Podcast: The Ride - Kitchen Kabaret/Food Rocks with Van Robichaux

Episode Date: May 18, 2018

Meat Ditties. Bonnie Appetite. Fud Wrapper. The USDA's Food Pyramid. Special Guest, Van Robichaux (Fist Fight, Mitch.Pizza).  All your favorites are here and they're ready to put on a show. Listen to Podcast: The Ride Ad-Free on Forever Dog Plus: https://foreverdogpodcasts.com/podcasts/ FOLLOW PODCAST: THE RIDE: https://twitter.com/PodcastTheRide https://www.instagram.com/podcasttheride BUY PODCAST: THE RIDE MERCH: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/podcast-the-ride PODCAST THE RIDE IS A FOREVER DOG PODCAST https://foreverdogpodcasts.com/podcasts/podcast-the-ride Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Warning, the following podcast contains suicidal cheese grainers, the comedy stylings of both ham and eggs, another Disney dollface creature that will haunt your dreams, and the most heated Podcast the Ride argument ever. It's Food Rocks and Kitchen Cabaret with Van Robichaux on today's Podcast the Ride. welcome to podcast the ride with your hosts three guys who literally get drunk and argue about how many days you need for a tokyo disney vacation uh joining me today is uh as always mike carlson who voted three yeah you this happened two days ago it was at the end of my birthday and scott was like yelling at me i think because i said well we're going to tokyo disneyland and i want to spend three days you're like no two two days and i was like what what i said three i didn't say 13 like i kept making sure you knew

i said three and not like you thought i misheard i wasn't sure i mean i was you know cocktails were consumed i wasn't out of my mind but oh yeah that's look a a regular opinion for some reason becomes a shouted, animated opinion. Not to rehash it, but also a person who voted four days, Jason Sheridan. I'm fine with four.

I think four is great. It's good to have two days per park because you don't know what you're going to like. Then you have to cram. If you start with one park, one day, one park each, then you're nervous. You've got to cram everything in. You don't know what you're going to like.

We're nervous men. That's the risk you take anywhere you travel, I feel. But then you have that extra day for each park. And they don't let you park hop in Tokyo, right? They don't let you park hop, I believe. Their ticket system works differently. This is what happened. The last memory

I have of being in the hotel is there's Some other friends of ours that don't Care much about this crap and there Are three or four of them against the wall And I kept yelling it's the greatest Park in the world supposedly Supposedly gets the greatest park in the world Three days isn't crazy and they're like looking

At me like oh yeah there's like nodding along And like why are we involved in this? Anyway. Hey, you guys over here. Happy big three, four to our own Michael Carlson. Yeah. Thank you very much. By the time this airs, it will have been three months ago.

I'll be 35 by the time this airs. Yes. Yeah, yeah. Well, and what a way, what a better way to spend your birthday than going to a hotel bar and shouting shouting about tickets types and itineraries that's the type of thing i like to do um you know hey well that's that's what i'm saying it was fun i legitimately uh uh hey i'm glad we can hash it out as we've said on our twitter the podcast goes every day all day uh there's many bonus episodes always being done for no one

yeah sometimes just quietly muttered to ourselves there'll be a truman show kind of a situation and it'll just be us and you will see that it's 80 of our lives i was just yelling about like yeah when we start camming when we start camming yeah when we start camming and it's just us talking about theme parks yeah when we say is camming the word isn't camming just the sex cam isn't that what you say it's a webcam people do difference a twitch streaming i guess is the more innocent version yeah that would have been more g-rated but we're gonna so we're gonna start doing that at some point just all day we won't go meet each other. We'll be on separate webcams for 14 hours, just muttering theme park opinions.

And if anyone gives us a tip, maybe taking off an item of clothing. Yeah, yeah. We're open to that. It's a good way to make money. I don't want to make our guests wait here, but a quick question, though, Scott. Are you still right now completely sober, adamant that you should only spend two days at the tokyo disneyland resort is that still a strong you know well you just riled up was it fun the party and you were enjoying i do still i i think it's a like i'm dying so we all some of us might

be going we're talking about tokyo disney trips and uh uh i don't know it's two parks you do it in two days Makes sense to me I don't know If I do three are you going to be like that Freak That was the tone like that was sort of It was a good natured tone but that was the tone But I was oddly judgmental Yeah you were like no

What Boy what a monster The bottle really Br brought it out of him who someone was clowning on us recently because we were talking about trying to plan just a itinerary in japan and i think i was one who's like well i think you need uh four days for the parks and five days for the rest of the country like one of the the most interesting countries in the world. I think that's what I'm saying. One of the most fascinating countries.

If you're going to be in Japan, maybe you want to do... You just add on more days to both. You just add on more days to parks, add on more days to Japan. You have to, minimum, you have to be in Japan for eight weeks. Yes, the only way everyone... That's how it works out. Yeah. And you take Disney breaks. You do uh you know yes yeah uh come back for a full week and a half yes i mean um but you also and you also got a cake in

time for puroland the hello kitty yes i do want to i'm hoping to go to and universal in osaka there's a lot the robot restaurant and the g the Ghibli Museum. Well, let's bring our guest in. He's actually been. We have not. Oh, that's right. We must get you in on this. And I think you're a person who's it seems like you've got deep-seated theme park opinions and

arguments and things to bring to the table. And I'm glad to have you. With past guest Evan Susser, he's a co-writer of the film Fist Fight and of course the tech guru behind Van Lab's Test Podcast and Mitch.Pizza. It's Van Robichaux. Thanks for joining

us. Hi guys, it's great to be here. Thank you for being here. I'm really excited. What is your feeling after you hear this argument about how many appropriate days it would be to spend at the Tokyo Disneyland Resort? And how many appropriate days it would be to spend at the Tokyo Disneyland Resort. And how many drinks is it appropriate for somebody to be viciously angry about someone's opinion in this area?

With one day difference. I want to discourage the vicious anger. Okay, good. Yeah. But I think that it's a very personal thing. I think that you guys need to be more accepting of each other's. That's a good point. I don't know that there's a one-size-fits-all amount of accepting of each other's that's a good point i don't know there's a one size fits all amount of time for every person that's a good point uh

you know i hear scott saying he only wants to be there for two days and you know some could be concerned well that means you're going to miss some things that means there's going to be some stuff you didn't get to do what if one of your things that would have been your favorite thing to do uh you never did it. And that could be a problem for some people. That anxiety could just ruin their Tokyo Disneyland trip. And maybe that person should go for three days. But I think Scott's the kind of guy who he's going to hit what he wants to hit in one day.

And that's going to be enough of the experience, I think, for him to understand. Maybe he'll want to go back. Very zen, chilled out, nice, appropriate, calm. You had no arguments for four, though. No, that's crazy. All right. There we go.

All right. All right. Fair enough. I'm a trailblazer. I'm happy to be on the bleeding edge of vacation planning thought. You push the limits. Yeah. The Hunter S. Thompson of vacationing.

Yeah. I drove. I was driven in a car with a bunch of people past Tokyo Disneyland on the way to the airport leaving Japan. And I was close enough that I saw the top of something. Was it a castle? Was it the... The volcano?

The volcano. I don't know. It was like, oh, that's a piece of it i can kind of see that's as close as i got and that's a terrible feeling and that oh so you didn't go you didn't get to go i didn't go in the park i just saw it's because i was inspired i was out of japan in 36 hours oh wow that's the only time you've been in japan yeah that's my only time so i i was like within spitting distance of it but i didn't get to go that's that's cool oh bummer that's a that's a nightmare that's a thing i would literally have a bad dream about yeah um you

weren't working you weren't like it was a work crazy like one crazy no i'm not just like i wasn't like my choice was like you know i'm going 36 hours that's how i'm gonna do it that's just like the way to do it for me i'm copying an episode of the layover with anthony bourdain well i guess we can agree then 36 hours and not going in is the least optimal way to yeah yeah that's the worst way to do it yeah yeah yeah um okay but you're uh uh so you're you seem like a you're you're a pretty big parks guy we've known each other for a little bit and the fact that you i it seems like you're a pretty big Parks guy. We've known each other for a little bit. And the fact that you, it seems like you're a big Epcot person specifically. Not ironically. I want to make that clear.

Yeah. But because Epcot specifically, I think, attracts some ironic love that is genuine. But like, you know, the Epcot Twitter account, for example. You ever see that? Oh, yeah. I've read that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a fake Epcot Twitter account. What's the You ever see that? Oh, yeah, I've read any of that. There's a fake Epcot Twitter account.

What's the tone of it? I don't really know. It claims to be the Twitter account for Epcot, and it doesn't break character as that. So that's a big piece of it. But there's sort of just absurdist things, or sometimes just like someone lost a wallet. Yeah, the bit is that it's

like some dumpy park that no one wants to go to and there's like two guys that work there and it's like i'm gonna close up not a lot of people in the park today i'm closing up early like stuff like that but yeah i want to make it clear that while i do i do follow that twitter account and i i think i i really just i'll take any epcot content that I can. Yeah. But it is a genuine love. Epcot was always my favorite park. I went to Disney World a lot as a kid. I lived in New Orleans. And so it's not that far.

Would you go once a year? Would you go? We would go once a year. We would drive a lot of the time. It's one of those things where it's like close enough that to fly there takes almost as long as to drive there just because airports are such time-sucking things. Yeah. How long would it take to drive, just out of curiosity?

It's like a five-hour drive. Not bad. Yeah. Oh, yeah, that's in Vegas. Oh, that's pretty good. That's closer than any of us, correct? So we would go every year for like a uh like there was like a nine-year stretch where we went every year um and you and epcot as a because i was so uh definitively a disney mgm

studios uh kid despite my recent disparaging of it and what has uh what's become of the park but like i like weirdly as a kid i think i found stuff to enjoy bad epcot but i like i was always in the other parks even magic kingdom kind of thinking about the next strike at uh disney mgm i was i was a big mgm fan but i preferred universal for my in that area theme park experience it felt more authentic you could feel it um that's really where you would ride the movies yeah um faking feel the heat more explosions closer to them in the yeah no and um i remember uh i remember going to the uh the nickelodeon studios uh i never got to go at universe i know you never did when i went and i went on the tour

like there was a part where you could see the sound stage and like you know at a certain point it's like that's where all that is filmed or whatever uh at this time it was like that's where this is being rented out for the live action mortal kombat tv show whoa really yeah you show yeah there was a there was a like from the same like production company as the movies i think there's a short-lived live action yeah i kind of remember it was a show on saturday after the cartoons that was like not mortal kombat but it was ninja fights in a cage yeah it was kind of like yeah i know exactly what you're talking about i don't remember the name but it was like a live

action street fighter yes but it was not mortal kombat it was like a live action street fighter. Yes, but it was not Mortal Kombat. It was like a karate take on WWE, essentially. Anyway, that's the kind of real life film and television production that Universal Studios, even in Florida, can bring you close to. And MGM never really had that. But you got the MMC. You got the Mickey Mouse Club, which is a big deal. That is true.

And the Golden Girls exterior, the house exterior. That fell apart really quickly. They stopped filming stuff. Thunder in Paradise, I think, some of that stuff was down there. Oh, boy. Oh, for sure. In the intro of Thunder in Paradise, if you don't know, is a Baywatch ripoff that was starring Hulk Hogan.

Is he credited as Terry Hulk Hogan Balea, I think? Yeah. It's just one that was joint in the seven seas lagoon yes but it's supposed to be like paradise it's supposed to be what the bahamas or the caribbean or something and it's very clearly the grand floridian resort in orlando florida in the background there's also like a boat that changes like there's a yeah there's like a sort of like a night rider car kit but a boat it doesn't talk to you but it's like a fancy high-tech vehicle in that same way infinite room in the bottom the scenes that are set in in the like interior cabin of the boat there's so much space it's bonkers have you and evan susser been approached to reboot thunder and paradise no reboot Thunder in Paradise. No. Perhaps with a John Cena or a newer wrestler.

