mix Jordan Jesse Go in there.

If you have a DJ or CrossFit, have them do a blend. You know, throw a classic beat underneath it, you know, grinding or something like that. Yeah, if you can please, if someone can send us a video of people flipping tires while this show plays in the background.

Brian will send you a t-shirt. Well, John, what an honor it's been to have you on the program. Thank you for taking the time. John Flansburg of They Might Be Giants, their brand new album and book is called Book. They're headed out around the world right this very moment, basically,

to entertain you. Thank you guys so much. Thank you. This has been a pleasure. It's like being inside my podcast extended universe. It's been more fun than listening to a Criterion commentary track. I'm flattered. That's the funnest thing of all.

We look forward to continuing to talk to you every four and a half years through the rest of our career, as we have done since we were 19 or whatever. I really appreciate it. I really appreciate it. Jordan, Jesse Go, produced by Brian Sonny D. Fernandez. Valerie Moffitt is on the live stream today.

We have theme music that is deeply upsetting to John Flansburg. It's called Love You by The Free Design, courtesy of The Free Design and Light in the Attic Records. You can find us on Twitter

at Jordan underscore Morris at Jesse Thorne. You can find us on Facebook at Jordan David Morris and at put.this.on hashtag your tweets hashtag JJGo you can find us on Facebook

facebook.com slash Jordan Jesse Go and look that's enough different shit oh reddit maximumfun.reddit.com yeah okay that's all we love you goodbye goodnight Jordan Jesse Go flip a tire maximum fun.org comedy and

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