Podcast: The Ride - Escapology CityWalk with Tom Scharpling

Episode Date: August 22, 2025

Tom Scharpling (The Best Show, Double Threat) joins the PTR boys in a tiny, frustrating, pirate-themed escape room for "fun."They get on the ground, turn large wheels and push through game-based fatigue in order to avoid embarrassment in front of the Escapology employees."⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Michael Graves Causeway⁠" episode is up at: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Patreon.com/PodcastTheRide⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠FOLLOW PODCAST: THE RIDE:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://twitter.com/PodcastTheRide⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/podcasttheride⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BUY PODCAST: THE RIDE MERCH:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.teepublic.com/stores/podcast-the-ride⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠PODCAST THE RIDE IS A FOREVER DOG PODCAST⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://foreverdogpodcasts.com/podcasts/podcast-the-ride⁠See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Forever. Dog. Warning, the following podcast may contain era-appropriate padlocks, an impatient game master, skull puzzles, and some brief but very substantive tuna talk. Tom Sharpling joins us at our favorite place, City Walk Hollywood, and tries to help us complete a pirate-themed escape room

at the newly opened Escapeology. Is there any chance we did, Well, you'll have to listen to this episode and solve every riddle to find out. Good luck. It's Podcast, The Ride. that friendship is more valuable even than the lost treasure of Captain Goldbeard. I'm Scott Gairnurgent by Mike Carlson. Yeah, well, that's true.

Also, I'm not quite sure what the treasure was, so I really can't weigh it against almost anything. Well, and there you go. If we can't remember, then for sure friendship is more valuable. No question. Jason Sheridan. The real friendships were the friendships we almost destroyed along the way. Hang to solve. Your Coots and puzzles.

Here's a friendship unraveled in one night, like half an escape room. Yeah. And in half an hour, they're all in peril. But, you know, I mean, that is true. But however, this remains a happy record and a positive record. Because what we get to do is keep forging a friendship with somebody who's, we've been so happy to run into and, you know, and get time with and good check. with and podcaster to podcaster pump up talks and you know right when we need them here in the halls of glamorous Forever Dog Studios which we all share but he has not properly joined us on

podcast the ride until now I'm so excited it's happening from the best show celebrating its 25th year from Double Threat with Julie Klausner it's Tom Sharplin hey thanks for having me this is so exciting thank you for doing this one of the legends of podcasting himself. Oh, yeah, you are. A really adopter. And you are. You are.

Yeah, I was trying. What if you were calling yourself that? Is a quote that is, that was him asking, Tom, can you just say that really quick about me as a blurb for my book? There's an index card that says that so you can just read it back.

Yeah. Read what it says. While you're here, there's a couple things we need out of you. No, we're so excited. And, you know, we've been wanting to have you on the show for a long time and I feel like it's just been a matter of

finding the right topic and after escapology I think we're still looking. Still searching. Someday we'll find it. Sunday we'll find it. Because we did not find it. No, we didn't find much of anything I wouldn't say. I mean

That was eye-opening. An eye-opening experience. Well, it taught us a lot about ourselves. A lot of limitations that we have. Well, before we get to that, time, I'll just open you up to possibly something worse. Can you believe this top 100 podcast full of Time, Time Magazine list? Oh, I'm completely comfortable with it. I feel it's more or less perfect.

And I think it's great when you do a thing for a quarter of a century. And then people actively tell you that you influence them to do it. and then the people who are influenced by those people are making piles of money and are on lists like the 100 best podcasts ever. No, honestly, I truly don't care. Those lists are so dumb and they've been around forever and I just look at them as just if I can turn it into something funny.

But if I can't, I don't care anymore. Well, look, I think we can all agree that at least part of the list, the part that Blank Check with Griffin and David is on, that this part of the list is correct and sacrosanct if we have issues with any of the other parts of the list. Let's get that on the record.

Like the parts of the list where there are podcasts that are on the list that started four months before the list began. They are the best. It doesn't matter how, you know, sometimes you do it for too long, as maybe happened to us here at podcast

the right, you do it for too long, you lose the like we maybe we would have had it as certain we gave ourselves too much time but if you just like gun for it as soon as you've been created then that we didn't start a mobile phone network maybe if we had made that leaf we would have got a little more we could still try no one has signed up for cellular service from us yeah it's too bad really you guys left some some opportunities on the table there yeah you could have had people complaining to you about 5G reception, like, just like they'd be coming to you with that now, just like, hey, my charger's not working. What do I do? My phone's not holding a charge anymore, you know. Now they're not just mad at, you know, me about things that I said about 90s pop punk bands. Now they're also mad that, like, I'm not getting any reception in, uh, my family lives

in Virginia. And if I, like, I have to go out on the pole. which is very inconvenient because it's cold out there in the winter. Yeah. And who wouldn't want three actors who became podcasters who became phone salesmen? Like they didn't even start as podcasters. See, that's the one difference that everybody's missing on so much of this stuff. So many of these podcasts, these people doing them, they do something else that actually made

them famous me the podcast is my thing that's my that's my calling card I'm not like hey I'm a golfer who does a podcast now I'm a you know like it's just like not part of a portfolio yeah but all these people they were famous for a different thing and then they're just

like I could talk I guess I'll do that sure looks easy to just start talking yeah I could I talk all the time and then And now they're just, oh, they're so successful. I'm not a stand-up. I'm not an athlete. Hard to, I want to just tell you that.

I'm not. Okay. I don't want you to jump to any conclusions. You weren't on the Maccavie show the other day. I love that energy he gives off because he stands the whole time. It's so cool to watch a guy do a podcast while standing because he's so mad. He's so amped up. A chair is just going to slow him down.

He needs to be ready. Was he ready for a fight? He's so amped all the sleeves off his shirts. Just gone. He doesn't have any. Exactly. The shirt and sleeves knew to get out of town. Clear a path.

You're not wanted here. Too much energy raging out of these biceps. We should get Pat McAfee on the show, though. Sure. Why not? I don't think I know who Pat McAfee is. Oh. He's an athlete who now has like a.

show where I mean he's probably like he probably makes 50 million dollars a year podcasting he is sometimes the play or a color commentator on Monday night raw okay and once in a while he will wrestle he will have a couple matches and if you really like wrestling it pisses you off yeah it's um he's one of these guys who ESPN at one point was dedicated to like sports journalism and then And one day they were just like, instead of hiring 60 talented people to like impeccably research and investigate the stories going on in sports, they're just like, what if we took that money and gave it to three people who are just foghorns that they're like hot take foghorns that will just draw attention to them and will pay them each. a hundred million dollars to do their thing and it's just like it's like nobody likes these guys nobody likes stephen a smith nobody likes pat maccafee i keep seeing headlines about his

presidential run that must mean someone likes him can you imagine that's just like the definition of delusion the fact that this guy's like i don't know if i'm going to throw my hat in the ring probably not the news cycle starts with yeah I'm not sure I'm just not sure and you're like who at when was the beginning of this thread you began it right in the middle

yeah you're I'm a think look I think things are a mess right now but it's like why would you think things are a mess you're insanely wealthy off of the current climate we think it's a mess because of you why do you think

it's a mess you're winning at this somehow you're like Like, this is not a mess for you. You're one of the only people getting paid now. Well, that's kind of the Trump formula in a way, is railing against a system that worked out incredibly well for you. Acting like, yeah. That's why Stephen A. Smith, people are like, maybe he can be,

this is a guy who he's got a TV show and a podcast where listeners submit questions and they trick him into talking about what kind of Pokemon he prefers. And if you're that much of a rube, you could be president, you know. Did he weigh in on which Pokemon he liked? Someone submitted like, you know, Charzard's more last. Chars are hard and swirdle. Squirtle.

You know. Wait, why is the Google Auto fill in, why does it go from Stephen A. Smith Pokemon to Stephen A. Smith, Pokemon, divorce. What? I don't know. That's the auto fill in on Google. Pokemon divorce sounds like something Jason saw on TikTok, and that we've never heard of.

Oh, you don't know about the Pokemon divorce? And we're like, oh, we haven't seen it. The results are all from TikTok. So yes, but Jason missed this one. Jason missed this. But you know, he does know the Pokemon half. Maybe these are separate things that don't go together. At night, what I'll do to wind down when I'm in bed, I will, I have a laptop.

I'm not bragging. I will open it up and it has Wi-Fi too. Don't have a cable running. Again, not bragging. Let's let it up. In the air. Yeah, exactly. There's not a cord running across.

my bed that's plugged into. Rich junk can come anywhere with that. I go anywhere with that. Someone else might be a Stephen A. Smith. The system seems to be working well for it. Time magazine right up or no time magazine. But I will watch these YouTube shorts that I guess are like TikTok things. Yeah, yeah.

And there's this, there's these people who all they do is open packs of Pokemon cards on camera. They're just like, but the thing, they're just like, I paid a, I paid $400 for this one pack. Let's see what we find in it. And it's just like, and I just, I can't stop. I don't know what any of the cards mean, anything, but then the guy will be just like, I'm going for the big one, the big. And it's just like, oh, it's, you know, the Charzard with the rainbow. And it's like, yeah, it's worth $6,000.

It's just like, I'm just obsessed with watching people open. Open Pokemon cards, sports cards, it's the most fascinating thing because it got to be like, this is a pack of 1977 Major League Baseball cards. This is fake. The person resealed it here. You can tell because they, I saw one word. The guy was literally making the point. He goes, this is not the gum from a 1976 pack. This is the gum from, from 86 to 89 would have gum like this.

Like the guy like knew the gum year. He was like, look at the size of it. And there's a certain kind of like speckling on it that it's a, I mean, they're bonkers, these people. And then he's like, I went, I told the person that I, uh, that this is fake and they gave me a refund. Like, like, he's like, I gotcha. And they deleted their whole store. Wow. Taking them down entire.

Probably opened up a different store. He's mostly, fine, I'll delete my store. Light change of me. name plenty just don't sell to change the numbers at the end of the name it's junior it says like something junior yeah because who could possibly who could possibly fake card boy

security of eBay card boy junior I yeah I've definitely watched a lot of the opening packs usually the X-Man or Marvel cards from my childhood where it's like I have these in the other room I could go look at them right now but there's something

appealing to someone open packs have you gotten into the vending machine people the people the people who bought so someone's like all right uh let's see how much my six hundred dollar vending machine made this oh i've seen yes i have watched those yep absolutely watch them watch my soda machine pretty cash yeah heavy my other one is mostly credit cards so super i've watched plenty of those i've watched them lately but it's kind of like he opens up his soda machine it'll be like It's sold a lot of spright. And then he's just like, he's got the bucket of coins here, and he pours it into the counter. And so he's like, it's $410.

And then we've got $80 in bills here. Not a bad haul for the week. And it's past, it only takes me 15 minutes to fill this up and collect the money every week. But it's in a Marriott. It's in a hotel. So it's 24-7 business. Jason, are you thinking of going into the vending machine business? Well, if you are, please, I mean, uh,

I, there, at my, my, partners. He's ignoring you. This is great. Both of you, you want to go in on it? Fine, it's me against you then.

I'll run you out of business. No, no, no, I'm going to run you out. You didn't accept quickly enough. He read some text. Oh, no, I missed it. I'm just trying to think of the, your enemies now. You race to go talk to Brett.

You go to our race to talk to bread about putting one in here and forever dogs. You pull up your rent. Great idea. A million dollar idea. Release $500 a day idea. You pull up your vending machine. fire and I'm just laughing

from another talk. I show you not to miss. Reject my business offer. Now how much you're going to get from that machine? You're going to burn your hand trying to get your coins out. I was going to say there used to be a massive vending machine

store on like half a block in Burbank. And I think it was mostly vintage ones, rent it by movie shoots. It was buying full vending machines, really? Yeah, like buying or rent vending machines and then that closed down they redid the building i don't know what there is now and then a block down is the uh everyday Tesla protest in front of the Tesla

dealership endlessly burning fire are you guys on whatnot have you done the whatnot app which what you're talking about with what cards and things opening but then you you do the bidding you can bid live okay this is dangerous it's very dangerous this though implies the Tom wants the cards, which it doesn't feel like you do. It's the, it's the, I would be the equivalent of somebody who just like shoots an animal and walks away from it. Like, like, shooting these things. I don't care anything past that.