I don't think that was a WWE associated production. No, it was not. I don't think it was. And Hogan would have stayed away from even wrestling again if it was a hit. He was hoping he was done because he was hoping that was going to be a big syndicated hit. Oh, like Baywatch. He could just ride that to weird infinite Europe money. Yes, but that didn't happen

and he went back to wcw and he turned heel and the rest that's part of that arc oh yes oh interesting uh uh now what became of jack lemon's son who was also on the show was that his like sidekick yeah yeah who's eerily jack lemon looking like once you once you're told it's jack lemon's son you just you kind of can't keep your eyes off like oh it's such an optical illusion how jack lemony he is jack lemon's son also joined the nwo and turned heel after thunder in paradise i'm mad about the cancellation damn it big faction but yeah i would say um my my order of ranking the disney world parks would be epcot then mgm studios then the magic kingdom uh then animal kingdom i think most people would put animal kingdom at the bottom maybe not anymore not anymore i i've heard it's

gotten more popular lately i i really i when they opened animal kingdom and killed all those animals that uh that is a thing that happened the birds they know when they opened animal kingdom they were like not really prepared to deal with keeping a bunch of animals alive oh right yeah and they quickly learned on their feet some about some mistakes in the way they were doing things and like a lot of the animals died yeah like a giraffe might not love the orlando heat and that always that that soured the park for me i'll be honest yeah that makes sense i mean well yeah i get that. They kind of scaled back on the there's real animals of it all in that park tremendously. I was there six months ago, and there are a lot of animals there.

And it's still pretty crazy. I mean, they used to, I think, have a much more aggressive slate of animals, maybe. Yeah. Well, that was a big thing they learned early on is that like the safari where you would see all the animals, if you went in the summer, they'd all be sleeping during the day or like hunting for shade because it's just so ungodly hot. But now do they breed like zebras who specifically are meant to be Orlando zebras? I'm assuming there has been some genetic engineering going on where they've been, what, like a lizard or something? They give them lizard DNA and that makes them uh while we're going up in the while we're going through the parks let me just ask you guys not to take over the podcast no go for it uh

can i ask you blizzard beach or typhoon lagoon uh um i haven't been to typhoon lagoon in years but we just went to bl Beach like six months ago. I think it's Blizzard Beach, even though Blizzard Beach is like saying Pizza Hut is better pizza than like a local pizza place, I think. I think Typhoon Lagoon is the classier, better choice. But if you like kind of like gaudy crap, Blizzard, you can't go wrong with Blizzard Beach. Kind of like reveling in its fakiness and silliness. Yes, it is. Blizzard Beach is the 90s.

They haven't changed a thing about it. It is like that. Yeah, it's great. Those teal and purple colors that Disney World. And you're forgetting the lead, Ice Gator, the mascot of Blizzard Beach. Oh, oh, oh. The skiing gator, Ice Gator. Ice G the skiing gator ice gator ice gator right and then there's a typhoon lagoon gator who i forget his name a real one that attacks a child i can't remember the typhoon lagoon skater's name you got that you got that you were lining up a

joke and you're like uh and you like he just kept scrolling through find it you're reading unrelated articles on cnn.com i'm just getting around to the pictures of desserts on his ipad uh yeah there there are drag there are gators for both parks but uh there's a cartoon gate there's like a silly gator there's park stars gators for both parts i have those um i will say this as a, we were not allowed to go to Blizzard Beach and Typhoon Lagoon because my mom felt that they were too intense. So we were a river country family. River country. We spent a lot of time in river country. Not a lot of dangerous slides.

Not a lot of excitement. Just listeria. Just the dangers of waterborne bacteria. I did not catch that, but that was lurking at every turn. There's a lot of video footage of me as an emaciated 12-year-old trying to climb across a rope. There's a rope in the water. It was very hard, but it looks like my arms are going to pop out of the sockets. Oh, you see, when you say River Country isn't dangerous or exciting or whatever, with stuff

like that, it's a little more rough and tumble, I feel like. true in river country the gator is real there's just a real gator yeah and he can also stand on his hind legs terrifyingly gator for sure is living there now because river country has been closed for many years and except for like a an annoying backpack guy who finds his way in oh yeah of course sneaks in we are heading into actual ruins i can't believe we're here now i remember at one point they built they were into doing like experience things and they built a racetrack down there near disney world is that still there oh we've never talked about that on this was it a rich or petty was it like uh it was like it was on disney's property it was like disney controlled. Yeah, the NASCAR experience. But I think they teamed up with someone.

Someone may have died at that. Yeah, was that true? I think so. Yeah, look that up so we don't know. We don't start claiming deaths at Disney's booth. They wanted the whole wide world of sports. They were doing a lot of that there. They had a lot of ambitious plans.

We're name checking maybe some things for the first. I don't think we've talked about Blizzard Beach or Typhoon Lagoon on the podcast yet. Certainly not the NASCAR track. have not talked about the disney institute yeah and use this as a vernacular you speak at a mail of these things uh and probably a lot of hotels do you have how about that any uh hotels yeah sure if you stayed at the hotels i've stayed at a bunch of the disney world hotels um highlights there uh yeah let's see um well i'm a uh i'm a yacht club and beach club yeah agreed i i i prefer the beach club to the yacht club because i like the soda shop beaches and cream yeah but of course they're connected so it's well sure

get back and forth you want to walk very far though but i like i stumble down the hall just i prefer it you know if i'm gonna pick between which one i'm hanging at i've never thought of the difference between the two i thought i i think my knee jerk is i liked the yacht more than the beach club but that's because i stayed there and not the other one so i don't know i got nothing i ended up at i don't know if i've talked about this on the podcast before but the uh that was where i stayed uh my second trip and i was like nine or ten and then i ended up there uh when i was 14 15 we were staying at the boardwalk but then the boardwalk was closed due to a hostage situation no a disgruntled employee barricaded another employee in the

son and it was a real piano duel with a swat team that came in uh it no this guy like uh he it was he was like seeking custody of his son and was not getting to see his kid and it was a uh yeah he barricaded himself for uh uh maybe close to 24 hours and they had to relocate everybody in the hotel and disney was very accommodating i remember they asked if there was any i think they gave us like clothes and amenities for free because it was at the arcade next to beaches and cream i uh left my wallet on top of the uh coin machine and someone took it i was about 10 years old okay and the disney employees found the wallet a few weeks later or a week later or so in the trash and mailed it to me back. Whoa. Oh, yeah.

Was anything left? The money was gone. But, I mean, a 10-year-old's wallet has, like, the money your mother just gave you in it and nothing else. Okay. Yeah. And, like, something that had my address on it i guess or they knew that i lost it or something chucky cheese token perhaps um special pouch for that that's a that kind of great attention to uh customer service customer that you'll get at the yacht and beach club i guess so

yeah we both have examples of exasperating circumstances that the disney employees alleviated but that's my favorite uh resort area because i like the proximity of the back epcot entrance oh that's great if people don't know that yeah unlike disneyland or the magic kingdom which just has the one entrance that takes you down main street epcot added another entrance a little secret one that's kind of only for the international gateway the international gateway that takes you it's what it's between the United Kingdom and France. Yes, it's right there near Paris. And it's, boy, it's beautifully done.

Great landscaping, those boats passing by. You know, nice at night, dim lighting. Just to follow up on something earlier. Yes, the Richard Petty driving experience was closed at Disney. Pretty much largely because someone died on the earlier. Yes, the Richard Petty driving experience was closed at Disney pretty much largely because someone died on the track. Apparently the track, according to this Reuters article,

the track was meant to be, cars I think were meant to be driven counterclockwise around the track and they were running them clockwise around the track. Like whoever was running it did the wrong? Yeah, that seems to be driven counterclockwise around the track and they were running them clockwise around the track and like whoever was running it did the wrong yeah that seems to be they hired a british guy the synopsis later mistake and i remember yeah i remember hearing about and then they closed it and i think they like just bulldozed and used it for like overflow parking or transportation parking and stuff here's this i unless we want to talk about this horrible thing more,

I have a side thought. We'll do a separate episode later. This is interesting. When we were at Blizzard Beach in September, and I have this same memory from years prior, everyone at the water park is British. I'm not sure why. When I say everyone, I mean maybe 90%, 80%.

But without fail, you would walk by someone and hear an english accent and it was there's a lot of english folks because they come because that's the proximity one and they don't want to go to france because we've heard it's bad you were there in august right yeah i think that's traditionally the month for british holiday like oh is that right shuts down in europe jolly holidays probably so but especially the water park i found that interesting maybe it's a rarity for a oh that's interesting for a month, probably. Especially the water park. I found that interesting. Maybe it's a rarity for a British person. I don't know.

If you know, if you're from England, please let us know. It's not great. Why do you go to water parks? Why do you go to water parks? And do you like them? Do you love water parks? And do you have a funny word for water park that's different than our word that you use? Yeah.

Make sure you ask them that, whoever's yeah you're worried you're asking them really you're saying it so that's fair yeah i guess i'm asking yeah well uh but let's forge an international gateway here and head back to the uh the wonderful yeah we've gone in that back entrance and now we've gone through world showcase and now we're going back in time to some attractions that don't exist anymore you mean to 1982 back in time to the future to when the future began october has a shirt that i like says october 1st 1982 because we're talking about well two attractions uh eventually food rocks but the original uh kitchen cabaret which was an opening day epcot attraction it was part of the land

pavilion one of the future world attractions sponsored by craft foods uh van we talked about a couple ideas for uh for topics uh especially in the epcot arena and the fact that you were willing to discuss of all things, kitchen cabaret. Oh, I love rocks. Kitchen cabaret was one of my favorite rides as a kid. I call it a ride. That's right.

I call it. It's more of a show, but that's fine. I like, it was on them. It was like a must do. It was definitely on my Epcot must do list. Really? I would, I, I loved it. Where it, where, um, It was like a must-do. It was definitely on my Epcot must-do list.

Really? I loved it. Where on the list of Epcot? The heyday of Epcot, is it in the top five? Is it in the top ten? I mean, I think it always happened, but I would say it's in the top five. Maelstrom is my Epcot number one. Oh, yeah.

Condolences you thank you i well and i'm i'm it's i'm torn i hear i haven't been on the new one i hear it's great it is very good uh and it doesn't seem like they messed this one up like if they were gonna it's maybe in the ballpark it's cool it is cool and yeah the same ride the idea of a ride being there in that part of epcot is most of the what appeals to me about it to begin with so the changing of the theming is actually surprisingly not something that i think bothers me that i have a real thing about uh like yeah the the the rides are not big big showy buildings in epcot uh including what we're talking about kitchen cabaret it's kind of like down an escalator and in a little corner the idea that in epcot you don't know what's around

what turn and that there's weird little hidden rides you might miss entirely yeah mexico boat ride is really deep in the back there i was not a fan of the land pavilion in general uh-huh because we talked about that being the the topic and then i i've had you kind of do we we uh we went back and forth we discussed that the land is probably its own thing outside of kitchen cabaret and food rocks and god help the poor guest that has to talk about the boat ride and the yeah the lobby what what's left if we don't there's a there's a food court now it's Soren now Soren is in the land as well that's a separate thing

we went on the boat ride which is now called living with the land yeah living with the land and it's now an automated narrator it used to be a guy or a girl on there giving you a spiel giving you a little tour which I liked as a kid if you don't know this ride name

check some things about this ride about living with the land well what do you get to see on oh well let's see you get to see some uh hydroponics hydroponic you get to see some pictures you get to see some pictures of wheat and grain and grain being harvested and you get to see uh what you get to see the facade of a farmhouse yeah what you also got to see in the classic hershey chocolate world uh tour a facade of a farmhouse maybe i just liked rides where you saw the facade of a farmhouse i believe that yeah it felt to me like it was inexplicably a boat ride yeah like what is the water element getting you yeah just like that it also it's all you're on a boat like well what like pirates of the caribbean it's about pirates and

pirate ships right so you're on a port town and it kind of makes there's a logic to but in the land pavilion you're on the water yeah it's not land there's no not it doesn't really i'm sure there's some nerd imagineer who really like bent over backwards to justify why well water you know water makes the land what it is or something allow we take from the water and fertilize the land you see and then that also you soar over the land and that's why Soren is in the land. None of it makes any sense. Yeah, and then this especially doesn't make any sense, what we're talking about today, to be in the land. It doesn't make sense. You were right.

