Podcast: The Ride - Disneyland’s New Turnstiles

Episode Date: February 28, 2025

Disneyland recently installed new technology that will change the way guests enter the park forever! Prepare to be informed and entertained as PTR breaks down this exciting news! "Mickey Mouse Disco" episode is up at: Patreon.com/PodcastTheRide FOLLOW PODCAST: THE RIDE: https://twitter.com/PodcastTheRide https://www.instagram.com/podcasttheride BUY PODCAST: THE RIDE MERCH: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/podcast-the-ride PODCAST THE RIDE IS A FOREVER DOG PODCAST https://foreverdogpodcasts.com/podcasts/podcast-the-ride Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Forever Dog Warning the following podcast may contain pleasant little welcome chimes shoe sole material investigation a long diversion about Vivian Vance's jewelry and clear door talk all that plus we stroll through the new Disneyland turnstiles on today's podcast, The Ride, where we know something that never goes out of style is going in and out of turnstiles. I'm Scott Gairdner, joined by Mike Carlson. I don't know why the man Jason Mraz popped into my mind, but it felt like a rhyme, a Mraz rhyme or something. You were reading some of his poetry.

I don't know why. I don't even begin to know why that's the case. I'm not familiar enough with the Mraz body of work. I'm not really either. I don't think to know that. I don't know why I said that. I'm not either. Listener, if you know, or if Jason Sheridan knows,

him being a fellow Jason, are you familiar enough with the body of work? I'm not, but I will say Disneyland is a place you can see fireworks from the freeway. Is that something from Jason Mraz? Isn't that a line? Isn't that a Mraz line? Again, I'm not the person to ask. I think you are the Mraz expert here.

Okay. Right? He sings The Remedy. Oh, yeah. I know that it's about not worrying your life away. Besides that, I don't know. Well, yeah. The Remedy is the experience?

Is that what he says? It's a dangerous liaison. Look at this. This is the most music knowledge he's had so far on this whole podcast. Well, that was in the college zone. That was when your music aperture opened up, the 10 months of new music. That's right. Meraz is right in the zone there.

But the one song, I think. Yeah. The remedy, yeah. Well, that's the the although we had a bigger one well they had the hats you know we were all like oh whoa what are those hats he did have the hats um yes well but you know not to distract too much because we i do want to get into today's topic which is the uh the disneyland uh if you know this maybe you don't know this if you're not on the West Coast, but the Disneyland has been redoing its entrance plaza. It's been redoing.

Is that what is that even the right term? Entrance plaza? That might be like what's between the gate, the literal gates, you know, and we we we have the second gate, but we don't do a lot of talking about the actual gates, which are really first part of your theme park experience right and uh they're brand new at disneyland they opened earlier this year uh they cost 4.8 million dollars and it's um 38 new uh entry gates so it's all it's a whole new experience as you enter them i feel like we haven't done enough gate talk on the show in general we've talked about universal which gives like they do they're like put your little finger on the dirty little circle or dirty little oval and above your dirty germs all over everybody that's been there's like during the day's germ one yeah put your finger on but we haven't really talked enough about you know all the different

things magic bands entryway and disney world which like that is kind of supposedly in disneyland yet but i haven't tried it. I haven't bought one. You can use a newer one there. You know, when we were down at Universal Orlando in 2023, they had some of this facial recognition.

Oh, yes. And that's an aspect of this. I don't know if that's up and running yet, but I think there will be a facial recognition component. I think currently they're having cast members on their phones scan you in and then automatic gates open. That's part of the new – it's not the like metal poles, whatever you want to call it, that spin around. It's now these plastic gates. And I think currently cast members are helping with this, but I think the idea is that eventually it'll just be a self-serve thing and that they'll monitor that via scanning your face.

And so Universal's been doing that for a little while then. They were testing it, at least I think it was. So we don't know if they've instituted the facial recognition. Yeah, I don't know. They were testing it for sure. They were live testing when we were there and i gotta say i i i wasn't really a fan of the fingerprints i'm certainly not a fan of the facial recognition i was wondering where you kind of gives me the creeps you know yeah

how long do they hold that data like what forever we're just giving all our data away to all these companies they did have our face already because they would take the picture for many years. That's true. So you would see the picture in there. And I think we discovered on some fine print recently that they have the picture, I think, for like seven years and then they have to update it. There was a time limit on when you have to refresh that picture. And it's more frequent with kids.

Yes. Kids have to update their photos more often because of the rate that kids change and grow at, obviously. What is everyone's favorite way to get into a theme park? Is it, mine is Magic Band. That's my favorite way. There's something class. Hello?

Whoa. What? Hey boys. What's going on here? Griffin? Griffin Newman? Griffin's here all of a sudden. Griffin, what's up?

Wait, wait, what the hell? We didn't even know you were in town. What's going on? Are we doing a main feed episode. Griffin, what's up? Wait, wait, what the hell? We didn't even know you were in town. What's going on? Are we doing a main feed episode? Yeah, this is a Disneyland turnstiles. Yeah, we're just doing a, yeah, we're doing a turnstiles. New turnstiles is a main feed episode, huh? Mm-hmm.

How's that going? How are you feeling about this? How's this going? I was just, I introduced a question I felt pretty good about, but other than that, I think it's fine. I was kind of excited to answer that because I kind of liked just the good old fashioned. What's your favorite way to enter a park? Yeah.

Huh? Yeah. Right, yeah. For a main feed episode. Yes. Yeah. Why not? What are we doing here?

What the fuck's the problem with that? Why not? It's our podcast. This topic is feces. It's feces? Feces? It's got mold on it. What do you mean?

That means it's old, I guess, but it's kind of a new topic because it just happened. These are new gates. This is barely a five-minute sidebar conversation and you're overpouring it. You don't do a mainframe episode. You don't understand what this podcast is. We mine a lot out of a little. That's what we've always done.

How is this any different than what we always do? You come in here, you tell us how to run our podcast. I'm shutting this down. It's almost like you flew into a town. You didn't know anything about the operations going on here. You started demanding things. Wait a minute. What did you just say?

What did you yell just now? I'm shutting this down! You're shutting it down? Where do you get out? You're shutting down our party? You don't have the right to do that. What gives you the right to do that? Excuse me.

One year ago, 2024, year of our Lord, Griffin Newman does whatever he wants, wins a Club 3 poll. Oh, that's right. Oh, shit. We have a very productive three-hour-plus pitching session on untitled Jason Sheridan animated project. We've been pitching around. We worked up a big deck. It's been an exhaustive amount of pitching.

There's a bidding war going on for it, too. The town's going crazy. Right. yes. But at the end of the episode, before my title, my power seeded, I slammed a bottle of John Taffer's brown butter bourbon onto the table and decreed that Taffer won. Must happen. Main feed before the end of 2024.

Now, some things went awry. Sure, yeah. Life got in the way. A lot of life got in the way. A lot of crazy 2024. Yeah. Scott, you had another child. Mm-hmm.

I left for a while. My podcast co-host had two more children. Had two of those. My God. My condolences to him. Which basically amounts to me having one child. I think law of averages. There's enough spillage on that that to its scale, one is kind of yours.

Engagements. Mm-hmm. Marriage! What do you mean time for marriage? Are you upset about it? Are you simply mad about this? I'm thrilled for Jason. I'm thrilled for my good friend.

But the point is, it got away from us. Yeah. Oh, shit. I forgot. I forgot. We did give you the power. I'm telling you what gives you the right.

Of course you have the right. Everything in the world gives you the right. It's past the calendar year, but it's time to make it happen. Tap for one. This is Podcast Rescue. This year, 6,500 failing podcasts will close their doors for good. If things don't change soon, Podcast The Ride of Burbank, California will become just another statistic.

In 2017, Mike Carlson, Jason Sheridan, and Scott Gairdner invested their life savings into their dream podcast. Curious theme park fans flocked to this trendy audio hotspot. But today, Podcast The Ride has become a fractured mess of tangents, dry micro-topics, and barely any theme park content at all. You and your f***ing madam need to get the f*** out of here. People just don't know about madam yet. Counterpoint go f*** yourself. You f*** up saying that. Don't even say that. Podcast the Ride is over

$300,000 in debt. With nowhere else to turn the good boys have agreed to bust open the books, pull back the main feed and do a topic the whole audience can agree on. Bar Rescue. Podcasts are a science and no one understands podcast science like griffin newman i don't embrace excuses i embrace solutions griffin

is renowned to all the good boys for having a more successful patreon than theirs you've already served this story five times. It's got bacteria on it. This is Taffer One. Wow. Oh, my God. You seized your power. It's happening. Disneyland's new turnstiles are out the door. They are trash now.

And we are now in the long-discussed Bar Rescue, a.k.a. the Taffer Soad, a.k.a. Taffer One. Taffer One. we are now in the long discussed bar rescue aka the taffer sewed aka taffer one my god the main branding that you that you griffin brought to the table wow i mean i'm freaked out i'm pretty jostled i was i came with page after page of notes about the turn styles yeah we didn't even get to say that they're actually tap styles i actually got right we didn't even get to talk about the turn styles. Yeah. We didn't even get to say that they're actually tap styles. I actually got it. Right. We didn't even get that term out there. Yeah. But I guess now we're talking about like different styles of taps in bars that John Taffer rescues. Tap styles is what we're talking about. Now it's because this episode's become all about tap styles.

The bar styling. Now some listeners, and perhaps these people overlap with the folks who think I should never be on this podcast. I'm going to say they exactly do. Yes. It seems like the type. Have long seemed to stand in opposition to the very idea of Taffer warranting an episode, let alone one that I am enforcing through.

People are coping with some people. Certain people are certain very vocal people are coping with a lot right now. Not only is it you, they also maybe were like, I was kind of excited about turnstiles, and now you've barged in. They were hoping Taffer Club 3, no guest, 15-minute mini-sode. Instead, you are getting main feed as you declared a dab and using the established Club 3 power.

And keep this in mind, if you are a Club 3 member and a Club 3 guest at the same time you, much like Daniel Lewis Lincoln, is clothed in immense power. I don't know if that's the exact quote. I always go for clothed in immense power. Yes, he's very, no, no, no.

No. We're on the world stage now. No, no, no, no. I'm Abraham Lincoln. Only he knows. Only he figured out the real voice. Now, I want to settle some, because I understand this is a sensitive time. Yeah. Yeah.

A lot of talking about Taffer is talking about facing our own depression, right? I think John Taffer, more than anything, is a depression warrior. I think Bar Rescue is a show about depression. Sure. And so i'm just gonna give some hard truths right now to the audience oh my god people who are locked in and excited for turnstiles going oh finally theme park content yeah they're getting back into the theme park minutiae and now it's being interrupted by taffer on main feed with my least favorite

recurring guest i got bad news for you you need to adjust to the marketplace this is no longer a theme park podcast it hasn't been a theme park podcast in a long time. Wow. You have to rebrand, much like Corporate Bar needed to let go of its pirate dreams. Look at the Surrender. Look at their clientele. Look at the clientele of the show. They aren't even theme park people anymore.

You have to adapt to the times. Look at the neighborhood surrounding Forever Dog Studios. 20 bars right there only universal studios is one sure but one theme park one measly theme 20 bars universal bar and grill is right there this bars are the ways to the needs to adapt to relate to bars. Each bar dirtier or flipping concepts than the last. Do you think if you dropped

John Taffer off the back of a plane with a parachute and landed him onto this block. If we did it actually physically? If you hired someone

to be like kidnap John Taffer swat his home. Yeah. I don't want any part of this wink wink. I want enough

like deniability that I bought the plane. Right. Multiple trank darts. Elephant grade. Right. Yeah. Yo, yes.

Sure. Right. Yeah. It takes a lot to bring him down. Get him in a cargo ship. Drop him off with a parachute. He lands on this block. Do you think he ejaculates immediately seeing the amount of bar rescuing he could do with

15 steps here in the Lancashire? Yeah. Yeah. No. Yeah. there are some bars, and the bars do seem in dire need of rescuing, yes. I also, I think another observation he would make is they do the show, they all live in Burbank. Burbank is a college town.

Look how many colleges. You've got Occidental. You've got Glendale Community. L.A. City College or something is right there. Woodbury University. And they aren't serving Woodbury, servicing Woodbury University whatsoever. Talking about theme parks kind of sometimes. Boys, I know the theme park podcast stream has been nice.

But it's just that. It's a dream and it's time to wake up. This needs to be a podcast about underage drinking. Look at your surroundings. I just, you don't, it's easy for you to come in here and say that, but I promised my dead husband that I would start a theme park podcast and that I would keep it about, and I'd keep his belongings around here in memory of him. Let me ask you a question.

You think your dead husband would be happy to see you being a big success? That is what he always said he wanted from me. And let me ask you a question. You think your dead husband would be happy to see you being a big success? That is what he always said he wanted for me. And let me ask you another question. Your husband ever go to college and have some beers when he shouldn't? Sneak into bad bars? Yes, of course. That's how I met him. We were both in a bar at 15. I think he'd be smiling. I think he'd be looking

down on us and smiling if he saw what this podcast could become. Okay. Okay. I'm going to work with you. I want to believe you. I'm going to work with you on this. We're going to do an episode about John Taffer. God damn it. One week later, Scott reinstated Podcast the Right as a theme park podcast.

Podcast the Right has since been cancelled. Six weeks later, the podcast was cancelled. John saddled it with an unusable premise. The full-length New Turnstiles episode becomes the only podcast to get negative listeners. Kettle One pulled their sponsorship. Realized it was doing nothing for them. Kettle One's been keeping this pod afloat for years.

People don't know that. John's major suggestion was to light the logo from underneath. It draws the eye! don't know that john's major suggestion was to light the logo from underneath that's something they're doing now you get with the times it's the 2010s this podcast needs a butt funnel you need to encourage listeners to touch each other there are so many odd like weird little elements like that all those phrases all is like the your draw the eye and stuff that like come and go over the years i think like i went back and watched the very first one and there was so much talk about hidden cameras i feel like in 2000 in the episode of bar rescue yeah yeah or was that the premise then is that we're putting hidden cameras around to watch the

stamp. But then at some point it clearly became they have the most produced reality show cameras in the world in the bar for five hours. Exactly. Where we are not hidden anymore. Yeah. No, I think that's all. Believe it or not, I think some of this might be constructed. I don't know that it it or not i think some of this might be uh

constructed i don't know that it's some of this might be k-fabe i mean my favorite i'll say this my favorite k-fabe moment is like in a more recent episode for a bar called sack down in sacramento sack town yes okay um it's maybe we should call this podcast. I hear that kind of thing a lot of fun these days. All right. Well, I'm open to it. So this isn't like old town Sacramento. It's very touristy area.

How many colleges? A lot of colleges around. What's the median income? Women! Well, okay. Now, here's the thing, though. It's a touristy area, but it it's guy who's an ex-cop and funneled all his money into making a massive sports bar filled with signed jerseys and

memorabilia and it is not doing well because he keeps insisting you don't know if this is a sports town taver's like it's not um but the funniest moment is wait does he mean all of sacramento isn't in terms of like versus like a chicago with a million sports parts that's strange though somebody people like sports he's gonna judge the entire city that no one likes sports in all of Sacramento. So this is a real touristy area, and they say there's a lot of farm-to-table restaurants popping up. Come on. So this is all his thing, but I haven't even gotten to. The recon is they go in with all the people and Taffer does it himself

with his guest, T-Pain. Oh, I have seen this episode. Taffer and T-Pain put on plain black baseball caps, walk in and walk right by the owner who goes like, welcome to our very usually quiet bar. And then later in the episode, they're confronting him. He's like, i didn't even see him come in and taver and t-pain are pretty recognizable like taver is a giant

he's a giant large yeah even if you don't know who he is you would notice when the giant i i'm gonna go one step down this he is the single most physically distinctive man alive. Part of this episode is going to be drilling down into why all four of us felt compelled to do this episode. I think we're going to have to break down because this isn't a Bar Rescue episode. This is a Jon Taffer episode. Why are we fascinated with this man?

Part of it is no one in history has ever looked like him. If Shredder created Toca Rezar and put Jon Taffer next to the two of them, he would look right. They would be three scary guys that could beat up the Ninja Turtles. Can you imagine a NECA Ultimate Taffer? Yes, I could. Oh, jeez. Now I'd be in the NECA game all of a sudden. All the different variations.

Casual Taffer. Chef Wyrd, color scheme Taffer. Yeah. On the Taffer's Tavern website, John Taffer and his furry friend with just a casual dress shirt and one of his dogs. I'm a nice guy, too. I have furry friends. I don't scream at him.

He'd run away. With his rescue pup, Bentley. That's nice. I'm just imagining John Taffer singing the Sarah McLachlan part in the SPCA commercial. In the arms of an angel! They're dying! They're dying every day! You are right that it's one of the immediate things, I think, that locked me into the Taffer universe the first time I stumbled across Bar Rescue is like, is this show actually pretending in the first five minutes of the episode that everyone is surprised when he walks through the door?

Despite there being like fucking sitcom lights, like 20 cameras. Yeah, angles, coverage. Movement. Camera movements. Yes. Not like zooms. Going into the back rooms. A camera went into

the kitchen already a camera's in the office right and as you said that he can walk in with a hat and be like oh i'll have chicken fingers please and you're just like even if you don't know what john taffer looks like in a world where you're pretending these people haven't all signed ndas and they contacted him of course yes begged him to come still if that guy walks into a bar every single person turns around and goes how does someone look like that a giant man walked in a giant unique man walked in he even says a word

yeah can I say my Taffer resemblance I might have said this on the show before and by the way I want to back up a little and talk about our history with Taffer I think that might be important to stay in case people are really like, what's going on? Why is this episode started? And now it's about the guy from Bar Rescue.