I don't want it. That's for buzzards to find. Yeah, I'd be like in the jungle. I'm just shooting a tiger and being like, did you want to get a picture with a tiger? I said, man, good. They got, there's a, there's a dangerous one I should not tell Jason about, but it's a, it's a, it's an, auction where there's a lady who owns a company that buys candy and she just starts loading a big box full of candy and there's an auction for people to buy the box so then she just like throw she's

like a hundred grand bar she's throwing stuff in and then she goes all right we got it we're doing it and then people are bidding she's throwing more stuff in it and she's just trying to get the the price up but it's yeah it's pretty fun we're not far from we have not gotten much further past like home shopping network with that guy who yelled about being Beanie babies all the time. Oh, the beating baby. Oh, yeah. You were big on him, right.

Don West, the legend, yeah. He'd just be like, we got 100 beanie babies. I thought, we got kidley winks. I saw Don West live. I saw him in Schaumburg, Illinois at a wrestling convention. Yeah, I mean, he was in the lobby and people were. I was starstruck. Yeah, it was too.

Yeah. I have a video of them somewhere on my phone. Oh my, he was like, I would watch like overnight. It would be at home shopping and that where he'd be just like, folks we got the greatest deal on beanie babies here we got 50 beanie babies you're getting the princess diana bear we have glory bear glory bear is here this is crazy how can we do this yeah he would like scream at the producer and he would just be like we only got a certain amount of like for the next five minutes is all you can get it and then you just realize it's the same

deal every day they just reconfigure it a little bit they just have a warehouse full of these beanie babies that they just read but what we need to do not the vending machines we need to figure out what the next thing is

we'd be late to the party with the vending machines okay there are people who have their vending machines staked out array there's no we're not going to find a new angle on that we're going to be we need to find a thing we have a clear path on and be what the next vending machine is like to those like what the vending machine was to people 10 years ago

we need to be for 2026 what's an what's an angle that we could play and I just came up with it okay great we do vending machines but we do them next to electron electric car chargers because people have to wait for 20 minutes right we provide entertainment for people waiting for their cars to charge or snacks for their cars to charge. It's a captive audience. Yeah, that is a great idea. Potentially entertainment could be part of it

a la gas station and TVs. That could be the quickest way to funnel people to any of our work. Charging TV and if it's a higher market, it's a nicer electric car. You can put the Dubai chocolate in there. You can put the Lubu Boo in there. Yes, we aim it at the people.

that they're strata, their financial strata. Yeah. What if there's video poker on it? Well, see, that's, I was honestly, I swear to Christ. That's where you're going with it. Gambling. Yeah. Any kind of like thing that hooks you to stay while you're charging your car, like the

equivalent of just like a slot machine. If we could get slot machines at EV charging stations, we would truly be rich. Do we have to change state gambling laws or do we have to find a loop? We just find loopholes. We just need to establish, we put like, oh, it's a part of this building over here that we just like, it's like a general in name only. Whatever we have to do to like. Oh, sure. Maybe like one cent ends up going to charity.

That's exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Like we just say like all profits go to charity. Right. But we count as one cent out of every hundred dollar goes to a real charity. but then we incorporate as a charity. You only have to do 25% I've heard.

Ah, really? Charities, yeah. Okay. Oh, that's a lot of art. I'm telling you those EV stations, that's the angle right there. Yeah. If we can figure out a way to get those people's money. Or just are robbing people at EVs because they can't drive away.

Well, that's the lower set. That's how we raise the funds to build the ratings. Just grab what's in there. Scrap it all. Let's just get a gun. How is that not happen? Does that not happen all the time, though? because you're the most vulnerable,

like if it's like one in the morning and you see somebody just parked in a thing, it's just like, well, I know they're here for a half hour and they can't get away. They can't drive away because their car is not working. It's a sign saying they're rich and a sign saying they're dumb because they bought a Tesla. Are you telling me Wawa stations with EV

Wawa gas station convenience stores with a row of EV chargers at 1am might not be the most reliably safe? Your mind's about that. to get blown it might not or we hide in an even fake one I don't have the rest oh we well we just start we get a gun they put the cable into the station we just all slowly far away steal their car that's how we do it yes that's we have to build a mechanism that makes it latch so that it doesn't just come out but once the once it's latched yeah

then we got it perfectly because we could also do with thing if we draw them the opposite end of the parking lot's like like oh come on in here and get a snack and everything but we're just out there stealing their car they're five play the one-arm bandlet the bandit they're hooked on that seats or wow we're getting their money we're getting their money from the slot machine and we're going to steal their car while we're at it geez wow well this is a better vicious look this is the kind of desperation of not being on the time list creates in four podcasters.

We have to start thinking of backup plans. We'll make a list. Maybe not the list we want to be on, but we go down this road. We'll be on a few lists. Most wanted list, which we stay on for a long time. Oh, another year.

That means we're not caught. Hopefully we can go to a minimum security prison where we can still podcast. I hope that there are, like, whatever Galane is, you probably can podcast. The Lane and the Real Housewife that's in that facility, too. They can start.

Oh, yeah. That's an all-star prison. Oh, wow. Yeah, the new one. The Texas home. In Texas. Yeah. And the guy from bad actor, did you see that documentary, bad actor?

No, no, no. There's a guy who he came to L.A., he was just like an aspiring actor who was, like, truly awful at acting. Like, like legitimately terrible. but then he started telling people like I have a like he's I'm looking for investors because I'm licensing these movies that that we license then to Netflix and HBO Max and all these things and he would get investors it was just a Ponzi scheme and he would just have these contracts that had just like these movies because the movies existed but he just wasn't the one licensing them and he would tell the people's like don't contact Netflix about. this because because I don't want them noticing and then we're all then they're going to think it's more competitive and go so like so he just always had everybody getting strong he just like ripped people off for just millions upon millions like family members and best friends like but he's in prison and he does a blog now from like when he can get on the prison

computer he writes this blog that is like clearly not that repentant Yeah Which and he will As soon as he's out He will immediately Plug back into the next scam Which people will happily

Yeah Yeah He was in movies He's in a movie with Brian Cox Where he like Like Brian just shows Brian Cox will just Is like literally for sale

When you see that guy The voice of McDonald's The voice of McDonald's He did say no to my movie Yeah Well that's good that's good Zach's got Zach up to that price

We just didn't get him there He is he is doing like a scene with Brian Like whatever Brian Cox's deal is He's an excellent actor And this guy who's like a total nitwit Is like acting across from him Wow Just because he would basically pay to be in the movies now

Because he's like yeah I'll just buy my way into movies he's like in a movie with like Olivia Munn and Brian Cox just like a real and sometimes he's in a movie for like half a second like it shows like it pans across and he's like freeze it's like oh there he is but he would like put that as a credit this would have been like I doesn't sound like this overlapped with the era of Bert Reynolds still being in movies but he would have been there in a flash oh yeah he would have been in Bert Reynolds would have been like four Bert Reynolds movies Stroker race That's too bad We didn't get to see Yeah How much pressure does anyone feel To talk about what we actually did?

Yeah Because we don't have to This is a critical juncture At which point We could Oh wait in the car You got your Livestrong bracelet Admission

Yes I'm wearing my escapeology The live escape game Oh yeah It's got a little pirate I'm glad that you reminded us of Because that aspect of it, I think, separates it from all other... I think that's really what's lived with us for the last few weeks

is that it was the lie of escape as opposed to all the many others that we've done. Yeah, digital, the virtual. Well, I still don't quite get that phrase. No, I'm saying. I have no idea. There was a game master on the surveillance, like, checking in, like playing along, because we needed some hints. Oh, is that what that refers?

to that somebody was helping us through the right the woman who checked us in and walked us to the room said like Jeremy is your game master today and we never saw Jeremy no it didn't have the pleasure to meet Jeremy after the fact there was just a

TV mounted to the corner the wall that gave us so many little chimes and reminders like a 22 inch flat screen just in the corner that was our cloth mommy wire Mommy, like the old, the old escape, uh, escape room, the experiments where they would introduce like

a monkey to cloth mommy. They could hug and the wire mommy. But it's like wire mommy would feed them more, but cloth mommy gave affection. Yeah. So we kind of had a wire mommy that we would look to and it did work. Jeremy. Jeremy. Was his name literally Jeremy or Eric. It was It was a good detail. There wasn't a name, but Jeremy. Let me back things up all the way here and just talk about, first of all, what we're doing, which is the newish escape room that is offered at Citywalk, Hollywood, which is called escapeology. And just a little bit of backstory of getting there is that, you know, Tom, as I was saying, at the top,

we've, you know, we've spent a bunch of time with you here in the studio. And it just seemed like a natural thing to get you up there at some point, or up. somewhere. We've just been talking about, like, maybe like an experiential thing would be the way to hook Tom, because I'm not sure that all of our interests necessarily overlap, the things that we talk about on the show a ton. I remained worried about that even in asking you up to Citywalk, because I have a specific memory of we would run into you a bunch when we would meet here, maybe do an episode, and then go up to Citywalk when we were doing our big City Walk series. Sure. Our second one. Our second, are the second of two

over 19 part daily episodes about Citywalk. So there was a period of time where we saw you in short succession and one day you asked what are you guys up to oh we're heading up to Citywalk. Then like less than a week later you asked the same question we said we're going up to CityWog

and your response still chills me which is you know there are other places. Which is I feel a lesson that may could be imparted to some of the people in this room more than others cough Mike cough

I don't know if that's still a feeling that you have no no I've softened yeah yeah he like you like it now that we've hearing it from Tom our wives are much closer to you guys assorted friends or family members now that you've escaped now that you've escaped

from City Walk I feel like you have more affection for it I don't know if I have any affection for City Walk city walk is what what it's it's like city walk feels like it's missing the good thing at it it like it feels like it's like we have all the other stuff but like there should be like this one thing it's like yeah well that's great but there is it the big imax theater but it's all the other stuff could be the theater do you ever use that as a movie that's a big that's a nice

big i max theater yeah that is a thing that human beings need i like that theater with you go to that theater and then it's like the biggest appeal to that theater I think is the open bar in the theater for a lot of people that's me yes yeah yeah where hey you can go and drink yeah they have the Jurassic Park beer that I like and I don't have to go all the way into the theme park

can you bring the beer into the actual theater though I think it depends on whatever the bartender feels that day because like so there used to be that it was a square there's a perimeter around the bar you couldn't bring it literally depends on how the the guy working is feeling yeah yeah it also has the um that movie theater has the the the uh the uh remote like it's it's unpopulated by employees the concession stand where it's just like it's like an automat you go in there and it's like but unlike an automat it's still insanely expensive to buy things and they're not hiring people to, like, facilitate anything.

Self-check-out movie concessions. Yeah. It's like. We're all asking for it, and the concessions area is bigger. It's huge. It's huge. Yeah, yeah. And you have to do it.

Yeah, yeah. But that's what you go to, it's sugar, the sexy candy store. Of course, yeah. And you stock up and you put it in your pocket. And you just, that's how you get your concessions. That's how you get over on it. Yeah. You get your candy thong.

You put it in your pocket. Sure. And then you eat your candy thong. while you watch a big you pay for the overpriced bowl candy so you don't pay for the overpriced movie theater concession. Yeah, you pay for the slightly less overpriced candy

and it's sugar. Saturday Night Live branded shuddy balls that you can buy added sugar. Yeah, just a $21 like a box of it of sweaty balls that you have to shove into a jacket where it creates a corner that's unhideable. Right. Does it

sugar have jellybellies you can pick your own Of course. I'm just making sure. Of course they do. There's something. Yeah, that's pretty good question.