The ancient cabaret. Yeah, it doesn't make any fucking sense. They're food. Food comes from the land. Yeah, but it's not. But then, like, you know, a lot of the food you see in these shows are, like, processed, which I guess it still comes from the land. But it's not all, like, you know, a lot of the food you see in these shows are like processed, which I guess it still comes from the land, but it's not all like, you know,

if it was like a farm, as much as I love it is a victim of the craft food sponsorship. Well, I think more than, more than, than I think in the, the, between the universe of energy sponsorship and the land, I actually think that this is the worst food did a worse.

Like as far as like the information again, I love kitchen cover, but the nutritional information contained in the ride and in food rocks is very much craft foods propaganda. Well, look, I think processed has a lot of negative connotations attached to it. I think I would say... Just the amount of dairy representation in Kitchen Cavalry. I would say handmade with love by our good friends at Kraft

and later Nestle. Nestle took over sponsorship. Jason took notes during this ride and basically based his whole childhood diet on this. I was a big cheese boy, big bread boy. They missed the hot dog group, though. A big part of the food pyramid left out. Jason, I think you said a couple of years ago that it was like 2009 when you realized cheese wasn't good for you.

Cheese and bread, I think. Which I agree. Is it the food pyramid that bread is the base of? The food pyramid. That's the one. That's what plays a big part in this. Yes, but those are themselves from lobbying, and those are propaganda. But anyway.

Yeah, yeah. In my notes, I do have the food pyramid with me in case that serves any function but the this this ride so the entire pavilion is sponsored by craft and this is a show where food comes to life and sings to you and sort of presents what a balanced meal might be in some regard kind of basic food which was the way they thought about nutrition at the time in 1982 and this was not the case by the time 1992 rolled around but in yeah this is originally a show where the four basic food groups come to life and uh and and are well are sort of brought to life by a a host who's who's down on her luck and can't decide what to make for herself.

We don't know who it's for. No family is mentioned. No. It's very light on even a hint of a story or a backstory. Like on Carousel of Progress, they flesh out the family.

This, they, who knows? So this character, sorry, you were probably going to say Bonnie Appetite. Bonnie Appetite is the name of this character. What is Bonnie Appetite? Is she a human? Is she a doll?

Is she a puppet? She's not as big as a human. She's probably three feet tall. Yeah. That's an interesting question. She looks like one of the Thunderbirds. She's a puppet. I would say she is a puppet. If you asked her, she would say, I am a puppet. she's a puppet i would say she's a i would say she is a puppet if you

asked her she would say i am a puppet i'm a puppet woman she looks related to the spectro man the doll it's not her part i would say that's not her kitchen you don't think so but you are in a kitchen well this is a cabaret show also so are we talking about her in the show or her real life well that's a great question so i mean i think there's a lot of layers to this is that probably a stage name like marilyn monroe there's a real woman like like i guess if we really broke it down carousel progress i feel is actually you're seeing this man in his real life and in the different stages of progress this is a show this is a show and you do the lobby of the show was like a fake city. Yeah.

I, I, in my mind, and again, I'm just bringing a lot of this to it. That's fair. Kitchen cabaret is like a toy story esque world where people might eat in this kitchen. And,

but that food like comes to life and puts on this show. Sure. My theory is sort of that. It kind of a well let's be honest the cabaret show is a little bit sexy oh it is i agree and this show for whatever reason is like has a little bit sexy like they're trying to do that she is so it seems almost like there are a few sexy characters. Yes. Based on some of the most classic sex pots of all time. Your Mae West's. I don't remember. The one's kind of like a French sex kitten. Oh, there you go.

Earth, you're the kid. So, yeah. So, I mean, this seems like a show you would see at a burlesque house. But instead of women, it's talking cheese or some ice cream. And you've got a vaudeville comedy act in there to break up the sexy acts. That's right. And all the, I mean, this is a little outdated

because all the women characters, very sexualized. None of the men are. So that's part of why. Nothing sexy about ham or eggs. They're also doing performances of music styles that were anachronistic in 1982. Yike. And this is why I did not like this attraction, even as a child.

Too much theming. Too many layers. Too many levels. No, no, no. The music, actually. Oh, you just didn't like it. I will play into probably what they were thinking when they replaced this show. They probably thought, kids don't know what this kind of music is.

But in my case, I would have said that on the survey. They're right. I don't relate to, I don't like boogie woogie. There's a killer boogie woogie bugle boy parody. If you were six in the late 80s which i guess they've brought that song back in many different commercials and i think there's been revivals of that song a different version the andrews sisters exist entirely as parodies now it's one of those things where nobody knows the original it's just uh it's a reference point sampled it on some song

yes there you go thank you uh so do we also just before we get too far have we conveyed that this is this is a robot show this is an animatronic show it's not unlike country bears yeah not unlike country bears it's like a really really expensive version of a show biz pizza show i don't know that it's that expensive well just i was watching it today make less clanking noise as they jerk about it looks cheap it looks very cheap in a lot of ways sorry i don't want to offend you but that's i don't i think it might not hold up well on video but i think in person okay possibly i think it maybe looked a little better. Because I think puppetry often looks much better in person than on a video.

I think that's fair. One less layer of removal. Reading people's recollections of both these shows, the consensus seems to be that Food Rocks looked a lot cheaper than Kitchen Cabaret. Now, I always liked the music more in Food Rocks. Food Rocks is one of a long line of Disney kind of re-dos where they kind of just kind of half, a little bit of a phoned in redo so we'll say quickly just food rocks basically is a bit of a reimagining uh using like i guess they're not

all they're not modern songs but they're pop songs and rock songs more recent than like like the kind of sort of weird genres that they're using in Kitchen Cabaret. And sort of the framing device is a benefit concert, but not for any charity, for just eating properly. For eating right, yes. Eating in moderation. But they put rock music into this show. And it basically was, even if you like Food Rocks more content-wise, it clearly is on the shoulders of Kitchen Cabaret. The host is in the same place

kitchen cabaret within food rocks like there are certain parts of the show similar to how when they redid the tiki room they would play like a section of the tiki right as exactly as it used to be there were there's some stuff in food rocks that is like of... Some of the same riggings. The bands are in the same spots on the stage. This one comes down from the top. There's a fridge in the same spot still. The dairy animatronics are the main ones that came back.

The milk came back. How do we tackle this? I think we gotta go back to food. Let's go back to Kitchen Cabaret. We'll go through the show a little bit. Okay. So, Bon Appetit, you meet a forlorn woman who is bemoaning another meal to cook. And what am I going to do?

What the hell? What the hell this modern world is trying to figure out the foods we have to prepare in 1982? But her solution becomes what? Like, just getting some food around like i i don't think she doesn't the song she sings the the blues what does anybody have it in front of it all yeah i have the whole show in front of me and what is the what does the song teach her to where she's no longer feeling down on her luck about having to make i mean here i'll just quickly breeze through this and she says it's time for another meal yes there are days when I feel downcast and get the mealtime blues.

And if I don't get a proper meal, my menu will be bad news. Which I don't know if that's like she's preparing it for a person or not. She said, oh, the mealtime blues can get you every time you dine. But we all can beat that rap and end up feeling fine. So on those days when we feel downcast i'll give you all some clues to work magic in our kitchen yeah and chase away the mealtime blues now the timing's right the show is prepared let me serve it on up to you and then she says okay crackpots let's get cooking oh yeah so she doesn't learn anything yeah she just kind of shuts up and does it. She remembers that all the food and utensils talk

and I'll just have them prepare this meal, I guess. Or not. Or they just sing and then no meal is made. I mean, to map on her first song to the movie, the musical cabaret, that sort of, the mealtime blues is kind of like

Velko men that the MC sings. And then the action unfolds. Then the show starts. Are they similar in general? Do these plots continue to map? I wouldn't pretend to know Cabaret. No, there's zero Nazis in Kitchen Cabaret.

But oddly, there are in Food Rocks. Yes, there are. The excess. They're worse than the Nazis, guys. I associated them more with like Kiss kind of hard rock band. What I'm saying is that their villains in history will not judge them kindly. You think heavy excesses. The rotting food that tries to mess up food rappers' show.

I'll save my malice for the excess for later. Okay, so the single stage that she's on opens up and uh a whole a whole world of singing food in a kitchen comes out the the band the band is called the uh crack ups where they crack the kitchen crack the kitchen crack pots uh who plays in the kitchen crack pots i know there's like a yes there's a. Yeah, there's mayonnaise is playing the drums. I can't make out who's playing like banjo. There's a Parmesan cheese. There's a bottle of mustard.

There's a bottle of ketchup playing a whisk. So what I think is interesting is that there's a lot of like real instruments and then ketchup is just playing a whisk and he's got like a face on like he knows, like this is not a real instrument. You mean like what you cook up? Yeah, like beating eggs. A whisk like you would beating eggs oh yeah yeah but the whisk is not animatronic but the whisk is not anamorphic the whisk is not alive morphic yes you're saying anthropomorphic no no the instruments aren't alive are they no no no whisk is different than the oh you're saying it makes sense that

kitchen i'm trying to figure out the react because it's a kitchen item. Would the whisk be alive? I think the whisk is a dead anthropomorphic whisk that he's taken and he's playing the corpse. Are there kitchen tools? Am I forgetting? Like knives aren't alive in the kitchen cabinet. No, no. But bottles are. I just wasn't.

Yeah, bottles are. I think by virtue of them being food and having. I have a whole. Okay. Yeah. This is my question in general. I think I'm not just in Kitchen Cabaret, but in many things I'm weirded out by food that's alive and food that's encouraging you to eat it. I find it just odd in general.

And why is that? As opposed to the toys in Toy Story come to life and they want to be played with. The goal, food convincing a human to eat you is very bizarre. Yeah, yeah. End this. Send me to hell.

All food is suicidal. But I also have some anatomical questions. Go ahead, yes. For example, one of the first numbers in the show is led by a milk carton and who sings next to a big piece of cheese. And if, okay, in a live milk carton, I guess their skin is the carton. Yes.

And the flap, obviously, that you tear is the mouth. And I guess the milk is its blood. But if you're in a live cheese with no outer wrapping, you just are the cheese, then how does that work? There's no skin. You just don't have skin. You're one bin. What's your blood? I feel like there's inconsistency. It's different for each character.

I mean, I think I feel like I know exactly the answer to this. It's different for each of them because they're all different species. So the milk, obviously, the skin is the carton, and inside the blood is the milk itself. So we're drinking the milk's blood. And by the way, the character's name is Mr. Dairy Goods. So we're drinking Mr. Dairy Goods' blood when we're drinking his milk. Yum, yum.