That's for the best. No one's making you listen. If you want to hang out and enjoy it. Those customers didn't pay! You didn't get them upgraded. You didn't get them behind the second gate. They're freeloaders. I've always thought that John Taffer looks like, if you look up, not the cartoon character,

but look up Governor Ratcliffe Disneyland. Oh, yes. The villain from Pocahontas. Specifically the walk around? Specifically the walk around. And if you imagine him without pigtails and colonial garb, without his big purple hat, just put the walk-around Ratcliffe

in modern clothes, in big billowy clothes. I think that... And you got to get rid of his mustache proper, but then you leave kind of the unshaven nature. And he's got the big lips. He's got the big angry pouty lips, too. Yeah, yeah. Can you see it?

Yeah. He's a little bit like deborah i'm gonna throw another one out i think he kind of looks like the handsome ogre played voiced by john ham and shrek forever after if you guys want to google john ham john ham now in the universe of shrek this is supposed to be the hunkiest ogre imaginable a hunky ogre yeah okay there's a little bit of the name is brogan brogan right there's a little bit of it yeah yeah just kind of the most face and head you've ever seen, but also like skull, neck, and shoulders all being one. Yeah. There's a, oh my God, there's a side character

in the first Despicable Me that Aaron said that he looks like, and this is going to drive me crazy. Ah, who is it? I put in accountant. I don't think, it's someone with a mundane job. Is it a lawyer? Yes, wait, I think so. What is this character's name? Oh oh it's in the tv tropes oh god uh uh here this guy does anyone know who this is

there's some taff resemblance yeah yeah i'm sorry i don't know despicable me well enough uh um anyway so that's that's first things first which Which animated character does John Taffer resemble the most? I'm glad we're getting past this. I think I texted this to you guys recently. But the realization that his birthplace is Great Neck, New York, when he is perhaps the owner of the world's greatest neck. Yeah. If we're talking greatest as in most does anyone have more as in mass that's the the home of andy kaufman is it not i think that's where andy yeah yeah

two of our greatest performance artists right the ability to walk into a room and make people question reality yeah yeah kind of a real life tony clifton yeah who's stuck that way that's another resemblance is he is john taffer an alter ego of another more like but not like a like a nice figure who we've never gotten to meet and he's playing the long haul then there's a nice meek little guy operating that suit yeah it's great neck that's new y City suburbs, like Long Island area? Nassau County, Long Island. Yes, North Shore. Yes. All right, that explains.

Yeah. That kind of unlocks a lot of the screaming. What about the voice? You get it better now. So let's talk a little bit about how we got here. I think it's a voice we've been doing a lot. I want to say that Mike was the first, but I think it was one voice we've been doing a lot. I want to say that Mike was the first, but I think it was one of those that we,

it like spoke to, it like caused us all to like, oh, that is a shared interest we didn't know we have. I think we've all watched the show and enjoyed the show and enjoyed the explosive presence of this man who comes in and screams at bars until they change their name

and then possibly change the name back three weeks later. So I think this bit was happening for a long time. There was plenty of shut it down. I know one that really lingered was the thing you're obsessed with, Mike, where he yells about the guy's wife. Yes. He yells Harold at the Scottsdale Comedy Club.

This is why your first wife left you. This is why your first wife. He goes, I'm going to be, I rewatch it. He goes, I'm going to be rough with you. This is why your first wife left you. I'm sure someone on the Reddit will be able to carbon date the first time it came up in conversation. Yeah, I'd love to know. I feel like I heard you guys all in real time realize that you shared the interest in Taffer.

And I think pretty soon after that, I messaged and said, I too am obsessed with Taffer. It wasn't a I need to do this episode with you as much as a I endorse the idea that this should be a full fledged episode. Yes, you were supportive of that regardless of participation. I do think there's something here and i think it falls into some of my favorite ptr bits the ability to like drill down into the couple of conversational verbal go-to's of a character and apply that to different subjects right sure yeah yeah the sort of kathy bates like oh boy late shift thing right which is where it helps me i think work out aggression in a way maybe that's true maybe like us all fairly meek men maybe like getting to live right in a kushnik or a taffer for a little bit like helps like get something get some of the inner anger gunk out

and uh you know i don't know this is maybe too inside but the kathy bates character from um uh late shift does that your favorite character to perform on podcasts? Oh, yeah. I feel like I can get lost in that. Yeah, sure. Have you dug down in her recently Critics' Choice Award winning role of Matlock? Now, Jason, I've heard you're exploring CBS's Matlock. The biography of Matlock.

You've been negotiating to watch one episode. me let me tell you i didn't know that was her i only saw the billboards were far away and the other night you said to yourself you tap jane you go who is this fresh face discovery i only saw the ads and then jane last night was like oh um kathy bates just won a big award. And I looked it up. I was like, oh, my God, she's Matlock. I was just saying, who is going to fill Andy Griffith's shoes? I sincerely was saying, who's going to fill Andy Griffith's shoes? Did you say that out loud to Jane?

And then did you say, who's Andy Griffith? She said, please go back to bed. Who's going to fill Andy Griffith's shoes? Your sleeping cap flies across the room like, don't wake daddy. You said that in like an alma mater speech at your high school. Yeah. I look at you at the student body. Which one of you is going to fill Andy Griffith's shoes? You've been waiting 20 long years.

There's a lot of fishing and a lot of cricks to do. Who of you is going to do it? You see a vouchment in theaters. You go, call me crazy. Call me crazy. But someday. I think she's got it. Look, I've clocked a lot of Matlock and diagnosed murder hours when I was a kid of my grandparents.

Okay. Those were the shows they like. And then later on, the short-lived Marshall Law. I don't know if that was short-lived. I think that was maybe by those standards. I think martial law was a law. I think martial law only lasted eight seasons. By CBS standards, you're right, a failure.

Diagnosis murder is 30 years or whatever. Jason, do you know the hook of this new Kathy Bates Matlock? Well, I bet she doesn't take any guff. Mike, do you know where I'm going with this? I believe I know. Now that I say that. Is she a computer simulation? Is she AI or something?

It's some clunky ass convoluted explanation of like she was. I'm going to say this very quickly because I also haven't watched it. But the day it premiered and the show seems to be doing very well. Yeah, it seems like it. She won a Critics' Choice Award. She got up. She said, this isn't just big for me. It's big for network broadcast television.

So she and Tim Allen are saving network TV. They're saving it. Shifting gears is going wild. That's what I read. So Matlock, old folksy lawyer, right? Gentile folksy lawyer. Yeah. They announced Kathy Bates.

Everyone goes, oh, the hook is just gender swap Matlock. We've been here before then the first episode premieres and i see on deadline the shocking twist at end of matlock premiere broke down oh my god right and listeners skip ahead if you don't want to hear if you know jason cover your ears so if people have watched any amount of this show they know what the twist is at the end of the first episode. There is a conceit twist from the get-go that was not in the marketing. Lindsay told me this and I can't remember it. I believe the conceit is, oh, Kathy Bale, I'm just an old lady. I don't know what I'm doing.

Then you find out that she had a close relative, maybe a son, who died due to an opioid addiction. And the law firm that she's working for represented the sackler analogs in this universe and she's like fucking trying to get in from the inside and tear this whole fucking place down oh my god it is opioid crisis revenge matlock with kathy bates using this cover being like i'm on a cbs procedural i'm taking all these fuckers down like i'm not a lawyer before i don't know she's just an angry mom but i'm like there's maybe a little bit of like mush nick in the matlock do you know what i'm saying kush kush nick kush sorry um close enough even i couldn't place it for a second kush nick it's very funny you say that because in the first or second episode of the new hit show that I have watched all of,

Dr. Odyssey. Of course. Spoiler alert, listeners. Dr. Odyssey. Dr. Odyssey is the show about Joshua Jackson playing a doctor on a very high-end cruise ship. Playing? He's the head of medicine. But is he really or he's playing one on a cruise ship? laying but he's he's he's the head of medicine but is he really or he's playing one on a cruise the character is okay okay all right he's a false doctor on a

cruise saying the role okay don johnson's the captain don johnson's the captain and there's love uh boat like guest star roles so like rachel dratch is on one um uh uh the oh god the guy from a serious man michael starbark no the other one richard kind no keep going all right how many serious men can you name malamud yeah uh is on one um but the twist at the end of an episode is Dr. Odyssey reveals he did all this amazing charity work all around the world, but then he's working at a hospital in Massachusetts where he was patient zero for the novel coronavirus. What? novel coronavirus what and he spent a lot of months in isolation like until they could get it the number one first person to get it was number one was dr odyssey and is dr odyssey his real name uh no the name of the ship is the odyssey so they Wu Han. I might say he invented the virus himself. In America, he was patient zero.

So that's the big twist. That's wild. Are you still watching Dr. Odyssey? Well, it's not come back from its mid-season break yet. But you've seen all of it? Perhaps you've noticed Jason has been down in the dumps recently for that reason. For that reason alone. Yeah.

I want to amend an earlier statement jason sure uh tim allen kathy bates and jason sheridan are single-handedly keeping network broadcast television very good yeah how many people are gonna start you know and i saw i was recommended dr odyssey by this podcast and it has been uh i finally understand covid in a way i never did before this is now a podcast about recommending network broadcast television recommending things with approximately 200 times our it has not been a podcast about theme parks and let's get some eyes on these shows if we became a shifting gears recap podcast that's when the money would roll yes and that is when all of america's most important political figures would start appearing on our show. Exactly, yeah.

We'd have to be on our show. You'd get the entire cabinet. And they'd go like, supporting Kath Denning, Sean William Scott. Like, these aren't like spring chickens, you know? What? These aren't fresh new fish. They are not fresh new faces. Spring chickens.

They're pros. Was that also when you saw Kath? Now, who's that on that billboard? Is that a spring chicken or more of an autumn chicken? Yeah. Taffer is, just for me, one of the great Podcast the Ride bit run structure guys. And you'll never devote a full episode to him, but sometimes you'll go into a sidebar of, like, imagine Taffer commenting on this subject or this situation. Yeah.

And it always makes me happy and part of what makes me happy with it is that, and I'm gonna join you guys in this The pressure's on now. The four of us at the table, none of us do an even reasonably good Taffer impression I think that's fair You have fun doing a take on Taffer

There's a game to how to do a Taffer, but like you had James Adomian on here, he does a great Taffer It's a great's a game to how to do a taffer but like you had James a domain on here. He does a great Illustrated what a real one is. Yeah all four of us. I think are hobbyists in the sport of just yelling horse voice Extreme statements. What are you talking about? It's very well observed. I Understand what great neck is as opposed to just general New York you want to have a perspective on the character Dana Carvey George Bush

she was not necessarily funny sometimes you pick one or two things and you do use that as your touchstone exagger You blow it out from there. I just turn them and you wind them up and go. What do you know about impression science? David gives you shit about every goddamn impression you do. I'm shutting you down. Let's compare track records. This one, for me, I have to give my knowledge of, at least at the start,

I will give it to Mike in his tastemaker role like excuse me elaborate please I like what he's saying whatever it is Griffin dropped the bottle at Mike the tastemaker this place is falling apart secure my water bottle

he's trying to compliment me sometimes when mike at least in the past mike would get really into something and like talk about it and show it to you so i remember being over at your apartment you're like have you seen this show and it was you found it either on demand or at the time, it was like 80% of Spike TV's programming. Yeah. And it is addicting. You make Tastemaker for you.

That's what you're saying. I don't know. I don't know. I'm just saying, I've looked at- Life still goes the nation. I don't want not to go on this side, Trey, but I've looked at a lot of numbers involving a lot of puppets and polls lately. And I think Mike, the tastemaker might be a questionable term.

Let's put a big old pin in that one. Yeah. Oh, no. That's the entire episode unravels if that's where we go. Pin for later. You've got Madam Sins to answer for yourself. Pin for later. All right.

I will break it down. I trust my friend's taste. We usually all fancy eye to eye. Hey, don't you have to defend this. I agreed with him. Don't let him bully you. I'll bully you whenever I... That's what I do on the fucking show.

You're going to tell me to not do the thing that I do? What does that leave me with? People love my suggestions. I got to say, Scott's going full physical with his performance. Yeah, yeah. Apologies, I've been banging on the table. Face red, arms flailing. I'm trying to surf the levels on the Zoom.

It's a nightmare. They know what they're getting into. It's a Tapper episode. Everyone trying to lean back from the mics. It's awful for never having an engineer. We should have hired an engineer for this episode. This guy's doing Sonic the Hedgehog recordings in here. What did that?

What the fuck did that mean? That reference was too obscure, even for a currently relevant piece of IP. I'll explain it later. I don't want to name things. We'll put a pin in that, too. Okay, second pin. He made a naughty joke he shouldn't have made. Oh, no. a naughty joke he shouldn't have made oh no um uh i i will say though i showed uh jane a couple

bar rescues last night because she had never seen the show so i showed her she wanted to see i said oh there's some in the san fernando valley there's a couple in burbank so we watched some of those and she got it immediately like she was immediately on board. Yeah, she understood the hypnotic. Did she say who was the tastemaker who showed you this show? Somebody with incredible taste must have made his taste go in front of you. I'm just...

An Olivia Rodrigo concert, maybe? I guess I'll just be the server or waiter goes like, I'm not taking this, and then storms out. But like, I don't need this. No, I like it. Yells back at Taffer.

I like the compliments. Do you, Jason and Mike, or Scott and Mike, excuse me, remember your first exposure to Taffer? How you locked down? Because I'm genuinely struggling to think of when he hit my radar. I was no big fan. All right, I will give some shine to Mike the Tastemaker, I guess. Because I think it was the thing

I just watched a bunch of on a plane once and that was kind of all. I wasn't really watching it regularly. And I guess it is only post Mike the Tastemaker bringing it up and it becoming a runner that now it became like, well, defaults at lunchtime, maybe i throw on the all bar rescue channel on pluto which is just it's great if you don't know about it pluto tv has the right i love every pluto tv channel it doesn't matter what it is but they have such i love blocks there have it's like nick at night

when i was a child for cheaters that i can flip between all cheaters and all Bar Rescue. My God, what a world we live in. Two Star Trek channels. I discovered a Pluto channel the other night that is Cheers plus Frasier. Wow. And I was scanning what was coming up. I love Cheers. And I was like, oh, it's kind of later season episodes.

I prefer the earlier ones. Let's see what's coming up for the next couple hours. Going totally chronological presumably just does all 11 seasons of cheers in order in a row which begs the question are they alternating with fraser days or is this channel 11 seasons of cheers in a row and then like 11 seasons of fraser and then back to the start that's like that's like a full shift of format, essentially. Right. Like every week.

Right. Yeah. Is it every other week between the two shows running in their entirety? I also, now, I've enjoyed Cheers when I've seen it, but I'm no expert. And that's why I'm just going to throw it out. If anybody else has any thoughts on what Taffer would say to the gang from Cheers. Does anything come to mind as what he might criticize? I took some notes.

I was doing some digging in some different areas. I didn't quite make a research fort, but I tried my best. We decided this was not a Spacey-esque structured episode where we're each coming with one piece. Right. We all were just trying to dig around and see if we found some interesting stuff.

I listened to a couple Taffer podcasts. I was trying to get some more backstory. His own podcast? Oh, yeah. I listened to one episode of each of his... Multiple podcasts. He had two podcasts

that both ended. He just signed a deal last week for two new podcasts that will launch later this year. Oh, my God. But he's in between podcasts. Uh-huh.

So I listened to an episode of both. I also listened to Taffer on Rob Lowe's Literally podcast. Wow. And Taffer on the Idiot podcast. episode of both i also listened to taffer on rob lowe's literally podcast wow and taffer on uh the idiot podcast the former nerdist i listened to some of that as well yes yeah and i think it was in the roblo episode actually had the best meat in it but i just need to throw this out

roblo was asking how he got started how he made the transition to tv rather and he said well i was friends with a bunch of the people at Paramount because I used to work with Paramount. And Rob Lowe said, what do you mean? And he said, you know, they had restaurants and stuff.

So I would consult on like Bubba Gump. I was instrumental in Bubba Gump, which you guys knew, right? Yeah. But then him bringing it up as I worked with Paramount for many years. Right. I was like,

Taffer must have fucking consulted on cheers at some point oh he didn't say it and low kind of cut him off once he said bubba gump he was like bubba gump does tom hanks get a piece of that like then he just jumped onto that right sure as we might but yeah you're right you found a because you remember the corporate family yeah paramount restaurant chains right 50 50 shot taffer consulted on Cheers at some point. Did he have anything to do with the Cheers airport bars with the animatronics that got sued?

We need to follow the trail on this. I couldn't immediately find any results. But he didn't say, I worked on Bubba Gump. He said, I worked with Paramount for years. What other Paramount restaurants exist? The Quarks Bar in Las Vegas. Oh my god. Here we go. But that seems like the kind of

shit he would hate. You're dressed up like space people! You look ridiculous! He's not a... I know he's not a Star Trek fan because I listened to his audio book about conflict. By the way, I don't want to cut you off. I just want to... We're all bringing so much to the table that I do

want to remind... For the run time, I think it's important to remember that this is Taffer 1. I think we're all going to get through a tenth of what we're bringing to the table. The power of conflict. I had no idea the power of conflict was on the table. Speak your mind and get the results you want.

Scott, this is why I texted last night. I said, any guidelines for structure? You said free-for-all. Everything's on the table. We're not attempting to get through all of it, but everything was on the table. He uses the famous Star Trek episode, City on the Edge of Forever, to prove that conflict is good.