Are we getting closer to what you might consider something closer to a necessity or a good thing? No, still not. I would still. They are getting a raiding Keynes and a halal guys, which makes the food infinitely better. Now, you wouldn't, I know you're a vegetarian, so Keynes. I like fish. I like fish. Well, a cane.

Cain's, not that I'm going to find it raising cames. Yeah, not, you're mostly eating Texas. goes and tossed. Yeah, I would be there. I'd be just like... But all guys solid. Of course, I could do that, but I could also... To a wise man once said, uh, you know there are other places.

Yeah. Like, where am I? Why am I going to go up the hill and pay $30 for parking to go get, like, a falafel? Tom, this has been my argument for a while. There's a lot of people making this argument that like, well, things are changing in city walk because they're getting raising canes, raising canes. And I'm like, it will out of the gate be the worst raising canes ever created. I'm not arguing with that.

I agree with that. But it's still exciting. Yeah. Sure. Amir's falafel, Studio City staple for decades is like half a mile away. But are, but aren't you, is that, was that you actually making an argument that was an anti-City Walk argument? Did I just, you said it with a weird tone, but I feel like that was an actual, citywalk was

not on the side of what you were saying. facetiously, and I was more trying to put over how good Amir's falafel and... Yeah, that's what I'm saying. You did the thing that I try to argue sometimes and which, as Tom is saying, that there are other places. You had to couch it in the weirdest tone ever, but you were saying something in which CityWalk was the loser of the argument.

I love how Tom has turned the tables here in the room. Jason was trying to curry favor and I don't care for it. We're five minutes... Trying to get free falafel from Amir. Yeah. Guys, we're five minutes away. from the restaurant where Robert Blake shot his wife.

Yes. I know very well. I am right. Who shot anybody there? I mean, I think it did happen in the parking lot once, but not like a, not a famous person and a famous wife.

He went back for his gun. He could have shot him. His gun was inside. My gun was in the rest. And he, that actually worked. He actually said, guys, I couldn't have shot my wife.

My gun was in the restaurant. Yeah. I couldn't find it. It was in the booth. Neil Sedaka played Vitello's like a month ago. we should have gone it was too expensive though yeah yeah that was insanely pricey wasn't it $150 you're keeping up with what this Neil Sedaka's up to on Instagram

he does a lot of duets with his grandson and it's really heartwarming I too love Neil Sadaka's Instagram hello I'm Neil Sedaka and I'm here with my grandson and we're going to play a calendar girl today you're acting like I should know other restaurants in the area I only lived in studio city for nearly 20 years Why would I know of course? Not been here.

And the Brady Bunch House. Yes, I led to around the corner from the Brady Bunch House. Forget who the owner is now. Did Fetone finally get it? Was Joey Fetone? Joey Fetone was in a... No, sorry, Lance Bass was in a bidding war with HGTV and lost. Oh, wow.

But I believe HDTV has had their fill of it. Capitalism had a good run, but it might be tough. time just end this whole capitalism thing we've got one bitter he's a human and the other is a television network yeah yeah yeah a television network that is just about quantity not quality going up against a guy who made way too much money from a band that is I'm sorry to say is not great Tom here's a warning from straight from me I've learned a lot about the perils of doing mild, mild insults of bands from the early 2000s in our specific audience base. So just tread as lightly as humanly possible. I will be on eggshells now because I don't

want these people coming after me. Can you imagine if you saw if there was a if you saw a comment how could you live with yourself? Yeah. How could I live with myself that someone felt differently than I did about one thing? I need to destroy them. They must be they must be extinguished I'm so Tom all is his negativity that he brought to the show

I hope they never have him back again you just trash city walk and now you're trashing Lance Bass we're gonna have to not this is unreleas

do you know what else is 10 minutes away from us the home of Rick Dalton oh from once upon a time in Hollywood oh I've never been up there

it's 10 minutes away wow it's just in it's just in the studio city hills in in the studio to see proper, the Britney Spears, uh, Kevin Federer house. So Popo Zelle could have looked. Some of the Pombo Zelle Tras could have been recorded there.

What happened? Sorry, that was that when they were married briefly. That was that with the only thing. I believe that was I didn't know. But you go up that street. You see Rick Dahlon's house. There's the gates next to it. That's Sharon Tate's house right there. Yeah. The whole thing. You can picture Leonardo DiCaprio coming out with the blender, yelling at the blend of whiskey sour Is it a Manson? They were in their beater pulling up the hill. It's literally they shot

like one fifth of the movie on that street. Yeah. Yeah. It's nuts. But do you know what's two minutes from here? The parking garage at Citywalk where Ethan Hunt They had Ethan Hunt at Mission Impossible 3 jump off to

it simulated a big building and he actually jumped off one of the parking garages at Citywalk. I didn't know that actually. And then in later Mission Impossible, they just found big buildings. That's true. Yeah, maybe that was the last time they faked a big building. Yeah. It was three.

But it was Citywalk. That's Hollywood history. Well, and don't forget the opening of Keenan and Kell. I wouldn't. Yeah, of course not. Featuring the heart, they showed the gorilla. That was in it. The Hard Rock Cafe guitar was.

So if you're going to start throwing around Hollywood history, you're right, even mind Coolio was driving a drop top down. It's pretty self-contained. You're right. Now, the parking over there was pretty exciting in terms of the swings in terms of how much they charge based on the amount of time you spend. This was, yeah, you know, as we delve back into CityWalk, which we haven't in a while, if you were worried that we'd have an episode without the typical podcast, the ride, City Walk hassle. Oh, yeah. worry not because so this is yeah we part of in trying to make this like an easy and fun endeavor for you tom is that like you know we record very close to city walk and i thought well you know

what to save everybody parking hassle i've got an annual pass we can carpool up there and you know it'll be easy and free but of course what i forgot is that um there are blackout dates at universal in any theme park and even though i have like one of the higher at least or at least the middle pass, there's still our day, if you're not allowed into the park that day, you can't park up there. And that's a given. You understand that you can't, maybe you can't go to the park on Christmas or on President's Day or, of course, on Monday, July 21st. You know, why would I, just some commoner be allowed in the pun, the hallowed holiday of Monday, July 21st.

Late afternoon. Yes, yeah, yeah. Oh, the rush. That always late afternoon rush for people wanting to go. I mean, once, you know, we did make it up there, but it was, you know, it was a mob scene. Yeah. Now we could barely move. It's mega movie summer at Universal Studios.

So many people up there for mega movies. And to just look at the sign of the slice house and imagine the slices that they'll end up be getting from Tony. Yeah, from Tony. Slice House also coming soon. Tony Giminyani at the Slice House. The owner and operator of all the Slice House franchises. Okay. There's also some very old.

like for a place it's supposed to be like so now there's a lot of like slightly out of date movie posters and things like on the side of buildings like we're just like still yes i know they aren't i mean it's still like the first secret life of pets yeah like they're not refreshing them at all yeah yeah one just was and i saw a blog writing about it like new post poster for movie from last three years added to parking garage yeah i don't remember what that was. Everything is like 10 years old, I feel like. And that's like, there's a post thing because to time travel back to, you know,

because 10 years gets you back to 2015 before a lot of the mess that were started. So how about that? Kind of nice. Kind of, yeah. It's easy to tune out the perils of the world when you're up at CityWall. Whenever Post Malone covered that Hootie and the Blowfish song that always plays at both coast citywalk, that was the better time in America. whenever that was

I don't know I think that's the only places that is played in America I've heard it on both coasts I've heard it on both coasts There's brand consistency Yeah But anyway we drive up there

You went up with me Tom And I was like Let me just take a stab And say we're going to the escape room And maybe they'll just let us in But then the guy Takes the pass Stairs at it for a while

And then says Did you schedule your bonus day A universal process I've never heard about until I don't know I guess you can get over the blackout situation if you call and schedule a separate bonus day. Is this available online? I don't know. I don't know

but I said no. That is a new concept. I've never heard of that. So I said no and then he explained that we've got to go to the valet instead. That's the only way that we can park up there and then there was some murmuring between him and another parking attendant.

That was right. There was some there was some miscommunication that was maybe the most avoidable thing ever. I can't remember what word he was using. I believe it was like, yeah, you got to, well, you got to go to Valais. And to get there, you got to turn around and go this big roundabout way. We're like, okay, well, just tell, let's figure that out. And then he said, wait, what?

And then he turned to the person he was working in the booth with. And he said, oh, it's, well, but it's closed. We were like, fuck, it's closed. God damn it. Well, how are we going to, Jesus. And then, and then the woman goes, no, no, it's close. Oh, sorry. it's close.

That's what she said. She said the valet is close. Kind of the opposite. Fully opposite of what you were trying to. Okay, no reason to be concerned there. We did have to take a strange roundabout way to get to the valet that I only knew about because I've been there a thousand times and used to work there. Otherwise, I would have gone lost immediately.

You go down by where all the tour buses park? Yeah, something like that. You see as a shortcut when I lived in the studio. They get out the freeway earlier. Sure. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, as long as you have locals knowledge, you can figure out how to get over there. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we, yeah, we did the valet. You went straight to valet. Straight to valet. No problems. You knew exactly where to go. Yeah, that you got to be sort of an insider. He's saying we fucked up. But it was also set up to be like, it was $10 for two hours. And if it went one minute past the two hours, it was $60. Yeah. I was like, well, that's actually admirable in a strange way.

How insane you're, you're going to rip people off if you're one minute late. That feels greedy in Trump 2.0. That's still by those standards. Trump would just go like, are we sure about that one? Trump would be like, that's unfair to hang. Wow, we really rolled the dice looking at all those Michael Ferrari paintings and talking about like, Should you get a donut? Should we get a big

kind of gross milkshake? That one's half Glinda and that one's half alpha bars so who knows what flavor that milkshake is. Yes, so the parking was a hassle. Besides the ticking clock of the escape room there was the ticking clock

of the money going from 10 to 60 and at the risk of staying too dry for too long at this point I have to say that there was also some hassle in booking the event itself. This by the way is It's a pretty new escape room. You know, we had this changing citywalk landscape.

It's one of their newer offerings. They got it off the ground quicker than Slice House by Tony Jim McNani. Yeah. So we had to go get up there and check it out. There was some talk of maybe could we get like a press invite because we'll get to review it on the show, struck out there as we, as it's been tending to happen. No, no, no, didn't happen at all. Very professional email.

So in the effort to keep the cost down, I discovered that there was a Groupon. Groupon was available for this. And the Groupon was successful because as long as we did it between Monday and Wednesday, it took it from $200 to $136.99. Pretty good, pretty good. So I did the Groupon, no special amount of pain or effort there. Then I go to the Escapology website. I enter the number and it immediately spits back the phrase not valid on Thursday.

I tried again and I got the same response. I thought, well, I'm trying Monday, and Monday is not Thursday. I guess I will have to fill out the form on the Escapeology website to get somebody to override this for me. Soon enough, I ended up in an email back and forth where they said, oh, yes, the website and the Groupon have been displaying different days. So that's what's going on there. Oh, yeah, of course. No, I know how that. Ah, you entered the Escape Room earlier than the rest of it.

That's what I was starting to think is like, is this it beginning or is this part of it? It's like how when Michael Douglas starts playing the game, that the game begins before he even knows he's in the game. Like, do I need to retain the number 136.99? And are we going to have to enter that in a box somewhere? But so now I'm in a back and forth email exchange, and they said it's no big deal. Just, you know, give us your credit card info and we'll get this sorted out. And I said, okay, sounds good. Thanks for getting back to me.

I'm not sure why you need my credit card info though because I did the Groupon so I don't owe you any money and they said well it's just so that we can reserve the time oh okay that makes sense and maybe you want to call us so that you can just say it over the phone and not write it down I sure make sense and then I call where I'm there seems to be a lot of hassle on the other end there's a lot of there's I hear somebody

at some point murmur it's the guy with the Groupon thing you've been dealing with now I know that a mini controversy has broken out in the escapology lobby so then I give them the credit card info and I asked them again to say but you're not going to charge me again right because I already played through no of course no absolutely not absolutely it's just a reserve and if you get charged if you get charged just if be sure to contact us immediately and we will sort it out of course I was charged Instantly, as soon as I could possibly check.