Miss Cheese you're talking about, which is that character's name. They have a name, you know. Her skin is the cheese and then yeah her insides are also cheese also cheese yeah so this brings up a larger question is bonnie closer to us humans or is bonnie closer to the food animatron like i would i think she is like a i think she's a doll i think she she reminds me of the... She certainly is. No one's arguing that. If you remember the parade SpectroMagic,

the nighttime show, there were the doll-faced SpectroMen that frightened me as a child. They would ride on giant glowing light-up balls. Some character's name, the doll-faced SpectroMen? You were afraid of them? They were just called the SpectroMen. But yeah, I did not like they kind of look like they had the strangers mask or the the purge masks that like look like human

faces but are clear yeah bonnie reminds me of that bonnie has a doll like face that i still find on her face she and she has big eyes let Let's not forget that. Like the film Big Eyes. Yeah, one of the issues with these characters is that they are not a consistent scale inside of this. That's true too, yes. They aren't the size that their food is necessarily. Not relative to each other, yeah. I guess that makes sense if you think of her conundrum of preparing food as a nightmare. The dream states we

all go into. Things are odd sizes and odd shapes and sing at us. As she's singing the blues, having to prepare a meal, instead of preparing a meal, she goes into this waking nightmare, and that's what we're watching in Kitchen Cabaret. So,

in this scene, this is the second scene in the show and that we were talking about miss cheese's in that mr dairy goods uh miss yogurt uh miss ice cream and now miss yogurt oh wait her head is like a puff of yogurt yes and the rest of her body uh i i can't think of it off is she like a cone or uh and this is another... If a jug of milk was alive, then the jug is there. Go ahead. But cheese is milk also. That's true.

Cheese is hardened milk. Well, I guess I understand your guys' internal logic. Yeah. But what if it's a cheese that comes in a wrapper, like a brie? The wrapper is the skin. And if you take the wrapper off then you're taking the skin off. You're ripping the skin off of a person, of an

animal. A cheese animal. But then you aren't killing it, you aren't eating it. The brie is going to live. So the brie outside of the paper wouldn't like regenerate new eyes or anything. No. It's done less from now

michael do you have any uh index cards red yarn and thumbtacks uh and we could figure this out yeah yeah sure no we'll put the podcast on hold and we'll really uh we'll put that post that uh that that conspiracy wall on our twitter i uh here's what i want to talk about how horny these women are miss cheese miss, Miss Dairy. They are... Here, let me read some of the lines. So, Miss Cheese says, Your taste buds all appease.

I know how to please. It's known that I'm too good for words. Wait, are we on to Dairy Goods and his Stars of the Milky Way? Yes. Okay. What are you talking about? Yeah, we fucking are, Jason. We've been talking about this for 10 minutes.

Well, we spent a lot of time about the kitchen crackpots all right we're talking about cheese and yogurt okay you're right because the kitchen crackpots are great musicians they play beets and tuna cans very handily now we're moved on to mr dairy distracted thinking about this horrifying spectro man how many times in the therapist's office have you said the phrase, Dollface SpectroMen? He also, Jason will be silent for half hour stretches of the rest of the podcast and then just suddenly start screaming and writhing. Dollface SpectroMen. So Miss Yogurt, here's what she's, your palate is assured.

I'm really quite cultured. Make a soured scene okay each and every day. So she's a little less thirsty. But Miss Ice Cream, I'm cool through and through. And I've got a double scoop for you to be with me, baby. It's such a tasty treat. Like, this is crazy. That's the way to my heart.

This is not terribly scandalized by these lyrics. I was expecting a lot worse as you went what van please help me out here this is crazy ice cream is a tasty treat it is but like if it was just like ice cream hey everybody take a big bite of me like that's that's what you wanted a wholesome theme park but you think tasty it's too like when she's delivering a different time it was a she's got the come hither come hither look on her i think that face i think that it would have been perhaps inappropriate for a uh something set contemporaneously and made in 1982 yeah and worthy of criticism but i think in 1982 i think it was still very very okay to reference things

that were maybe sexist from the past when referencing the past, and then recreate them in the present. Like, we hadn't caught, that's like too many layers of problematic. I'm just saying this is maybe PG, PG-13 material for a young person. I think it's so wrapped in innuendo, and like, yeah, little knots to like,

it's like the kid in Carousel of Progress who's like watching the hoochie-coochie. And we know if it's in Carousel of Progress, it's progress, it's like the kid in carousel of progress who's like watching the hoochie coochie and we know if it's in carousel in progress it's progress it's perfect and yeah there's no they're very concerned with progress that's what they're all about yeah i mean i guess you also we've said this a couple times this is something for dad i guess as well like when my dad was this is this is an air-conditioned room yes and that's also epcot is full of and it still is full of i want to point out that the like the room itself if you think about the size of it it's about the size and shape of a porno theater you know it doesn't quite have enough seats for a full movie theater seating like it couldn't do

the full screening of black panther there couldn't fit in the the uh giant blockbuster audience but you go down shows that repeat all day on a loop you go down to santa monica so those one or two santa monica boulevard those one or two that are still hanging on you're gonna see about the size of this room yeah that that it's like a 50 seats right yeah 50 seat theater here something uh yeah so this is also because it's a theater show there's not a height restriction to go on it right so this is a ride that attracts a younger crowd for that reason yes but people you're people of all ages i guess can enjoy it on different levels i guess that is what great entertainment is you know if you really break it down thank you do we know um i don't know i know the research on this podcast is it's strong suit

oh yeah um do we know like was uh the show itself like was craft involved at all in the making of the show i know sometimes with the pavilions they're more directly involved i knew that the the land pavilion initially was insanely elaborate it was going to be like glass spires like essentially a functioning biodome like in the early blue sky stages and sure i think if pretty quickly they realize like oh this would be the most expensive thing oh you know what i think also might might have come out of that i think i saw that same source as you and the the uh the there was another sponsor that was not craft and which is why they wanted to do this big this big biosphere kind of vibe but then when craft ended up being the sponsor they didn't care about any of that because they

are a food company and they wanted to do the food centric attractions and shows which is probably where you get kitchen cabaret to begin with yeah but in terms of them calling out specific uh items i don't know there's one thing i know which is that though nestle becoming the sponsor in 1992 uh spurred the change into food rocks there was a brief interim period where it was nestle but kitchen cabaret was still running and there was only one change which is that the mayonnaise jar playing the drums was repainted to become a tomato sauce jar playing the drums okay so nestle did dictate that so hey send us your photos if you were there in the rare that's like

some like superman misprint or something backwards penny kind of a situation you saw if you saw tomato sauce jar whaling away on those those cans i would be curious to read like an epcot book because it's such an odd confluence of like disney imagineers corporate interests and then like well futurists buckminster fuller and ray bradbury cabaret specifically there are a couple of epcot things that remind me of this but it feels like it kind of comes from the tradition of industrials you know about these yeah oh like these were musicals that were put on by major corporations in like the 40s 50s 60s up really through the 80s not really oh they would get full broadway casts and songwriters

there's a book this was like the this was branded content for like 1940 yeah yeah yeah what it was was it would be four year like you would be ford and you would have all these car dealerships that sold your ford cars and you'd have a convention every year and all you would ever all the car dealerships would come and that's where they'd learn about the cars they were selling for that year and at that convention a show would be performed and these were called industrials and these were custom made musicals like about ford like for a ford crowd of people who like did business with ford and these were kind of big across industries at that time it wasn't just like produce fully really like talented people writing and performing in the like full cat not maybe the

star of a broadway musical but somebody who would be like in the cast of a broadway musical but not the star those are kind of people who would be taking these industrial jobs doing these performances anyway yeah they weren't very well i have a book about it's called everything's coming up profits yeah that's a golden age of industrial music guy who wrote that was a letterman writer yeah whoa um and it's such an odd like he spent years researching this stuff because it wasn't preserved like yeah he would just have that people would happen to find like the scripts and file cabinets or an lp with the music but anyway kitchen cabaret reminds me of those all those were parody type things where it would sort of be like

and maybe sort of like a little bit little like inside nods to the companies that they were playing to and huh huh so it was a way and and with epcot being a world's fair yeah and corporate sponsorship is kind of inherent in that it's a way to have a show like that happening uh all day every day because robots do it and not uh struggling broadway stars weird interesting yeah um as far it seems like because like they're it's ice cream it's yogurt obviously it's very like specific stuff they probably had some there doesn't seem to be as much like backstory at least from the lazy research i tried to do earlier this afternoon who wrote this that's what i want to know who wrote this i haven't seen a lot of names of voices

or anything i can't find a lot of the voices like voiced ham and eggs they're great that's a killer comedy duo fun yeah and it's not you know that's that is something that uh you know there's a lot of recurring voices that you recognize you know the buffalo head is in country bears is somebody a voice that you've heard in pirates or whatever it is and none of these voices are a voice you've heard anywhere else in another disney attraction there's no and i also don't think that the the animatronics in either show looks particularly disney-esque no i agree with you i think that might be a thing that holds me back from both of these attractions they don't feel super disney to me these feel um you know that

was always it's a small world you could always kind of feel that about right it did it's a little different it's not the house style of animatronics in the house style of disney animatronics like you would see way like you were like they would have done this this would look differently if it had started its life as a disney attraction like the just the kind of the way it's done isn't quite the way they do things in in food rocks some of the people doing the parody songs are the people who did the songs oh absolutely tone low the pointer sisters oh well yeah we'll get them there do yeah the show i said this before the show feels cheap the show feels like a show i there and this maybe this is a this is something that's this is a side note but it's haunted me for years now uh there was a little caesars

that was right where i grew up and it was a a giant Chuck E. Cheese-style play place. I don't know if you guys ever had these where you grew up. I've only ever known Little Caesars to be a run-in counter, and you get it, and you leave. No, no, no, no, no. There was a place. It was called Little Caesars, and eventually it was called Caesarland when they revamped it and made it all tubes and ball pits. It was a big place. I loved it.

They had rides. They had arcades. They had a place to play in, it they had rides they had arcades they had a place to play in and they had these little like animatronic like you would you would hit a button and garlic would bread would just laugh at you and then there would be like a little caesar and you hit a button and he'd go hi i'm little caesar and i'm glad you could be here today and we love it would go no joke he would no joke he would it would go like this there would be a little beat that would play it would would go, and he'd go,

hi, I'm a little Caesar, and I'm glad you could be here today. And that's it. This is a shocking revelation. So this is, I am trying to find documentation. This exists. Many people have backed me up.

I'm not crazy. But there's no documentation of it. It is gone. It's now some sort of fruit market. Wait, what's the location here? It's in Schaumburg, Illinois. I'll give you my home the location here it's it's in schaumburg illinois i'll give you my home address if you want um but it was a schaumburg illinois um and it's i i cannot find any pictures of it i'm just wanting to remember to see if my memory of it is

exactly as it was but that's all i'm my point is kitchen cabaret feels like stuff i saw at this place which was i loved it but obviously much cheaper when you compare it to some not the same quality i uh i want to almost start a mutiny to make the rest of the episode about caesar land and uh stop talking about kitchen care i have i have i have life in me all of a sudden thing everyone came alive when i explained there was a little caesars that i grew up that was like a Chuck E. Cheese. And everyone was like, holy shit. We all sat up.

