Shutdown Fullcast - The Vacation Disasters Episode

Episode Date: August 16, 2019

Vacations are like any other carefully planned human endeavor: they are subject to complete and total collapse, from predictable factors and from shit you never saw coming. You, the listeners, have pooped yourselves, seriously injured yourselves, left each other in jail on false charges, been conquered by Disney, and caused permanent damage to your relationships. Fortunately, we have done these things, too. The Shutdown Fullcast: We All Sink Down Here! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the shutdown fullcast. That's right. So the Internet's only college football podcast. But we're also a podcast that likes to look out for your health and welfare. For instance, how long has it been since you've taken a moment for yourself? Even a vacation, if you will. It's probably been too long. And by that, I mean like a week, two weeks.

Self-care is important, right? I think we'd all agree on that. You think you think two weeks is too long to go between vacations. It's definitely too. Anything in the year 2019 can be self-care, right? Welcome to the shutdown forecast, France's most radical podcast. The 15-hour work week. Too long.

Yeah, it's grueling, but I think it's the way forward for this company. Our fat sons are ready to shatter heaven. we we asked y'all for and by y'all i mean our loyal listeners both on the shutdown full cast reddit and on the shutdown full cast twitter account we asked y'all to tell us about your vacation disasters and good good lord did you reply an enormous amount of y'all have pooped in church which i i That's absolutely not what we were asking for. Listen, this beer moves different people in different ways, all right? Hey, God said 10% of everything is his. Including your ass. Why is God George Carlin in this case?

Well, when he's nice, he's Thomas the train, George Carlin. Right. Right. Right. Thomas felt something loose. wait what new testament god is george carlin as a train and then old testament god is just george carlin yeah right and then in revelation he's like the caricature meme of george carlin and mormon god is dan carlin i have new histories

for you but good lord y'all responded i will say this people on vacation when things things go wrong. There is no going wrong in third gear. Nope. Either people would tell stories like, oh, I don't know. My sister got the chicken pox and it was kind of a bummer. Or it was my sister got a virus that the CDC still can't identify. Like it's first gear or fifth gear. Things either go real well or they go tragically wrong. My sister vomited in the gas tank and her car blew up. Oh my God, you just reminded me my vacation disaster. I thought

I didn't have one. Oh, God. Excellent. That shouldn't be a prompt. Why would, never mind. Should we start by presenting our own vacation disasters? In the spirit of transparency, yeah. Right. I think so.

Yeah, yeah, because we are like a, we're like Congress. We don't want to be audited. Right. We don't want to, we don't want to play this game of truth or dare without providing either a truth or the dare, right? So the dare would be to create a new vacation disaster. Buddy, I got kids. I've already taken that up. I dare you to go put out the fires in Antarctica because there are those now.

Wait, what? Or is it the Arctic? One of them. One of them's burning. Whoever, whoever has the itchy mouse finger, I will find you would kill you. Oh, my God, the clicking. I know it's Spencer. It's not. It's not. Honestly. It's not me.

For once, I am not the problem. Before we, okay. So people on the full cast Reddit said that we're too mean to Spencer. Is this true? No, one person said that. There was a whole thread and there were people who suggested that they felt this way. There were upfotes and agreeers. Is this before or after the guy who asked if I was really smart or if it was just in contrast?

Wow, that was. I mean, there are factions forming. Um, Spencer, are we too mean to you? I ask no quarter fuckers. Bring it. Does the bear, does the bear apologize for his paws? No. I feel like it's our way of reclaiming our time from him.

Exactly. All the time he's wasted. Yeah, I think people misunderstand that like, A, almost, almost all of the bullshit on here is a bit. Ryan and I do violently dislike each other. Right. Thank you. Thank you, Jason, for correcting him. the record. Also, we have to put up with Spencer all of the time. Yeah. Not just, not just when we

record the full cast. That's a lot of a sometimes food. You know, when you see people playing on the field and you go, wow, a football game is really only 11 minutes of action. Do you know how much training goes into those 11 minutes? Now, think of that time for this particular podcast and their lives as being the training, the practice, the grinding that goes into tolerating me for just the length of this podcast. Spencer, you sound like you're about to burst into song. Do you feel a song coming on? I do.

This actually makes me happy. Perfect. Let's go. No quarter ass, none given. All right. Well, Spencer, let's start with your vacation disaster, please. Yeah. And if you think y'all are mean to me, let me tell you what, food poisoning's been way worse.

And this is the story. I was on a very long vacation in China. And normally when you say I went on a very long vacation in China. Like Bruce Wayne. Yeah, it usually means prison or I was training to become a vigilante. Or both in Bruce Wayne's case. Or both in Bruce Wayne's case, right? And in mine, it was sadly neither.

It was just vacation. This was in Kunming, China. Lovely city. right fantastic hills great climate produce just yeah just a perfect place it has everything you want when you go on vacation produce hills and a mild climate were you playing sim city what the fuck are you talking about i don't know how you go on vacation ryan wants to go to the city where they've got disasters on and somebody built an enormous pyramid in the middle of town Just to put the little mansion on top.

But, oh, I forgot. How am I going to get the wires up there? You're talking about Memphis, right? If you built, have you ever built Memphis in SimCity? I have. And do you know what Memphis is in SimCity? No. Wildly successful.