I have insured 136.99 by two different entities for the same escape room day. Was it, was the same group on price though you were charged? Yes, yeah. Okay. So at least that was consistent. You're making money. Yeah. You got two.

I got the same savings twice. Yeah. Most people are only getting it once. Wow. I got to go like time travel and relive my money savings experience. You're turning a profit. Now you just have to. scalp, your escapology tickets, and you're making 30% right off the top.

And that cashback, you know, if you got three or four percent, you know, you might be getting $8. Oh, that's true. You have to factor the credit card points into it as well. Yeah. This is, well, this is a- You're cleaning up. I think you found the thing I was looking for, the business.

This is in the meantime before we can get the charger machine. Secondary market sales of escape room. Yeah, just flip, use Groupon to flip escape room packages. Well, I'm looking forward to going into business with everyone on that. So, you know, just two big hassles before the event has begun. Now we enter the door of escapeology and perhaps a little info about escapeology. This is a pretty big chain of escape rooms. It started as so many good things do in Orlando, Florida on I drive.

Like the boy bands we were talking about Just like the boy bands For which Tom is sure to catch no heat Yeah, no Bringing up with Time magazine Time got it right So Anyway they

It now is a pretty big chain There's 50 of these They're all across the globe in fact So we're dealing with a Titan In the escape room space There is a section of their website Where they say discover what makes us unique.

The number one thing in the list is number one, premium steampunk themed lobbies. This is their number one bragging point. Now that you've seen one of those, strong feelings about the steampunk themed lobby. Well, the interesting thing is that it's the, the, um, escapology is basically behind toothsums. Yes. So it's kind of like a steampunk, like area. of the citywalk. The steampunk district.

This is like the steampunk district. The steamboat district with the cinnobon on the one side and don't worry about that. Lids. You need to buy a stove pipe hat at lids. Lids and locker room by lids. Yeah. You got two lids. That's true.

And then what's over there? Voodoo donut. Oh, yeah. A little farther. Yeah. Maybe get one of those cough syrup donuts that they were selling in Portland of Voodoo. And they like got in trouble. for that.

I think that one didn't make the jump. I think they eliminated that one before. It's filled with cough syrup and there's seven, like a great $7 donut. No, it's got fruity pebbles all over it. I feel like possibly more because I don't know. You haven't been at CityWalk as much as we have.

There is the CityWock up charge. Something that Mike welcomes and celebrates. He likes getting the, trying to use Taco Bell points to somehow feel like he got one over on CityWWat Taco Bell. You redeem your Taco Bell points, but they're worth more up at CityWall points.

because if you're getting a crunch rap Supreme for free you're getting more because it costs more at Citywalk. No, I understand what you think you're getting away with you. Worst episode ever. There is a second Scott in the room. I am getting away with that.

It doesn't matter. You're not paying. I'm not paying. Okay, but it's the same item, but I'm sitting there and I'm watching the big screen while all the music videos. It's playing the cover

The Post Malone did that you were just talking about? Well, no, I've never seen a video for that. I've only heard it. I've never seen it. My mistake. But you, whatever, the, did they do the McJagger William song up there? Hardest ever, what is it called?

They're waiting until that song is a 16 years old. Yeah, yeah. The McJagger solo is too easy. It's still gasoline. Oh, well, that's, yeah. It will always be gasoline at the official song of CityWalk. You don't pay any money to park at a Taco Bell. Usually not, yeah.

You never have paid. once in your entire life to park. For just a meter, perhaps. It's for just a Taco Bell. That's true. You've never ever paid. I'll defend Mike for a second and say that the parking is usually free for him. Again, unless it is Monday, July 21st.

There's no, yes. I'm not, but it's not free for you because you're a nice guy. It's free for you because you're clearly involved in some sort of transaction with them that they're making parking free as a part of the larger thing you're paying. Yes, you're at as a part of paying a higher amount of money for the past that gets you parking. I'm paying for that. But it is a little bit cheap if you were up there every six days or so, as Mike seems to be. Sometimes with his little girl.

Well, now, yes. Which he uses Citywalk as a park for his daughter. She says Citywalk is great. That's the thing she said before. And look, I do the same mental gymnastics you're doing with this all the time. I'm not judging you. I'm just saying I recognize. I recognize sometimes I'll get, if I get paid for like a, like, oh,

here's like 50 bucks for a thing. I'll just, in my mind, I will think of like four different places that I can spend that 50 bucks that will save me money, but I can't spend the same $50 or four places. In my mind, I'm saving hundreds of dollars. Yeah, yeah. Because I, like, if I put the 50 bucks towards going to dinner, then we get a free dinner out of it. I could also put it toward this, so we get that. It's just like, no, you get one from it.

If I used it for one single city walk valet upcharge. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. I just like, we're cut from the same cloth is all I'm saying. I reckon, game recognizes game. All right, thanks. I'm glad you came around. I'm not putting you down.

I'm just saying I wish I have not. Both of us were not these people were. There's certainly been a lot of time wasted in my life. I will admit to that. There's certainly been a lot. It's hell of an admission. Machinations. Yeah, no.

Although I don't know, because so much of the time wasting then turns into stories that others enjoy. Well, sure. Now, you're now. I've never gone up there just to go to Taco Bell. Okay. I will admit, I will not admit. I will say that. I'm never gone just for Taco Bell.

Well, I'm glad you would say that out loud also because that would be the most troubling thing anybody's ever said. If you would go there just for Taco Bell, that would be legitimately the weirdest thing I've ever heard. Ten listeners feel a chill because they know they have. Even the idea of like if there was if there was a Taco Bell that was at the top of a hill, does that drive up? And if the only thing at the top of that hill was a Taco Bell, that would be too much of an investment to go to Taco Bell.

The wear and tear on the car alone makes it value any coupons that you're getting. Yeah, it's true. I don't think, I'm trying to think, have I ever gone up there just for like Firehouse subs? I don't think so. I'm pretty sure I haven't. It's usually like a very important reason. Like you're going to the theme park or you want to go to Margaritaville. Tom, this is, by the way, is a sandwich place where Jason was at one point excited to get a little piece of plastic in the sandwich.

He said lovingly it's just a little nub. It's just a little nub of plastic. And he loves fire. Because we're like, why is that corner that's red, blue. And Scott thinks that's disqualifying for a place if you find a piece of plastic in your sandwich. I think that you don't go back to that place. And Jason and I have been back since. And this for some reason upsets him.

Did you tell anyone? For some reason is leading. For some reason. No, I had taken it. I'd taken it home to go. Okay, well then you're lost the case on the... You used to have it on the premises. Yeah, you had to have it on the premises.

Yeah. I get it. Yeah. I would like a ruling on this one, Tom. And I'm not... I'm not currently... You can cite any way that you want. But what Mike just said, for some reason...

For some reason, he doesn't... I don't like that they keep going back to a place where they found plastic in their sandwiches. Not mine. I never found it. Jason did. yeah that would take that would take firehouse subs firehouse subs firehouse fireman subs

firehouse subs off the look there are other places to get subs wow wow this is not just because some fireman made it well there's they give this is quite a time for old scuddy they give a small percentage to firefighting charities I'm not

I don't want to either of your sides after you call yourself old scottie no that's fair that's disqualifying for me. We're all going to get... A nickname that it didn't work as soon as it was out of my brother. The three of us are going to go get those subs now. Just to stick it to you.

Shit, I lost his... No, you're like... You're like Jack Lemon and Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross, where you just had to keep flapping your guns. And then you got caught. Yeah, yeah. Because the thing I shouldn't keep talking past a sale? Isn't the rule of salesmanship that you make the sale and you keep going and going and going and be like, wait, so what about the cards? And you're like, Kevin Spacey's going to get you.

Well, this is something we're all worried about. Well, that's the thing we're all always afraid of. Yeah. Let's get back. Okay, this is, I enjoyed all of that litigation, but let's, let's talk about the, it must have been impressed by the steampunk themed lobby. Yes, no, I felt like I, I felt like I was visiting, like, a place that I don't live. Yeah.

That it's like, here's Tootsam's, uh, chocolate factory. And around back is this new escapeology place that used to be a steakhouse, you said? A Brazilian statehouse with the sword. Samba. Brazilian Steakhouse, yeah. They take the little meats and you could tell them to keep them coming or stop it. And then before that, a place that I'm

fond of called Cafe Tutu Tango, which is a place where you could get the smallest tapas you've ever received in your life. Wait, that was out here too? It was out here too. It was a chain. It was at the outlets it orange. It was all over our city in the globe. But it's also a place

where you could watch live painters paint. You could watch like somebody do an oil painting of Lenny Kravitz. Sure. how would that go out but not I can't believe that went out of business that that took up a space

that now contains nine different escape room adventures if you could watch Michael Ferrari live paint like Daniel Craig James Bond that would be amazing

you know he with Michael Ferrari prices he's charging like 40 grand an hour for that privilege that's your point yeah anyways

premium theme theme lobbies there's other things in that list but I'll get to those late. Actually, you know, I'll say another one in their list of what they tout about the scapeology. One of them is exclusively licensed games because they have, it's not just generic stuff. They have official licensing agreements with Warner Brothers, Paramount, and Agatha

Christie. They cut a deal with Agatha Christie Limited. Was there an Agatha Christie room? That's a good question. I don't know if they have. Maybe that's not there. It might not be at our location, but they made a deal for the, the official murder on the Orient Express escape. We could have been helping the little Belgian man. Hercule. That is what. Watch out.

Let's hear it. Hercule barro. This is now you're backing up to Jane's birthday. Yeah. In which Bethy's, we're talking to Bethy's Squires. And you corrected me. You talked about this character for a long time and said the name out loud many times. And then she took a beat and then told you I to say it correctly.

Because our friend Andrew Gerson made a good point I would only read it I didn't know I haven't seen A very good point I just wanted to tell that there was a Jason pronunciation situation That took place in which Mike and I Were not participants

Mike was not even physically present So I just want to make that clear I think I was saying Hercule Poirot Okay And it's like Poirot I think again I didn't know Was it Ogie mouth or was it probably a little bit of hokey mouth

let's call it a hokey mouth mispronunciation over the years This is the problem You haven't lived your Agatha Christie's story yet Oh yeah because you'd be hearing the name out loud all the time You'd be shouting his name to help you out And ironically at that party down the hallway Of that hotel lobby bar was a dinner detective show

Oh god Jason all I want is you in a dinner detective show I mean we know people who did it years ago Because a guy from UCB ran one I think owned a franchise. Well, I'd like to see you. I don't want to do it. I want to see you do it. I mean, I would like to do Tony and Tina's wedding a couple times.

We did hear a blood-curdling scream because I think someone was murdered. Okay. That was a little jarring in a Hilton Garden Inn. Hilton Garden Inn. Just hear that. Folks, don't worry. This one's staged. If you hear any screams before 10 o'clock state, after can't help you.

It ain't the McLaughlin. Family reunion, okay. Not to go too far off subject. Have you guys been to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee? Not yet. No, did you do this in your recent travels? Wow, wow. Oh, wow.

Oh, what happened? I'm going to say this. You need to go to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. You will get 100 episodes out of Pigeon. You just drive up and down the road. I know. I know. There's things on either side of the road.

And one is more magnificent than the next that you'd be just like, oh, Bible dinner theater. What's that going to be like? Yeah. We almost went to the Bible dinner. And then we were just talking about it for a side. We're just like, no, that's funnier in theory than to actually sit in a room watching Bible dinner. Funnier in theory, eh? Podcasts the ride is there.