And then when you did the voice, we all stood up. And now we're all merging around the room with vigor. Although, I guess it's hard to do an episode about something that I just found out about and that there are no photos of or information about. And may not exist. And may never have occurred. I have pictures from there but uh yeah you go back into your memory inception style and you find out it was actually the doll face spectrum and they planted a memory they would be that devious it was just like them if you live in my hometown or near there it was on roselle road um you know the road okay i just

looked up okay i look well i looked up where this other uh this uh place called zippies used to be which sold beef let's get into that too write us about zippies uh yes but zippies existed you know what else was in schaumburg i just found out this week did you ever go to mickey's kitchen yes i did you did go to mickey's kitchen mickey Mickey's Kitchen was they decided on the Disney store. They decided to open up a restaurant next to the Disney store. Oh, smart. And we ate there once. Not good? And it was fine,

I think. It sounded, they were trying to do in keeping with our theme and topic, they were trying to do healthier fast food and I think people didn't really like it. I don't want to derail the podcast, but I do think I have an original newspaper article about Mickey's Kitchen upstairs right now in my apartment i'm pretty sure uh why don't you go find it and we'll all go with you and leave the microphones recording and not edit that part out all right great cool i hope you enjoy hearing our footsteps uh yeah

mickey's kitchen one in montclair in california one in Schaumburg, Illinois, the second one. And then they never did any others. So you were very lucky in terms of your food entertainment in your childhood. A lot of exciting revelations. So yeah, sorry to derail the podcast with all this different talk here. No, let's get back then to pure raw terror. I'd like you guys to look at this lineup, and you know them because you've been looking into this too but just please stare if you will yeah sure any rice marzy oats and connie corn rice oats and corn i find them uh very hideous there's been a lot of doll faces and a lot of alive food

but these three to me are the worst combo of doll face and alive food particularly renny rice who i think is a i guess is a bag of rice but then has kind of like a she looks like furry but then with a doll face carved at it she looks almost like a like a like a doll a dog toy that's a lot she's some kind of like dog hybrid i i'm uh i'm not gonna sleep well because of renee rice and we when when evan susser was on and we were talking hershey park he was like talking about how he thought that the walk around you know reese's pieces or one of the reese's cups were scary or he didn't like him and i said no i love these characters i didn't know they existed until like a couple years ago but i love them i feel very strongly about that um but i don't have that affection for these

characters for whatever reason i had some that i liked as a kid you did yeah yeah uh and you know what i'm not gonna sell it short i still like them who were your guys uh so milk you liked milk well milk came back milk's in food rocks well sure but we had a i had a milk cookie jar that i got from there's a gift shop in the land. Great. Called? Anybody know it? Broccoli and Company.

Broccoli and Company. That's right. That's where you could buy all the kitchen cabaret memorabilia you wanted. You could also bid on the film rights for the James Bond series. That's one for the insiders out there. I love that. When you say milk, you mean Mr. Dairy Goods. Yes. Mr. Dairy Goods. Mr dairy goods yes yes mr dairy goods just over on the same page um ham and eggs yeah yeah okay let's talk about ham and eggs ham and eggs break up all this

sexiness uh with a comedy routine uh ham's more of a straight man and egg is a funny man very common in cabaret they're kind of a vaudeville duo type. Who kind of, maybe the jokes are a little knowingly lame in the Fozzie Bear mode. Yeah. And, but they crack each other up. Although Egg has a hard time getting in with Ham. Oh, hey, look, now you got me doing it. They also make sure to let you know that

cheese is a good source of protein yeah the the the facts are laid on thick in both of these attractions they just suddenly hard right turn now we say the book is because ham is not happy with how the act went and as the animatronics are descending back from whence they came, he wants to pair up with another protein. So he's like, yeah, there's a ton of great proteins I could do a bit with. You know, nuts, for example, good source of protein. It really dries up from the stage and lower in a kind of a very ominous sort of way. Yeah, it says right here, the pan emits more smoke to hide ham and eggs as they are lowered down into the stove so i mean that is saying they're about to

die yeah they do come back for the grand finale and then die i remember distinctly thinking when i saw the movie the lion king for the first time this was when it came out that timon and pumba i said these guys are just ham and eggs really these guys are knock off a ham and eggs they're stealing ham and eggs this whole thing pumba is a pig and he looks a bit like similar color scheme yeah wow similar voices yeah i just think you're on to something so and for sure they're all just not a parody of a hundred other well yeah that's what's actually happening okay sorry sorry well mike and i briefly toured under the name ham and eggs and we also broke up live on stage doing our vaudeville act lowered into an

oven yeah we were lowered into a giant uh steaming oven it was bad um well yeah but so you like you like them did you like the fruits and vegetables that make up i did like i did like the combo and well i like the tune that's my favorite fruit fruit yes that's the best that's the best song for sure and for sure veggie veggie fruit food you're right but i was not immediately i don't know this is not on the tiki tiki room short list of disney classics in the show that's the best one i'm not saying they're the most endearing characters i mean they were stuffed versions of them available in that gift shop did you have like no i didn't but i remember okay uh i just remember seeing them and those characters endured well the character merch in the in bronco and company uh i think went a long way for me to selling the ride in the world of it yeah right you could get individual

merch for individual kinds of food in the show as a kid or probably thinking well they wouldn't have merch for it if it wasn't important and That's right. And if it wasn't a world other kids care about. Exactly. Yeah. And you win. You were wrong. I was always, when's the cartoon going to come out? And it never.

Yeah, you assume they become part of your life when you left Epcot, and they never followed you out. There is a picture of, I've seen this a few times. I've seen the item itself pop up on eBay of a tea towel you could buy with all the vegetables and fruits on it and then those characters have endured beyond this show they were the mascots for the the food the epcot festival one of the epcot food festivals for a little while define endured uh i feel like they come back on retro merchandise on like pins or shirts sometimes that's something

yeah yeah i believe there are uh what are those disney uh the dolls that they do the little vinyl toys of vinylmations yes i believe there are vinylmations of them yes i i just did a quick ebay search to see what we have here and yes there's some vinylmations there's also uh disney's epcot kitchen cabaret full set of five plush hey there's 1982 oh yeah full set what's that going for see those are 295 295 dollars that seems fair who's in that lineup can you name check them okay uh we have mr tomato uh banana these are all from fruit and veggie they're all from the colander combo they're all from the colander combo. They're all from the colander combo. Let's see if they have...

Oh, you have... You know who I think is my favorite character in all this is the broccoli with the sunglasses. Oh, that's a good one. Yeah, he's a good one. He's fun. Yes, he's good. Again, like the Hershey Park characters, no traits. He exists.

He has sunglasses. But that's all you need. He's like a session musician. You know, he shows up, clocks in, does his job, goes home. I think that's why I like him. He's the Hal Blaine of fruits and vegetables. Yeah. So, yeah, there's plenty of this merch here.

Yeah, I don't know if we missed the land when I was a kid. Because so much of this is not familiar. So much of Epcot is burned in my brain from being a kid. Did you see your parents looking at a map seeing what was in it and going what if we just don't tell mike about this because if we uh we're gonna have to like buy him all this shit and sit through these shows well my family liked it because it was air conditioned and i feel like we would usually eat at the food court and it was i think just everyone could agree on it i i remember the land and the wonders of life pavilions you know big enclosed multiple attractions and i think we would all go like

all right we're gonna be in here for a little while yeah i think it's why i love uh malls more than i should i think like it gave me my my love of uh atriums yes Not frequently updated carpets. Both of these pavilions. Okay, so, alright. We love the fruit and veggie song, right? We sure do. I think everyone's agreed they love veggie, veggie, fruit, fruit. And then there's this kind of like medley finale.

There sure is. And she doesn't even eat a meal though, right? She's just kind of like well, thanks for coming. Yeah, we don't watch the robot eat a bunch of food yeah that's true and they sing like the last thing they sing is the proper foods each time you dine can keep you fit and feeling fine eating right's a healthy sign and feeling good makes each day shine and shine but they really didn't give you like a real strong like message it wasn't a real i will say in the show itself it's not the lyrics are not really sold like they're important uh like the yeah it's almost

no memorable vibe of the the music they're saying doing at any given point uh so i feel like you're really focused as you go through this on the lyrics that's true you're right're right. And I wonder if that's doing a disservice to the rock. Right. And you're right. Look, there are great pop songs that if you really analyze the lyrics, what do they mean? It's more about the vibe of the song. It's more about the feeling. The only reason I'm interested in this is because Epcot is about teaching.

Epcot is about enlightening people on different aspects of our world. So if you're going to put this in a thing called The Land, I think that it's fair for me to scrutinize what exactly the message is. If this were in Magic Kingdom, sure, let's just have a good fruit vegetable party. Who gives a shit?

But since we're in Epcot, I think that we need to give it a little bit more weight. Well, I think it reflects the thinking about nutrition at the time. Like, yeah, just get a bunch, a little of all that shit.

Like, the Food Rock Show uses a little of all that shit like the the the food rock show uses a lot of words like moderation and lean like stuff that was very 90s very 90s and it's there's more yes there's more more in uh food rocks as far as like maybe instruction but it feels very notey i feel the corporate hand in food rocks a lot more despite it being more current and irreverent yeah that's true cabaret well here's one thing and i guess let's just jump right into food rocks uh food wrap that open food rocks opened in 1994 1994 is also the year that it became mandatory to have nutrition labels on food and you see food rapper the host voiced by tone loke is a giant nutrition label yeah he is it's kind of uh he is a vague animatronic he is very

what are we looking at here he looks like he's dimensional for what like the back of a capri sun kind of he's shaped he's an odd shape and is a label is a nutritional label that tells you the amount of protein and carbs is that a rapper i don't think it's an accurate name yeah i mean obviously they're going for the pun of the yes rapper a lot more puns in food rocks and his his name is f-u-d-w-r-a-a now why is that i don't know is that supposed to be like tone loke somehow well i think i have a guess why so when you're doing a character like this you want to be careful to have it be a trademarkable name okay oh smart um to sell the pun you have to spell rapper normally, like the word rapper.

Uh-huh, yeah. Because otherwise, you're not going to sell the pun, so you've got to change up food. Otherwise, you're saying food rapper, which just is the thing, and it's not going to be trademarkable in the same way. That's hard to Google. That's hard to put a stamp on, but if you Google F-U-D rapper. Yep. Oh, that's smart. And if they wanted to spin him off later, like Johnny Depp ended up playing food rapper

and not a pirate from Pirates of the Caribbean, that would have been a big problem. Is there something subliminal, too, in that FUD is one letter off from fun? Yeah, sure. That's probably a part of it. I feel it. Well, that seems to be the modus operandi of food rocks as opposed to kitchen

cabaret why go to this austere you know vaudeville uh presentation when you can go to a crazy jacked up rock concert and that's what food rocks is. Yeah, just like Live Aid and Farm Aid. I will say, Food Rocks does, they do bring more energy. Yes. It is a higher energy show. It's a less relaxing experience for sure. The segments are shorter. The segments are shorter.

It's faster. The music fights the air conditioning a little more. The 80s had really uh taken hold and changed our culture and we got mtv and then we got food rocks this was a singing food show for the mtv generation uh it's got attitude and it's got rap i you know i'll say that we've you know we've covered the hard rock park recently we you know anytime a theme park tries to get into music territory can be a little embarrassing i don't cringe at this as much as i think i could a lot of the music is out of date but the even that they're aware of peter gabriel that the police are in it it's a little hipper than you

might expect i'm not saying it is hip or it's not fringe-worthy, but the inclusion of Tone Loke, the inclusion of a rapper. I think that Food Wrapper was actually an early example of inclusion in the park. Absolutely. That's a good point. It's kind of late, but that's just how it went. What do you think was the first rap in a theme park anyway in in the disney parks ever this the first rap within like within an actual official theme park experience like i'm sure someone rapped at epcot and there was there was the rap yeah yeah i've you know we've talked about

the splash mountain rap and we've talked about when Alan Thicke rapped to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles sure if we didn't we should but yeah the first installed rap maybe in Beetlejuice's Graveyard Review some version of that

oh well now in the line for the Jimmy Fallon that's exactly you took the thought out of my head there. Yeah, sure. Black Thought raps the safety instructions while Jimmy throws cards down like Bob Dylan. That's correct. That does happen.