Like, regulations, zero. Traffic, nightmare. Zoning. Off. Money. piled high son piled high so anyway I'm in I'm in Kunming China and one night for dinner a guy just I'm about to eat some chicken and this guy puts an entire tub full of turtles through the window from the street like just shoves them and in Chinese says they're turtles they're good you should

eat them natural pitch like the salesmanship was just innate is this the produce that's what I'm talking about everything you want in a good city climate produce and turtles so the guy puts them in my face and you know he's like hey the cook can make them for you you can you know here just buy them i'll give them to you for a good price and i'm like i'm not going to eat turtles i just ordered some chicken also those are turtles swimming in front of me and i'm feeling a little feeling a little sad at the moment about the idea of eating these beautiful adorable uque so i went to I ate the chicken. And then I woke up at like two in the morning.

And, you know, in every vampire movie, when they're like, I turned cold, I couldn't sleep. I was alternately hot and then freezing. The change. You're describing the change. I was going through the change. Yeah. Yeah, it was, I thought I was going through the change. I could not hold my hand still.

I started moving down the hallway and off the walls, moving back and forth. because I could not walk a straight line. Yeah, this is why it's called menopause. Mm-hmm. And... You were entering adulthood. I was. My fangs weren't quite out yet.

It turns out when you become a vampire... This is when you get your egg tooth. Yeah. When you become a vampire due to food poisoning, you get none of the cool parts of vampirism and all the really bad parts, right? What are the cool parts? A vampirism?

A vampirism? Or a food poisoning vamporism. Vampirism? Turn into a bat. I mean, you get to fly, right? That's cool. You get to stay up real late. You get 15 credit hours at Texas Tech.

Mm-hmm. Instantly, right? Excellent. Yeah, you get an excuse to get out of social occasions for a real long time. Nobody makes you eat vegetables. Yeah, no. You can't even do it. Cape, free cape.

Free cape. Is that free? Yeah. You have to buy your graduation gown. What, does it sprout on you? Yeah. Like you're molting or something? Is this like a Doctor Strange situation?

Is it you're familiar? It's like you've never played a Super Mario World. What if you're a vampire and you just get like a lame cape, right? Like your cape of many colors? Patchwork. It means a lot to me. I'm an Appalachian vampire. My cloak of many colors.

I'm a deeply Christian vampire. But I believe in the free market. There we go. That's a Tennessee vampire. Yeah, that's right. I only eat poor people. Because I'm supposed to. The bad parts about being a food poisoning vampire are pretty much everything.

Because I remember thinking when I was. I was going down the hallway of this Chinese hostel. I was like, one, I might really be dying. Two, I remember thinking, it's kind of cool that my hands won't stop shaking this badly. It's like a toy. Well, that hasn't happened before. Again, you're Dr. Strange. Yeah.

And three, I thought, well, you know what? Probably going to learn something tonight. That's why I remember thinking that as I passed out. And I only know that I had passed out because I felt like, I was like, oh, my cheek's cold. That's because it was on the floor. I remember being put in a Chinese. Remember being put in a Chinese ambulance in the middle of the night with an extremely grumpy looking cop.

I remember waking up in the hospital, again, on the floor. I remember going up in the elevator and thinking, wow, this elevator is really strong. It's carrying me. Thank you, strong elevator. And then I passed out again. I remember waking up in the hospital and they were taking blood. And the way they take blood on vacation as a food poisoning vampire, at least at this point in China, as they took a razor blade and slashed the end of my finger.

Guy's like, yeah, I'm going to take some blood. I'm like, okay, cool. And I just slashed the end of my finger. And I remember sitting there completely too weak to move watching a lady paint carp on TV because that was the big, that was the big show at the time. That's like the Chinese Bob Ross. Yeah, Chinese Bob Ross. They were just painting happy cart, man. Like big happy carp.

And after about a day in the hospital, you know, there, I was like, okay, cool, like, I'm going to die. And they're like, no, you just ate some bad chicken. That's all. But fully hospitalized on vacation at a Chinese hospital. Yay. So do you think if you had gone the turtle route, you would have avoided this calamity or suffered something far worse? You know, given the way things usually work when you're that far away from home, I bet it was. just doubling down on disaster, right?

Like, you think the decision tree here was this. You know, this could have gone right if you'd just done this. Nope, that's not the way it works. It was you have option A, which is bad. And then option B, which is insanely bad. Right. Choose wisely. Life is not always goofus and gallant.

Sometimes it's goofus and goofus with hepatitis. You don't. This was a dilemma in the sense that I think I only had bad choices. Yeah. So I ran headlong into one. But, you know, shouts out to Kunming General. That was really great, y'all. And it's strong elevator.

And it's strong, masculine elevator. That is my worst personal disaster story. It was the time that I got turned into a powerless vampire by bad Chinese chicken. Holly, how did I accidentally trigger your memory of your vacation disaster? Well, my family's full of hillbillies. We're always getting injured everywhere, like, you know, blood pouring out. out of unexpected limbs and unexpected places is just not a new experience for me home or abroad or for anyone that I'm related to. But you reminded me of something my mother always used to yell at me

for when I was a kid, which was reading books during family vacations when we were supposed to be driving through beautiful places like national parks and getting out to look at hot springs and cooing over the majesty of nature and I would be in the backseat of the car with my face stuck in a book. She had to limit me at one point to one paper grocery sack full of books. Like that was all I could bring on vacation because otherwise they would have just overflown and taken the car. So anyway, one summer, I'm like seven, my brother's like five. we drive in my parents' ancient Jeep Cherokee, all four of us, out to Colorado to see my family up there. And this, I think this trip has been referenced on the show before because it's how I ended up at Laramie Frontier Day or Chey and Frontier Day is the weekend of some insane murder.