If you stay at the island, which is the one shopping center, you stay in the Margarineville, then you can walk to Paula Dean's case. kitchen restaurant. This is how much he's thought about. He knows the specific places you can stay, and yet we have not endeavored to do this. Because there's now two Margaritville hotels, Pige and Forge. The tariffs haven't hit there yet. They're just always cranked out. There's also, I believe, I don't know if it's changed recently, and perhaps even changed back

recently, recently, but I believe they have a dinner theater that's Civil War theme. It's like medieval times, but it's civil war, so you can root for the north or the south. Well, it's allie's Dixie's Stampede, I believe is what you're talking about? Yeah. Yeah. There was a thing called a huge dinner theater called Hatfields versus McCoy's. And it was like, and it said featuring Granny's, uh, home cooking buffet. And I was saying to my wife, Julia, I was like, we should go there.

And she's like, no, we shouldn't. And then. And then I was just kind of fun. No, she's so, so that tells you. It even tested her limits on this. She was like, no. And then, like, we drove past it again. There was a line wrapped around the building

of people waiting to get into this thing for the Hatfields versus the McCoy's show. Next to it was what we did go to. Because you go to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. Of course, what are you going to go to? A museum about the Titanic. Oh. You know, who doesn't think about the Titanic?

And that was. something else because they just had all this crap from the Titanic like here's a fork from the dining room of the Titanic and it would always have like purchase for 22,000 like they were just trying to impress everybody they were trying to impress everybody that these things were expensive oh oh but you can't buy it's not a big store no no no they have but they did have a gift shop that was troubling because they sold little plush titanics in it where it's just like we didn't give your kid cuddle up with this death ship

we like go to sleep here you Cameron hard time sleeping here's your Titanic stuffed animal 1,000 souls good nights like that or they little

ducks with little titanic hats on you can buy some of the stuff at the Beverly Center right now where Titanic VR is going on yeah we did a Titanic VR You can buy like branded whatever the company was

that ran the Titanic you can buy shirts with that company on it. This place was you go in and they hand you a passport as soon as you go in and it has the name of a actual passenger on the Titanic and they hand Julia Hears. It's like, oh, you're, uh, you know, lady Winthrop or whatever first class. I'm just like, and I get handed mine. I'm just like, you know, like, uh, Stinky Brano. Hobo, Joe, Jim.

Yeah. Third. Third. Like, I was in steward. peerage and then you go through the whole thing and at the end that you find out whether you lived or died oh you were saying the thing we did could have used this component yeah it was they had they had it here you find out whether you lived or died spoil alert i died because the thing is just they were rescuing women and children yeah and if you were

man in the ninth third again the third class trip died like pretty good like then they of all the names line that we're just like oh my god's all third it's like first class who's people that's like 16 people it's like the thousands came from the the low class people yeah yeah so it was and they also had a thing where you could dip your hand into the water say how cold the water actually was for people that's oh my god it was so it was like such a sobering thing you're like this is the coldest water it's like I can do it for like 30 seconds and I'm like, oh, that's too much. My hands old.

And you're just like, they were out there for two days in that water. It's like 29 degrees or something like. The lucky ones were barely above it. Yeah, it's just. That's if you're, you got a good. There is, um, in the Luxor Casino Hotel in Vegas for a long time, it's had a Titanic exhibit. Yeah. Big Pyramid, of course, there's going to be a Titanic.

And I believe, uh, it's already very haunted place. number of people died building that hotel and people have died in the hotel and the titanic exhibit there is like yeah they've come in the next day and like pictures have been slammed to the ground their stuff's been knocked over so it's like well you put the haunted artifacts into the exhibit oh you thought the haunted hotel the ghost of the titanic moved over to the luxor oh and teamed up with the ghosts of the luxor to do a bunch of knock i don't know I don't know. Just seeing videos of that.

And they're up to nonsense like knocking pictures off the wall. Yeah. I'll show them. Goat's favorite pastime. Because the Luxor used to be where Chris Angel was at, right? Right. Yeah. So between the Titanic thing and these evil spirits, Chris Angels, messing around with it.

Isn't his Caratop there now? Caratub is there and he is jacked. And there's a giant sign of him like hanging off an Egyptian god statue. You were in the group, by the way, that did Chris Angels a mystica. Oh, yes. A night I'll never. We were pelted by garbage from giant fans together. That was an unforgettable evening where because we were one of the, they had a thing for people who they could attend a meet and greet, but the catch was that you had to physically buy tickets for them.

And you start to realize, most of the people, they're papering this room and they're getting in the casino. was giving them tickets. They didn't actually, like, pay a proper full price for a ticket. So it was not that much of a, like, the line was not endless. Like, you'd think, everybody can meet Chris Angel if you have a ticket. It's like, no, everybody who bought a ticket can. And it was not that long of a line. And we went up to him and Nathan tried to slip him $20.

Do you remember that? He had tip him. He tried to, like, he did it like in his hand. He tried to tip him $20. It's just like I want I'm taking every other money Like Chris Angel said I don't need your money man

And then he kept like he went for it again right I think like tried to sneak Yeah yeah I take my money It's like no man I don't need your money Like with his upstate New York accent No no it's cool I got plenty

But by the way Always if we bring up a mystica I also want to say RIP Franco Dragoon we got to we're up one of the last audiences to see dragoan yeah this is a bond we've had man we'll exactly look like a tontine and we are bonded forever

don't start thinking we were part of the demise of Franco dragoe no I don't know okay escapeology though I mean this look we're still excited we haven't even gotten past the premium steampunk theme lobby there's so much going on here we had a lot of I had a lot of questions I'm like is there a reason you were put here because of the two so like I kept questioning them

they're like, yeah, it is weird, but I don't know, known any good answers for it. They are a third party. Yeah, Universal does not own them. They've existed for a long time. Batman is at CityWalk, which is not a universal property. And Scooby-Doo. Scooby-Doo. The properties we value the most. But Scooby-Doo is in the theme parks.

Oh, yeah, true. That one ties together. But now, speaking of other properties, you noticed something on the wall. You noticed a character. You'll explain the character to us. Well, it looks like Dr. Toothsome. Almost exactly. It looks like a steampunk lady and i was asking about the character and i said are there mazes with this character they said no and i said is the character anywhere else in the escapology i don't know

franchise and they were like no only on the wall here and i go oh okay and this is the thing my notes got deleted somehow do we remember is the name of the character does anybody remember it because i can't remember is it scarlet i think it's scarlet sounds no good reason but they're like oh this is scarlet the mascot of escapeology yeah and they but that's it there's it there's just a steampunk lady that represents escapology and that's it there's no other media you can enjoy her character i don't know why she is an original IP to a wall she's an original IP and you can see her on the wall but that's it i don't know why they're not using i would love it if they had like a scarlet maze and you understood why like she was so interested in this uh trapping people and

making them solve puzzles that annoy everyone like if there was something like that it would It would be interesting, but unfortunately they haven't gotten there yet. No, no. And nor what's weird is that it's this steampunk portal, but beyond which you can go to all these worlds that don't have anything to do with steampunk at all, including what we ended up doing. We, I think, we put our heads together. I could dress this up a little bit, but I think, let me just be direct and say,

we try to think what is the one that would annoy Tom the most? No, that's, I wouldn't have expected any less. And that is how we landed in. We consider the seven deadly sins. Oh, yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah. I don't remember much about that. But we, no, we went with a pirate's curse.

And I would say we absolutely went with that due to the name that beckoned us, which was Captain Goldbeard. Yeah. And sure enough, as soon as it started, and the little backstory video began, and they said Captain Goldbeard, it was half a second before you said, Goldbeard. It's like, it's like you're not, calling a pirate like blue beard or yellow beard.

It's like, nobody owns that. You're not going to get sued by... Robert, the state of Robert Louis Stevenson's going to come after you. But, yeah, Goldbeard, because I... Goldbeard is kind of... Does gold beard just mean blonde? Is that what that means? If you were a blonde pirate...

Or it's a nickname because he had so much gold. Right. He's just such a good pirate. He had a lot of gold. He was in his beard almost. Let's not forget the pre-year... escape room details we were given when

we walked in there and she's like okay just so you know this door is unlocked so if you need step out to use bathroom make phone call feel free but it does count against your time so you're not going to get that time back bathroom breaks fine

really the escape could happen any time we felt the need this is what a realization I had only recently that made me feel so dumb of like they can't lock the door yeah they can't lock you yeah in there should be locking you in there yeah yeah yeah they're gonna do it right yeah but i don't think businesses can just trap you inside without people going like hey my kid is freaking out

we need to get some air you know can't i admit 44 minutes to go my kid is find a way find air somewhere up them to the ceiling i want to look for those clues a little harder your kid might want to get to work. Scooby-Doo need your help. What part did you not understand? You didn't pick the Batman one, but you are essentially in a Batman later. My kid, the spikes are coming at you. My kid won't stop peeing in the bat cave.

He's been peeing for 15 minutes. You have to get him out of here. I will say this. I did almost have my normal escape room panic attack right before we started. And then she said the door is open and I relaxed. Hey, all right. Oh, that's good. I almost freaked out.

You didn't, like, you didn't feel relaxed hanging out on that big empty patio. Well, that's a different story. I, that's one of my favorite parts about the new escapeology is that patio. Okay. There's a patio outside where you can sit and just look at the Margaritaville. Clearly inherited from the Brazilian. When it was a place to sit in there. A couple of times.

And then they, so they just painted it black and bought some patio furniture like Home Depot. Yeah. And they're like, hang out. And it worked on Mike 100%. That's one of my favorite parts of this whole experience was sitting out there on that patio. Looking at Margaritaville. Yeah. Not enjoying a drink.

No. I mean, there was no drink. You couldn't get a drink there. I don't think, right? I don't think so. I don't think so. I don't think they wanted any food mucking up all the gears and stuff. The gears in the lobby.

Somebody shoved their chicken into the gears. The gears in the lobby. And then the actual. contraptions in the escape room that would pop open unexpectedly and startle us when we actually did something good. Oh, that's true.

I did. Those are moments that I liked. Anytime something suddenly shoved itself open. Yeah, that is the thing. It's like as hokey as these things are, there still is that moment where you, when you actually do solve a thing,

it's just this rush of satisfaction. It's like magical. Yeah. That you actually are moving the thing forward. When a big, that's just the macs. metallic clang of something suddenly shove in itself. Those are really

like once we were like maybe we take a permanent bathroom break and leave the whole experience. Those things would we would get something right and it was a little rush. Perhaps a quick thing to say maybe this is an obvious question but would you, Tom, would you like to calibrate your experience or enjoyment of escape rooms in general?

Yeah. Would I like to cal? I mean just how, what do I feel? I have, I did one I did one before this Okay And it was downtown L.A And I did not do well at it

Yeah yeah And it was like a It was like a Sam Spade Kind of like noirish Yeah Office and there was a performer In the room

That was supposed to be the secretary So she was in like a pencil skirt And she was there to give help with things And there were these little toy planes that like you little metal planes. You turned them over and they had like latitude and longitude numbers written on it. And then I said to her, I was like, so is this mean something? And she goes, she's like, yeah, it doesn't mean something. So I spent like literally half the time staring at these coordinates.

And then when we didn't finish it in time. And then I said to her, so what did this mean? She said, yeah, it didn't mean anything. I was like, why would you lie about it? Like, in her mind, she's like, well, I just took one person's out of the running on this. They're never going to solve this escape room. And I also was like they had a bookshelf and it's supposed to be the 40s. And I see on the bookshelf, clearly they bought the books in bulk.

And there was a, if you remember Susan Powder, the fitness. Oh yeah There were a couple of her books They just were buying books They bought you by the pound And just fill that shelf with any books Like there's like a Susan powder book I'm like are we in some sort of simulation

Because this is a glitch I found the It's like this is time travel To 1993 This is time travel This shelf has all Bill O'Reilly books And Da Vinci Code copies Killing Reagan Remember when

O'Reilly wrote all those. It's the killing series. Oh, I know that he still does because I hear from my parents about every new one that there's dozens now and my father reads them all. And they get turned into TV movies

on the National Geographic channel. Probably all starring Dean Kaine before his run as an ice agent. Well, you might get a quaid in there. You might after. Do the, do the, does Reagan get killed in killing Reagan?