But yeah, there's not a lot of hip hop in the theme parks. Well, so I'm going to give Food Rock rocks some big points for that and it's not you know what it's not uh super embarrassing either because you'd think the like a theme park putting rap in would be a little like you know like you'd like dudes with toad it'd be a little more sort of like hey mini check it out check what i can do mini oh well you are reminding me legacy of like mickey mouse with a boom box that's kind of rap type stuff and this this is like a little better than that tone loke he is a real rapper he's someone who also had done some disney movies sure yes yeah probably the reason that he's there but you know uh yeah his songs were legit yeah

funky called medina sure um that's like as good of a that's as legit of a song as somebody's gonna be in food rocks was his choice for the ride i can't imagine i think in general we're seeing a lot of second third choices um so that's what it brings up a question for me um because the there are adversaries in this uh the the band uh the fictional group the excess the heavy metal junk food yeah yeah um they sing an original composition called give us junk what do you think they tried to get do you you think there was an actual... No, see, I think they wouldn't for the bad guy have gone for. That's what I'm questioning. Because every song in this is a song that exists and it's a parody,

except for that one song. But they would have to kind of make those guys the bad guys. So do you think there was a band they went to that were like, you're going to be the evil? Yeah, I don't think so. People would be willing to do that. Wouldn't Gene Simmons be a... Well, but then you get all the baggage of Gene Simmons.

You know, they tried. Rockin' Rollercoaster was supposed to be Kiss. We did a Rockin' Rollercoaster episode. You guys didn't go over that part of it? We heard that it was supposed to be Rolling Stones. I had not heard the Kiss component. Really? Well, then we have a correction to make,

or you need to send us an article. I'll get you guys. I'll back that up. Then we'll record the addendum. You can come back. I mean, Kiss makes sense. I believe it. It makes sense as if somebody that they would.

Yeah, they will. And they sell a coffin. Well, and also it makes sense that that would fall apart because Gene Simmons is notoriously difficult to negotiate with. But whatever, there's a miniature golf course as we've both golfed at in Las Vegas, the Kiss Mini Golf, that for some reason they were able to close a deal,

no problem. Yeah, I bet he gets a cut of that gate, though. I'm sure he does. Oh, yeah, yeah. I see what you're saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's got a big tongue. He wants a big taste.

That happened with the Rolling Stones, what I've seen about money every year. Also a big tongue. Yeah tongue yeah yeah a lot of tongues so did steven tyler let's not count his tongue amount of the annual income of steven spielberg every year comes from his cut of the game universal that he still gets he gets a cut he gets a every time you buy an executive producer every time you buy a ticket to universal studios he gets a set percentage of that i don't know what the number is but it's high enough that it's millions of dollars a year for him oh my god and and that goes up it must increase and that was a deal that was done when theme parks were not like the idea wasn't necessarily that tickets were like a hundred

dollars right they they they now are so very upset that that deal exists because they would have so much money percentage of a different number yeah not that one that they decided to make be really high but you gotta think people are going because of the ip he brought into the parks i mean who would go to universal florida if not for botanicus that's right he's 60 percent of the audience. On the green planet. He absolutely is. Excuse me, Zrek's teacher. That's E.T.'s real name. The proper name. Zrek.

Z-R-E-K. Anyway, back to Food Rocks. Yeah, yeah. Food Rocks. So, I'm going in its first. First of all, I read, this could be wrong, that Disney owns the Queen catalog. Yeah, Hollywood Records. Is that right?

Okay. Uh-huh. When I worked for this weird Disney company, and there was made like viral video, attempted viral videos for Disney, and I spent a week editing, taking Bohemian Rhapsody and editing clips of Pinocchio to it. Wow. I condensed the entire story of Pinocchio into the length of Bohemian Rhapsody, and I finished it and was like, I think I did okay.

This exists. I did it. And then like ad people were so moved by this. They like, I cried. The synergy between these two pieces of IP that we control both of. This mashup

of properties made me weep. I just couldn't could people were getting in it people were putting their hand on my shoulder like scott you don't i had a the catharsis i had like because i pinocchio plus all right is this still available never came out is this online no no no never and then ultimately queen said no even though they did own the catalog yeah i think it did go up to to brian may uh uh somebody who i bet also is i bet they reject i wonder if they were tried for Even though they did own the catalog. Yeah. I think it did go up to Brian May. Somebody who I bet also is, I bet they reject. I wonder if they were tried for a rock and roller coaster.

That would have been a good idea too. So you're saying that they rejected your Pinocchio video, but when they sent them the food rocks, the plan for food rocks and the parody song of Bohemian Rhapsody, they were like, yes, yes, please. And it will be a band that's like a parody of Queen? No, no, no. They'll be called the U-Tensils. Alright, sure. That seems clean to me. Absolutely. I sign off.

That is a very good point about all of this. It's inconsistent in the names of the fake bands. Yep. The parody bands. Some are puns. Yeah, you got the Peach Boys. That's a low-hanging fruit. I'll say that. Oh, God. Hey, all right, all right, all right.

Look at this guy over here. I really have a problem with Neil Moussaka. I had to look up what Moussaka is. Yeah, what is Moussaka? I forget. Does anybody know offhand? It is a food. Is it mousse?

Oh, I know what moussaka is. It's like a Greek lasagna, essentially. It's just essentially lasagna with other stuff in it. Is that right? I think so. Wow. It sounds delicious, and I guess it has the AKA, but I don't believe Neil Moussaka is a Greek lasagna once you see him.

It's all over the map. And that's a parody of that man neil sadaka is the parody so it does sort of line up that one you know sometimes we have to on it something like this podcast have to say oh for those of you who are younger you might not know you really might not know neil sadaka oh yeah that's and i'm interested i'm very interested in like who was like we got to get neil sadaka yeah and when you're including song someone that someone was proud of themselves about that pun they were like i've got the best and they force it through upon and then like the little richard like parody is just called richard he's just they richard it says here they took the the one bit of color out of his name yeah

now he's just richard the best one is pita gabriel yeah i'll give it gabriel uh just to confirm moussaka is an eggplant or potato based uh usually includes ground meat sometimes has a milk-based sauce on top so if you can imagine like a lasagna no noodles eggplants and kind of a i can imagine that sauce on's very heavy. Imagine that sauce singing a parody of Breaking Up is Hard to Do. If you can imagine that. The sauce on top would be the skin or the hair. Thank you.

The eggplant is his blood. Probably the best... But what's his blood? We need a chart of what every character's blood is. The ground meat is his guts. Peter Gabriel's blood is hummus um air is his blood is air he's empty on the inside yeah what's in yeah knowledge facts numbers is what he's made of um pita gabriel is a highlight i would agree uh the parody of sledgehammer high fiber um if you know it's sung by the guy who

voiced uh wacko on uh animaniacs uh the man his name is uh jess parnell you got it yeah yeah um pretty good now there's a voice you recognize there's better voice talent in this thing came up in the splash mountain episode let me ask van do you remember when you went to epcot the first time and your beloved kitchen cabaret had been changed into food rocks i do and i actually uh i was excited you were okay i didn't know you know this is these this is in the dark days when you didn't know what things were before you went to them oh boy uh we're fixing that and uh i i went uh and i remember the show starting i sat down not knowing they'd updated it like i was i missed the like theming out you know they put a new marquee up um and i somehow missed all of the re-theming

and so i remember the show starting being like oh the show is different um but i got it in my head that this was like they would update it would ever be updated again like i remember thinking like oh i guess maybe they're gonna start updating it so you just thought maybe every couple years yeah but i i didn't have that like uh you weren't upset i wasn't upset and i think but though maybe it was because i went in and sat down i had no expectation of how is the new one gonna compare to the old one oh okay uh that might also just be a difference in like our culture now sure you know what i mean like when people accepted stuff more i feel like in the old now

it's very much like you have to i was always excited uh when things would change in the theme parks because i like you know this seemed changed seemed better like it's a living breathing thing it's getting better it's the change you would feel it was good it was good that it was changing you know i also remember like certain theme parks other theme parks it's like you know when they think stop changing right that's when they're in trouble right absolutely oh yeah and that's not that that's counter to waltz vision although this was a time of some pretty bad changes enchanted tiki room uh under new management was pretty wretched and i but i'll say you, when you compare this to the, like,

hippified remakes of old attractions, I think this one's not too bad. It's closer to the top of the list in terms of not being, I think it is a little more energetic and a little more fun than Kitchen Cabaret. It is also, though, it does it does you know you're not starting the kitchen cabaret is not starting from like the original tiki room bar it's not right that's a good point yes i do like the name kitchen cabaret yes it's a good name k kitchen k cabaret as they

spell it yeah food rocks is a dumber sound yeah they definitely dumb. I have the note they made the name dumber, too. Food rocks is... Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not really a pun. Yeah. Well, yeah, it's like sort of phrased like you've made a pun, but you haven't. Right. Yeah. I'm sure there's a pun we could think of that's better.

I guess because it's food, and then they're doing rock music. Well, that's just saying the thing it is, and then the thing it is. But it sort of puts itself out there like it feels like there's a blank spot waiting for a pun you're waiting for something clever or like yeah like they were trying to come up with a name and it's like what do you want to just call it food rocks and everyone's like yeah let's just go home let's do that it would go home tonight i also think this is i think the kitchen cabaret was maybe from an era when i feel like they came up with that idea and then that was just it i there i bet food rocks had like 30 names yeah oh yeah yeah probably very market says rent ran through nestle

um yeah there were nestle people who had to shift from one is a meeting about the the uh the program to get third world women addicted to baby formula uh sure that they could keep descending to those countries uh into infinity and then like hang on can i grab you for the uh the the epcot thing yeah sure yeah uh i wanted 20 new funds let me see them um uh a great twitter user uh progress city uh wrote a book uh about some disney stuff called the progress city primer uh linked a while back to a uh menu from the first restaurant at the land like an opening day menu okay and there's craft logos all over it and uh i just i was really tickled by reading and also like all the food is either

covered in a lemon butter or a peppercorn sauce or a cream salt a lot of a lot of heavy a lot of veggie veggie fruit fruit yeah not a lot going on there uh but there there was this great uh i guess it was the motto the corporate bible just says, craft means good food, dot, dot, dot, worldwide. Like, that's just said, that motto is just nothing. Yeah, very general. Yeah, that's not anything either. Yeah. Oh, maybe that was how they were doing things, just general statements.

This was, again, just to put some historical perspective on this, which has been my role in this podcast. Thank you. You know, this was a time when globalization was a new concept and i think that craft food was probably trying to forefront the fact that they had brands across the world and were a global company also pictured in in this menu next to the wine list some of those brands like cracker barrel cheese or Velveeta or Parquet or Philadelphia Crate Cheese. Again, on the page opposite the wine list.

Wow. You got to pick your cream cheese before you pick your wine. That's cool. I was thinking like Epcot Center, just in general, before Walt died, Walt Disney died, his dream, as we all know, was to make a true experimental city that would be a beacon of hope and change for the whole world and it would organize cities in a different way and they would be like clean cities as far as energy is concerned uh if he was like reanimated and he was like take me with like the first thing he would be like is take me to epcot because that was what

his dying wish basically was to finish epcot Center. And then he walked and there was just like a show where there was a talking milk carton and then there were all these pop songs. Like, wouldn't he be the most disappointed man of all time? Like, this is what you guys did? What? So now will you take me to where the solar electricity is made and where all the children of the world live in peace

in a mixed race school. Well, there's just a bunch of people drinking in the back of it, I guess. People just go country to country and just drink a different fruity colored drink. What? What is that? What are those buildings with the giant swan on top? What the hell is that? What are those buildings with the giant swan on top? What the hell is that?