Whoa. And he says, even though I'm not a Trekkie, he explains that he's not a Trekkie, he uses that episode, very popular, popular famous original series episode to prove that uh i think it's because a war happened they they a war doesn't happen and then uh things go bad so it proves that the conflict is good military conflict is good we should be in every war every we're not in enough wars wasn't roddenberry's whole thing like kind of trying

to make a sci-fi show with as little conflict as possible yes correct that was sort of his like life's a peaceful future yes yeah the vibe is very polite yes there's no money there's no conflict they found it hard to write next generation because he put rules on like the people cannot have conflict and then he dies and then the show gets a little better. Yeah. Like the rules loosen a little bit for what the characters can do. No one wants peace in the Space Federation. He also explains that great music has come out of conflict.

Go on. Including the Rolling Stones, Fleetwood Mac, and even the Beach Boys. He addressed the Beach Boys in his book? Yes. He talks about how the Beach Boys had conflict and they created wonderful music. Although I think the music gets worse the more... Their commercial prospects go down as they're fighting more.

I don't know if that's exact... Yeah, I don't know. That's a mixed bag. But Fleetwood Mac, for sure. Can't argue that. We all know that he started as a drummer, too i have i do know that yes i do have a photo in front of me of him in his band days here is a black and white photo of kind of a little bit of a retro throwback greaser guy young john taffer like a bauman a a John Bowser Bauman. He is very

Bowser from Sha Na Na-esque, I would say. And he, in fact, described this band that he was the drummer of as being a little bit like the Stray Cats. He is after my heart now. He's a set sir. Conflict, sorry, my guess is the ride thrives on conflict. That's why you have one

who doesn't like the Stray Cats, and the others, I don't know how they feel, but it's fun to fight them at the stray cats. You've got to get on board. You've got to rock this town tonight. Not tomorrow. Not in five years. I don't embrace excuses

about rocking this town. I embrace solutions. I embrace the rocking of the town. That photo, he is looking pretty fit and thin. It is alarming how much his neck is still twice as wide as his head. It's an unbelievable. It's very long in this. This shows you that the neck is quite long.

Right. Yes. Yes. It is pro wrestler neck. Yes. It's wild. But I'm like, in that photo, it's like he looks kind of bean Polish. Right, yes.

Where you're like, the neck is not muscle. It is not fat. That is just his basic construction. Yeah. He's sort of built like a popsicle stick man with arms and legs. It's what made me good at observing what happens at bars because my neck allows me to get up above where other people could see I can see everything that's going wrong That's why all the roaches. I could see the bugs in the bottles much wants the bottles lit from underneath But I can't install them I'm too tall somebody's balls gotta go down

In the early um credits opening credits of bar rescue which you see the show change a lot over the years the narrator in the opening credits is so reserved and doesn't really find the full this voice yes yeah but they say something there's a moment in the credits where it's like the bar science from the height of the stools to where your eyes first go on the menu and i'm like i do not remember menu eye lines i see it i don't remember it on a menu they'll have like a little thing in a rectangle and they want your eye to go to that to order that because that's where they usually make the most money and i don't remember if i learned that from john taffer or from one of my other restaurant guys yeah

such as you're never happy with just one type of guy yeah robert earl i don't know i mean i shouldn't say my guys but yeah they dropped that that was like a subtlety in the early opening that just kind of gave way to like just showing people having full meltdowns in the beginning for a while they use that slamming windows and yeah yeah they use that voiceover guy for the john taffer podcast yes which i still has an intro that's very bar rescue ish is it called no excuses that was the first one and then i think the second one was just called the john taffer podcast yes and he has like interviews with people like Guy Fieri or Guy Fieri and Kristen Chenoweth. The one I listened to was is live entertainment coming back with Kara Topp.

Yes. Kara Topp's on that. It's a lot of COVID era stuff. It's a real fucking time capsule in a way that's a little upsetting. It is not a great listen. I listened to, there's an episode of that show. That's the first episode of 2020. 2020 is going to be your year do not embrace excuses he was talking to the virus he's talking and it's just taffer going like i'm telling you this year anything you want to do you can

accomplish it on that show in particular he does a little bit of npr voice which is very unnerving yes he does yeah he's like another guy on the pot he's trying to prove that like i have another moment i'm actually smart very together and very calm you see it i got great feelings about this the economy's in a great place i think divisiveness is down he's got a sidekick on the show his jamie who he goes like chase you know what i'm talking about here isn't chase is that it's not it's not horry it might be corey i think it's corey and he goes corey do you know what I'm talking about here? It feels like people have calmed down. The era of peak divisiveness is gone.

We're all starting to get a lot. It's a lot. January 2020. He goes, people just had Thanksgiving. I think families aren't fighting as much. I watched the Golden Globes. Not too much politics.

That's something you hear. But in this very quiet voice, he's like, 2020, I'm telling you, I think everyone's going to calm down in 2020. My good pal, my good friend, the doctor, got a great job on a cruise ship called the Odyssey. It's going to work out fantastic for him. He just caught a little bug and then he's getting on that ship. Once he works out this cough, it's a billion dollars for this guy. I listened to something in the start of 2023, one of those,

and he is in the same way you're discussing where he's like, everything's going to be good in this year. He starts talking about the great success of Taffer's Tavern

and how many locations they have and how Las Vegas is coming. in January 2020. It's unbelievable. Las Vegas is coming soon. We're rejecting franchise applications.

We can't handle all these requests. I also, I looked at, there is an episode that is October 28th, I believe, of 2020. That is like the state of businesses with President Donald J. Trump. Oh, yes. I was like, fuck, this feels like maybe the most fruitful thing to dig into. And I actually don't think I can listen to 45 minutes of this without having a nervous breakdown oh yeah trump one week before the 2020 election with taffer explaining how america's coming back and it's a lot of like and i need i

need you to promise mr president i need because we need you we need you we need minimum wage so these lazy people he don't get too comfortable well he got he addresses his political beliefs yes in while he does it on the podcast but he addresses political beliefs in the power of conflict he explains that he is a fiscal conservative but he's very socially liberal he explains he supports all the different people i grew up in the rock and roll scene you can't be a conservative and like rock and roll music i mean like the big like sort of formation of the John Taffer kind of like legacy is him becoming the manager of the Troubadour, running the Troubadour for years, right? Yes. And as he always likes to underline, that was the black flag, dead Kennedys.

Yeah. Adam Antony. They are past the, yeah, the Troubadour Famous Nightclub in LA have been around since the 70s, or really like peaked culturally in the 70s with like gentle singer-songwriters. Right. Like the birthplace of James Taylor. He talked about doing an anniversary event where they convinced Ron Statt and Jackson Brown to come back. drummer was overseeing all these early punk guys which just feels like the most incompatible vibe even more so than the like the singer-songwriters yeah he came in not in the early days of troubadour but in the punk era uh dead kennedys and fear he's working with bands like that put the foot

down and be like as he put it you gotta pay got to pay for that steak. And he said all the audiences would fight. Like the Fear fans wanted to crush the ants. They wanted to crush the ants. Oh, that referring to Adam Ant because new wave people hate punk people. So they'd all, yeah, yeah. They'd be fighting night after night. Taffer talking to Lee Ving, who was the lead singer of Fear, is insane to me. I can't even. right but it doesn't make sense i could hear taver definitely like kicking off a fear

style yeah yeah he could yeah he could have been in a punk band too like i wonder if he thought about it then um fuck you i'm only fiscally conservative fuck ronald reagan the socially liberal thing feels like it starts there where it's like, look, as long as you're bringing them in, I don't care. If it's good for business, I don't care. You have to imagine he's seeing these bands every night and being like, I don't fucking get this shit.

But if they respect me and they sell tickets, I don't care! If they aren't being overpoured to! He's name-check checking a lot of these. He's done a couple interviews of this nature and like, wow, just incredible, groundbreaking punk bands and you were around. He's like, yes, but you know who was really great?

You know who I really loved? The Knack. When those guys, when they kicked into my Sharona, let me tell you that, the whole building shook. That bass line, there was magic in that bass line.

So my Sharona was his favorite. I didn't even, yeah, the neck's good, but that's just a funny. Just a funny, of all the ones to shout out, like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's all well and good, but the neck. My Sharona. My Sharona. What were you going to say, Jason? I was going to say, was the Troubadour before or after another L.A. landmark, Barney's Beanery? Well, he started it, I think, I don't know what open when, but his first job was bartender at Barney's Beanery, which is also in West Hollywood. There's a Burbank location, but the original is in West Hollywood. There's a Burbank location, but the original's in West Hollywood. This is notable

as this bar used to be like this was kind of the end of Route 66. Yes. Where this bar was. And then eventually they either opened up other locations or franchised and now they're kind of everywhere. But the first location was in

Radiator Springs, is that right? Barney's oil tree um so so but i'm glad we're touching on this history because yeah so bartender barney's beater and he must have kicked him off like he must have done something right because it's still there uh then like you saw the troubadour through a big wave of success. Then moved to a, you ever heard of this, Jason? Philadelphia nightclub. This is Delaware County. A nightclub called Pulsations. Anybody know about Pulsations?

Yeah, I do. Delaware County is where I grew up, too. Oh, okay. Gotcha. Delco, they say. Delco, yeah, mayor mayor of east town sat there um is does pulsations have a a little friend in there maybe it does do you know about the little it's kind of a big friend like do you know about the robot i actually don't this is my this is

pretty wild that his history and and i'm sure you you know not that we have to justify any connection to theme parks or the things that we're theoretically supposed to be talking about but we do have a pretty good one here Taffer maybe ties back to Cheers Airport Bar and Taffer he might he might certainly ties back to a classic friend of PTO

yes yeah so this nightclub is called Pulsations it was a sci-fi nightclub there was a giant spaceship in it 27 feet in diameter 70 lighting systems in it it would fly over the crowd at an i-beam track people would cry i listened to three different podcasts where he described it and said people tears in their eyes they try to get on it like close encounters. I want to live here forever, they'd say. They want to abandon their families. They didn't know it didn't actually leave.

It was so realistic. They leave Terrigar in the dust. But the main thing is the door would open, dry ice fog, bright lights would blast, and out would come a robot. A robot would come out of the spaceship every night. The name of the robot is Pulsar. And I will let his quote say it. It got so popular that they had a clone built for Rocky IV.

This robot that we've talked about, that one robot. Seiko. Seiko. Seiko. He claims Seiko was made. I think he's wrong and i don't know what's going on taver does seem to be a fabulous and listening to a bunch of different stories i've i've noticed every time the telling changes 25 i heard three podcasts where he said and then they rented the robot from us and that's the robot in rocky four but then if you look it up it says yeah the story

is that sylvester stallone's autistic son encountered a seiko right and it was like something it was like helpful for communication and that's why it's in rocky was a thing like i here's my take on the story as he's presenting it they too found a seiko right and purchased one right or commissioned one but like seiko was a thing that was being made for multiple applications. International robotic, robo, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, international robotronics shop in New York.

Much cooler name. My guess is that he bought a Seiko. He didn't create it at a night club. No. He couldn't have built it. And then when Stallone put Seiko in Rocky 4, he's like, must have taken it from me but sometimes he's saying they cloned our robot sometimes he's saying we rented them the robot yeah oh so sometimes he claims that the robot in rocky 4 is i heard two separate podcasts where he said that this one says

it was so popular connection right that makes sense that adds up maybe i saw now refresh my memory i know we talked about this on the show i think it was in the episode about smart one but what was siko had an epcot connection am i making that or did we why did we end up talking about siko in relationship in the uh that's special though special with danny thomas or is it Thomas? Danny. Danny K or Danny Thomas? Danny. Which Danny? Don't know. I don't remember how we got there.

We ended up with Monami Seiko, the single that Seiko had. That's right. YouTube recommended to me last night. Okay. Okay. I mean, but I, anyway, it's sometimes it's named Seiko, cut out of Rocky IV, but Taffer claims. Well, not cut out of Rocky IV.

Out of some. Yes. The final cut. Yeah. Yeah. But. cut yeah yeah but um so but i have the toy uh i have the toy oh i have the i have the super seven one right yeah because you remember jack's had a prototype but it never got released oh right right they were supposed to do a seiko and a james brown in their second series of rocky four specific figures that's oh yeah because this robot also introduced j Brown in concert. That's a video I watched last night.

So there was an unproduced Rocky IV James Brown action figure that was solicited. That's good. And never actually hit the factory line, unfortunately.

Oh my God. Anyway, so Seiko, according to Taffer, and there's a video of this, you can watch this on YouTube, Seiko's name in this version was Pulsar, and he came out

of a big spaceship, and so says John Taff john taver pulsations it was the greatest nightclub in the world and i am honored to be part of that history the greatest nightclub in the world ever is where you grew up that's right uh seiko by the yeah just confirm it is danny k and also drew barry that's why met seiko at the epcot opening day special they needed a little extra robot help even though that's a robot that would not stay at it so so really if we want again we don't have to but the justification for talking about him on a theme park podcast is that he you know he's an older man at this point he has probably influenced chain crap, robot type, touristy garbage stuff that we love. Yeah, I think so.

Well, and there's another gigantic reason to talk about him, and it is this. I bet you didn't even know that this guy is an Imagineer. Let me prove it. Here we go. I want to thank Disney Imagineering for this incredible Christmas basket and also for making me an honorary Imagineer

thank you Disney done did you know that he is more I think he's more on topic than a lot of things that we talk about he is an honorary Imagineer

this is him at his office and he's got a big he's got a big basket it looks like it has an imagining shirt in it and mouse ears in it uh and uh yeah look this guy who get who is who has the title at disney to make that call for an honorary imagineer just walt only walt so the robot maybe the the Walt robot now has that power. Look at this freezer. Feces. Walt's head. It's disgusting. You're not taking care of it.

His head's not going to attach back to his body. You got Walt next to meat. Nothing. You're storing old chicken in there. The bacteria's getting into Walt's nostrils. You let his soul escape to hell faces

nothing about this restaurant says Tomorrowland it's barely a terrace it's horrible let me here's let's keep going

with the massive Disney connection as if we had to prove any further than that this guy's an honorary Imagineer. This guy, let's quote the man himself. I'm a Walt Disney World nutcase.

The new Tron ride knocks it out of the park. Here's him riding the Tron light cycles. He's a nutcase. We haven't even called ourselves that. No. Here's him in the Millennium Falcon. Look at that. He goes there all the time. He was at nutcase. We haven't even called ourselves that. Here's him in the Millennium Falcon. Look at that. He goes there all the time.

He was at the opening. You know the opening with Harrison and Hamill where they got the cue wrong. And yeah, Harrison banged on the thing all weird. He was at that. He has photos of that. So I think there's a lot of credentials he has here he also credits in general walt disney and and all of their operations with being one of his primary areas of inspiration um walt disney walt disney had an apartment above disneyland where he would watch the entrance gates. The turnstiles, you might. The old style turnstiles.

They weren't tap styles yet. Anyway, he could see the facial expressions of people entering and exiting the park. Disney was the pioneer of reaction management. He created the human transaction experience. What a way. And then he made transactions twice the price. He invented transactions, Walt Disney. That's what gets him really excited.

He hears transactions and then hears- The mouse and the big whale and the roller coasters. Who cares? It's the transactions. I had never heard, I've heard a million times about the Disneyland apartment above the firehouse. I'd never heard it referred to as like rear windows style

and note the beautiful beautiful ladies and hoped that their hubbies were treating them right binoculars in one hand a can of cold denison's chili in the other and he's just scooping. I hope that Taffer buys the apartment above every single bar he's ever rescued. So I can watch their smiling faces. The reaction management thing, he was getting into it in the Hardwick episode where he was saying, I believe, that he grew up with a very emotionally erratic, to say the least, mother. And then he said, from a young age, I learned reaction management because I had to keep her happy. It wasn't something I even knew I was doing. Then later I realized I have a skill for it. And then he said to Rob Lowe, we're both in the reaction business.

And he goes, what do you mean? He goes, the product we're making, we're not in the business of bars or making movies or TV shows. We're in the business of making reactions. The product isn't making, we're not in the business of bars or making movies or TV shows. We're in the business of making reactions. The product isn't the thing we make. It's the reaction that people have to the thing. It's not about making a movie. It's about making a reaction. And then he asks Rob Lowe 20 questions about the scene in Tommy Boy where his shirt gets sucked up the pneumatic tube.

He goes, that's the funniest thing I've ever seen in a movie. How did you do that? I had to sit there in the theater. Oh, the reaction you must have gotten. Now, I heard you were on the Doughboys podcast recently. What was the reaction to that like? Yeah, you made quite a reaction there. Here's another thing I like about Taffer.