Was that a different podcast? I don't know. Okay. Was that on it? I feel like that was on it seemed smart at some point. Anyway, my mom is grumping and grousing at me the entire trip because all through this, like, four-day drive through the world's largest ball of string in Kansas or whatever, and all through the badlands in South Dakota and winding our way down to Colorado, I'm like sitting in the back reading, I don't know, Babysitters Club Mysteries or whatever. I was seven, probably Stephen King. And then on the way home, at the start of a four-day drive, they let my little brother sit in the first. front seat and he threw up into the air conditioning vent oh god oh god he's in my suit on like hour three on like hour three of day one of a four day day journey and years later like i was in college and i got this

vintage postcard from my mother uh and i flipped it was like a family an old timey family everybody looking miserable posing in front of Yellowstone and I flipped it over on the back she had written in retrospect reading a book through the bad lands is maybe not the worst thing you could have done thanks mom sorry about the car it's horrifying um Jason you want to give us yours so my worst vacation experience involves no externally visible injury, physical, or financial, well, financial, yes, because we went to Disney. This was my first trip there as a paying customer first time as an adult. This was, I think, maybe like four years ago.

And everything is fine. You're paying a shitload of money. That's never, never comfortable. But everything's fine. I enjoyed Hollywood studios. The zoo park is fine. Then we get to Magic Kingdom. which I believe this is the one tagline

the happiest place on earth I found it I found myself disagreeing with that tagline for one thing I'm very tired of being at Disney you know we've we've been here at this very expensive place for a long time rest of my family's having great time and that's awesome I am slowly becoming disenchanted

with the amount of money I'm this is the thing that really triggers it is the amount of money I'm forced to pay for shitty food and I'm less and less pleased with the food selections over time as we're spending 16 hours per day at the parks and the one I think the highest rated restaurant at Magic Kingdom was this like nacho place it was like this old West Wild West style nacho place and I'm like okay this would be

you can't fuck up nachos this is something to look forward to we do it and it's sub Taco Bell for like 50 $15 a plate. No, the food at Disney will make you bitter. Yeah. Listen, for everybody out there who has yet to go on the trip, the key is to go, is to eat breakfast in your room and eat dinner away from the park and just shell out for lunch. That's it.

You'll survive. Well, here's the thing about the Kirk's. We show up at the place opens and we don't leave until it's closed. I admire that. That's an ethos. I wouldn't say this is my choice, but it's how. It's how we do business. Come and take it.

And by it, I mean these mouse ears. So after this meal, I am as close to a shambles as I can possibly get. I don't really like to talk about feelings because I have a very hard time producing them. People often tell me I should talk about them more. And then I try very hard to manufacture feelings to have that I can talk about. Jason, what was the deal with the nachos? They suck. They were shitty.

And this set me off because, all right, I'm trapped in this place. Am I being detained, basically? This is what, this is, this is what this is triggering. And now I am just a depressed mess, cannot speak, can barely walk. No, what is this, is this day, day the end of day two at Disney? Three, three. Oh, yeah, no, day three, yeah. So, yeah, end of the day, there is like this parade around Magic Kingdom.

It's cool, it's the happiest thing in the world. It's like you're riding on fucking Rainbow Road, right? Like, it's all the characters. Blinking and flashing past you. It's the electrical parade. Yeah. That is an extremely annoying parade if you're not in the mood for it. Right.

Yeah. That is maybe the most, I love it. That is maybe the most annoying thing that they do objectively. I think if we'd been there for one day and I had not had a shitty meal of bad nachos, I would have been like, oh, this is awesome. You know, I was just not in the frame for it. I was as depleted as I could possibly be in every way. I'm sitting on the ground surrounded by people

who are like standing and clapping and singing. And it's like compounding. You know, you're like, this is ridiculous. I have been broken by Disney, you know. So now you're wallowing in shame and, wow, man. This is, this is, you're sort of at that point where like Jason Bourne is getting, he's getting into the Treadstone program. They're like, commit to this.

commit to this program, Jason. Well, there is one thing here. There is a self-care element. There is a remedy that is an elixir. There's a light at the end of the tunnel, right? Is it an Epcot? It's Epcot. Day four, you go to Epcot.

Oh, baby. You do the drinking tour. If it takes $200 to cure your ailments, you spend $200. You go to France. You get the Konex slushy. You go to England. You hit the bar kiosks. I just, I can't believe you made it to day four.

Yeah, man. He was already dead at that point. It didn't matter. No, day four was awesome. He was crawling, but in day four, he made it to the oasis. On day four, we rose again, brother. Jason, your discussion of the Main Street Electrical Parade reminded me that I have another vacation disaster at that same parade

that I had just forgotten about. Same branch of the family, though. My Aunt Mothman was knocked unconscious by one of the seven dwarves swinging a prop lantern. it was dope it wasn't it no it was doc man we were sitting on the curb of the street and the seven dwarves come like strolling down the street

you know swinging little things jauntily and one of them just clocks clocks my mom's sister in the side of the head and she falls out into the street that's targeting that's targeting how are you not going to call it targeting yeah

yeah we got pictures of it If it had been a different state, you could sue for medical malpractice. My grandpa was mad at her the whole way. My grandparents lived in Central Florida, so we were at Disney a lot. And my grandpa was furious with his injured daughter the whole way back to their house because he's like, if you just stayed in the street, we could own that damn part by now. Like he was mad that she popped right up immediately. He's like, no, no, no, stay down.

We're going to see what we can get out of this. unlike your stories i am the antagonist of my vacation disaster story because i am not the victim my brother was uh i think i was nine or ten which puts him at seven or eight we are on a family vacation in key west we're staying at some sort of timeshare condo whatever whatever and in one of the bedrooms my brother and i find a foot locker like the kind you know the The sort of like cheapo one you find with the gold corners and the, like, the brass corners and Brack lock. Yeah, you find it like at Walmart for $28 around school moving time. It's probably made a press board.