See, now I think that... He would love the swan and dolphin hotel. I think he would love the swan and dolphin. I think he would think those were a savvy business deal. Absolutely. Those are managed by... Bold architecture. Those are managed by not Disney.

It's like a third party management. And they're building another hotel across from it also will be managed in a partnership like now which is odd the swan and dolphin you know sure did those ballrooms get used uh to dissect cadavers yeah maybe we discovered possibly so do your yacht and beach club ballrooms this is true yeah there's blood on every ballroom floor my dad just listened to that episode he's like we're not staying at the otter beach club now that i know that we're not saying wow we had we have never stayed there and we talked about it he's like i don't know if i

want to stay there now well he's just worried the bone will fall off the ceiling while he's sleeping i think that these dissections are some of the happier things that happen at Disney hotels that you don't want to think about. Enough said about that. An ominous tease from guest Van Robes show. We're still here on Podcast The Ride and

we're going back to singing. I never remind people what you're listening to like radio shows. Back to singing. Back to singing food. You got the, you know know it's another punless uh section not to jump around too much but to the climax in a way when the excess performs their evil tyrannous song of wishing to eat junk and being okay with your teeth rotting uh then kind of the song stops and then they're like what happened and food rapper says no power you just got unplugged which is accurate it's what he did he took a plug and he unplugged it and that's not a food thing i guess unplugged is a

reference to mtv unplugged but other than that it's just kind of i don't know food rapper just says what he did and it's uh i don't know i think they're a heavy metal band and so they're so power reliant yeah yeah good point well food rapper hit him where it hurts yeah and there i just described the stakes of the show um and that's yeah that's the very exciting part of it that's like the most exciting part i haven't re-watched these shows the that band the evil band are are they what are their animatronics they were they a re-purposing of any of the food from the previous it's unclear what they are um i was i have that in my notes are they garlics are they rotting garlics they look like garlics

but i also they could be like hard candy maybe like a wrapper of a hard candy where on stage where something else they pop up well are we talking stage left or stage right like are we on the stage or are we looking at the stage yeah that's a good question and they pop up different places and i assume if we're looking at the stage, they're towards the right. But it'd be opposite if you're in food. But if you're looking at it, they're towards the right. They're just below, you know, they'd be directly below Peter Gabriel, if that helps you visualize.

Peach Boy's in the center. Richard, not little Richard, off to the right. And then everybody uh and then food rapper down downstage left yeah he's he's where uh um uh anita food what is her what is her name bonnie appetite bonnie apatite yeah anita food is what i just guessed that is well it might be better that would work if it was a more specific food you could do anita burger or anita slice of pizza but a food doesn't quite work i need a milk i wouldn't pass i couldn't be on the pun staff of one of these shows yeah here i'm showing van right now they're

here they are this is the garlics um i mean all you need to know is that they have to their food with toad and they have tattoos and their teeth are missing wait and food rapper would be over over here he's here he staged right yeah guys the point is they are some bad guys they They are some scary, evil, vicious musicians who are ruining the fun. Oh yeah, they're not really junk food, are they? They're just kind of dirty. They're bags?

Yeah, they're like... Are they trash? What are... We'll ask people on Twitter what you think the excess are. Are they just pure... They're manifestations of evil? They're like just

shapeless nothings vaguely the size that a food item would be? They probably couldn't. Somebody would get litigious if they made them look like any food. I think they're supposed to be something. I think like onions that were left in the

trash and they're fine with it they're like let me rot like rotten food i have a death wish food because if if because maybe we're getting back to food motivation if a piece of if it's a fresh food really wants to be eaten maybe the the inverse of that is for a food for food to rot and never be eaten and that's what the excess wants and that's why I hate them. Yeah, because they don't want to be eaten when they're fresh. Yeah. They don't want to die when they're in their prime.

In a human's... I want to die when I'm a burden on society. Yeah, that's... I'm going to bring up something else confusing which is the Get the Point Sisters. They sing the song Respect by Aretha Franklin, which is not their song.

Yeah. It is the real Pointer Sisters singing, and also the name is strange, the Get the Point Sisters, not one of the better names. I know that they're candy bars, but it took me a sec. They're sort of just like, they look like ribbons or something.

They look like beautiful ribbons. But hey, kudos to the real Pointer Sisters for doing it. And it's not a bad song. I want to go backwards a little. They changed the pre-show area area the little lobby you would wait it used to be a very elaborate like city scape city facade because like you were going in a broadway theater and converted it as many 90s things are to just kind of like cartoony looking paintings on the wall yes it's very different uh with a lot of food facts some of which i found

very odd that they posted one One, cashews are never sold in the shell. That's because they are related to poison ivy and the shells contain an irritating oil. That's a weird thing to have painted on the wall at a theme park. Take that back to your friends at your school, kids.

Here's another one. Why is there a stalk of celery in a Bloody Mary? Since ancient Rome, celery has been thought of as a hangover remedy. What? Again, a weird thing to have painted on a wall. For children? This is in the land pavilion. This is in, like, you see these little cartoony paintings as you walk in to the show.

It's a very strange choice. Very strange. The 90s were a wild time yeah you're telling me people's ideas of what food facts were were so out of whack um what have we missed what well we there's a lot of like actual people doing the voices which i think is i remember as a kid finding that neat and i thought it was because i read about that in my burn bombs guide on the delta flight on my way to disney world and i remember thinking i'm this is something i'm gonna know when i'm watching the show the other kids don't i will know that neil sadaka is neil

musaga i will know that uh chubby checker is chubby cheddar yes he's chubby cheddar um that's pretty good that one's a good name here's a here's a here's a thing about i noticed so chubby cheddar is kind of like he's in the background it's unclear to me if he's sort of a full animatronic or it's just sort of a uh an excuse me in an animation it's like a silhouette um he is he's doing you know the twist which is chubby checkers signature um only song but chubby cheddar looks to be holding a cheese grater above his head as he does the twist which is very dark i mean he is he is advocating that he's a cutter yeah he's a cutter i mean kill me now. Kill me slowly. Well, he used to have skin.

That's true, right. That had been ripped from him. His package of skin has been ripped off. Now he's just the inside. Is that shade? Is Nestle throwing shade at Kraft? Oh, that's interesting. Oh, wow.

Like, Kraft, go kill yourself. We finally unlocked the secret inner corporate message. They've implicated Chubby Checker in this whole evil plan of theirs. Unwittingly, surely. I mean, he got paid. Go grate yourself. Huh. Well, we figured that out.

You know, in keeping with the theme in this episode of punless puns, I was curious about what old Chubby Checker is up to. He is not up to being dead He is up to being alive Good for him And you can not only book him for corporate events Or whatever Maybe for a podcast

In fact, if you want to book Chubby Checker Email eevans at thelasttwist.com That's a tip from me, Scott Gardner, to you I saved you a trip to chubby last twist.com. That's a tip from me. Scott Gardner to you. I saved you a trip to chubby checker.com. But also he sells food himself. You can buy a beef jerky from Chevy checker. And you know what it's called? Beef jerky.

What? Chubby checkers, beef jerky. It's not like there's no, it's not a twist. It's not. Now, do they call it the last twist? Because the idea is you book him and maybe if you're lucky you got the last one you

know i was there i hate to say i'm not proud of this but you know it was a meaningful moment in my life to get to see the last twist um and yeah i know but to be this is the second to last twist if you shell out the money for that found out can you imagine uh well you'd be a fool um they all see also has like uh checker chocolate and pony punch i guess he had a song called the pony that was another dance he did that's a little closer but um although several of those i have pony punch and checker chocolate only available in bulk orders. So don't buy Pony Punch unless you want a ton of Pony Punch.

Have any of us seen Chubby Checker live? No, but I think he does a lot of like... I certainly have. September Fest, Schaumburg, Illinois. Oh, Schaumburg was the place to be. Oh, yeah. Did you yell out, do exercise to the tune of the twist

rather than the twist. Yeah. Do your Food Rocks song. I was really into it. We went to see the Food Rocks material, but he didn't. Did he just do a greater? Yeah, he did a greater, though.

He didn't do any of the songs. He also craves death. Yeah. I don't want to sing this anymore. Someone greet me. Yikes. Come on now. And let me die.

Cut to our text conversation when he does pass away before this episode is released. Okay, emergency. Yeah, so he's in it you know he's also uh do you guys know he was on quantum leap and that there is an episode where sam beckett goes into the body of a he becomes a 50s dj and then chubby checker comes in and says uh hey will you play my record and he's like oh you're chubby checker and he starts doing the twist which teaches chubby checker comes in and says uh hey will you play my record and he's like oh you're chubby checker and he starts doing the twist which teaches chubby checker the twist so in a back to the future chuck berry kind of moment a white guy invents a black guy's thing yeah yeah yeah wow this is

forrest gump uh teaching elvis how to move his hips oddly. That's right. Oh, right. Nobody thought of anything. Some oddball, some time-hopping omnipresent. Every famous musical dance you know, yeah, was done by a... A time traveler. Or a movie character. Or a magic sprite. We haven't seen it in a film, but we can only assume the Macarena or the Dougie. Sure.

I am suspicious of every dance now. It was always a time traveler or a leaper. Yeah. Or a gump, a manic pixie dream boy or whatever you would call gump that's how you regard him i don't know i guess he is in his own way though it's not the stereotype but he's like a muse he's everyone's he's a magical figure yeah sure so i guess that, Manic Pixie Dream Gump is not the phrase. What's, what haven't we, what haven't we covered? I mean, there's so much here.

There's a lot. There's a lot. But, yeah, like, what else do we care about? You know, I want to say, I mean, you guys might know that I'm a pretty big Peach Boys fan. Yeah. And I really, you know, Good Nutrition, I think, is just such a, like, hallmark pop song. It took them six months to record. I don't know if you know that.

It was, like, so experimental. There was a lot of tension within the band between Brian Wilsorge and Mike Lunch, who is an apple. Of course, yeah. But his last name is Lunch. That's just what we're... But, you know, a lot of, like, inner band struggling and infighting,

but obviously it worked out because they made so much great music together, all culminating in the masterpiece album Plate Sounds. Sure. And, you know,

I'm sure most of our listeners know it, but in case you don't I probably should read The entire track listing Of plate sounds Out loud Sure

Yeah yeah Just as a survey I mean you know Most of you know it probably Yeah okay So you know The album starts out with Wouldn't it be rice

And then gives way to You still eat leaves with me That's not meat Don't talk Put your bread in my toaster. I'm waiting for the dates. Let's go eat whey for a while. Sloop John beef.

Of course, that's a catchy one. Chard only grows, which I believe Per McCartney called his favorite song ever written. I know there's a custard, which alternatively is a hang on to your manchego. Here's souffle. I just wasn't glazed for these bites. The title track plate sounds, obviously, instrumental. And then ends with a tender ballad, Clementine's Yes. So I just wanted to remind people of that great record and all these evocative titles

and go check it out on the version of Spotify that's all fruit puns. What a journey. That's great. The band has taken us on over these many decades. I agree. Thanks for the music, Peach Boys. Make that clear that that's not something you made.

That was canon. No, I'm just a huge Peach Boys fan. I love everything about them. I love that only one of them is a peach. There's the whole mythology. Yeah. I love that they, you know, it was a sad time when they got involved with Charles Branson. He murdered all those cereal boxes.