I was trying to, I always have struggled to find the language to describe what it is I find so fascinating about him. We talk about physical appearance. We've been trying to emulate his voice. Yeah. But the body language, the movement of the man, right, is so unique. He moves unlike anyone else. The way he floats through a space just like i just way out unless he's floating especially for how large he is right like he's

just like physically imposing man and then he has this sort of very odd yes kind of floatiness to him i think i finally cracked it last night he moves like a hand puppet. And I will explain what I mean by this. The way that like a puppet can't make micro expressions. Right. Because by design, unless you're putting like significant sort of like mechanics or animatronics or like rigs in there or whatever. You're basically like a hand puppet where your hand operates the mouth and you can scrunch it a little and try to make it look angry or whatever. Yeah. where your hand operates the mouth and you can scrunch it a little and try to make it look angry or whatever yeah it's like the muppets there's a lot of head and neck acting because they need to sell the emotions with the full body and also because like a puppeteer only has two hands

the main one's the head in the mouth and then like they're usually puppeteering one of the arms if a character has to use two arms at the same time you have another person just supplying that but very often you have a puppet who has like one of their arms kind of glued to their chest and the arm is moving really wildly john taffer's right arm never moves very often sometimes he'll do the full kermit like arm flap right which requires the second puppeteer but very often one arm is like straight by his side or across his chest or pocket and he's like doing this where you're just like man they're overselling the arm in the head because they have to make this thing look like it's alive and the way he's talking to anyone any reaction shot of him listening to

someone's troubles is like yeah that's right isn't it like he tilts his head all the way down the camera can't see my feet yes it's't got to do none of those. Yes. It's incredible. But unlike a puppet, he is flexing every single muscle in his face at all times. Like he's always pulling the most extreme expression. It looks like his body is exerting the most effort possible. Like it's worrisome to some degree how much energy he must be expelling. Just when he's talking to somebody about like the scale that weighs the bottles the drink is like quiet moments where

he's trying to show compassion for people yeah and he's like so you gave up you lost your way you know and his whole body is like yeah it's a rocket about to take off and his eyebrows are all the way up here and like that's not that's not how a successful marriage works you're a good man i respect you he's just i mean he there's a thing he does we we pegged it early on is that when he's talking he's explaining something he goes like this he takes his arm or he takes his hand and he goes like this and he almost like cups an invisible ball like a basketball he always does this and i don't know why but he's been doing it since the start he goes it's a good place to pin the puppet arm it's what seems kind of natural right it's right there it looks human right and then you can put the arm somewhere else to move a different part but he's just what i

think what is so uh uh engaging about him is just you've never seen a more fully formed specific character like this even like he joe pesesci in all the Martin Scorsese movies wishes he was this like weird and scary when he's talking to somebody. Like you've just, this he would, it would be almost too much with him in a movie. Well, here's another thing.

You're making me realize it. All of us are dirty, dirty sketch comedy monsters, right? We come from the sketch comedy filth. Sure. And this is just like an immediately- Bacteria feces! Right, this is an immediately,

fully realized sketch comedy character. It's unbelievable. You can drop him into any scenario. He's got a look, he's got a voice, he's got five games. It's not just one. Right, yes. And they all work.

And they have sub-games. Right. Where you're like, it's that feeling of watching Matt Foley for the first time. Yes. Where you're like, holy shit. of watching matt foley for the first time where you're like holy shit wow he is a chris farley not not not chris farley like vibe whatsoever but amount of physicality and presence i think of matt foley as kind of being like the pinnacle

of like sketch comedy characterization right he lost in the online poll to Stefan on the NBSNL Twitter. They did a whole brackets. They had all these different voting and he lost. It was a final two with Stefan and Matt Foley. Let's say this. That's recency bias. The original Matt Foley sketch, which is the one they did at Second City for years and years and years that Odin Kirk wrote that was so honed at that point that it was just like a perfect diamond cut thing right is for my money the best thing SNL ever put on there might be number one best I think it's just like the tightest

most perfectly executed especially with the live element where you're like the one they got was by all accounts the best it was ever performed it's lightning in a bottle yeah and every time I re-watch it I'm like huh were the other ones not as good and you watch them they're all good right like there's no like oh fuck they tried it again and it fell no they never did but i know what you mean that's true and because they all are kind of the same right like like like one is a plus plus and then the rest are all like b plus they're all like totally all like, yeah, totally. Yeah. And they'll do other moves and they're funny ones in there. But I always think of like,

oh, Spade flipping it to him. What do you want to do when you grow up? I want to live in a van down by the river. I don't remember if he says it or the Applegate says it.

You're like, that's the kind of joke you think you get to the fifth time you do the character. And they got there in the first one. Right? Taffer enters

at a first Matt Foley sketch level oh true with catchphrases when he's got him ready to go the first episode anytime i've shown taffer to someone they immediately go like holy shit he's like this all the time and then you go but clearly you must be showing me the best episode he can't be this good all the time and taffer is like what if every matt foley sketch was the first matt foley sketch wow yeah it is it is a pretty fully formed that first episode yeah it's like all the pieces how is it different is it less aggressive in general it's a little less of aggressive the narrator's less aggressive they they are explaining the concept of the show a lot. Only a little. And then new

stuff comes along later on. I feel like it gets much slicker. And I feel like there's more sponsorships. It's not as good anymore. I hate to bring that up. The newer ones are just, there's something missing. So I...

Bar Rescue is one of the things that I use as a very depressive person to sort of gauge how my mental health is doing. Where if I find I've been in a three-day hole of watching Bar Rescue and Paramount+, I'm like, oh, I'm going through something. But if you're doing a three-hour podcast episode about it, you're having the time of your life. And if I'm watching, it's productive. It's for research. But I'm like there's something i find very comforted in watching bar rescue this goes back to my reading i'm being a show about depression where basically the through line of every episode is that like the people running the bar are really depressed and have sort of like

stopped giving a shit to some degree or another yeah or like can't find the will to like do the hard work although sometimes they're like, I'm pulling my tits out and they love it. They love to pull their tits out. This is true. They hate when that's robbed from them. I would argue though, there is perhaps a core sadness. Maybe some depression in there somewhere. I think there's usually some level of sadness.

Depression and also no education. Or no training. Yes. About how a restaurant works or how to tend bars. That's a good delineation. It's the sort of like, be fun to own a restaurant or bar. Almost every Bar Rescue starts with that energy.

The backstory for the place is, I thought it'd be fun. I thought it'd be easy. I got in a business with two people. I didn't know them that well. We were friendly enough at the time. Or I knew them too well there's always you always like not always maybe on every episode but like the one eye the

scottsdale's that's the that's in my mind the gold standard but it's every like so many of these episodes have these just sad tragedies just immediately and it's like harold this guy is gonna he's a stand-up comic, and he's just so sad. And this other guy sunk $180,000 into this comedy club and was like, Harold's the face of it. And then this guy's just kind of a meek guy, and John's yelling at him about like, you're emboldening him. You're not helping. And he's like, yeah, no, I guess so. And then like Harold's sister is there, and she's like yeah no i guess so and then like harold's sister is there and she's crying like there's immediately these these like epic like family dramas unfold on these episodes by the

way why of course paramount was like we should have him do marriage rescue a show that makes perfect sense on paper because you're like that is the core of the thing of him yelling at depressed people and being like stop lying right but it is not as fun to see him in Puerto Rico. No. With, like, one couple. And the other problem with that show, which I had never watched before, is, like, he basically does one check in every 10 minutes,

and then he's like, I'm sending you out on a challenge. And then they go, like, boogie boarding, and he's not with them. And he needs to be over the guy's shoulder. With them. Kiss your wife give a compliment you don't stand up on boogie boards you're laid down on them and you don't stand up in conversation either point out the sunset okay this is a thing i think that comes into the show

kind of later still pretty early but where it's like there's family dynamics or there's there's husband and wife dynamics yeah and they bring in a counselor or a therapist and for show uh purposes that gets wrapped up in five minutes when that sort of counseling takes ages and ages not when it's me not when it's me three days i know i know a marriage expert and if not i do it myself that's that's the thing about marriage expert that it seems to be the selling point seems to be like like i'm a i'm i'm a bar expert but i'm also a marriage expert you know why because i'm in a marriage plenty marriage rescue he does not outsource to anyone and greater authority than him he is the guy he's not around

a lot all the hard conversations funnel through him the one i watched was the last episode they ever did because it did one season in 2019 a short see it was only a short season and i think quickly this wasn't working any chance of it coming back was probably killed immediately by the pandemic of like yeah right this whole thing is like luxury getaway whatever but the one i watched was two couples one of them is two stand up comedians always fertile territory for taffer to take down a yuckster but the other one you're hiding in your bits is a guy who's become addicted to dms on social media and the whole thing is has he crossed the line into the physical though and they keep asking him have you and then he with like the biggest cheshire cat grin

is like i have never since i met you stuck my dick in another woman and he's like grinning ear to ear and taffer's like you're lying you're lying in my face i got a test i have a challenge that's gonna settle this once and for all and you're like holy shit what does taffer have up his sleeve a lie detector test he just bends in a polygraph test, right? Three questions. Are you in Puerto Rico right now? Yes. Do you DM women on social media?

He says no. A thing he has previously already admitted to in the one episode. And then question three is, has it crossed into a physical realm with any of those women? Or maybe have you cheated on your wife ever? And he says no and the woman holds the printout and she goes you lied about the cheating question and he goes i didn't i didn't and he's smiling and taffer goes you're lying you're lying he refuses to admit it the segment just ends then they go to another challenge where they're like fucking like on rvs or whatever like atv vehicles like

painting rocks or whatever it's entirely it's marriage is being solved through amenities that are just at the resort correct and then you're having a lot of trouble you aren't communicating you know what you gotta do you gotta make your own pizza yes but then he's not there for the pizza no he doesn't say that in voiceover and then you'll just see someone else be like hello i'm a pizza expert i got a nice lunch scheduled i'm going to the way better resort that didn't give us a deal up the coast the pizza is a popular food introduced in italy and perfected in america the end of the episode using a very hot oven i guess they have this segment that is like they have to renew their vows and decide whether or not the marriage is rescued or whether they're giving up on it.

And the woman like gives like reads this tearful written speech about like, I am willing to accept you back and forgive you for the mistakes and for cheating on me. And then he just goes like, thank you for for your tolerance or something like that. He the whole episode never admits that he has cheated on her, even though he clearly has. He denies it the entire time. And then when she says, I forgive you, he goes, I accept. And I'm like, and the show ends like marriage rescue. Cool.

Like, look, as long as it happens within the three days, this goes enough for me. Right. But like, yes. So what I was gonna say here is i'll go down these like three-day rabbit holes of depression watching the show where i think i'm like i feel something in taffer being like snap out of it you gotta get to work you end up with an angel and devil on your shoulder devil is loud taffer angel is slightly quieter podcast

effort it eventually like gets me out of my funk. There's something cathartic to it, right? I continue to do these. I fall into these taffer holes a couple times a year. I have not, I don't think I had watched a single episode post-pandemic. Because a lot of TV shows- Produced post-pandemic, you mean, yeah. Correct.

Yes, I'll go on Paramount Plus. I'll scale the mountain. I'll watch any of my favorite episodes from the first like six seasons. Stephen Colbert's up here too and the South Park kids. Come on. And Dora the Explorer. This, I want to interject.

This is a little confusing. On Paramount+, first season is like 10 episodes. Yes. Ninth season is like 40 episodes. Yeah, they ran way up. Way up. Because I was like, there's got to be 13 seasons at this point. I was like,

Paramount only has nine? And I'm like, oh, the later ones are crazy. But I saw an announcement that they just announced it was renewed for season 10 this week. That is the official number. The announcement was like after. They may already be out by this. This month, whenever we're putting this episode out, season 10 is about to launch.

Yeah, yeah. So get ready for three days of depression. The Taffer seasons do tend to average 40 episodes, which means they're favorites I can go back to over and over again. But I also constantly like, oh, I don't think I've seen this one. Like digging through the old ones. Most reality shows, or I'll just even say shows that reflect reality in any way. constantly like oh i don't think i've seen this one like digging through the old ones most reality shows or i'll just even say shows that reflect reality in any way during the pandemic i was like i don't want to watch pandemic episodes of anything i don't want to watch television with

people wearing masks and talking about working through this and i was like i could see this being fertile for bar rescue and being like the bars need me more than ever but i didn't want to watch them and so i've just never wanted to venture into the post-pandemic episodes last night i was like i should watch a nine if we're gonna talk taffer one yeah i should watch at least one nine just to sample the current batch this is one you got to do a nine watch a nine for one watch one nine for taffer nine i'll watch all of one are you by the way are you asserting that you are always on them maybe do you ever do episodes about theme parks ever again am i gonna be the the evan saucer of taffer oh yeah yeah it's the yearly it's the shaken well so we've. You no longer talk about theme park attractions. Weiger does not seem interested in doing so.

We're losing a lot of the big ones. I'll say this. Eva doesn't really do theme park attractions. Yeah. No, look, every time I come on here, I say there is a pure theme park topic. I know. We've had three years of kicking this down the curb.

That's going to happen. That means a lot to multiple members yeah of of this a child favorite of mine yeah and a big one um but i so i watched this episode tonight the thing i knew and i feel like we've been texting about this without seemingly any of us watching it seriously is that nine is the season where he starts not being in every episode right oh yeah i didn't it's like a Hot Ones thing, too, where they do Hot Ones now where it's not the guy. Right.

Which I'm like, if Taffer's gone from this, the format's whatever. Right? Right. Like, the format is sturdy, but, like, what I'm here for is Taffer. And a lot of his regular rotation of experts are just now going in without him.

And you have to look on Paramount+. Obviously, if he's in the thumbnail he's in it but the description will either say john sends or john visits right that's a trick that's like putting that's like putting a pretty lady in the thumbnail and then i watch it because i want to see a pretty lady but then it was a lie and there was no at least they tend to be honest you're saying like okay okay yeah i watched the last one of season nine the most recent episode at the time of our recording and uh he now seemingly is only in a third of the episode so his workload is lessened and i hadn't watched a couple years and i don't think it's advanced age but i was just like the anger seems a little forced

he's still doing the thing. Yeah. And it doesn't feel like, oh, no, he's slowed down. Yeah. In a way that makes me sad for like the passage of time. Yeah. It just felt like he's phoning it in a little bit. That's pretty depressing. Well, I'm like, if you're telling me that he doesn't want to do the full season anymore,

I want it to be because he's like, look, I only have so much anger left. I want to give each episode all I can. Well, that's like in our season nine. I'll be like, you guys, I don't want to talk about Frank Marshall. Miss Tanda. And you can just tell I don't have it in me. I just don't. It just doesn't have the ver.

You're defeated. You're dead inside. Oh, sick of I love Lucy, guys. Gary Morton, Lucy's second husband? Ew, why thought I was supposed to talk about a theme park? Why do you have so many thoughts about Lucy's feelings on her second marriage? Mike the Tastemaker, that's ridiculous.

This actually sounds good. Because I'll still have my juice. Gary Morton talk coming up. Gary Morton 9. Oh, you can steamroll all over me. Okay, I can't let what happened to Tapper happen to me. Season 9, you'll only be 22 at that point. Yeah, well you know 23 i don't want to talk about it uh uh yeah it's he says i believe it's in his book i'm getting some of my uh taffer information confused

maybe the podcast maybe the book i believe it's the conflict book but he explains that he had a screaming match with an executive early on in the bar rescue process where they wanted to fake something and he he said you can go fuck yourself and he said that that was a good thing he did that because he put down that he was only going to make these shows authentic yes it couldn't be fake so it's i agree with you i even think around i don't even know if it's like five six whatever whatever episodes i watched. I feel like he became too self-aware, perhaps. Those first few seasons, he's just going on instinct. He doesn't know what he's doing even.

And then he know all the press comes in and people tell him what they like about him. It's a similar thing. We've talked about Leslie Nielsen, then people telling him he's funny. Right. And then he goes on with the fart machine. I mean, I did the fucking my annual rewatch of the naked gun trilogy a thing i do without fail every year sure that's a smart move it is stunning sure and it always is this thing of like should i dig into the rest of leslie nielsen comedy

catalog and none of it i know i'm like is one of them accidentally a little bit is there just even one sequence i'll find pieces i'll find sl slivers. But you're just like, there was something there. Spy Hard with villain Andy Griffith. Is that good at all? Is Andy Griffith as a villain in a movie any good? I've seen that, but many years ago. I've never made it through that movie to the end. It always felt unpleasant.

Something about it was unpleasant. Jason wants to see that Mr. Magoo. Have you made it to that list? I haven't, no. Jason, do you know the craziest thing about that movie? What? I keep wanting to text you every time you bring up... Mr. Magoo. It's only been once, right? Has it come up more than once? I don't know.

I feel like I remember it once or maybe twice. I believe that film is directed by Stanley Tong, who was one of Jackie Chan's go-to directors. Okay. It is a movie that on paper you're just like this actually is the right formulation leslie neilson's now a surprising comedy star he's good at playing oblivious to what's going on around him right what's a cartoon character mr magoo that's all physical comedy

hire someone from the fucking jackie chan school smart whoa yeah and the movie's like a disaster it is like so immediately inert i remember seeing it as a child and like being raring to go and it's got that thing i feel like you guys might relate to this where a movie would have an animated opening credit sequence the old pink panther trick right yeah you're really locked in and then the second it cuts to live action you're like immediately not as fun oh yeah yeah you know oh so they literally they do a little animated voice by nielsen and he's walking on fucking eye beams and shit and it's funny and then it cuts to live action and it's immediately dead jeez so that's his that's stanley tong's only english

language film yeah he did like drunken master right i feel like wow several of the biggest jackie chan there's not even like one sequence that's impressive because of him? I have not rewatched. Okay. Well, now we need Jason to watch more. I have been a little curious. Huh, huh. Yeah.

Okay. Put it on the list, Jason. Now that Dr. Odyssey is on hiatus, you really should be digging into all this. That's true. Jumping into Magoo. Right. Jumping into Magoo. Magooing it.

Yes. You should be walking off the edge of a building without realizing it getting accidentally rescued by a like a construction beam that goes by beautiful windy day his big breakthrough was he did police story 3 super cop wow i didn't realize he joins jackie a little later he's jackie's main 90s collaborator but he does rumble in the bronx he does jackie chan's first strike which wasator, but he does Rumble in the Bronx. He does Jackie Chan's First Strike, which was Police Story 4. Like he was he was the guy. And hold on.

Hold on. Let me check this. He did, in fact, work on the TV show Martial Law. Whoa. It's all tiny. How many seasons we got on Martial Law? That's something that's that's outstanding. Thirty one.