Yes. So I decide I'm going to put my brother in this and we're just going to do some like magic show bullshit. So I convince him to get, crawl in the, um, the foot locker. I close it. I don't lock it per se because it doesn't have like a padlock or a combination or something, but I do fasten it shut. Oh, per se, counselor. However, I cannot open it at this point.

Like, this is not me fucking with my brother. I literally cannot open it. At first, he thinks I'm just messing with him. And then that turns into intense panic and screaming and kicking. So I go get my dad from the other room. And he's like, okay. We're just going to have to, like, take it off the hinges. Now, if we were at home, that would have been a, like, fairly easy thing.

You go into the garage, you grab a drill. Maybe you grab, like, a pry bar or something, pop it open. We are staying in a rental property, which has, like, the world's tiniest, shittiest Philip screwdriver. So my dad has to painstakingly unscrew for Phillips Head screws. While my brother is screaming that he's going to die. And then we have to do three more days of vacation with him just silently hating me. And probably to this day, still thinks that I, like, tried to murder him. When in reality, I was just bored and bad at fun.

Like seven or eight. Yeah. Yeah. Bad at fun. The shutdown forecast. So we have, I will say, maybe with the exception of Spencer, even that, like, our stories don't really come close to some of the madness that y'all have suffered or visited upon others. Like, I don't even, Jason, do you just want to start with one here? From, uh, internet subscriber Hamilton Cook.

Went to Chattanooga Train Museum as last trip before kindergarten fell down a manhole. You idiot. We're already doing very well. Spencer, you've taken your kids there a lot. How has this never happened? I don't know, but oh, God, I'd be so angry. Once I'd verified that the child was not dead or seriously maimed, I would have the anger of the gods. Oh, God.

Well, here's what you'd have to do in order to extricate your boy from that. Yeah. Hamilton continues, quote. Storm-drained cover was too small, so I wily coyote my way toward the Tennessee sewers. Thankfully, the side I fell down, had pipes to land on about 10 feet down instead of the other side, which was an abyss for 30 feet. Oh, God. Like now we're in the fucking fugitive. One concussion and nearly broken neck later, my 6'6 dad climbs down and pulls me out. That is how I nearly became Tennessee sewer Batman.

Some say Hamilton's still down there to this day I'm so mad at this dude for his dad I'm so mad Dad says Oh god damn it This little fucker went and fell down a cavern It's 30 feet to the other side Oh god

This little shithead is 20 feet below ground in Chattanooga That's the part they should have shown in Batman against Was Thomas Wayne be like What the fuck are you doing playing by the well? What the fuck are you doing? are you doing down in that 20 foot pit full of bats? Who the shit is afraid of bats? We have a whole mansion

and you have a Game Boy! Get out of the well! That's how you know they're rich, right? And that's how you know his dad was raised rich because he falls down the well and he says oh, well, what a terrible thing as opposed to, God damn it! Do you know what you could have cost this family?

Bruce, why do we fall down? Because your mother raised a goddamn moron. Why do we fall down so we can sue Disney and get the whole park. Like, Thomas Wayne just says, oh, I'll buy another boy. But if you got a working man's dad, like Hamilton

here, he's like, God damn it, I'm not paying for it. We got to fix this one. I'm not making another one. I'm tired. It's too late to we didn't save the receipts. It's too late to return them for store credit. They tell you that extended warranties bullshit,

but now I'm wishing I got it. if we leave him down there somebody's going to come and make me pay for everything he breaks while trying to climb his way back to safety. You couldn't just be a typical kid and die of a firearms accident or falling off of the bylaw

when you were huffing inhalens out of the air conditioner but no. Instead, you have to get in a well. God damn it, Tennessee sewer, Batman, get out. We got a Chattanooga duckboat tour rented 30 minutes from now. It's called Train Museum, not Tunnel Museum. stupid shit. Holly, what do you do?

God, my mother would have left me. Anyway, oh, you want one of my stories? Yes, please. I'm going to pair two of these together because they're fairly short, and I don't really love the stories so much as I love two of the phrases in the stories. Reddit user Bexley P. submitted a story in which, and I'm quoting here, well, in which two uncles gave 25 to 30 people.

at a family reunion food poisoning in a two-bathroom house at a cousin's retreat on Lake Martin. But the perpetrators were described as two uncles with wild contempt for food safety, which I just really appreciate it. That's redundant.

And the other one that I just really thought had a beautiful turn of phrase and it was from Jordan, who sent a story about a week-long hiking trip to Romania in which he sprained both knees on day three, but the part that stuck out to me was that he

was stuck in a hostel with holes in the ceiling and a mean horse. Mean horse in Romania. Like the mean horse just sounds like the worst part. Like you're sitting there in Romania with both your legs propped up and wrapped in

ice and like carrots or whatever is just over there giving you the shit eye. Got to fight. Got to fight the horse. Mean horse. Mean horse needs to be a college football mascot at this point. It's another ineffective form of vampirism. He's a mean horse and he don't like you.