What is, forgive me for not knowing what actually happens. Was it an alternate reality? Yeah, do we not know? Gosh, I know. Well, I think the originals were like killing Kennedy, killing Lick and people who are actually killed. I know that they were killed.

Now he starts needing more premises, so we start changing the goals a little bit. So we start going for the ones to survive the intent. Well, I could ask my dad about this, or I could ask him about any other topic in the world. Yeah. Okay. I think that might be a better bet for me. All right.

Fair enough. Anyways. So escape rooms are not my thing. Sure, yeah. And I think we've only together, we did the Universal Florida one as part of the City Walk series. I think that why I wanted to get some of this out is that I think that if we are in some ways insulting of this experience or feel like dissatisfied by it, I think that this might be a group of people who uniquely are not qualified to do escape rooms, bad at escape rooms. What I'm saying is some of the complaint might be at the genre and not to the nice people who seemingly who work at. escapeology. Yeah, I also had done something downtown

that was like a library with people who had done escape rooms before and I think we still didn't solve it. And then we had done back to the future and they like all right, we need to keep going. Like they clearly had a B option where it's like you didn't saw the room but we need the room for the next party. So yeah, Doc Brown would open the door for us for us because it was back to the future he would go we saw a shadow and some voice over we did not

see any way oh the door's open now yeah never mind and don't need you don't forget it good good try he'd be like open he's like where you guys are going there are no roads but there is an exit door you need to go through it you losers you idiots you guys are going There's an exit. Yeah, so this was pretty, this was pretty rough right out of the gate. We noted that there's a call button for hints. I had a feeling that we would be needing it a bunch. We were asked to put our belongings in some kind of box.

We all said, absolutely not. Why would we do that? The story of the thing, Captain Goldbeard has spent years voyaging the seat. You know, I started reading this, and I'm immediately like, I want to leave, just like I wanted to leave. I'm like, do I want to say the whole thing? No. Do you guys want to hear the whole thing? No.

I caught myself and I'm glad I did. You are on a boat called the soul catcher. It's an abandoned ship laden with treasure. And if you can break a curse, that's what we're doing. Then we get the treasure. And in the setup, they said, are you the rightful owners of the treasure? And I said, no. We just showed up here.

Yeah. We have no claim to this treasure. I think we're pillagers by even being. here. Yeah, I think that's right. Yeah. So we're, we're a bunch of criminals trying to take treasurer that doesn't belong to you. Um, I, I also, some of the details that I have about this experience I know because I was recording the experience on the voice memo. Oh, right. On my phone. I should have maybe been clearer to you guys that you were being recorded. Oh, I'm just finding that out now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're saying you should

have been clearer about it. You mean like say it at all? In any way. Yes. Clear. You've heard clear, not clear, rur. There's no er. We spent most of our frustration, the puzzles, slandering our respective peers. Yeah, yeah. So, you got blackmail on us. Everyone on the Time 100 podcast list.

That's what Epstein did. He recorded a lot of escape rooms with all the different people, the game of the island. He knows that that's where the worst comes out of anyone. Yeah. Chris Tucker in an escape room trying to do that. Look, my apologies for that. I think the revenge could come in that I flipped through this thing before we started recording today, and this is a very dreadful endeavor.

There was mostly cloth rustling that gave me almost nothing to talk about, and it made me nearly fall asleep and borderline disassociate. Yeah, you were kind of alternating between falling asleep and borderline dissociate. While doing it? While doing it. This was, I think all of us, I think we were all, like, out of it that day. It was like, I was, like, strangely tired going into it. Yeah.

Because it's also, like, did we go at four o'clock? It's a bad time. Yeah, yeah. At the end of the day. Like, it's strangest, like, time to, like, ramp up again. Like, because it's earlier than when you, it's like a true wind down time. It's like, let's do something new that is unlike anything I've done today. It requires the most thought.

You have to focus for an hour, like a hard focus for an hour. I told you when I felt such a split between email me and in-person me, where we had arranged this. And I'd said, like, all right, we'll see it this time. And, you know, maybe, you know, because then we got time to get up there. And all right, I'm looking forward to it. And as soon as I had to look you in the eye and I had caused you being in an escape room, the shame. I'm just like, what was I doing in that email? Here, God, now we have to do this.

And I'm the face of escape rooms to you. Well, at least Doc Brown wasn't yelling at us. at least kind of older a little horse dog brown wasn't yelling at us so were the other escape rooms there was no nothing about like oh it couldn't get the Batman room no we chose we wanted

yeah we thought maybe Captain Goldbeard would be funny what we didn't know is that it was just kind of you were not going to meet a pirate character yeah all of these things clearly are like puzzles they're all like find letters on things find a map I think no matter what any of the themes are you're going to get the same stuff

I gotta say I was feeling pretty good in the first room because I feel like we started figuring stuff out pretty quickly like oh there's only a sad amount of bottles so that spells out of word and then there was a wall of like pirate

sayings like I-I captain ahoy meaty I Scott admitted shiver me eat rum yeah shiver me row Scott admittedly tried to do

a Hoy captain and I'm like, no, no, you want a hoy matey. The already captain, say I-I-I-Captist. And I'm like, I don't know why I was so proud of knowing my pirate slang. I got a real Master and Commander fan over here. That's right.

He's recently brought Master and Commander up. Come back to the, I've been on. the far side of the world and now I've come back to share my knowledge. There was a photo recently where you were like, you know what's funny about this photo, all the Master and Commander posters and we look it's in the very background.

What are you talking about? No, they were like 10 feet tall. He just has Master and Commander on the brain all the time. Sure. Now is that a top 10 like dad movie, Master and Commander?

It is a top 10 dad movie. And in fact, I told... Russell Crowe's in like four of the ten top dad movies of all time. He's the Pope Exorcist. He's in a...

But just a gladiator. That's a dad... Gladiator. Yeah. Like, what other ones would be? Well, Born... He's a big BORri. Oh, yeah, I love Born.

He loves the Bourne franchise as well, which are the ultimate dad movies. Yeah. Yeah. He's not in... Ford versus Ferrari is a dad movie. Yeah. What, that's not the Michael Man?

That's the Matt Damon one? That's the one. That's the Christian. Christian Bale. Oh, yeah. And then this year we had a dad movie with F1. Okay. Oh, yeah.

That's a huge. Like, these movies are just like, they're not going to, they might not do well in theaters, but like they will live on T&T. They'll be all of the content of TNT, basically. TNT, uh, car, car mechanic or dealership waiting rooms. Yeah. Yeah. It's like a warm bath. Okay.

It's not going to offend anyone. one, it's not going to be too loud. Is that right? Ben Affleck's up, the accountant, is that right? The accountant, yes. Well, the accountant, too, with John Baranthol, is his brother. Yeah. I've never seen these, yeah. Okay.

I think we've, let me say this, I think we have no obligation to say everything that we did. I don't know that anything we did was interesting at all. I know, that's, well, that's what I discovered from the recording. My apologies again, but I, it was just, it was very frustrating because it would just be, well, Let me read one part that I wrote down. This summarized the whole thing. Me saying angrily, do we put Jolly Roger on top of Red Rock? And then Mike said, put Jolly Roger on top of it.

That's a slice of where this got us. We're like humorlessly bickering the phrase Jolly Roger. Yeah. Like cluelessly. Like nobody knows what's right. And it's not like, I know I'm right. Like nobody was. Mad at the three of you, mad at the situation.

But there was like no confidence with any decision. It was like maybe that won't work. We can kind of like, hey, I have an idea we could try and maybe it'll be. It's not just like, this is what it is. Do that. Yeah, nobody was doing that version. Yeah, nobody corralled it. It would have been really nice to have somebody.

I feel like it had Eva Anderson been with us, I think she would have been, I think she would have like doubled the knowledge and the confidence. She couldn't come because she was doing. the game in real life. She was doing that real life game. She does that like every other week. And she loves it. Almost died several times, but I hear she's doing it.

But it's fun, yeah. So it seemed like because there were two small rooms. Three. I was surprised by the third. Because there was a gate that you had to get open to go from room one to room two or crawl through this like little cubby hole. Yeah. I was very impressed by that because we solved the.

bottles full of sand puzzle and this crate popped open and Tom jumped into action and crawled through the crate and then opened the door for the rest of us. Yeah. After I made a joke before about like, well, I hope you brought some movement clothes and you scoffed at that and then sure enough, there you were. Yeah. It didn't. Yeah.

Yeah. It really was. Mm-hmm. So then that, and it seemed like that second room was really where we slowed down. Yeah. Yeah. like things were just like where the blood sugar dropped collectively but also where it was just kind of like were the clues back in the first work like it was like kind of like this open end

things was like yeah were we still supposed to do stuff back there that would help us yeah did we do it out of order yeah yeah that was a big question yeah and that is a huge like flaw in the presentation on it they're like it did not feel like there was a to be to see kind of flow it It's kind of just like, what am I doing here? And you just try a thing. You don't realize you're, you're on sea now. You're starting with sea. And you kind of have to go back.

Because then there were like these, these like things on the wall that you had to like, was it a key? Then it made a turn, it would reveal the sand would fall down. Yeah, like a painting in a box. Then there'd be something once the sand fell. Yeah, once you, if you got it to, if you could move it, look with a key, then it would turn and reveal something. Yeah. Yes. And then a box, a trap box opened underneath his skeleton to unveil a codex, like a small miniature cylinder with all the letters on it.

Yeah. And this, I have known from watching dad movies. I was like, ah, it's a codex. We have to figure out the word. And we're like, oh, fuck, how? Yes. And then we finally got the word, but I couldn't get the last. letter and then I was like Mike can you put that to S and like pull it oh and you did and that got us a key because there was also locks there was a bunch of lock thank you there was a bunch of locks on the door and Mike is like I think these are just

oh yeah yeah yeah yeah so what happened was I think so they had some locks where you would have to put a code in that were like old like old pirate locks they were like like brass they were kind of high school lock lock. They had leather. Rotating. No, no. Some were like, okay. Some were in the theming.

Yeah, well, yes, they were, yes. Some were like, some were like, some had a key element, like you just put a key in,

which obviously is old. But now some had like a, actually with the numbers, but it was encased in leather to make it look like it was from back in the day. There you go. But then clearly some of these locks had broken and somebody just went down to the hardware store and got a couple unthemed locks for different parts of the experience. Yeah.

So it's something that we need. that we passed by earlier because it just looked like something that would be on the wall of a laundry room in an apartment. It looked like, yeah, you could get to like some emergency equipment or something in the room with these, but then, oh, actually, that's part of it. That was part of it. It just wasn't

themed. That was not the defibrillator. Yeah, in case I had a medical like medical emergency box at like a arena. Yeah. The NARCAP. We were all kind of We all maybe, like, needed a medical jolt.

Yeah, it would have been bad. And then there were these giant, like, apple box kind of. Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's where the Jolly Roger anger came from. We never, we didn't get that. That had different symbols that were like, some were raised and on the opposite side of a box would be indented. That's supposed to align like a puzzle with it, but it just never kind of.

That did not come together. And you had to put them in order, but then there was also a line. leather numerical saying like each one of these symbols has a numerical value so you do this like this was like a middle school math puzzle

because there was a book there was also there was a there was like a small book that had a lot of like symbols and things that were supposed to be clues but we were not making the connection on like literally any of them like none of them we've struggled

with literally every And then the thing is, like, you hit a wall with it. We're just, like, eating shit in this room. And the guy is on the other side of that screen is like, What's his name again, Jason? Jeremy. I know, I, it was. Jeremy?

I feel like it was Jeremy or Eric or one. Like, a name you hear a lot. Okay, so Jerrick up there. We would do, we were doing poorly with certain things. And, like, he'd give clues to just become. And initially the clues would always just be like, like done in kind of pirate talk early on to say, one must look for the thing. And then like we still were not good at.

And finally he's just like, it's numbers and just eight seven six oh three. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like the third round of us not doing, not getting it, he would just literally say stack those things and add the numbers on the side and put that in and the door will open. And we're just like... There's no yarr in there or anything.