I'm going to say three. Martial. You know what? I think Jason was right in his original assessment. Really? It only lasted for two seasons. It combined 44 episodes. Wow.

44 episodes. That's less than one season of Bar Rescue. Wow. Geez. I think I just assumed. I did too. If it was CBS in that era, well, let me take that back. But Stanley Tongue, executive producer.

And I guess by that logic, Mike is a tastemaker. Yeah. Yeah. All right. We're reassessing things from an hour ago or more. Well, Jason remembers when I first introduced the idea of Lucy's second husband gearing Morton to him. He remembers that. Yeah.

Because I'm a tastemaker. I've still got the anger. Don't push your luck on Morton. I've still got it. It ain't season nine yet. It was during commercials of Bar rescue oh good i got 30 seconds to talk about gary morton talk about gary morton uh can i throw out just a a very quick tidbit that i'd be remiss if i don't get in here somewhere and there's never going to be a clean

transition to it okay go ahead the john taffer podcast or john taffer show episode i listened to is the one with kara top about his live entertainment coming back. And in doing the rundown of his credits that was clearly pre-recorded with Corey, right? Yeah. Kara Topp not in the room. He's like, this guy, his credits are unbelievable. And he's doing the NPR voice. I mean, his credits are unbelievable.

He's got 20 credits here. He lists off the credits. Here are three direct quotes. And I'm going to verbatim try to, even if I i can't do the impression say these credits the way he says them real time with bill mahar the jim galifian show which i imagine has to be the jim gaffigan show did he have a show called that yep okay and then he referred to Tosh-o. In one rundown of credits, real time with Bill Maher, the Jim Gallifant show,

and Tosh-o. There's a typo in Tosh-o. They put a period in it. It's not supposed to be. All right. He fucked up three of them. What is? Okay.

Tosh-o. Tosh-o. Wait, just picture it in your head. But also imagine. Is it Tosh.0? Yes. You got it. Tasha. Tasha. Wait, just picture it in your head. But also imagine... Is it Tash.0? Yes. You got it. Okay, Tasha.

But just imagine him in serious NPR voice, right? It's like him trying to do his best like Terry Gross and trying to imbue these credits with the energy of... And what big credits these are. Of course I know what all these shows are. He's been on Tasha. Tasha. He's selling it as if he's not what all these shows are. He's been on Ta-Show. Ta-Show. He's selling it as if he's not cold reading these names incorrectly. Seeing a

Carrot Top show is like seeing a great motion picture like M3 Gan. Now there's an M3 Gan 20. Or M3 Gan 20. M3 Galifan. Galifan I had to stop and rewind and go, what is he trying to say here? And then I went, it must be Gaffigan. Galifan.

He's been on Jay Lenoo. This is huge. Does he not watch TV? That is such a, Bill Maher especially, for him, that feels like he would? Like that is such a Bill Maher, especially for him. Like that feels like he would know who that is. He talked a lot about the Baz Luhrmann Elvis movie and the Rob Lowe podcast where he was talking about it has to be authentic, has to be real. They told me not to scream. They said, you're too old.

You're too ugly. I said, I gotta be me. And he was saying, it's like in the Elvis movie. They want him to wear that snowman sweater and sing the Christmas song. He's Elvis. I'm like, oh, yes, the famously authentic Baz Luhrmann Elvis movie. Which he might have been drawn to because he, I believe, lives in Vegas. He's a big Vegas guy.

And he talked a lot about in 2021 and 2022, like the city's coming back, the city's opening up. Because Vegas was obviously hit hard in 2020, but the amount of advertising I feel like I saw from them online and then when I was there over the years of just like live entertainment is back that was come breathe others air i mean he just kept in this podcast saying and i'm calling it now april 1st 2020 that's the day everything's coming back i'm sorry i'm sorry it was 2021 because trump in 2020 said by easter everything's gonna be real oh right this was a podcast from the end of 2020 or the very beginning of 2021 and he's saying i'm calling it april 1st everything's going to be real oh right this was a podcast from the end of 2020 or the very beginning

of 2021 and he's saying i'm calling it april 1st everything's going to look normal again live entertainment road trips people are ready he needed to make it he he's let us all down by not doing a vegas review oh a bar rescue live i mean and doing like, gonna tell some jokes, I'm gonna sing some songs, gonna talk to some baroners about what they're doing wrong. It's a John Taffer show. He and one of these podcasts

offhandedly referred, it must have been the Carrot Top episode, offhandedly referenced, you know, I did stand up for a little while. No shit.

Oh man. Which of course he did. Like I'm sure that means that he went to four open mics. Right. Maybe did one bringer show. Look at this couple here in the front. Look at these guys.

She doesn't love you anymore! Why aren't you laughing? That was funny! What do you do for a living? Nothing! Your father would be very disappointed in you, don't you think? You're a good guy. I can see that in you. You're a good guy i could see that in you you're a good

guy why aren't you all saying oh and clapping for that you should be reacting you're talking about it feeling a little less authentic at certain points sorry what were you gonna say i was gonna say that in the sacramento x cop opens a sports bar which is really kind of like just a place for him to display all this memorabilia he has and it's also probably failing because it's massive yeah but at one point in terms of like funny it ain't real quick because you used to be a policeman you're a hero but now this bar is failing like he like so quickly got through like you're a hero you know we all have so much respect the whole crew everybody who's here we're all we're tearing up with respect for what you do but you're a failure and a cook but he's calling the guy a hero and the guy's just like i just want to do my

so many jurors he's just so mopey and he's losing just so much money. I mean, some of these, the Pirates one always stands really tall for me. Oh, yeah. I believe it is $950,000 in debt. Yeah. Jesus, whoa, wow. Yeah, let's, I mean, I think we gotta do just kind of a round robin of episodes in Bar Rescue Classics.

And Pirates absolutely is what, this is, I think, is his magnum opus. P-I-R-A-T-Z. Is the name of the bar. Pirates. What city is Pirates in? Is it Baltimore or something? I it baltimore i think so let me check something like that but it is yeah it's like it's a pirate themed bar there's a bunch of dorks there who want to dress up like pirates uh like i and and it feels like silver spring maryland silver it's a very corporate town but

yes this is his assessment. You know, it's these dorks and dressing up like pirates makes them happy. No one goes in there, but they like what they have here. They aren't running a good version of what that could be whatsoever. But $950,000 in debt. They have seemingly 15 employees who are just people who want to live like a pirate all day long. She cites it like she's like, well,

of course, Pirate Bar makes sense. It's the ultimate fantasy. We all wish we could be a pirate. What she says is being a pirate is the ultimate Peter Pan syndrome. Words that must have warmed your heart. Well, yeah. First, once I picked myself off the floor from having flung myself off the couch, I thought, no, it's the opposite.

Peter Pan doesn't get along with the pirates. It is the opposite of the ultimate Peter Pan syndrome. Being a lost boy. Yes. The enemy of the pirates. You've got it fully wrong. Yeah. So that might indicate what's wrong with your pirate bar.

But then he, oh, by the way, and we should say this episode is, there's even, even though like he takes great pains to be like thoughtful and like, because you're dealing with a lot, aren't you? And your kids, and that's, that's very hard. And then he'll still name the episode something so insulting. Like in this case, the episode is called yo ho ho and a bottle of dumb yes the the episode about champs bar in burbank which seems to be very popular and doing very well uh still that episode is on paramount pluses chumps jeez jeez i mean the thing about

the pirates episode is it's one of the strongest themes in relation to the level of failure the business has been going through for the amount of years it's been failing at that level. And he's basically like, you got to take all the theming out. And she's like, I want you to fix this and make this more normal. But my dream is to own a pirate bar. And he keeps on being like, you gotta meet me halfway. This woman is close to a million dollars in debt. I forget what she says, but she used to have like

what seemingly was a fairly successful job in like a corporate sphere. She has a much younger husband named Juciano who she installed as the chef with no cooking experience. Oh yeah, he's one of the worst chefs I've ever... Juciano. Terrible.

And just curses whenever anyone says anything to him. He goes, what the shit? Fuck you. You think it's dog shit? I think you're dog shit. She's got a 16-year-old daughter. She's now moved into her parents' basement with the daughter and Juiciano and sold her home to keep the Pirates bar afloat. And the whole

time he's like, you gotta trust me. I can tell you're going through a lot. All these things where he really wants to be Mr. Compassionate. and then it's just the greatest bar rescue moment for me is the redesign of the bar which so often is like he turns it into the blandest airport bar possible that's usually the idea was his taste is so so lame and then he'll point to one thing and be like and look i still kept your love of football in there yes there's a helmet on the wall like a point to one thing where he's like i know your dad was important so i scribbled your dad's initials under the table if you go in the second stall of the women's

restroom right but the bar is always like renamed the drinking place or something right the beer pub yeah i'm trying to think of a more, like, here's a more tepid example. One is called The Poor House. Right. And it's poor, like, P-O-U-R. Yeah. Which makes plenty, like, yeah, I got that.

Makes all the sense in the world for a bar to be called The Poor House, and it's a play on words. And he's so, like, that sounds sad. That's miserable. People put a gun in their mouth when they hear Poor House. And then that one he turns into.

We need people smiling when they see this. So bundle it. Like Disneyland. And that one he changes to the study. Right. Fine. Whatever. But they're usually that.

It's like, whatever. They aren't as offensive as pirates. Pirate's Bar is the only one that feels like it is actually spiteful. Yeah. He keeps saying, you're in a corporate area. There's so many corporate there's corporate offices around he drills that corporate people don't want to have lunch at a pirate bar which people famously love being trapped in offices of course yeah they do go do it as

their job and then they want to leave and do it again immediately yeah it's having to go out for lunch and being outside of the safe comforting walls of a cubicle and i want to walk out in their coat and tie and see a logo with a coat and tie in it his logic is very few people live in this town this is a town that people commute into for work after five o'clock people are gone you need to be a happy hour and lunch bar in that case i'm like okay this this is a guy speaking like he's an expert in bar science that he understands the business the basic tense of what he's saying makes sense to me and the pirate bar does seem like dog shit it seems like a terrible it seems terrible it seems less committed than when like a cruise

ship does pirate yeah yes yeah, an elementary school. Like, wear pirate costumes today. It is worse than that. But it's weirdly trying to be that themed. Like, it's not like a bar that has some pirate shit on the wall. It's a bar where your servers are like, aye! It is immersive. It's immersive.

They're trying to make it immersive. There are a bunch of creeps. Hey, there are lasses. Right. And it's basically all people who are like, I can't exist in the real world. Have these emotional breakdowns to Taffer where they're like, I've tried to exist

in the real world. This is the only place I feel safe. I'd fall apart if I'm not a pirate. And his rebranding is corporate. The bar is called corporate. The logo is a man wearing a shirt and tie. And the theme of the bar is the office it's just like this is designed to corporate place you do corporate bar and if there's a town

with a lot of construction in it then you the people want to end up going to the wrecking ball but she's just pacing around and she's like, I hate it. I'm miserable. And he's like, you're going to ride this out. I hear her body is rejecting it. There's never one that's ever gone. No. So where you could tell they might not make it through the night without her taking it.

Yeah. There's one where he doesn't. He like, I forget which one that it was. There's one where he just leaves. Yeah. That's maybe the worst one. But this is. Yeah.

There's not. There's the one where there's the, there's the female staff member who they were physically abusive to and they won't take responsibility. Do you know what I'm talking about? It's like they have one staff member who gets really drunk and is starting a fight with a nicer woman. Yeah. And he keeps on saying like, you have to fire the woman who hit her. Yes.

Yeah. Yeah. And the owners go she was asking for it right and they have my bottles falling down again i was asking for it edit that out that's the clangiest bottle i've ever heard but he leaves where he's like i cannot abide by this and then i think the owners went to jail oh i don't know that oh that's it maybe that's the same episode i'm trying to remember there's something people won't do something and then he leaves there's the chicago sports bar one the dugout yeah where the guy has his special is the hot pussy shot and he has an all-female staff

and taffer's like this is revolting how dare you make them say this well that's in dimples in the dimples episode that's the other this is the burbank is a former burbank karaoke bar it has the was known as the first karaoke bar in america just a couple blocks from warner brothers studios now it's a whole foods and apartments um but when it was your birthday you would go and they were be like, hey, it's Christian's birthday. There was a million-year-old man running it. He has no charisma. Yes.

He's really sleazy. He's really creepy, yeah. And he's like, got to get the blowjob shot. You got to do the blowjob shot. And that's where he puts his shot with whipped cream on it between a woman's legs. And he tells a man to get down on his knees and he goes hey that's not the first time you're gonna hear that tonight and everyone's like i don't really do this i i don't really want to do this and he goes like i don't care like he goes like

we gotta do it anyway and the bar seems very unsafe there's tchotchkes and mementos and movie memorabilia everywhere yeah the sound system is awful yeah and he moves everything into the parking lot all the memorabilia puts a little back gets them a new sign and the guy's like wow and eventually like in the post-show credit they're like he did put a lot of it back well that's a case where it's like i look maybe makes a good television you're not changing this guy yeah right like this bar has existed this long this way right and this what i have a a connection i i never went this bar, but this bar is in walking distance to the Oakwood Apartments, which is now called-

That's a long walk. Yeah, it is a long walk, but when you have college students who just turned 21 and want to get hammered. Wow. That's an old classic, Wiener. Wow.

See, this episode does have to do with the podcast. I'm not arguing with theme parks. I'm arguing with other things. Other things. That was the Ithaca or Emerson bar that people would go to. So you partied with this old creep? No, I never partied.

I never. It seemed so nasty. I would look up pictures, and I was like, I don't want to go there. That seems awful but people would go there and get their video of karaoke the other regular of this bar Mr. Belding from I didn't see him I re-watched it okay I would think he would be I'm a false memory of just hearing for years people be like, there's this funny dive bar we go to where Mr. Belding is there every night if you want to meet Mr. Belding.

Yeah, and he was kind of a lush. But that is the one where the cook gets so overwhelmed by the stress test they have to call an ambulance. Yeah. And he's okay, but you can tell it is like everyone's really weirded out after that even more than the creepy owner it is another element it is cathartic to see people get yelled at if you feel personally that they deserve it yeah yeah that's one thing about this is that well you, you know, sometimes Taffer's tactics can be, like, upsetting and it's fun to make fun of him.

The other side of it is often pretty wrong, too. There's that zombie bar. It's like two-sided disagree with everyone in this all at the same time. Do you remember, like, I think it's a Vegas episode where there's the bar he re-themes into a very immersive zombie bar. Oh, yeah. I haven't seen that one in a while. And I feel like it used to be, like, a fucking heavy metal bar. Oh, yeah. I haven't seen that one in a while. And I feel like it used to be like a fucking heavy metal bar

or something before that, but the bartender is like incredibly gross with all women. Yeah, yeah. And it's like the whole episode is him being like, you're scaring women away. You're disrespecting women.

My wife. He would scream that a lot because that's Lindsay's go-to when she's quoting Taffer. She goes, you're disrespecting women. Because that's a big, that's that's that's lindsey's go-to and she's quoting taffer she's you're disrespecting women well let's because that's a big that's it's my favorite thing is when he sends his wife in to do the cold yeah you go do it worst of all that's my wife you said that to my wife there's an episode of marriage rescue where um somebody in the couple,

one of them is really obsessed with social media and her social media brand and her partner isn't really into it and doesn't want to be part of it. And his solution is you should be in her videos, which by the way, it's a former Harlem Globetrotter. So he does like basketball spinning, like you should be in her basketball Instagrams because you know what?

You know, I've been married for a long time. And when I got a TV show, you know what I did? I put my wife in it. I put her in it. And that's what you have to do with each other. You got to be, you got to spin a basketball with her. That's the solution. It's so good.

I feel like this might have restarted a wave of the Taffer conversation a year or two ago. But I went to my friend's wedding in Chicago. And I walked out of my hotel and I was waiting for an Uber. And I recognized the signage and I texted you guys. And I said, do you know what this is? And it's another one of my top, absolute top tier bar rescue episodes. And I realized I was staying outside the husk of it, which was the Wonder bar do you remember this one yeah it's this woman the underground wonder bar oh yeah yeah the woman's name bad like performance arts yes she's like an old hippie woman and they're like

crayons on the tables and she basically performs a four-hour set of her music every night and the bar is clearly like she got it for a song like Like she paid $5 for an 80-year lease in like 1965. And they can't kick her out, but it makes no money. And she's just like, this place, it's about love and it's an attitude. And he's like, but it's not a successful business. And she's got an adult son who she's now like tasked with managing the bar. But he can't break his mom's habits of what she wants it to be. And he's just like, she's out of touch with the times.

Our customer base is literally dying off. We have this whole downstairs area we don't use. And he rethemes it as the ice bar. He's like, you're going to have the best ice in all of Chicago. And he always has his weird product sponsorships, a POS system from one of these. He's always got these companies. His good friend's at Blake. Partender. Yeah. Partender is the one.. He's always got these companies. His good friend's at Blake. Partender.

Yeah. Partender. Partender is the one. But he's got this ice company that he's like, you're going to be on Barn Chicago with square ice, and the ice comes in Ziploc bags, and the bar is made of ice. The whole thing is ice. He watched Batman and Robin the night before maybe.