Yeah, but his teeth are flat so he can't ever get the blood, right? Oh, that sucks so bad. And here comes the Middle Tennessee State mean horse. Being bitten by a vampire horse. Oh, God. Those flat teeth just gnawn into your neck. Just grinding down like vampire cow. It's just kicking me ineffectively over and over.

what about vampire whale that would suck oh vampire krill would be way worse though you'll never see those fuckers coming this one comes from paperboy 615 on reddit uh every year my family has a huge five day long family reunion uh where it uh me and my siblings raised in nashville meet up with a contingent of the family in sigourney iowa where my siblings and our cousins would have the run of a hunting lodge facility. One of the rooms in the facility had a treadmill. When my cousin was nine, he realized that instead of having the speed listed as slow too fast, this treadmill went from tame to extreme, and no, there is not an E at the front

of that. Being a dumbass, my cousin got on and cranked it up. When he couldn't keep up, he fell down, could not get off the treadmill, and ended up getting most of the skin rubbed off the back of his neck, left shoulder, and left side of his back. You put him on a belt sander. Rather than take him to the hospital, his parents opted to send an uncle

to Dollar General for bandages and patched him up themselves. Oncels, man. Later that same reunion, my brother then six years old, was jumping from bed to bed in another room, only to overshoot and knock three of his teeth out on a

nightstand. Once again, no medical professional was alerted, and my parents just told him to, this is exact phrasing, put them back in place for the remainder of the trip. Like, hold them there? Like, I think just

insert them like you were some sort of operation doll. Like their damn Legos? Yes. See, this is what I meant when I said I couldn't think of any vacation disasters because this is exactly the attitude that greeted every would-be calamity in my

family once my brother and I were like three. Now, here's the thing. in defense of the parents involved here once when your brother knocks out three teeth once you've already committed that multiple layers of skin being rubbed off multiple parts of a child's body does not warrant a trip to even like urgent care

yeah man losing some teeth is not going to get you there you really got to you really you got to show some consistency no there was there was do you know what happened before this to get them to that point these were normal people once they had souls they had dreams they had joy in their hearts and then they had this child what this really is is it's the intense commitment to vacation where you're like we're not you're not going to ruin this oh yeah yep i don't care i don't care of your spleen rupture you probably don't need it i don't even think it's that i think it's pre-ruined they're like yeah

we're going out of ruined vacation kevin's coming my blissfully childless friends and i used to wander around behind screaming children at Disney just hissing, happiest place on Earth, happiest place on Earth! And that has never been repaid to us in cosmic debt. Nope. Oh, I forgot a detail about Magic Kingdom, the place that murdered my soul.

You know the name of the person who runs Magic Kingdom? No. It's Jason Kirk. What? Wow. Yeah, I have to find this man and defeat him. Oh, yeah. He's got to go.

He's your mirror link. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I'll defeat him by jumping and holding the sword down. He'll never see that coming. You mentioned, by the way, you mentioned... A customer with a sword has entered the park. It's Disney. They sell swords.

It's the master sword. I'm allowed to have it. It's a lightsaber. I know the story you're about to tell, don't do it. No, I'm going to do it. I don't think you know the story. I'm about to tell. Oh, I thought you were going to tell the story about Disney jail.

No, no. You were saying you used to go up behind kids at Disney and say, happy his place on her. No, no, not to the kids. say this to each other whenever we would see like parents crying okay well because one time i had a bystander passed me at the atlanta zoo you've definitely told this story but please yeah i don't remember this one yeah and i had i had my i had my my kid the one who destroyed all patients in my life um wait which one is that uh the elder oh okay um you know after it's a fair question you make it sound like he's a sunken god

he and then the elder appeared listen he's he's yeah he's a lot he's a lot and at that time we had because he was really small we had one of those like seriously had him on a leash that was exactly what we needed to do we've wanted one of those for you for years no one's blaming you for putting one on an actual child and I had him on the leash and this dude like just this like little sullen looking dude in a Manchester United shirt looks up at me leading my kid to the zoo and says I don't know that just looks so demeaning and before and I heard demeaning and at the minute the G finished I looked at him and with no particular plan in mind fixed my eyes on him and just said bitch no like no like nothing no warning I didn't know what I I was doing and the guy just looked so shook he just kept walking and honestly I was like shook too because I was like

I don't know what I was going to do you've had a lot of conflict at the zoo I need to stay away speaking of conflict and revenge this is maybe my favorite one and it's from Heather

on Twitter at HC 1059 went to Cancun on spring break my then boyfriend threw a barstool through a window then ran away leaving me

to get arrested for vandalism alone spent two days in Mexican prison waiting for bail which I spent planning my revenge

now this was kind of dramatic because that's just the first tweet so for a minute there was a cliffhanger like I sort of thought because she did not follow up on it maybe she was still engaged in this like years long plan of revenge

and we were going to get a tweet in three years that was like so the operation is concluded the operation is complete he's now in a box armless and legless in my basement

forever I make him watch things he doesn't like on the television because he can't walk away. So, she did reply. And in the second tweet, continued, y'all got to make a vacation disaster part two, but it involved damaging his new F-150, Texas Edition,

and minor credit card fraud. Nice. Seems light, honestly. Yeah, he got off easy. You messed up as Texas Edition F-150, though. Merciful is what I should say, not like. I think, no, that is. that is merciful because

I think you get damaged if that's the case if you leave me in Mexican prison alone for two days for something I did yeah yeah it's just bad it's amazing it's amazing that guy

I just know she was probably in there right and the guards were like so what's up she told them they're like man you got to leave him that's fucked up yeah so you're better You're better than that. You deserve better than that, Heather. So here's what you do.

Thank you, Pablo. Can I hit you with a, I think this is a dad combo. Oh, it's a dad and uncle combo, just to continue the uncle theme. From Scott Go Blue 314 on Twitter, summer 2000. Hiking in Maine.