That was like he could tell... He could feel him getting mad at us. Because he dropped the... The character. Yeah, the character went away. These people don't deserve an awoy. Yeah. They might have been thinking,

oh, the character language is confusing. Yeah. Just go to your regular. These people are so stupid. They can't understand the pirate sentence. Yeah. it's horrifying to me now that people that there was a person listening to every single thing we said while trapped in that rule what we're doing right now it's the same group of people

and a lot more people are going to be listening to this and we're listening to us on that day but i'm not i'm not thrown by this at all well i'm horrified that one man heard every stupid thing we said one guy went home and told whoever is in his life like how's work today it's like you're not going to believe 4 o'clock I had the dumbest group The dumbest group yet Was it kids

No No it was older men Oh god Did they do Batman? Were they nerds? No they did the pirate That's not anything I don't know why they did that

They couldn't figure a thing out And I recorded them without telling them Let's listen to it Yeah Do you think that guy has six things going, right? Is it like you're working in a movie theater in the projection room?

Yeah, you're just running from screen to screen. They can't have one guy be dedicated for the whole otherwise they would just have an employee in the thing. This is a cost-cutting measure. At least two at a time. Exactly. Even if he's doing two at a time now you get two for like one employee's covering two escape rooms per hour.

Yeah, yeah. It could also be someone remotely. Oh, I don't think he was anywhere near us. He could be doing multiple cities. That's what I thought it was. I was like, this guy could be anywhere on the globe. They could be. Oh, he's like he's also doing the one in San Francisco.

The gold beard in San Francisco. Because he just may be his gold beard guy. He might do all the pirate. You're right. Like that. It's a guess. But I just thought it's like this guy is somewhere on this planet and he's just, this is a quantity situation. Probably, yeah.

Zadlov does the Batman one from his giant office. Because otherwise, they'd put a guy in a pirate outfit and put him in the room and it would be fun. Oh, if you get individual staffing. Yeah, that's right. Yes. Oh, God. So there's a call center somewhere. Maybe that too.

They're also like trying to call you about home loans. But in the middle, hang on one sec. Exactly. You best be looking and look on the port side. Yeah, somebody's applying for like. like a reverse mortgage and like, why are you talking like a pirate? I was like, oh, crap, I almost forgot. Hold on a second.

Wrong window. It's the group. How many pieces of eight you wish to be investing? I'm looking for $35,000. Yeah, it's the groupon fool. We'll finally be rid of him soon. Oh no, the god mic was on. Yeah, because eventually we got through the,

there was a door door like a heavy door that had to get opened yeah and then which is a cool uh probably the coolest room waiting for you there's some neat lighting effects in there and a map you had to interact with and books and stuff yeah one of the puzzles we solved a little bit okay there were like different boxes that had different skeleton

like skulls in them yeah and one would have a patch on then you had the core match there's a there's a were four paintings on the wall four boxes and the four boxes were like oh one of the boxes the guy has a patch on there so you put the that skull underneath the painting of the guy with the patch on and then that like worked like and once all four were done then like a drawer opened or something yeah yeah um i think in that room was where ah we're like okay maybe this is we're on the way out here or this will be like kind of a climax and we quickly realize that the first thing that we had to deal with in that third room was a leather bound journal.

We had to read some entries from a journal. And it was at that point that Utah said, don't some people get to come on your show and go on roller coasters? Yeah. People are just very simple. Like I'm in school all of a sudden. Like, yeah, escape rooms are like the homework of fun.

It feels like, you know what it feels like to me? It feels like taking a standard. test where it lasts so long and you'd feel like minute 30 or whatever in that test in school you just be like oh come like yeah how much more is there in this and at the end she was like oh yes there are multiple ways to solve some of these because I was like where are all those codes on that box he crawled through and she's like oh if you hold up this tattered flag it will highlight the and it's like we didn't even consider that I thought it just looked like set dressing.

Because there was like a, there was like on the door of this little cubby hole that, that I climbed through. There were like 12 symbols on it. And if you held this tattered flag up to it, it would reveal like four of the symbols, which then it's like, oh, those are the four that means something. But we didn't even go anywhere near utilizing that. Yes, is that, is it our, I mean, it's our fault. Yes. It is our fault. I think some of this not working.

I will put on ourselves, but maybe we're just not the candidates to be doing it. I like when there's a music cue. I like when something lights up. I like when a box opens. When I like when I discover something, oh, it's this or this. I feel nothing. I don't feel excited. That's the difference.

There's a lot of people that once they go, oh my God, this is that and you got to turn this because it corresponds to that. People get excited. There are for whatever reason some people like that. And they get. And this is like, I feel nothing when I discover something like that. You get surges of adrenaline when you get like. like a $1.50 off like a painted bear.

Yes. Or when I'm on a collection, you don't even collect. When I'm on whatnot and I get like a good under, like I over or underbid somebody and I still win or something. Like I, there's a lot of weird things that I get a big, strong dose of adrenaline. Neil Siddakas posted a new Instagram with his grandson. I get so excited when Neil and his grandson are performing together. Wait, how many hundred grand did you just throw in that box bid? Yeah. Right.

Yeah. Yeah, I don't care. I don't care in an escape room. I just want, I want the entertainment to, I want to see it, and I don't want to do it. I don't want to be part of it. Now, you get a rush when you're just like, uh, actually the Gordita will be free today. Yeah. I do.

Yeah. It's true. I get very excited. Why, yes, I did drive to this, this Taco Bell five miles away from my house up a hill. I get, I did pass four Taco Bells on the way to this one. If you, if I do a separate order, if I do a separate order just for my Baja blast, then I'll get enough bells to claim a Mexican pizza. Yeah, that's right.

And I get, I get off on that. I get off on doing stuff like that. All right, all right. Easy brother. How many fast food rewards apps do you have? Oh, man. Oh, Tom. Tom's got to be upset in this question.

We've done a whole points episode. Jason and I When I left to do some other work The first thing they do is do an episode The voters are patriots Wanted me to do a points episode Our audience said Scott's gone You know what we need

An episode about credit card points and apps What do you like? How many points do you currently have banked At the McDonald's app? It's a great question I really should know off the top of my head It's a little on the lower side right now You're cashing those things up

That means you've used it 4,500 at a time Yeah I will well yeah you want to get like, because the Happy Meal toys recently have been very good. And we're starting tomorrow, Hello Kitty, X Ninja Turtle, Happy Meal Toys. But they're also starting the new McDonald's stuff where you can get classic McDonald's tins. Now, Mike, are these for your daughter? Well, technically, they're for both of us.

Because they've also, the little McDonald's toys just came to. So that's what she's going to do. Assuming they don't accrue value. We have no money to leave her. Common interests are important. Yeah, yeah. So, no, we got Wendy's. We got, we love, Jason and I love Shore Points, Jersey Shore Points.

That's, I can find my in on the, I've gotten. So when you get the free sub, it is a very exciting. Yes, and you get a giant, if you really save them up. Not just the large, you can get a giant. You can get a giant and eat half of it the next movie. That's what they like to do. And we like to, well, that's a good question. Do you ever eat part of the sub the next day if it's Jersey Mikes?

Because sometimes that gets a little wet. Look, if I go to Jersey Mikes, I'm getting a tuna sub and that is not going to stick around otherwise it's just I'm eating just like a like a pile of mush when that's what they want them

they love the mush the mush is better I'll go to Jersey mics when I know I can knock the whole thing back okay but I'm not getting a giant I don't have the pull you have over there well if you had more

shore points you would be able to get more look I'm from the Jersey shore I have more points than I do I have this tattoo You're from here You're going here to eat You go here That's where the Jersey

You have the shore You have the shore You the shore is on you There's a lot of Pleasant Right point pleasant Yeah that's where it started Oh right right right

Do you like subway tuna? I do and then I'll stop I'll be like Man I mean it's Why did I stop going to subway Subway rules And I'll eat like I'll eat like five times

It's subway and it'll be just like, I'm done for two years now. Like, two years later, I'll be like, man, why don't ever stop going to subway? Subway is awesome. Podcast the ride standards. You're a quitter. Just keep, no, on ahead. He goes back, though.

He does eventually, yeah. He does mind a race like we do. Yeah, you can, you can, you can relate. How about a local, how about a non-franchise place, like Uncle Paulies in Studio City? I bet Jason's going to have one and I bet Michael not. I don't think I ever made it, Uncle. I think that was opening around when I was. moving, but I'm pretty close to

Philly's best. That's where I'm from. Uncle Pauley's has the best sandwiches I've had in Los Angeles. Is that right? I really believe. They do, because they do like a bacon, egg and cheese for breakfast. They have all that stuff, yeah. They have all the lunch stuff, yeah. They have just

like, yeah, it's like their bread is really good. What is the hardest program, though? 10, 10 for one? Pretty good. So you're getting a 10% discount every time. You buy a freaking sandwich at Uncle Paul. He says pretty good.

Yeah, you're right. It doesn't have to be a big chain to have the... You could have a little card, yeah, with a punch. Yeah, yeah. I will, I probably said before, but, like, coming from Delcoe from outside Philadelphia, spending a lot of time in South Jersey, I have the hardest time finding good bread in Los Angeles. In that style. I know exactly what you mean.

Yeah. And I don't want to be that person moaning about this. so different they don't get it right here but that is one thing they do not that is not replicated here is like like like a bagel is like like squishy here yeah i don't think i've had the pleasure of this kind of bread to which you yeah it's got a little bit of a crunch to it yeah that's italian roll it's a little chewy yeah you've got to get the the bread machine the new york bread machine that they have or the water excuse me the water machine yeah which that plays ghost pizza that was right by our house

had and it was good and then it closed some Philly focused food places will fly in the Amarosa Roll packs but I who knows how fresh it's when you haven't chatted out I don't think the Amorosa rolls No yeah they're good okay okay not the crunch But they have a nice chew to them

Sure nice texture nice chew So you're Wawa not sheets But Wawa not sheets Okay Sheets is more of a west Pennsylvania kind of thing. Sheets is like like Wawa plus

meth equals sheets. Like sheets is like trucker speed and like they like actually sell it there like over the counter. They sell drugs to truckers. It's like literally at the counter. Maybe a place to start this little business of ours.

Well that I sent Mike. He saw all American rejects for free at Comic Con. And then there was video them playing in a sheets sparking fun recently so they're a band of the people

yeah that's pretty yeah sure okay you know we've kind of replicated the escape room

in some ways by creating a situation where we have to talk about all the things we did but I think we're sort of there

right it's really up to us there's no there's no guy up in a booth or a call center or somewhere

across the world I kind of like the last room it has Did that have the most effects, it felt like? Yeah, some kind of lighting and secret things. And then we got, and then we had to figure out we had to lug some of the jewels back to the very first shelf. Because there was this, what was it, like a tabletop kind of like, like disc, like a circle that had three like holes in it that you had to insert the jewels into.

in the right order. Right. Like an infant Fisherman. Yeah. Yeah. Which we failed down to the final thing. Right down the final moment guys that's finally put him in order.

Like his final thing, which is this angry thing on the screen. Insert them into the holes in the order that they're on the screen, that they're on the thing. That's where he typed guys, guys. It's all caps. And then a celebratory music cue.

We did it. Yeah. And he did and suddenly went. like, but then it was like, well, I guess we got the jewels. Yeah. And then the girl came to let us out and she, her, I liked her tone. I liked when she went, God, hooray! Yeah, yeah.

That was a little infectious. And, but then I think in both of these situations, both times we've done an escape room now, they ask you, they're pretty point blank. They say, like, how was it? Yeah. And I feel so uncomfortable having to, that doesn't happen. It's, like, if we're on a ride, we don't like, nobody's there from Disney saying, what did you think?

Yeah. It's a little uncomfortable. Yeah. It's like a close-up magician when you have to act. Like, oh, my God. Yeah, that was amazing. Even though if it was, I still feel like a lot of pressure. And then we all held props like we were at a wedding, photo booth.