And you're just like, this woman just doesn't give a shit. She just wants to get on her piano and like sing age of aquarius or whatever this is gonna like disappear immediately and one of my favorite batch of ice it's all done one of my favorite corners of like taffa taffanalia taffabilia taffiana whatever we want to call it um do you guys watch any of the um what are they called back to the bar episodes yes i have yeah there's a scott stale episode yeah yeah where he like narrates it which is great to like these knuckleheads didn't do what i said first time let's see if that changes when we go check in on him again his teleprompter reading is a nightmare. They're also the ones where he's hosting

it from a giant set surrounded by a live audience that's like a circular bar. Oh yeah. And he's like, today we're going to revisit some of our past bars. And it's him trying to do like genial MC shit. It's like a Vegas show. And he does like a

live. And his DJ. Put him in that. His DJ on camera in a booth with like headphones and turntables will be the announcer. Yes, yes. Which this is another thing that's great about him. Taffer has lasted so long, like a cockroach, that he is like the one vestige of the Spike Network that still has that energy. And even though they've rebranded that channel like four times.

I crushed Mansers. Right. Mansers is dead've rebranded that channel like four times. I crushed Manswers. Right. Manswers is dead. He still got the Manswers vibes. Yeah, yeah. That's the voice. John Taffer coming live from Las Vegas. You see him.

He looks like one of us. It's very disorienting. Wow. Because you're just like, he just looks like a comedy dude. You know? But he'll have, you know, he'll play like a clip package of the worst moments from that episode and be like and we're gonna catch up with them now and he'll have them live in studio and he'll just kind of castigate them but he'll do it in a like wow we're old friends kind of way

yeah it's a real like a jump to go like your friends are the pirates people you know we've been so vicious to them do you know what it reminds me of like we just lived through months and months and months of the democratic party being like fascism is knocking at the door this man's an immediate threat to our country and i'm like i agree we should figure out some way to stop him from getting elected seems like you don't want a new hitler in there probably he gets elected and they're just like well of course we have to find a way to meet him in the middle and i'm like like, no, stand by this. You pointed out that Biden goes, hey, welcome home.

Right. I'm like, you don't need to be fucking friendly to this guy. Your assessment was correct. And I'm like, for as much as Taffer can be an asshole, like he'll have the Wonderbar woman on. And he's just like, oh, you never change your ways. And we love her for it, don't we? And I'm like, her business is collapsing. Yeah, I hate it.

I don't like those episodes. And she drives you crazy. It's weird. They're bad. They're bad. The audience response is weird. It's weird how insincere he is where he's trying to play nice guy. We're going to do a fashion show in the worst uniforms that ever we ever saw at a bar.

That shit. We're going to make some women wear some really embarrassing scanty stuff the insincerity i think is why there was only one season of hungry investors we got a whole other show this other show wow where him and two of his experts choose between two restaurants to invest in it's's a very boring, like, shark tank. Whoever put the shows together, whatever person, people that put the shows together, they made him look so impressive.

Even though we know we're smart guys, savvy to the biz, I still kind of came away from, like, the first so many episodes being like, man, he really gets to the heart of the matter. Literally, from the business. Yeah, nobody understands bar science like john so it makes sense that people are like we he must be so talented he can work in any genre right any type of show right and he can solve any kind of problem we're talking reality drums in every genre stand up this is not just a perfectly constructed piece of reality television that makes him look like a superhero.

This man is a superhero. This isn't just a Svengali. This isn't like some kind of... The Wizard of Oz. This is the Wizard of Oz, but he's a real wizard. Oh, he's a real wizard. There's no man behind the curtain. I'm the size of a wizard.

I'm the size of a big head. I got the magic. I'm the size of the balloon. The magic is real. I get magic is real. Mike, I feel like you have many times over the years said to me in your way, you know, I hear from a lot of people that he's not very smart. You'll repeat this thing of like,

I know people who have worked on some of the shows or met him in situations. We have to talk about somebody because we have a connection to someone who has been a part of this franchise. We should say that that comment has not been made by

this person. Oh, that's true. I actually don't know the reaction. This might require a little bit of tea because coincidentally this is i knew that we we know somebody who's been on a bar rescue but then still i was trying to find unusual episodes and and i started watching this one not even realizing oh that's the one because the episode in and of itself is extremely notable because it's the one where reality genres all clash, and we have not just a failing bar but a haunted bar, a bar that has a ghost in it, and where the owner will not lock it up by himself because of the ghost. And I don't have the exact quotes, but I know that it builds to things like, you have to choose. Is it the bar?

Who wins? Is it the bar and a ghost? Hearing him yell about the ghost is so awesome. I ain't afraid of no ghost. But that makes me feel good. I never liked the ghost. An invisible man sleeping in your bed? That's worse than bacteria.

Keep writing those low-ulls, Mike. I'm sorry. He would be a good ghost in a Ghostbusters movie. With the translucent, whatever, the effect on it. He's just like a scary ghost. Slimer, they imagine what a ghost of me would be like. And that's what I thought of Slimer. He should have been Muncher.

Oh. Oh, my God. Yes. The dream casting. If Muncher had the voice of John Taffer. Oh. Oh, my God. Yes. The dream casting. If Muncher had the voice of John Taffer. Munch, munch, munch. I'm Muncher. I'm Munchin.

Even if it wasn't words, it was just him going, and they don't even tell him he's dead. They just wake him up in the middle of the night, see what sounds he naturally makes. But then it has him yelling about the ghost, but then it also has the tender side. And it's like they fix the bar stuff and then like, now it's time we get rid of this ghost you are gonna you're gonna close this building alone and then and he's also working the angle of like haunted attractions are big in this country imagine you're in a haunted bar it's gonna

be huge but here's what's funny is that there's a premise laid on top of it, which is that, you know, he sends people in to do the recon and sometimes those people are connected to local industry or whatever. Sometimes they're experts.

Sometimes they're past bar rescue subjects. Oh, that's right. People who have survived. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But in this case, I met two podcasters. If they recommend this place

on the show, the on their podcast it could change everything but one negative word would send them plummeting into the toilet i hired uh and then it's am i the other one is matt myra in the idiot is that why the nerdist appearance happened correct oh okay wow it's, Myra was really into Bar Rescue. This is Hardwick saying, like, Myra's been trying to get me to watch Bar Rescue forever. Then he was on the episode. Then I finally watched it. And I was like, Matt, we have to get Taffer on the show.

Wow. And it happened because of that. And then because they have a relationship, he keeps, like, zinging him. Right. Because, like, you know, because you're in a nightclub. Now you're feeling confident. You want to be talking to the girls, everybody except for you, man. I'm just kidding. I love you.

He's zinging him so hard. You know, normal guys so Matt, you stay out of this. But the other one, Jordan Morris from Jordan Jesse Gold. And I saw this at some point just on the Pluto feed

without knowing and I just bugged out. What do you mean you were on it? And I know I've talked to him about this a bunch over the years, but then remembering, oh, my God. And it's the ghost one. And I thought a bar rescue episode would not be complete without some chip in from somebody who was actually on an episode who had the opportunity to make or break a bar. Yeah. You know, like, did he say negative words about it just because there's a ghost in there?

Was Jordan so cruel? I'm not sure. And he sent us a voice memo. I don't know what's in it. I haven't listened to it, but should we experience this together? We can maybe get some actual feedback of the kayfabe and the character

and is he smart or whatever it is um yeah hey podcast the ride occasional guest jordan morris here with a remembrance of my time on bar rescue in 2015 i was working with writer and podcaster matt myra he knew i was a fan of bar rescue and he knew a few of the field producers. He asked me if I wanted to be one of the recon guys in an episode with him. It was shooting in El Cajon, and I, of course, jumped at the chance. The recon segment of the show, of course, happens early in the episode before John Taffer rescues the bar. He sends in his friends to order drinks and report back on what's wrong with the bar. This particular bar was Myers Pour, P-O-U-R House, a very down-the-middle SoCal strip mall bar.

They apparently had two problems, bartenders that overpoured and a ghost that scared away the owner. We got told all of this ahead of time, and we were also asked if we would be okay ordering Kettle One Spirits, who were sponsoring the episode. I was just kind of excited to be there, so I gladly ordered Kettle One, which I never had and never have since. So we were set up not as just John's friends, but as podcasters whose recommendation or pan could make or break the bar.

If you've heard of my podcast, Jordan, Jesse, Go, you know, of course, that we spend most of our time reviewing bars near San Diego. We had a little like meet and greet with John before we went in. He was very nice and I got to see his famous one sport coat that he owns. We went in, ordered our kettle one cocktails and tried to get the bartenders to talk about the ghost. I remember it was really awkward for a bunch of reasons. First is that it's really strange being in a bar with harsh TV lighting. It was just so bright in there. Second, the bar was filled with all these locals who were just really excited to be on camera and were just shouting insane shit all night long i was next to this one woman

who had clearly just learned the phrase by felicia and she would just yell by felicia at anyone who walked by um so we drank a little bit uh the bartender was doing strong pours and since we kind of knew this was an issue going into it, Matt and I really played up how strong the drinks were because we wanted Daddy to be proud. Speaking of Daddy, it was a real thrill to see John come in and do the shut it down

speech. He did it in one take and that's basically the take you see in the episode. Also, I was really impressed that he was really watching a feed of the bar outside in the SUV, something I had assumed was faked, but is totally actually happening. So I walked away from the experience really impressed with the authenticity of the timeline they present in the show, for that particular segment, anyway. I still have not been to the rescued bar.

It was changed to the vaguely academic themed, the study. And according to Google, it's still there. I was paid nothing for my appearance and do not receive any residuals when it is rerun seven times a month. Okay. I hope that was enlightening.

If you'll permit me a plug that might be of interest to the PTR audience, I wrote a story for the upcoming comics anthology Godzilla vs. L.A. It is three comic stories about Godzilla visiting L.A., and all the money goes to wildfire relief. My story is from the POV of the Universal Studios tram driver. There's a bunch of theme park in-jokes that I think you all will enjoy, and the art is by the amazing Nicole Goh.

It drops on April 30th and you can pre-order it at your local comic book store. That's Godzilla vs. L.A. coming on April 30th. Wow. Thank you Jordan. That's very good. You're always selling. Everything you do is an opportunity to sell

and that's why Jordan I'm gifting you this P selling every everything you do is an opportunity to sell and that's why jordan i'm gifting you this pos system so you can track how many people on podcasts are uh getting uh the the comic or learn to do um daddy i i mike i need you to correct me on this are do we my memory is we have a connection to one of these bars very briefly you and i which bar pat's cocktails in valley village california and my memory is we filmed something in there that you wrote a web series you co-wrote oh is that never came out and then I think after we did this, Pat's Cocktail Bar sticks out in my mind as one of the fixes. They make a cocktail with a smoke gun. I don't know what to call it other than just a gun that shoots smoke into your whiskey cocktail.

So we're going to get you this gun, and you're going to night. What scene? And that's how you're going to fix it. What was happening in the scene? I don't remember. We were just in this bar. Who were we with and have they been canceled? No, Marissa was there. I don't know the person. Oh, that scene.

That scene. Yes, yes, yes. No, this was something. We made this for Justin Lin's YouTube channel. When there was just money millions of dollars out to a ton of different people uh and justin lynn the famous director of many fast and few many fast and furious had dumped a bunch of money into a project that never showed a second emerging new internet media invested a bunch of money into people who were already proven

in the most legitimate sectors of the entertainment industry to then underpay struggling creatives and then the thing was never released? That doesn't sound like our industry. Don't worry. I know, it seems weird. A lot of people are not paid at all.

The ultimate underpayment. The ultimate underpayment. Zero. What I remember about the Pat's Cocktails episode, there was a barbecue place next door, and they cut a hole in the wall. It's like, now people can order the barbecue. And then you just, everyone makes more money.

We're going to ruin their business too. But what I read about Pat's Cocktail Bar after that, where I think people I knew visited, and they, hey, do you still have that smoke gun? And they're like, oh, that stopped working weeks after that was taped. That's long gone. I feel like whenever Taffer and Bar Rescue comes up, this is always one of the main things you hone in on, Mike, is that like every episode starts with they're over pouring they're sloppy they're taking too long to make drinks and it's like a gin and tonic

right like there's a 20 year old who doesn't know how to do a gin and tonic and like everything's going wrong and then they bring in the world's greatest mixologist whoever it is they happen to be the world's greatest mixologist the winner of the most prestigious award

she's very cool she has a big pompadour curl on her head that's something that we're doing now like the band that was bad on snl carmen we have a carmen and she's gonna fix your bar it's just the the leap from they can't make two ingredient cocktails where the name is the two ingredients and it's taking too long. They're doing it poorly and they're losing money. And they come in and they're like, here's the concept. The drink is inside a skull. It's on fire. You need to shake it with some flair.

You know, let's make it a show. It's complicated to make. It costs $40. Proprietary equipment. Cinnamon hair strands at the top. And you singe. Don't burn them all the way. You lightly singe the cinnamon hair.

This season nine episode I watched was, he's like, the bar needs a gimmick. You got to have a gimmick and a challenge to get people in through the door. So they had a drink called the Bucking Bronco where there's a pepper and you have to eat the pepper first and then the drink has like 10 different types of like chili and hot sauce in it but then like a tahini rim and then like a straw that's coated in some other spicy substance i'm like there are 27 steps to this thing and the woman at the beginning of it was making martinis with orange juice. There's like, it's the same way with the kitchen.

Like there's a guy who cannot figure out how to make mozzarella sticks in a microwave. And he's like, I want you to cook a full Thanksgiving dinner for every person on that bar. You better plate the caprese successfully because we eat with our eyes before we eat with our mouths.

You need to slaughter the bison yourself. Tame him. Do it at the table. Form the table. Let the littlest kid take the knife and do it. In one of the recons, before everything's fixed at one of the Burbank bars,

the expert orders a scotch and soda, gets it, takes a sip and goes, like, he just drank toilet water. And just hearing Jordan talk about, like, playing up the reactions. I was like, how badly could you fuck up a scotch and soda? This is interesting. What he's thrown into question, he himself, himself perhaps was not authentic thinking that this was what the show asked for but then found the man himself john to be a beacon of authenticity right that he nailed

it in one take that the time i am very surprised that the the recon and the van is happening i am too yeah that seems like the fakest like i'm in there. I assume that he just knocked out all the van scenes, like, in a soundstage months and months later. That was always my guess. And then I was digging in, and it seems to be that the timeline of the show as represented is pretty honest and accurate. But my, like, head always watching the show was like, he must go to one bar, do those couple of days, leave. The renovation takes a week or two. Then he goes to one bar do those couple of days leave the renovation takes a week or two then he goes to another bar he circles back to the first bar when that renovation is done then he circles back to the second bar when that renovation is done but it's like no it does sound like each episode

happens within one five-day week basically and he's actually in the van right i'm sure they time it so it's like 20 yeah 15 minutes tops him in the van looking at the footage. Yeah. But the fact that these things are actually happening. Yeah. It makes you feel good. It does. Do you think that one thing Jordan didn't say is whether or not he made good on the promise.

Is there an episode of Jordan, Jesse, go where real quick, I don't want to sidebar too much, but I found myself in El Cajon where I often am. And I was mortified at my experience at a little place called the poor and then just like a 15 minute absolute tear down. And forgive me, Jesse, I will let you. Well, I was confused at first because I always knew the show as Jordan,

get Jordan, Jesse go brought to by kettle one. Yeah, there's a later season, like the sponsorship to, I'm sorry, I'm all over the place. I feel like there's more of that and there's more synergy later.

Don't worry. I got a whole, I have a whole pdf take behind about his philosophy from just for for us to read well for us to apply to our lives oh sure wow well that's what that's what i think it's about when we get together griffin gifted us a television premise which is now the subject of a massive bidding war right and uh you're gonna help us uh so i think we'll learn that making that show that that conflict will be crucial and you're going to help us. I think we'll learn that making that show, that conflict will be crucial to making the animated show. And you listened to the one audiobook,

but you didn't even listen to the older book, Raise the Bar, an Action-Based Method for Maximum Customer Reaction. No, I understand. I didn't. Bit of a double meaning in that title, if I'm not mistaken. I think there might be. I think there might be. I think there might be. I just want to at least say the name of this. It's called Taffer's Toolkit Takeaways.

So that's where you learn about conflict and how to use conflict to help in your daily life. Wow. But we don't have time to get to that. We don't have time. There's so much. I know. We do have to start. I think maybe one thing to talk about a little bit, and we've referred to this a bit, but

this is also something that's a promise and something we can make talk about a little bit and we've referred to this a bit but i this is also something to you know that's that's a promise and something we can make good on a little better in taffer too uh is is uh his own restaurant uh taffer taffer um so the ultimate bar scientist has applied this science to a restaurant chain yes and wouldn't you know it, of the three locations that have opened, two of them have quickly closed. It does not seem to be going very well. Every time it opens in a new city, the food reviewer for that city's paper tears it apart. I mean, what a great opportunity to do so.

You can't blame them. The one that remains open is in Alpharetta, Georgia. It's 40 minutes north of Atlanta. That one has maintained. But D.C. closed. Watertown, Massachusetts closed in trying to assess what a problem might be. Well, the very thing that we're referring to, the drinks in the skulls and such. I was curious what is on the bar menu oh yeah yeah at taffer's tavern uh and one that jumped out at me is a drink called lost at sea

a glistening deep sea experience with vodka tropical orange and ginger flavors garnished with a mermaid what do you mean by that yeah um i have no further information on what the mermaid garnish is but this does seem in keeping with like, I'm going to check in on these knuckleheads and see if they kept my system in place. Excuse me. Where are the mermaids? I don't see clamshell bras anywhere. I hand shucked those clams. I took the clams out themselves.

We were importing the clams from sicily why aren't you keeping the mermaids in your drinks they could talk i bred them in a lab they were real live mermaids i'm trying to find this article i found yesterday that was him breaking down i can't remember if it was right before the pandemic or sort of like right at the beginning of vaccination when he was ramping up and he was just like, this is ready to overtake everything. Oh, I got some Taffer vaccination things, but go ahead. Yeah, yeah. There's a lot. I forgot.