Mom slips and hurts her ankle. Dad tries to carry her slips. Shatters. her ankle and we have to wait hours for him to run down this mountain to get help she still has the plates and screws in long recovery leads directly to divorce a year later this is the um cliff wife meme the cursed no this is how cliff wife should have gone this is the yeah the uh the uh pg 13 rated cliff wife uh so let's continue the theme of men being very good at uh relationship and particularly on vacation from Patrick Burnett on Twitter, Burnett with a why, please.

When I was seven years old, I came down with chickenpox on day two of vacation with extended family. Turns out uncle never had it as a kid, so he got it. He was so miserable to be around on drive home from South Carolina to New Hampshire. His girlfriend broke up with him. Wow. That's it. Like, I kind of feel like this might have been. been not even a tipping point like like you were like 99% dumped already because she knows this is a one-time thing you can literally can only get chickenpox once that's the entire like that's the arc of it that's what launched this whole story to begin with have you ever do were any of you ever on a vacation as a child with somebody like a family member or a family friend or

something and their partner in the middle of like the disintegration phase of the relationship because I have been stuck in a canoe with with a woman who's a good friend of our family and her boyfriend at the time his name was skip and while they basically just there's your problem while they basically just sniped and fought with each other for like an hour and I have such crystal clear memories of being like seven years old and being like oh no oh no this is bad and i'm in a boat with them i can't go anywhere skip can i skip just take the loss can i add one story to the pile of an uncle who saves the day yes oh the redeemer uncle yes this one comes from reddit user gigger of them i appreciate this construction who says

He calls this story Texas-sized toothache. While we were still in college and before we got married, I went down the Texas coast with my wife's family. The day before, I noticed some tooth discomfort, but I wasn't about to cancel a vacation for a sore tooth. We get there and the pain is still present, but the alcohol helps. As the day goes on, more drinking ensues and the pain starts to catch up. I don't want to be a bother, so I subdue it with more drinking. I also try just letting a shot of bourbon sit on my sore tooth, but that just makes my gums and cheek raw with no tooth relief.

I picked this one special for all of our dentistry fraud enthusiasts on this show. The next morning, I wake up a little hungover and half my face is swollen. At this point, I can't even breathe through my mouth without my tooth hurting, and I can feel my heartbeat in my mouth. So apparently that's suboptimal. so I reluctantly ask for help. Luckily, my wife's uncle is a doctor. So I get her mom to call her brother and inform him of the situation.

He prescribes me some pain meds and an antibiotic because he suspects it's an infection. It helps me get through the day and ride back home the next day. I go to the dentist on Monday and find out it's an infection in the root of my tooth. They can extract the tooth or I can get a root canal. However, he said he didn't know any root canal. now specialist that would operate on a tooth that far gone, so I opt to rip it out. He tells me that they probably could have saved the tooth had I come in sooner. This is kind of a sad story, but I really loved the coda.

Still have a missing tooth. I never got an implant. I like it because it's a nice little spot for my straws. That's a nice hack. Gigum indeed. I was going to say, man, that is lemonade from lemons right there, by the way. Like all of these stories? Actual lemonade, yeah.

Throw a straw. That's the second most Texan story I've ever heard about home dentistry or home care. The first being a guy whose dad I know, the dad fell off a horse but was alone on his ranch. So he filled up his bathtub with ice, got four bottles of Jack Daniels, and just called himself in with whatever ghastly injuries had happened from this dehorcing. And just said, well, I'm going to sit in this ice bath and drink Jack Daniels until something gets better, it gets worse. de-horsing. I call this my Lazarus pit. Did he go to A&M?

Yes, he did. There should be Lazarus spas in Texas. I know we've already done horse spas, but... Does Texas A&M have a med school? Because if not, their amateur med school would be incredible. I like to call him a lazy-ass pit. I feel like at A&M, they're probably still the kind of people who get their doctoring done at the blacksmith.

Yeah. Yeah. I think also the pattern of noticing these vacation stories is the one I notice in any group stories where people are put in extremists or put in situations that they can't quite handle. There's one person who's always going to suggest torture eventually, like down the road in any group that's four or larger. There's one person who's like, you know it'll fix this. Waterboarding. It's a little bit of torture. It's just humanity.

I don't know, man. I just keep seeing a lot of women realizing they married the wrong Kevin. Well, that leads to me to my next person who's ever in. every group, which is there's always looking, there's someone looking to abandon the weak or injured. There's always somebody who's like, I don't know, she's going to have to leave you here. And you're like, this is an Arby's. I just have a hangnail. I don't think we're, I don't, I don't think we can make it. Listen, we'll send back help. Yeah, you'll be fine. Just stay here. There's horsey sauce. You'll be fine. The thing about uncles is that they're all brothers.

And that plays an important role in this story from Andy Pratt on Twitter. This story starts at an Alaskan cruise stop at icy straight point, which sounds safe to start with. The cruise recommended excursions all seemed lame, so the dads decided to make their own excursion. Are your alarm bells going off yet? They should be. After finding a path into the woods, we would just hike to town a few miles away, they said. The path followed some pipes, which eventually ended along with the path. So now we're randomly hiking through the Alaskan wilderness, attempting to find some small town with no map and no sense of direction. Hours pass, and the concern turns to getting back on the cruise.