Or when the peach got, was 300 pounds. Yeah, yeah. He really, yeah, he got way too, way too ripe. He grew way too, well, he had his struggles. He got addicted to, he experimented with pesticides. Or when the apple just walked off his boat and sunk to the bottom of the sea. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Marina del Dates. And his doctor, Dr. Candy, who was treating him.

Dr. Food Gene Candy. Yeah, yeah. Correct. I was wrong. He, the brother, the the apple brother he drowned in Marina Del Taco that's what I meant to say sorry to get my facts wrong

we do great research no more three stars that's fair yeah so hey thanks Peach Boys thanks for the music God bless the Peach Boys alright so how do we feel about this I mean I guess that's the end of this these rides suck I mean let's be, I guess that's the end of this. These rides suck. I mean, let's be honest. They're bad.

Well, yeah, in the arc of this, one attraction was replaced by another attraction that was similar. And if you polled everyone, there would be no clear answer on which one is better. Most people would say, I've never heard of it. And then it got replaced by Soarin', which is a wonderful attraction everyone loves,

and no one ever complains that these are gone. So let's say... Those attractions closed on the same day, 10 years apart. That is crazy. I would advocate for a re-theming of Sorin to involve food. Okay. So would they be just...

It doesn't have to be this food. It could be. Now look, if they sort over some of these characters in just maybe one scene of it, that really would be, for me, a great nostalgia bump. But I just mean, I think that I do think it's a shame to have the food theming kind of gone from this physical space that was dedicated to food for so long.

Right. I mean, yeah yeah so you want even though soren like you fly over land you still would like i want food i i want not land i know it's the land yeah right right that era like i like the idea that that physical space that was once occupied by the kitchen cabaret is occupied by something else that deals with actual literal food you want to like fly over greece where peter gabriel and neil musaka are from you want to see the fields in which their ingredients are uh like some wheat fields um yeah you uh obviously obviously fly over uh marina del taco the sure there's meant so much to the Peach Boys growing up.

So, if you were that, so that's when you're talking about our, of course, patented podcast, the ride scale. Sorry, the dog just almost ripped the recorder off. He wants this episode to be done. He wants this to be done. Do you at home? So, yeah. On our patented podcast, the ride scale, you're saying you don't want to plus up these old rides or anything.

You want to plus up the Soarin' ride yeah bring the food back into it uh um yeah well you could be yeah you could be flying a big uh in a big colander you can uh that's good yeah i like that i've also always thought that uh soren could do could play with scale more and you could have something some macro photography and then you could feel giant like you could feel tiny right i think that would be really fun you could maybe sort through some food in that way all right yeah i think maybe like a big hand could come up from the bottom of the screen with a big old sub sandwich yeah oh man this is over yeah that's right jason you haven't smiled as wide as you have the whole podcast when you're thinking about a giant submarine sandwich coming at you on Soarin'.

You cupped up one side from the bottom of the screen and then to the other side of the screen. So, yeah, how about... Okay, so maybe your dream is sort of a Soarin' where you're flying inside someone's mouth. Oh, yeah. You're like a tiny person inside a mouth seeing giant food. Smelling that food?

Oh, yeah. And then they can, like a Subway sponsorship, you can smell that Subway tuna. You know what I'm talking about. Yeah, but then that's going to attract all those Vore freaks. What freaks? Vore, V-O-R-E. Vore, yeah. What is Vore?

Keep going, guys. What is this? It's a getting eating. It's a getting eaten fetish. Oh, the one you have? The alien encounter fetish you have that you were hoping to get eaten by an alien? Oh, by the alien? Well, just that alien. Oh, okay.

So you don't have a full range, full anything goes fetish? It's just that you want to be eaten by that alien encounter alien? Yeah, I don't want Mac and me to eat me. Okay. Van, do you have this fetish? Oh, no. Okay. You guys are just aware of it. A ride would allow you to experience the ultimate fantasy of

a big vorhead. Virtual reality, you might call it. Yeah, let's... No, I agree. Let's change just so well voron soren is born yeah that's what we that's what we want i think everyone will be pleased with this and you know to have a ride where you get to see a big sandwich go by a ride where you get to experience what it's like to eat uh would be I think, so much more satisfying than eating. Yeah.

Well, you kind of want to feel like what it's like to be a sandwich. Maybe not the eating part, but you want to be on that scale of a sandwich. Right. You want to appreciate the food in an up-close-and-personal way. Yeah. What if, like, the Soarin', because, you know, Soarin', famously, there's three levels. There's three different levels of people seated. So, like, it's kind kind of you're not supposed to kind

of know about that but like you see people's feet above you what if everyone is like a row of teeth or something and then they kind of close in and you're no adjacent well i i think we're we can't see the forest from the trees i mean there's been rumors about like imagineers skulking around the wonders of life pavilion i think this is a way to reignite uh-oh that pavilion oh in what way i mean like a getting eaten thing and you follow the full journey you get and then you go down the throat to a stomach a digestive tract the entire that's interesting you get shit out is what you're saying part of the ride is getting shit out this is going to breathe breathe life into the wonders of life and then you become you get shit out and you get shit i was i was never a fan of the wonders of life okay what that's one of my

favorite boy we had very different epcot uh i i yeah that was just. Boy, next time I have two drinks, I'm really going to let you have it. Yeah, watch out. Scott the Monster bubbles up. You're a big Body Wars kind of a guy. I mean, I was at the time. I think now I can see the hollowness of Body Wars. But that's the closest thing to what we're talking about. That's you inside the human body, but not inside the part you want, the part where all the delicious food is coming right now certainly not coming out the

rectum that was not part of it not at all but in your fantasy we're talking about a different park we're talking about freak cot i think we what you did your plus that our plus that up here is to bill it's a it's an epcot in which every pavilion is a different fetish yeah and then walt would be happy so well i can get behind this if we're not gonna make the world better yeah like at least people can enjoy their sex things this is the future i've come to right all societal norms have fallen away and it's all sex perverts now surely seems like that was what he liked when we yeah yeah after he's seen what epcot is and he's like well but just tell me they still hold freak cot every year for one special

day things get a little while things get really experimental yeah i mean what what i would do is if this was still open now uh in the dead of night i would have a couple uh college kids that i paid 20 dollars uh sneak in throw some oily rags around it and just light it on fire is this the first official burn it down for insurance i kind of said it about back to the future but i didn't really mean it fully but this is this is the one where i mean just burn it down i don't know yeah fine as well i'm with you yeah like you'll get the insurance money and build a soaring over california or the world it's almost a little what they did it is what they did pretty much yeah yeah pretty much they burned it down although although in reality what they did

was close the ride with very little announcement and there is very little concern about it and it was a great decision for the park and uh if you want the ride to live on it'll live on and uh meandering podcasts yep i think the appropriate place for it well then appropriately van you have survived podcast the ride thank you so much for being here it was great to be here putting things in uh in perspective and uh thanks i'm glad to have been able to take that role. Yeah. Anytime that you can compare world events to the events of World Showcase. I think it's important for us all to do.

Let me ask you guys just real quick, just an Epcot question before we go. Favorite country in the World Showcase. That's interesting. I got to go Norway because of the ride, but does that not count? Does it have to be the full package? No, that's a wonderful answer. Yeah, it's got to be.

Yeah, what a ride. Yeah, yeah. And I think fun theming and fun, and those trolls, you get trolls hanging out. I like, this is weird. I don't know if this, the first thing that popped into my head was Japan because I love the love the gift shops in japan yeah that's there are so many different little stores and different type and cool stuff and japanese candy the candies are great like it

really like you kind of like you feel like you're there i mean and as we said we're gonna be there you know for two three four days i don't know how long but how many days does it take to see all of the gift shops in the tiny japan and epcot uh i would say two days two days i think you need guys you're out of your fucking minds oh god i'm so sorry i have a problem uh i think mexico okay i always like the boat ride that that lobby you're talking like it now mexico is my favorite so we're yeah i am the night the night restaurant is the reason for me the restaurant uh coffee day tequila the bar where this is newer in the last few years but they have this a very nice tequila bar where they will they have tons of different uh margaritas made with very fresh

ingredients it's delicious uh and just like the fact that it's like a starry night and there's music and it's but very pleasantly air conditioned during the day as i find beautiful it's it's great it's great and there's nothing like especially like usually if you're going uh clockwise mexico is great because it's the first one you's nothing like, especially like usually if you're going clockwise, Mexico is great because it's the first one. You get that drink in your hand and you're ready to tour the world. You're ready. Like there's a nice feeling, like only possibility lies ahead of you from here on out.

Like it's just, it's the start of a wonderful journey, a tipsy journey that has many different stops, including one where Benjamin Franklin and Mark Twain shake hands. I also have to give credit to Canada. The last time I was there, I really enjoyed Canada. Shout out to Canada. Great steakhouse, Le Cellier, wonderful restaurant.

This is a sidetrack on a very long episode already. It occurred to me this weekend that there are, do you know how many, there are four attractions, films in the various parks starring martin short he's made four wow different wait so canada canada ride making of me and wonders of life uh your burn it to the ground for sure it's money there's something called the cinemagique in paris yeah and then the monster sound show with chevy chase four films that are shown only in disney parks hey i'm good with also none of them anyone likes yeah not memorable i kind of

like that sound effects show yeah i'm better than anything else they they put in uh um and uh i haven't seen canada 360 with mart Short. Maybe it's a ball. I don't mean to assail it. Okay, no positive affirmations. All right, so our Canadian listeners will be mad that we're disparaging Martin Short's work, and then our Japanese listeners will be mad because we all picked the wrong number of days to spend at the park.

I was always a little disappointed and by canada uh in epcot i just always felt a little bit like i wish it were maybe somewhere more exotic every single one of them needs a boat ride you'd like canada fine if you're on a blog you're in a or going through through yeah the beautiful wilderness or like going through a maple factory. Oh, boy. Yeah. That's what I'll dream of. Well, we're making this longer and longer, but Westcott was going to be built out here, and there was going to be a giant boat ride that took you through all the countries. Yeah.

Really? It was going to go all the way around the park. It was a 45-minute, I think, boat ride. You could get off at multiple stops. You would have gotten your boat ride wish through all the countries and did we say in the american adventure there was a art of an of the history of america told on a boat ride boat were they like if you're imagineers if you're ever talking about a boat ride build the boat ride build the boat build the boat build the boat hashtag build the boat hashtag build the boat um van anything you want to you want to plug or alert people to uh you can follow me on twitter at at van the brand um if you

are interested in talking to comedian mike mitchell visit mitch.pizza uh which is my uh person to mitch texting service it is a literal you're not joking like if people don't know you it is a literal thing you can sign up for that will let you directly text comedian mike mitchell yes it will uh you can get your message to him uh who you know from either being a guest on the show or us referring to him derisively uh without context yeah um all right so if you want to talk to him go to mitch.pizza um and then check out my podcast wherever podcasts are the van labs test podcast so just search for van labs test podcast or you

can on your web browser go to van.labs.show all right great and if you want to know more about this podcast that you're listening to go to podcast Podcast The Ride at Twitter, Instagram, and I feel like I forget. I should just, why don't I write this down? Oh, Podcast The Ride at gmail.com. There you go. There you go.

And rate and review us on iTunes. Most importantly, Van Robichaux, you've survived Podcast The Ride. I think I did. I did.

I survived already. Did I just miss it? I'm already asleep. on your iPad again? The Spectro Men are eroding your brain. They're stealing your memories of things that happened

four minutes ago. Jason, Jason. God damn it. Get out of Jason's brain, man. And the rest of you, get out of this episode. It's done. Bye.