But he was basically saying like, I've just been studying the restaurant industry and it just angers me how broken it is and I'm ready to fix it all. And I've recently gone down a similar rabbit hole. Steve Ells, the creator of Chipotle, has been like, I've seen my thing go through its whole like rise and fall arc Chipotle to wherever it's landed, right? And I'm ready to revolutionize the industry again. And he's like, robots, people don't want to interact with people. It's plant-based robots, no seating, takeout only. And he started these restaurants called Colonel that opened in New York that very quickly closed because people found them unappealing. And now they keep rebranding and be like, we've heard you. We're going to make it more warm.

You will see a person's face. There will be a chair. I don't understand. The greatest nightclub in the world had a robot in it. Seco. If it was Seco, though, I bet it would have worked. Yeah, yeah. Taffer's Tavern.

I was finding this article I sent to you guys, and there are quotes I'm looking forward to pull up here, but the model was based on labor costs have become too high. Taffer's a real big fighter against minimum wage being raised. Small business psycho. Yeah, small business tyrant. Right. Labor costs versus material costs. It's like the health of the business

is the only thing that matters and the numbers have been out of whack. Places like Applebee's are doing like four entrees for $5 or whatever. And he's like, something has to change. Higher quality food,

but less people working. So the Taffer Tavern model, I didn't realize, was at least at the beginning very much conceived of this is a largely robotic kitchen. Really? Yes.

Oh, I missed this. And the food is sous vide. Yeah, that is a big thing. You have high quality food that is prepared and seasoned by experts, sous vide en masse. And they were like, so do you need to have

some off-site location that's making food for all of the franchise locations if your thing expands he's like no we use the company that makes the sandwiches for starbucks and now they make steaks for us and so they make steaks they vacuum seal them in bags they ship them to taffer's tavern and then a robot cooks it which is dumps it in water sous vide uh as i know it it is vacuum sealed in a bag yes placed in boiling water yes then opened and put on the plate right and he was like incredible it's easier it's cheaper it tastes better we don't have a 15 year old seasoning on a line now it doesn't take like a day to teach someone to cook it takes them like a minute because they don't

actually have to do the cooking they just oversee the robot and he's saying like and you won't believe how good this steak tastes you won't believe review from washington post steak frites in which the flat iron cut had been waterboarded to the consistency of guacamole there's almost evocative descriptions i have ever read in a restaurant review how do you possibly end up doing this after you're the guy 300 episodes of screaming and people you just put it in water chicken and waffles in which the pre-cooked bird was fried in-house to a nice crackle but the base was so gooey and underdone that the pearl sugar concealed inside the waffle cracked against my teeth like grit from a poorly cleaned oyster the waffle's the problem oh my god

he'll give taffy that the chicken was good but the waffle the cost of making waffles is what's bringing this country down and mr trump i need you to assure me that you'll get the waffle prices there let my robot put a bagged waffle in a tub of water is there a detail left in that review that you could read as if it was taffer yelling at the person who like there it is taffer yelling at the cook scott let me see if i can scan this review for even one more negative that must be all right part well i'm just i'll read that part of me is dazzled by technology that holds taffers tavern this review for even one more negative statement. That must be all of them, right? I'll read that part of me is dazzled by the technology that holds Taffer's Tavern together. And what am I mean for the future of hospitality? Kitchens that require fewer and less skilled workers.

Read between the lines there. Now this we can all agree on. Yes. This is a very good thing. Yes. Yes, we all agree on this. More POS systems than humans. Well, business owners are better.

The only way I agree is if it's like a kitchen of Seco's. Yes. Yeah. And they are wearing big old, wait, here's a point of discussion. Giant chef's hats or regular human-sized chef's hats that are very small on Seco's big head? Regular. Okay, got to talk to my question. They have a lot of these in Vegas now where like a robot will make your cocktail, but it looks like a robot arm from an assembly line.

And it's just grabbing different bottles from the seat. So it's not made to look friendly at all. And then it's not like a robot. It looks like it could torture you. Yeah. Like tangled up in its robot arms. It's like, here is your Jack and Coke. That's what I want.

If it says that, I'm happy. All I need, just talk to me. Talk to me and it's not in a human AI voice. I did like, I hope you are satisfied. Enjoy getting hammered. The only robot you want is the greeter. Yeah. Like going table to table,

being like, how is your dinner? Where you're like, that's fun novelty entertainment shit. Have you been here before? At a pulsation type restaurant right i mean this this washington post review goes in multiple paragraphs of being like i think i've identified the problem with robot restaurants like this person is like in theory i get it but here's what's terrifying about going to a restaurant without humans in it uh i will read uh this uh paragraph in my best worst uh taffer here uh the

section about the drinks which should be taffers specialty of course the cocktail list which would seem to play the taffet strengths borrows ideas from the wider world of mixology without apparently understanding how to best apply them the tiny pile of wood chips that sits next to the trademark campfire cocktail, basically a fat-washed old-fashioned, is ignited purely for show, not flavor. And I'm still not sure why my server served

charred a jalapeno table side, which I was then told to switch around the spiced, rum-based resurrection, a drink that looks like it was mixed with water from splash mountain so if anyone thinks this podcast doesn't have to do with theme parks it really does yeah you got a problem with the way i make my campfire drinks do you have a better way to make campfire drinks when have you gotten a little set next to your beverage huh this other article when

they were about to open where he was just like, and we're turning away applications. Too many franchisees want to open one. He's like, it's simple. We've simplified the cook robots and sous vide. And they're like, what about the drinks? He's like, the most obnoxious drinks of all time. Every drink has five glow sticks.

There are backstories to every drink. You have to have read a graphic novel prequel to understand the beverage you're drinking. And the interviewer straight up asked him, like, doesn't that seem counter to the philosophy that you just outlined for the food? And he's like, no, it's going to work the same way. And they're like, how is that possible? And he's like, well, obviously there'll be a

big component of pre-mixing. And I'm like, yeah, but you're also advertising that the drinks have 10 novelty toys inside of them the drinks are like magic tricks when a magician has to escape from a straitjacket you only have one minute to find the key to rescue your drink

from a straitjacket which is gonna fall into a little mini tub of fire it's simple it creates excitement to the night and we're in the reaction industry of course you're gonna react to that can I bring it to theme parks a little bit i have a little like i have a little challenge that i think just to tie some things together there are of course

some bars in the world of theme parks that do kind of have stories backstories to them and where there is like a canon to it and i I just thought I'd propose, and anybody jump in there, how Taffer might go about rescuing certain theme parks. Oh, sure. Yeah. Let me start with an obvious one. Perhaps Oga's Cantina. You're over-serving. You're over-pouring.

You're making people get two drinks at once. This alien's laying eggs in this tank, and the tank is dirty. The eggs are poisonous. There's a frog in there. There is a frog in the jar, and the pipes go straight to the consumers. They're dripping mucus and pus into the drinks. And where are the aliens serving? These are dirty human beings working.

Not enough droids. Automate. You've got one droid here, but his programming don't work. He still thinks he's a pilot. He needs mental health counseling from what he's been through. He should be doing sous vide.

He's got so many arms he could be making three meals play the music on a tape you don't need a dj it's the same shit every hour have you heard this thing he says he he did seemingly create the nfl season pass or whatever that fucking business model is that sells the nfl games to bars which he's part of the permanent he's part of the nfl hall of fame was part of the board of directors at some point or something but basically as a bar guy was like we should have some unified program i don't know everyone gives him credit for that he also keeps saying in interviews i found that he's the only man in america with a patent on a

music organizational system for public spaces or something like that it's a weird weirdly convoluted thing and only in the nerdist episode did he kind of get into it where he's like i spent seven years studying the science of how emotions make people feel with music and get them to do different things at bars and i have a system where you can't play the same song the same day, but you need to know how to adjust to the crowd. And the one stat he threw out was, I with music can do anything I want to a crowd. I can get gang members out of a bar in three weeks. I heard this.

He said, I've musically eradicated a bar from the gang members in three weeks time. And then Rick's like, what do you mean and he goes two out of every three songs are a female artist that's his only follow up explanation but you have a lot to say to Rex do the gang members have to go through the

butt funnel that's a very small entry exit exit way to the dance floor so everyone has to lean in to get to know each other a little more with their cross and bands i've eradicated a bar of stormtroopers it is this fascinating thing though where like taffer is like the butt funnel is one of my big inventions you need a space that's too hard to walk through so people are forced to interact because people go to bars to meet people.

And you're like, oh, so you basically have created a tunnel of sexual harassment. A fire hazard. That's why he calls it a butt funnel. It's like a fucking corridor that forces people to get uncomfortably close to each other while very drunk. This drink with the word pussy in it is disgusting. Yes. This system I've implemented nationwide with butt in it is perfection he's only comfortable with his sexuality he says yes that's what you said too yeah you want to control it yeah uh oh go oh go

come here come here i want you to stand at. Do you see where you're at right now? All right, look over there. That's the closest bathroom. That's one block away. Why are there no bathrooms in your establishment? Why are there no bathrooms here? And then people have to take dirty bathroom return cards? That card's been in the bathroom. The median income on Batuu is over 25,000 credits.

Why do you call it Oga's Cantina? It's an ego stroke. Your name's not even, you don't even appear in this place. Look around this area. 70% of the surrounding businesses are frontier themed. You need to appeal

to that clientele. Alright, here we go. Rebranding. Three, two, one. The spur. There you go. That is genuinely what Taffer would do. Is he'd go to Oga's and go, you have to appeal to the Frontierland crowd.

And then it's the one Frontierland bar in a Star Wars area. Take a look at this on the map. Right around the corner. You have railroad workers coming in here. They want to think about drilling rails. You could call it the sidecar, the caboose. We're going to serve the caboose, and this girl with the big hair is going to teach you how to make it.

It's got 25 ingredients. Look, this part of town's been through some rough times. This used to be critter country. That industry failed. People don't know where to go. Entire critter bands have been evicted and replaced by cheaper ones with less characters in them. I'm bringing in my expert chef, Dexter Jetster.

He's going to overhaul the whole menu. Olga, what happened? You used to have a fire in you. I read about you. You were going to put a dinner theater right behind this bar. That never happened. Instead, you're addicted to Dexter's death sticks. If he

had gotten into the Star Cruiser, it would have never closed. Yeah. He could have fixed that whole thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, he would have identified right away. There's pillars in the way. People can't see the show. I've got an idea for a rebranding.

Here we go. Three, two, one. The Imagineering Office. I've sent Jenny Nicholson in. She's one of the biggest influences in this space. Just one four-hour video could make or break this establishment. You know what's a really depressing one? There's like a season five episode where he sends fucking David Portnoy in.

Barstool Sports, yeah. In that way where he's like, your bar serves pizza. This is Dave Portnoy, Dave Portnoy in. Barstool Sports, yeah. In that way where he's like, your bar serves pizza. This is Dave Portnoy. He's the most important man in pizza. One word from him could make or break your business. And I'm like,

oh, this is like classic fucking taffer like blow up. Yeah, yeah. And now you read these articles of like pizzerias that are clinging on for dear life because like Portnoy started a flame war with them and now people

like jam their phone number all day saying like baba buoy and you're like this guy actually is like a force who is able to like oh in a dark way oh no but also now everyone has to curry favor with him because they're like if he likes us then the business like goes through the roof oh jesus it didn't save pizza rizzo it didn't save did portnoy ever do but yeah i've gotten the portnoy this year this year over one rat themed pizza restaurant we'll close its doors forever if he's not careful local pizza maker rizzo i can't believe it took us this many years to get to Portnoy One Bite Pizza Rizzo and Taffer Galactic Star Cruiser Rescue. I know. Take a look at these guys.

These old men, these two old men, they're influencers in the theater community. If they criticize a live production, it might close its doors forever. If they make a punny joke about you. If they do a single heckle of your restaurant, you're done for. If Statler and Waldorf get on Yelp. If it happened,

and that could be a stand-up bit worthy of Carrot Top or John Taffer himself. Well, are we sort of And that could be a stand-up bit worthy of Carrot Top or John Taffer himself. This is true. Well, are we sort of getting to the, has this been ample time? One thing I think is funny is that a lot of people woke up or whatever that people encountered this episode and went, sorry, two and a half hours on the turnstiles. Although I think they would have, I don't think they would have been, I think they would have gone, let's go!

Let's fucking go! I get it. Yeah, I get that. The only note I wrote down that I wanted to hit as a bullet point that I didn't get to today, and forgive me if this has been covered in a past episode, do we know, did we

know previously that he was involved for years with the rainforest cafe no no he threw this out i think in the rob low because rob low was talking about like the rise and falls of these things where he's like i remember when hard rock was actually cool and then now they became this like mainstream thing and he's like what about planet hollywood and taffer was breaking down the differences in business models where he was like hard rock when it started advertised having the best burger in the world they actually did have a great burger yeah and then jimmy hendrix came and he left his guitar because he liked it and that was the first piece of memorabilia they had why it happened

that's what he said wow it's true whoa uh. Also, Rocky IV is based on John Taffer's personal life. Not just the robot, but the toughness of a great Italian man. Yeah, Rocky is me. Yeah. I met this guy, this failing actor, Stallone. I said, you know what you should do? You should tell your story about boxing. Yeah. But with a heart of gold.

I texted this to you guys last night that one website says that Taffer, the origin of the name is Tavern. Oh, right, right. That it's a last name based in the tradition of the tavern keeper. It's like, I'm going to plant something on Google that maybe people will repeat. Maybe, yeah. But he was saying that was the origin of Hard Rock. And then he was like, and then Robber Oak came in. And Planet Hollywood was done the opposite way where it was memorabilia first.

And then he was like, and then like Rainforest Cafe. And he was like, well, I worked with Rainforest Cafe for many years and it was a silly mob. And then he explained it. This is the other thing I'll say about these podcasts I listen to. Talking about is Taffer dumb? Does his – are his suggestions like stupid? Do they not work or whatever? I listen to four random podcast episodes and each one of them there was at least one five minute run he went on where I was like this is the first time you've actually sounded like you know what you're talking about where he's speaking calmly and getting into like hard data and saying concepts I have never heard in over a decade of bar rescue. Wow.

Where I'm like there is something here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He was breaking down like the analytics of like, here's what I've learned over 40 years of doing this and this and that. And was talking about like the margins on drinks in a way where I'm like, I've never heard this monologue in an episode. And this feels like basic stuff. Huh. there may be some disconnect to the like applying like the science that you of how a bubba gumps or rainforest cafe works to some bar where a guy just wanted to have his five sad friends around yes that's what i think where i think it all falls apart is like we're gonna do the stress test we

have people at every table they don't want people at every table they don't want to be failing but it's their worst nightmare to have a full crowd of people come in. We crammed 500 people into a clown car. If it can't handle this, you should be in business. pulsations and like bar rescue was like him having success launching bars or clubs and then becoming this high level consultant for like these very corporate enterprises that were like how do we make this work yeah we know we should have cheers in an airport or bubba gump in a strip mall you know or like how do we scale rainforest cafe up or whatever and he used like 10 terms i'd never heard before that were kind of interesting where he was like i don't he called like an atmosphere packet or whatever it was where he

was talking about like well rainforest had a different model it was about this and it was about that and that's how they scaled it up and i was like all of this is kind of interesting but it also means he's particularly ill-suited to like a small dive bar because the only thing he knows how to turn it into is like something that could be franchised that is kind of like bland and automated enough and kind of like refillable i don't know i think the study has has legs i think we could be 500 the studies across the country he's very numbers guy yeah yeah so like i'm assuming he has like some sort of i don't even want to call an expert maybe it is an expertise in numbers or something.

He's an aspect. But I would love to hear. I've never like he doesn't seem like he overlaps with the Tillman for Tita's of the world. No. But yet when he's talking about like turnover at tables and trying to like maximize profits and whatever and like this corner of the bar should be worth one million dollars a year. Right. I'm like what he's saying makes sense for like Applebee's in times square yeah yeah yeah you know like perfect sense where i'm like if i run that i call him and go fix my business because it's applebee's in times square you just want

this thing to fucking run like a machine it's bad it's also just the it's it's uh uh bad for the world to think of everything like that yes yeah because things are supposed to have character and be odd and it like pirates wasn't good but if you applied the logic that wipes pirates of its theme right if pirates worked yeah it there would be something actually special about it pirates were 10 good it would be our favorite place in america right like the four of us are the target audience oh yeah even not caring about pirates specifically when are the boys gonna go to pirates why haven't they done it why haven't they got boys if you ever make it to silver spring you gotta do the pirates episode i think this is jane said when we were watching she's like with dimples she's like

it had more character before they changed there's the whole thing with it they certainly had to gut it to repair some of the safety issues a sound system seemed like it was still from the 1980s they said but it's like you could have put a little more bric-a-brac in for the charm it didn't all just have to be black vinyl boots he doesn't like't like it. The whole thing with Pirates he just didn't like it. If anything about him if anything about that tickled him then he would have been like, because that's an easy theme to kind of do.

Long John Silver's has been a Pirate theme. Tell me one example of a successful Pirate chain! Oh wait! Pirate Dizner, I'm sure he would love Pirate's Dinner Adventure. He would. Oh and the way the food, the food that they serve, and the efficiency with which they,

now is this sous vide? They cook it under a light bulb! This is the thing, though, it's like, we're fascinated by Taffer, but a big part of it is that he is so repellent, and kind of stands as an enemy to the exact type of thing we like. Well, he's a kind of representative of everything in culture that like scares us that I feel like the four of us are always talking about.