We hike to a spot with some altitude to get our bearings, and we find a road. The problem is we are at the top of a cliff, and the road is below us. Luckily, or so we think, and they should not have, there happens to be a thick rope tied off nearby, offering our path down. Oh, that is a trap. Have you never been trained to spot a trap? What ex-serb are you from? I think people should know that life is not... The real world is not like a Tomb Raider video game

where you're like, ah, a well-placed rope. It's meant for swinging and climbing. That's why the designers put it here in real life, the video game. So my cousin and I, teenage boys, are sent down first with no problem. The dads are coordinating everything from the top, and my mom is next, as a serious gymnast in her youth. younger days, she should have no problem scaling down the cliff face. My brother, younger than 10 and easily bored, alarm bell number five at this point probably, is behind my dad. He pulls a rock out of

the wall behind him, looks at it, then drops it. At first, the rock is falling wide left. It deflects off at first. It deflects off the cliff face straight from my mom, who has no idea what is coming. The rock strikes her on the side of the face and immediately blood is everywhere. Miraculously, she hangs on, dangling 20 feet off the ground halfway down a cliff, suddenly screaming. She slowly makes it to the bottom in shock. And in town, while getting stitched up, my parents are told that the locals don't hike up in those woods, as they are considered haunted and filled with bears. Ghost bears! What are little brothers but uncles that just haven't hatched yet?

Exactly. Also, which it feels like you only need one of those to not hike in a place. Oh, the woods are haunted. Don't go there. Oh, they're full of bears. Oh, they're both. Double up. This, I really like this story because it contains a lot of my favorite. We've talked before about how starting a story with, well, or it turns out on previous disaster episodes is the harbinger of a really, really good disaster. And this story has a couple more. You know, it has a it seemed. It has at first It has easily bored It has Where's the Or so we think That's a great one

At first, no problem There's like three or four Genres of Mail We had our own idea That's when you know things are going wrong You know they suggested this But What do they know

Also good on mom hanging of that rope. Congrats on your grip strength. If Mufasa had had that, we wouldn't have the Lion King movie. See? That was, that, I guarantee you, that was a mother's pure desire to scream at her child later. That was what coursed through her body and said, you will not die today. She's like, I'm going to live through this so I can beat this child to death. Yes, you will not die today because you need to tell your husband what a dipshitty is and your sons what dipshits they are. Oh, if they need to stop being like their father. If that's scarred up, If that's scarred up?

That's it. That's game over for life. You have to live through this day. You lose every argument with your mother from that point on. Hey, Mom, we're planning the wedding, and we'd really like it to be a point at Spar. I don't care what you would like. I would like to not have this scar on my face because you got bored. Actually, there's Spencer is now the time to jump in with, did you want to tell the story of the reader who wrote in and whose mom immediately wrote in behind him to inform us that he's full of shit.

Because this might have been, this might have been my favorite one, and I think that you had claimed it. Yes, let me set that up because it's a two-parter. I have a quick one to share before that, which is related, by the way, to another thing. This morning, getting off an airplane, I was told, everyone, be careful. Step carefully. somebody defecated on their way out of the plane. How can this be a mystery?

How can this be a mystery? I wish we didn't know what state you're in so we could guess. Yeah, because I would have said Ohio. I think we'd get it in under five guesses. I think I agree with Jason. Yeah, I agree with Jason. I'll just tell everyone, it's Louisiana. Las Vegas, like, Nevada would have been a good guess as well.

Nevada is a really good guess right there. Although in Nevada, they wouldn't have told you. I think in Nevada, it's you shit yourself getting back on the plane. Dark, uh, dark horse here, Texas. Oh, I don't know. I just ate too much. Claiming territory. Yep.

That's just a homestead. Yeah. The, the relationship between that, my experience this morning, where by the way, they eventually put towels down. That was their big solution. was to put towels down so you could just walk over the poopy towel. Like it's a body. CSI has to come investigate. Yeah.

Like a passenger on here, I'm sure it was really bad. I hope they're okay. Because that's a terrible moment in life. When you're like, well, time to get off the plane. Oh, no! Like, that's when you're... Yeah, I wonder if that was a reader. Yeah, probably.

If it is, you can go ahead and DM me at 38 Godfrey. I'm telling me everything that happens. Yeah, since we've already established the particulars, there's no need for you to explain what you're doing. Just start telling the story. If you have pictures, don't provide unnecessary context. Don't waste our time. Maybe it was at Ogeron, like, marking territory, right? The, anyway.

How does this possibly relate to the story I was trying to get you to tell? It doesn't. It's a setup for this story, which is from at Coffee Cup. You're a terrible improv partner. Mm-hmm. Did you notice me not saying yes there, either? Yes, and this story's from Cup of Time. Go ahead, Spencer.

The story from him via Twitter. Is the following. It's to the point. shit myself on the Swiss family Robinson tree house which seemed to be one mile in the air I think I was eight or nine years old first time at Disney World

that would have been my last yeah that's now if you'll remember if you'll remember the Swiss family Robinson tree house the the staircases loop over each other

Oh yeah There's all kinds of rope ladders Yeah so I just have this This idea of like an outbreak monkey scene right Where he's at the very top Let's loose and shuts down the entire tree By himself right

And like getting yourself back out Every time you come upon a new challenge You're like oh you got to be kidding me I gotta go upside down Yeah we get see you keep reminding me a disaster is my brother and I also got ourselves like seriously stranded in a Florida hedge maze in the middle of the summer and got heat stroke I'd like to preface all of this by saying before we started recording we were discussing what stories we were going to share

and Holly's standpoint was I don't really have any vacation disasters this is the thing these were not treated as emergencies I guess because this happened so often that we had a really high baseline for what constituted disaster right this is like asking mad max what his vacation disasters are yeah listen man spencer has seen the rope swing behind my parents house that we jump off the cliff that we jump off for fun at it takes a lot we are we are bred to be indestructible idiots spencer was this was there more here like he's not he's not he's not he's not I'm not going to do. I'm going to. I chugged K.O. Peck tape for the rest of the trip. I'm going to do. I'm going to do the last sentence of this horrendous story. Ryan, do the one that I wanted Spencer to do. No, I've got it. No, it's Ryan's now. No. You could have brought that story up during the Disney World segment. All three of you read it in unison. No, Ryan. You almost did. So this is from Jay and later, Ann McGrath. And call me on Twitter. Let's start