All the props for totally other escape rooms. For Scooby-Doo. Scooby-Doo. I don't think we got any props from what we did. Captain Goldbeard not represented. No, but on the way out, you could. They did have T-shirts for each different escape room. Yeah, they did.

So if you wanted to recall your experience, a 50-50 cotton polyester blend shirt and didn't you didn't we weren't we entitled to a disc like a 10% discount on merch on merch and if we wanted to do it again

now that's a I if we could do it and not have to play the game yeah I wouldn't mind sitting in the room for 45 minutes or an hour at some point I said what if we just said we're not going to try to solve it we let's just do a podcast from hidden this escape. Well, that would be fine, too. And then you would have, you would be hearing pirate music playing the whole time,

but I think that'd be a fun change of pace for the listener. But I sort of wish we could have just, like, talked, just sat on some crates and just got down to it. Yeah. Running studio rental in L.A. costs of like, might be cheaper to just take mics up to that escape. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Like a we work situation. Yeah. With, with the blooms. I know we're talking about a very serious topic today. If you hear Daphne and Velma scared in the background, do not pay attention to it. Yeah, no.

That becomes an episode, yeah, where we have to deal with an actual tragedy that's occurred. Right. We're all dealing with, shut up, Scooby. Somebody shut Scrappy up, please. But no, I think, well, technically we did succeed. And I think

we succeeded in having at least an interesting time. It was so much fun. It really was. I'm glad that's the feeling. It was. We have fun. We've encountered this a lot no matter how much you end up bemoaning things. It's fun all told. It's fun to recall it. It's who we are. That's right. This is how we, yes.

You're going to go and not goof on it a little bit. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. That is right. This is how we express joy. And that we're happy fun. It's a love language. Yeah. sarcasm is our love language. Just getting the good point.

Absolutely obliterated. That's an important reminder, I think. I totally agree. But did it drain us and leave us not wanting to do one single thing on the way out the door of CityWalk? Yes, absolutely. Well, we were debating making ourselves sick with like two or three days worth of sugar. Yeah. And instead, Mike and I just opted to make ourselves sick with that coffee vending machine.

What happened in the area? Well, no, we were sick. Do we make ourselves sick? No, it was just joking. We had to hold the coffee, but we were driving downhill. Every other week you get sick with something. And as soon as you went to a speed bump, I immediately spilled. Oh, you're right.

That is an open coffee container that is yours. All right, that's for you to have and enjoy. Thanks for parking here. Now, just consume it on the way down an exit that's entirely steep and turns and speed bumps and getting onto freeways. I think I said, Jason, should I take that? I'm worried about you holding that. And you said, no, it's fine.

Bump all over you. Splish, splash, splish. Yeah, it was really like immediately a situation where I was right. It is interesting because it would, they should just give you a lid at the, at the very least. And we haven't really talked about this free. This is what you get when you valet park. We haven't talked about this in five, six years.

We talked about with Jason Walner, I believe, as there was some coffee cup, the statute of limitations on the coffee coin controversy. We get to go back. And it's still an old school machine. They haven't upgraded and you get a coin. Yeah, like you're like you have jury duty. Yeah. Yeah.

The thrill. See, it's not just, it's not just $60 going down the drain. If you're one minute late, you get a coffee and a special little coin for a minute. And much more variety at that machine than you would think. Yeah. There is a lot. Did you get something? I don't want to go on.

Yeah, I did. I got a vanilla latte. How would you compare? Like if you were. It was, I've had much worse vanilla. a lot of things. Wow. All right.

For real, it was perfectly fun. Yeah. Well, that's a great. That's a little sweet taste. Pick me up. They have to get overstimulated at Citywalk. And tired from running to hit that two hours.

Yeah, that's, yes. Yeah. If anything, the escape room just made me want to like wrap it up and go to bed at 515 p. That was not in the cards. They were able to escape from being awake. From all, from all things from my life. Yeah. Um, that said, it's, but does this now make it of, is, is, is a final ruling that you have

learned some, you have learned you're not an escape room person and you shan't try again. I, I, I, it takes me a while for me, some of these things to truly sink in. And I think, I think it, that probably made me think the, the first escape room experience I had, I could not have been worse at. this one actually it made me think maybe I'm not as bad at as I was at first time I'm not good at it

but I was I fail if it was a test I would have gotten like see me after class on the first one um this one I would have gotten like a D minus on

but I'm kind of just like hey I'm in the mix yeah a little bit I can get to a C plus and And I'm not going to go in any time. So if somebody was, if somebody else was saying, hey, we were wondering, we were thinking about going to an escape room tonight, I would be more open to it than I was before that. I still would, I would never be the one to initiate an escape room. But I would probably, if somebody was like, yeah, we're going to go to one of those,

like, yeah, I'll jump on it. And because I would have the proper expectations of it now. Sure, sure. All right. Well, you hear that escapology? That's not bad. Somebody's attitude about 20% or so. And it's the same attitude you have about Subway every two years.

Until you go back. Yeah. I just get the. Oh, yeah. I'll go to Subway. Because look, I'll say this about the Subway app. You play that thing. You game that.

You can game that thing to expert level. You could take Subway for a ride with that. If you use that app correctly. there's like they're a little too generous with the it's like a loose slot machine yeah that subway you gotta try the footlong truro the footlong cookie you get a free cookie you get a free large drink okay you get like you could really right game the system on that thing McDonald's yeah they they've got locked down 4500 for a fillet fish xx every one they're got it's getting worse because you can't even get one deal or redeem

and a reward. You can do it and then you can, they make you wait 15 minutes so you couldn't go to say the one in Burbank and then go to the one and the other one in Burbank.

You have to wait 15 minutes which I've done to get two deals at once. You have, you have, you've like put yourself on a time out in order to.

There's the one on San Fernando in Burbank. I'll go get a free call or a dollar coffee. But then you drive over to the one on Burbank Boulevard and you can, and you wait a couple minutes and you get whatever,

I'll redeem, you know, bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit. You should walk is what you should. You should fill that time with exercise. That would be okay. That should be a way, this will be a way to encourage Mike to be fit, just riding out that, the hated McDonald's 15. Going from Burbank Boulevard to Olive Boulevard, like that diagonal line. Yes, you could go to all, you could do Burbank to Olive as well,

because these are all pretty close to each other. Mike waiting out the 15 minute time. The McDonald's 15. This is a whole new thing. Then you've dropped. I don't do it a lot, but I have done it. The coffee bean app is the final thing I'll say. Oh, with the coffee bean is free.

I had my greatest success moment, maybe in my entire life in any way, shape, or form. Take that time. Last week, I went to coffee bean, and they were just like, you get a free, free coffee. So I was like, well, I got a large iced latte. And they just like, do you want a free pastry? You get a free pastry today, too. I'm just like, whoa. I was just like.

So I tip them a hundred dollars. I might as well just started like whying about how much I take. It's just completely unprovable. So I tipped them 100 and then I did see Bruce Willis once in New York City at McMannis, which is the bar that was like the UCB Theater hang out. Oh yeah, yeah. One time Bruce Willis walked in. He was with some young woman.

And he goes up to the bar. Guy, he pours him like a whiskey. He downs it and slaps $100 on the bar and walked out. Wow. Whoa. I was like, that was the coolest thing I've ever seen. Damn, Bruce. Like, just in and out.

I would like to turn that into Jason with pastries. You go in one pastry, down it, down it like a shot. And then 100. Yeah. Or you're doing it at one. Wawa not sheets, that's what we've learned. Correct. Well, the Wawa app you can really game too.

Okay, sure. Look, Wawa is a bargain in and of itself. You go to Wawa. You shouldn't even... No offense. You shouldn't even be thinking about that app. It's a little disrespectful to Wawa. Okay. You're taking money out of their buckets.

You're giving you so much. And now you're going to nickel and dime them down the whole stretch. Because the browsing and picking out your coffee and your touchscreen hoagie. That's part of the experience. How much more we end this episode? We got the McDonald's 15.

We got touchscreen hoagies. How much more is Wawa supposed to give you? Yeah, I know. Well, free coffee Tuesday, though. It's fun. They like it. You stand your ground. You have your own principles.

You're committed to a way of life. You tell Tom what for. It's so tough. I listen to so much of the best show, but I'm so loyal to the apps. are you with tom or you wall wall over there best show wow

like china town yeah you're like well look at this so hard this worked out so great we got you got some victories

everybody got some app talk I got a lot of victories for old Scotty too everybody won with Tom Sharpling on podcast the ride Tom you survived podcast to ride

no this was so much fun thank you for including I'm so glad I'm sincerely so glad you could do it After all this time It's such a pleasure Getting to know you over the years You let me know it

I'll come, I'll do another thing You'll go Are you guys excited You must be so excited about that Stupid fast and furious ride Oh that big rolling Yeah you are Well after the movie

If you're like the excitement around the movies It's died down There's more It has coming out Yeah those are always I like it Yeah but that ride's still gonna be a Oh the ride's gonna be great

They're doing the last one and they're bringing back Paul Walker. Vin Diesel said we're bringing back Paul Walker. Oh. No one's clear what that means. The thing that worked in that one shot, let's do it for an entire movie. Suppose there is something interesting. We're going to summon him.

Is it the last one or is it two-part last one? Well, probably two-part. I don't know. I don't know anything other than there's one coming. Paul Walker is back and the ride is going to be spectacular. That said, the ride is too interesting for you to do. Yeah, you're not going to be on that episode. We can find something boring for you to do.

Yeah, no, no, of course. No, I mean, we could do a thing about the making of the ride or some sort of. No, sure. Yeah, yeah. A mobile game that promotes the opening of the ride. But it is the most amazing thing that you see from this, from the podcast studio. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Literally seeing a ride getting built. It's every week it's further along. It's pretty exciting. And that's been like a view. I mean, I grew up around here, so I've had it my whole life. He passed my go, there's a theme park up there. But mostly it was like a bunch of pavilions and buildings that we, and that now we got a castle up there.

We got a minion up there. Now we got on us to gone ride. Yeah, now there's a roller goes. It's gotten so much stupider looking in this city and it makes me so happy. I'm glad it does you too. And it's clearly just like they don't have enough space for the things there. They're just doing things on the side of the hill now. Yeah, they have to carve the hill in order to that's how hard up they are.

I try not to think of the roller coaster built in the side of the hill in Earthquake. Yeah. How does that be a problem? I'll get my ride. I'll let me just get a ride or two in. Through as fast as you can. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Get out of there. Tom, let's exit to the gift shop. Is there anything you'd like to plug? Yeah, well, I do the best show every Tuesday. It's our, this is year 25 for the best show. show and we're going to commemorate that with some live shows in October. We're doing Brooklyn and Philadelphia and Los Angeles and Chicago. And you can check the dates are online.

The Best Show.net and the shows are going to be super fun. Oh, geez, congrats. Yeah, yeah, check those shows out. That's going to be great. Also, I just had the pleasure of doing your show Outgrown. Yes. You do with your wife, Julia. Very good episode.

Oh, thanks. You check it out. Oh, thanks. Yeah, yeah, some very funny details of you trying to work around. Yeah, trying to like square. I was, just thank you for the forum to talk about squaring, being still a hardcore Catholic and trying to be interested in Buster Rhymes and Red Man. Yeah.

This was a difficult time for me and nice to expel it to you. That was a fantastic episode. I appreciate it. Yeah, check that out, PTR folks, if you want. More of me. for the rest of us for three bonus episodes every month check out Podcast the Ride the Second Gate or get one more bonus episode in our VIP Tier Club 3

you'll find all of that at patreon.com slash podcast The Ride which support us and you know that your money's going to great places like the McDonald's 15 future grifting that we might do and whatever that app was where you're bidding

What Not What Not. Yeah fund Mike's What Not Habits He's bought a 60s Batman thrill joy Collectible So thanks You want Mike to have that. Yeah. Forever.

This has been a Forever Dog production. Executive produced by Mike Carlson, Jason Sheridan, Scott Gerdner, Brett Boehm, Joe Sillio, and Alex Ramsey. For more original podcasts, please visit Forever Dog Podcasts.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.