He's a contradiction, though, in some ways, because obviously he appreciates Imagineer. He appreciates Disney and themed shit, but he is not able to apply like to change his thinking when it comes to different scenarios he has one single focus that's what i'm saying he's numbers brained yeah which is the danger of everything fun in this world right is a number brained business moron killing all the dumb shit that we love for all fun in the world algorithm based entertainment that shouldn't survive he seems to have actual knowledge and the show is entertaining on like a trashy reality tv level and the core that i do think is him like digging into the psychology of these people yeah yeah but then he also does those like speaker conventions at a hotel by the airport where

it's like condoleezza rice general mathis john taffer for a small business but i think that's one one of the things that i remember i of other podcast like i think matt chrisman and someone else took mushrooms and then went to like a c-pack thing in pasadena yes until they were kicked out and they saw like we're sitting in a conference room, like a convention center watching John Taffer talk. Oh, yeah. That sounds better than anything you can see at Coachella, right? Oh, yeah.

Festival audience. And I was I was fifth row for Taffer. Now I'm just imagining Taffer on the Coachella poster. Headliner Taffer. Playing drums? Saturday afternoon. No, just him. He comes out and he just yells at everyone on stage. What are you wearing?

Feathers? That's weird. I've got you a new hat. It doesn't have any feathers in it. And it's better for blocking the sun. My talk today is called You Do you everyone write that down like that lady who just wanted to play her songs and own the building he should have all he should have been like all right here's the deal let's figure out a way where this doesn't sink you right financially and you can play your dumb

songs till you die because the part of like the the thing we joke about of like every bar gets reverted back to what it was within three weeks and then is out of business within four months. Right. Is that he goes from one extreme to another where they're like, this is why I started the bar. This is my emotional story. This is why I love it. And he's like, throw all of that fucking garbage. You need to be worried about making money and appealing to the blandest, broadest, like, group of people possible.

And then they revolt against that. And you're like, right, how do you, like, split the atom and find a way to make both people happy? I feel like there are a couple episodes I've seen amidst the, like, 800, right? Where there's, like, the one that's, like, a bar in a trailer. And the guy is, like, they're, like, safety code violations. He does, like like hillbilly. They call him like a hillbilly plumber or some shit where they're like everything's held together with duct tape. And they're like, this is the charm of the place.

I'll call violations. Mold. And at the end, he like redoes it and is like, I'll make like the Disney World version of the character you had before. I don't know if that works because I think the people who go there don't want to go see the like in quote self parody version of what the bar was before. But that was a rare example of him at least trying to keep the thing that he liked. Yeah. You know what they like identified as this is the heart of the place. This is why our 10 loyal customers come here. And every other place he's like the dream has

to die you have to shoot it in the head yeah some of that wouldn't work in philadelphia because one of the things about certain uh bars in certain neighborhoods it'll just be a block or a few blocks of row houses townhouses yeah and the corner house the the bottom floor, the ground floor is a bar. Yeah. But that is like basically a rec route. Right. You don't want to try to run that bar like the Rainforest Cafe. Right.

You want the same 20 bar flight. It's Moe's. You basically like, he should not try to fix Moe's. They're not the most entertaining episodes, but the most effective episodes are the ones where he just stumbles onto a poorly run bar. Yes. He doesn't try to change the character. Right.

Where it's like this bar already has no identity. Right. And it's just not operating well. And he's just sort of like, how do I tighten this up? It's like because you can't change the core character of things like this like let's say there was a podcast and maybe the the branding of it was kind of confusing because it bills itself as a podcast about theme parks but then the character the heart of it is that all of this other bullshit is talked about at extreme length and maybe some corporate person would come in and say, you need to, like, you should crank this out

like an assembly line. Right. And, you know, talk about a ride and keep the episode to an hour, 90 minutes or so. The last time you were on, there was a gift that didn't come. Yes. During the episode,

I don't know if I said it on the show, that the gifts ended up coming. It became not what, it was not what i suspected which was a bunch more kingo toys i would never do that you sent for my my first son for my second you sent a bunch of sprites yes you said the exact variety five of funkos five of action figures and five key chains right of sprite now sprite is another character from the eternals yes now i thought sprite would drive you particularly crazy because spriteite is the Peter Pan of the Eternals.

The ultimate Peter. Being a pirate is the ultimate Sprite syndrome. She's a little girl who can never grow up. This is the creepiest shit. And there's like somebody who wants to be with Sprite. No, Sprite wants to be with Richard Madden. Okay. And she has a complex about the fact that Richard Madden will never be with her because he doesn't want to look like a pedophile.

What a wonderful story for a great superhero epic. And what if he's got this weird kink where he's sexually attracted to women who look like adults and thus Sprite is always heartbroken. This is how this narrative plays out. She sees him kissing Gemma Chan and gets angry and almost becomes bad out of revulsion wow yeah so what if there was this this kind of creepy element to the story yeah and on top of it it was the boringest movie ever made um so anyway i i but i did want to thank you for that for that gift for my second son and i also it we've been recording a while it's getting a little hot in here here we go and i wanted to to, oh, look at that.

Whoa. Oh, I happen to be wearing something from Griffin's second round of gifts. The website Boxlaunch, Boxlaunch.com connected to the chain of mall, mostly mall-based stores, was having a sale on some other items I wanted, and I was trying to hit

some free shipping minimums. Yeah, of course. And I was like, what else do they have that I maybe want? I was just doing, you know. Yeah, I do that. Keyword searches for brands I like. My favorite IP. Yeah. And I was like, do they have any deep discount Eternals merch? And what I found is specifically that

they sell two different kinds of Sprite and Kingo shirts. Sprite? Yes, we should say that's the shirt. It is Sprite and Kingo together. I can't reallyo. Yes, we should say that's the shirt. It is Sprite and Kingo together. Can you stand up? I can't really see. It is only the two characters that I have infected Scott's children with.

The character, yes. You have decided that my oldest is a Kingo kid and my youngest is a Sprite kid and that's how it will be. But you were also kind enough to make this a pair. You got a pretty matching child coordination shirts so that i could have one and so that my son could have one so here a photo from earlier today but a different sprite and kingo yes a totally different shirt but still with sprite and with kingo on the

same sides there is one for my oldest son and i'm wearing one as well and then there's an entire other one that's like the like it's like the magical patterns of goo and dust they are shirts that represent really the uniform oh wow famous eternals uh fucking space garbage that's on their uniforms so there's a you can be sprite and king Wow. I don't think that my oldest even knows that there is more, that there are more Kingo shirts available. But yeah, we'll get to go out and be the envy of all the dads and kids in town. I forgot. I forget if I ruined it, but when you said, I didn't know about it,

but when you said there's a new package coming, I pulled up all the Eternal Action figures and I was like in my head I may have texted him but I was like I will bet $100 that he picked Sprite you got it right

the only way I was possibly previously familiar with Sprite but now I am Mike and I did some back and forth because i was like is fastos the second funniest but fastos doesn't come in the the pocket pop keychain form factor that was a big yeah right it has to be a character that fits into these pre-established patterns with the kingo and then i was like i could do crow the evil deviant but mike agreed that it might be too scary for your children.

Yeah, yeah, you don't want that. No, no, no. I want a story that everybody can get behind, like an eternal girl who wants to have sex with a man, something great for my baby. Yeah, a lot more appropriate. To start the world thinking about. And I also, I believe, to make this a mega episode, I don't think that's the final reveal.

Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, here's the thing. Griffin, I have your Galactic Star Cruiser toy right here. Amazing. Wait, not Galactic Star Cruiser. Yeah. You've got the names wrong. Star Speeder is right here. It is so much bigger than I thought it would be.

It's massive. It's giant. How are you going to transport that? I brought extra empty luggage Not that name's wrong. Star Speeder is right here. It is so much bigger than I thought it would be. It's massive. It's giant. It's about three feet tall. How are you going to transport that? I brought extra empty luggage. From D23. I'm trying to get this back home, and I'm still going to have to do some adjusting. Listener, this is so huge. And it's also, I think now what's happened is that it's, Mike, you put it perfectly in

a place where I can't see Jason anymore. Right. It's massive. More than blocks Jason. And there's a whole discussion that's going to have to happen off the air because I have pulled the carded Rex out of the box because we were going to try to just put it on eBay and recoup some of the costs. Because there's two Rexes, a carded and a loose. There's a loose Rex in there, which is the same one, but this is a carded Rex. And we have to have a whole debate off the air of what we're going to do about this.

Maybe nothing. But I also want to say that I have gotten everyone a gift, the same gift, and maybe Griffin has this already, and it's sort of redundant, but I just wanted to make sure that there was a character you could put in to the Star Speeder immediately. Okay. Where are we going here? I've been sitting on this for about a year, maybe a year.

This actually just lined up perfectly. I have a guess of what this is, too. I am going to give everyone a Miles Quarich action figure from Avatar. Wow. Everyone got them. Wow. Very cool. They were on a nice discount on BestBuy.com many months ago.

I've got to scan that. I bought a Jar Jar there before. And, of course, you see he comes with his trademark cup of coffee. Right. And he fits. He's already Jar Jar there before. And of course, you see, he comes with his trademark cup of coffee. Right. And he fits. He's already in my- He's got this perfect scale. He's already in my Star Speeder.

Because the problem is that you need something in a specific scale. Because there are the exact amount of seats in this toy that there are on the actual Star Tours ride. But you need toys at this scale with knees that bend. Yeah. It's very important. Because some of the different toys I have that are this size don't have bendable knees.

You can't use reactions. You gotta go post-Power of the Force 2. Look at these knees. Look at these knees. Look at these. They can't even bend. What kind of figure is that? Well, I'll say,

so Mike and I were very invested in trying to get the Star Speeder when they went up very quickly on the Disney Store site. And I had a hack. This is the fancy one with the script where it plays the ride. It plays the ride. That was very limited and went like super fast on the Disney store site. And I had a hack. This is the fancy one with the script where it plays the rhyme. That was very limited and went like super fast.

We were waiting online for like a fucking hour. And then I found a hack that I thought would maybe help me get one. And it didn't work for me, but it worked for Mike. But Mike had also bid on one on eBay. So then this is the extra one he had, which you've been holding for me for a while now. I similarly, at yourork comic-con at your request yes of course got you an action figure of kevin eastman co-creator of ninja turtles so

dressed as a garbage man from a deleted scene of the first live action movie but included in here also from new york comic-con are a pack of blues the mascot of thrill joy oh wow when we haven't even talked about that i think brian mariotti company ceo of funko mariotty stuff likes blue mike thinks blue is cute i think this character but then here's an extra bonus i bought some other bullshit on ebay recently and because i bought enough of his stuff the ebay seller threw in a mass amount of bat Forever PVCs. So I think I have two Kilmers and two Chris O'Donnells in here. Oh, wow. This is a little gift bag for Mike.

I mean, if they're the same as Batman, I can spread the joy, the thrill joy around. Jason, I've been hinting for a long time I have a thing I've been trying to get to you. Logistically, it's been a little difficult to make happen. Sure, and it's not from the Dollhouse Museum that you said you were stopping at. It's not, which I did stop at. OK, I woke up this morning in Santa Barbara, made a quick stop at the dollhouse,

the Teddy Bear and Doll Museum. That's pretty excellent. Wow. A big discovery I found there, Mike, that I think I need to put on your radar if I can take the pin out of puppets from. Oh, right. Oh, my God. You know, we are at almost three hours as you take that pin out. Yeah, we're approaching three hours, yeah. Sherry Lewis doll. The doll of the woman Sherry Lewis. Correct. Mass produced.

Was on a shelf with Buffalo Bob from Howdy Doody, who I know was not strictly the puppeteer of Howdy Doody, but I am now like, is there an entire sub-universe of merchandise of the people behind the puppets? Of the ventriloquists. Because it was above a ventriloquist shelf, which had, it did not have an Alclyde Smith, sadly. But it did have a Charlie McCarthy. Okay. It had a Mortimer Snurd. Why would they not make a Jerry Mahoney?

That's a reference people are making all the time. They did have a Jerry Mahoney. I was like, where's the Edgar Bergendgendahl where's the edgar bergendahl but i just i i now know there's a buffalo bob and a sherry lewis interesting what does it look like doll that says little sherry is it she like a baby i don't know it's just like a little sherry the same size as a shop really yeah you gotta find littlery. I actually packed. Topic next month, Little Sherry. Little Sherry. Enjoy your 5%, Little Sherry.

No, madam. Fine. No, madam. I actually packed a peanut butter and jelly knowing this would happen today, and I am looking forward to eating it because I am running NSD. Yeah, let's do it. That's it. So, Jason, let's wrap it up. But wait.

Griffin's a guest. What do you got? Final reveal. Okay. So, I think it was a year or two ago. It was after I'd done the first Kingo drop of the Massimassimo Kingo, where Mike bought you a creepy stylized Japanese toy of director, raconteur, Kevin Smith. Yes.

A Q-Posket, I believe it was called. Yep. Yeah. And on Mike, he invoked me to say, now Griffin has a tendency our friend griffin to sometimes buy multiples of an item oh no perhaps this will encourage him to buy multiples and i i originally that was my plan gonna buy several of these at discount okay and just bombard you with kevin smith cute baskets and then i was like is there a more meaningful thing i can do here and it took a little while logistically to make happen but especially you've had a year or two of high highs and low lows yeah i owe you multiple i i've been feeling like it's been

building of like i need to give you something meaningful both in commiseration and celebration and everything so this is a q posket signed by kevin oh. Now, here is the funny part of this. We I kept trying to get in-person interactions with him. He was supposed to do the podcast in studio a couple of times. Then one time I was out here and I saw him, but I forgot to pack it. It kept not lining up at the last second. And then we did George Lucas talk show at his theater in New Jersey. And as I was changing out of the Watto costume and I knew he was going to run off quickly I was like I forgot to get him to sign this Patrick can you go give this to him

and get him to sign it and he went sure and he brought it back and so it is signed I heart you Kevin Smith I saw I love it which I didn't say it's for me I didn't say it's for you but I think the message translates we We all are you. Kevin Smith, most of all. Right. Wow. That's really beautiful. Yeah.

Well, Jason, let Kevin Smith's love of you, his heart of you resonate and power you through stuff. That's beautiful. My God. Now I just need to get him to sign 10 more of them. Oh, no. Where are those? Wow. Geez. A massive. there's never been more

On the table I mean this is a gigantic box Yeah, what are you going to do with this? I don't know I really want you guys to see it, but we can't do that on the air I want you to see what the look Because you guys have not come over and seen the toy No, no, no, we haven't been invited

For a star speeder party That's true Yeah, no, the scale's massive We'll post photos of it We haven't been invited for a star speeder party. That's true. Yeah, no, the scale's massive. We'll post photos of it. But Griffin, the greatest gift that you gave us was coming in here, veering us off topic in an original Star Tours kind of way. That's right.

And sending us on a much more entertaining adventure full of twists and turns through the world of taffer one an adventure that's just beginning i mean we've already referred to nine which is the amount of the original star wars uh so we'll at least get to nine you know and then we'll end up with our rogue ones and our solos and uh taffer side stories yeah yeah i'm looking forward to all but i guess for now my god uh gr Griffin Newman, you survived podcast The Ride. What a time. Exit to the gift shop.

Any energy left in which to plug anything? Blank check. Podcast. Griffin and David, we're doing a miniseries on Steven Spielberg right now. Followed up by a miniseries on the work of John Taffer. You're also doing it. You're going through episode by episode. Yes, I'm treating him as an auteur of bars.

We're shifting our format a little bit We have an episode In the planning stages in theory, that would be a PTR BC crossover That hopefully will happen soon. I gotta figure out some of the logistics also Years ago on this podcast. I mentioned that there was a movie I got cast in largely because the director was a listener of this show. Yeah, indeed. The great Michael Taberski, who then I went to. It premiered at a film festival in Europe in the last fall.

So then we went to Disneyland Paris together and had this very nice, like, full circle. Oh, wow. We're getting to go to a theme park together moment. Anyway, this movie got released on VOD very suddenly without much advanced warning. Oh, sure. That sounds like how things go, yes. Yep, very much the state of the industry,

but we're trying to do catch-up promoting it now. So it's called Turn Me On. It's Belle Powley and Nick Robinson are the leads, but a bunch of comedy people like Darcy Carden and Patty Harrison are also in it. Julie Shiplet, who's a great stand-up. And it's like a dystopian sci-fi relationship satire thing. It's rentable in most places.

And half the length of this episode? Yeah. Okay. I think it's pretty close to 90. It'll go down smooth. Less challenging work than three hours. Three hours and a threatened part one of nine though it's really it's i mean it's less our star wars and more our avatar with the run times with the now it's just on us to release them you know with a better pace than uh you know to not

have the amount of time between uh fire and ash yeah yeah God, we really got to put a pin in Palak. Palak the wind trader. Oh, my God. We don't have time. We got to get out the door. Because as for us, for three bonus episodes every month, check out Podcasts around the second gate or get one more bonus episode on our VIP tier Club 3 where this entire taffer mess began.

You will find all of that at patreon.com slash podcast the ride. I found the guy who suggested it. Jordan Kegel. There you go, Jordan. Two years later. Are you happy now? You better be. Forever Dog.

This has been a Forever Dog production. Executive produced by Mike Carlson, Jason Sheridan, Scott Gairdner, Brett Boehm, Joe Cilio, and Alex Ramsey. For more original podcasts, please visit foreverdogpodcasts.com and subscribe to our shows on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Keep up with the latest Forever Dog news by following us on Twitter and Instagram at Forever Dog Team and liking our page on Facebook.