with Jay. Got lost and separated from my family getting off Disney's cruise line when I was seven or eight. Never seen my dad more angry when they found me in the ship's arcade room. We had three more days of vacation afterward, but my dad didn't speak to me for the rest of the trip. Now, that's bad enough. That's pretty hilarious to lose your son and then find him in the video game arcade. It's also, also like, if I'm being real honest, how was that not one of the first four places you like? Yeah, seriously, dad. That's bad detective work. But, anyway, it turns out he may not have been there at all. So, mom responds. This is Anne's response. And to be clear, this is our reader's mother coming in and tweeting right behind him that that's

not what happened. She says, I don't remember it like that. You were with another family, not in the arcade room. Yes, your dad was very mad, but I took your side. I didn't know the not speaking part. I'm having PTSD, just thinking about it. Look what you did to your mother. Look what you did First of all You were with another family It contains multitudes potentially There's a lot

There's a lot I think yeah I gotta say I side with Anne Yeah team Ann Also Anne if you Or really any reader's mother If you ever want to come on the show And just tell us what shitheads your children are

We'll believe you get on here I think we only got one disaster based around a mom which I would like to at least throw in just for the sake of some bounds the almost all disasters vacation or otherwise are dad or uncle or brother based but this one is from Hey I'm Adam on Reddit my mother always had a deep fear of leaving something on

during vacations one summer we made it four hours away from home before she was convinced she left the oven on not leaving anyone else with access to the house she convinced my unwilling father to turn around and head back 20 miles from the house we had a blowout we got home just before sunset to find an oven that was off and a father's will that was broken i still have not been to disney world god the coda but according to jason you should feel blessed yeah this sounds better than the magic kingdom I have a really short one that I want to throw in here from the delightfully named Rich Homi Don on Twitter. He included a photo of the van in question because Twitter is an audio medium and podcast is a visual medium, but just believe me that it lives up to it.

It kind of looks like the brave little toaster. Dad tried to take our 2003 Chevy Astro conversion ran offroading on a beach to get to a lighthouse, only accessible. from the beach. He let the air out of the tires for traction. Oh, my God. Somebody was watching a lot of NASCAR. And we made it surprisingly far, but that just made it more difficult for the tow truck to get to us later. Oh, my God.

Oh, my God. You know, that's an example of being just competent enough to get yourself in trouble. This is the perfect place for that Patrick Ewing meme from last basketball. season that. Have you ever tried that shot before? Have you ever shot that shot before? I did something really cool that only made things worse. I'm so stupid. I feel like this is where I usually run into trouble.

Can I offer one that I think is football related? Please. Oh, please. From Aubrey Neely, whose handle is underscore silver breeches. Oh, this is the guy. Wait, is this the silver britches who was, a railroad hobo on a trespassies. This is the train hopped the train to the cocktail party

and had the worst time of his life. Oh, the cocktail party. Which city is that in? Jacksonville. Well, buddy, we're going back to Jacksonville, all right? Aubrey, bless you. Friend cracked his head on a palm tree planner in Jacksonville. Happens. Was convinced

he could stop the bleeding by taking a cold shower. Sure. Only after I touched his skull with my finger, did he agree to the ER. Spencer, you're a dentist, which is like being a doctor. Is that true? Totally true. Skull's just a brain tooth. Listen, I think I think this. Okay. Let me stay in Florida from Twitter user Aaron Radin. This was a conversation between three different Twitter users. So

Aaron was in the middle of telling us, a buddy of mine got a saltwater catfish tossed at him by his father and it lodged into his forearm by the venomous barbs spent a good chunk of his beach vacation in a hospital then a second user chimes in and says the same thing happened to my younger brother in panama city on a youth retreat a friend threw a catfish at him and it got stuck in his chest this is florida hawkeye so in comes a third twitter user saying i was enjoying an evening stroll on the beach with my wife's family and somehow ended up kicking a dead catfish on the beach that lodged itself into my foot my wife's sister's boyfriend had to tug it out and it didn't take one try now we're back to Aaron who says yeah they couldn't pull it out by

hand so the youth pastor had to cut the barb with wire cutters so he didn't have to ride to the ER with a dead catfish stuck to his chest. If you got pulled over, the cops would be like, we've seen this before. Catfish, nature spike strip. This is a television

show catfish that I would watch. Yeah, that's true. Fuck, what a disaster. Yeah, I have one from user at Jack Byram. It's more of a visual to put in your head, a scenario, if you will. I think this is a video game.

Somebody needs to sell it. Give me the elevator. Give me the elevator bitch for Home Alone 5, Spencer. It's a contemporary story about the surveilled home. Parents check the live feed on our house on their iPhones to check on the pets, only to discover the house besieged by several recos. I have so many questions. I have none.

I have none. Where are the pets? One, did they just go, well, I guess it's theirs now. The pets just went native. Like, yeah, we're part of this clan now. We work for you now. Two, after a couple of hours of horror, you just start watching for entertainment. Like, well, look, they got into the cheeses.

Honey, look, they're really crafty. Yeah, look. Man, look, they turned the TV on. I think I think they're watching Fixer Upper They're paying our bills Leave them be Like I'm just recording and posting at that point right Like raccoons had friends over awesome

Met of the neighbors over Dave Trader How dare you