So... Alright - Pets and Baths

Episode Date: February 3, 2026

Geoff investigates the global bathing rate, while also diving into animal fronted bands. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Last time I recorded, I promised that I would be diving into Japanese horror films. It's a huge genre, and it would be too much to tackle. But I did say I was going to look into the first Japanese horror film out of curiosity. I wanted to see what the very first horror film was. I started to do a little bit of research on that, and man, they got away from me pretty quickly. That's a lot going on there. And then I also said I was going to look into the Japanese hippie movement, if there was such a thing.

And I'm happy to report there is, and once again, a little overwhelmed with the amount of data available to me. I will say that the whole idea of that came from that Japanese film house

that I watched, the 1977 Japanese experimental horror film house. I said it, it reminded me it felt like it had the, like a hippie aesthetic to it, maybe.

Maybe not a hippie movie, but definitely had hippie vibes. And then when I was looking up the history of the hippie movement in Japan, which, by the way, fascinating and we will get into in a future episode. There was a list of classic hippie movies from Japan and sure enough that one was on there. So I guess we nailed that influence pretty succinctly. Regardless, Japanese hippie

movement, much like the history of Japanese horror is a whole can of worms. It's a lot, a lot to read into. I don't want to half ass it. I want to do it justice. So I will spend some more time working on that in the background. But what I do want to talk about today. A couple things, actually. I take a bath this morning. I don't ever, I don't know about you. Do you take baths? I'm a shower guy. I feel like most people are shower people. Take a shower every morning of my life. Sometimes showers at night as well, depending on what I did throughout the day. But very rarely, if ever, do I take a bath? Usually, I take a bath if I'm sick. You know, I'm like, fluy and you just want to be warm and cozy. Or I'm sore as hell, because I'm sore as hell, because I'm not.

because I've fallen off my bike and hurt myself or did some other dumb stunt at work that backfired. I will admit that I'm a little sore today. I got some shoulder issues because I took two falls at work yesterday in the ice. Well, one was in the ice. One was in a trash can. Regardless, I definitely am sore today, but that wasn't the motivation for the bath. I don't know. Anyway, I think I, throughout the course of a regular year, I think I maybe take four or five baths a year. Maybe six baths a year is right. I don't know. It's very, very rare. Like I said, only if I'm sick or sore, you know, and you want to soak in some Epsom salts or whatever. And so it was weird. This morning, I walked by the bathroom, it's next to my office, that has a tub

in it. And I just stopped and I thought, once last time you took a bath in the morning? I don't know. Maybe when I was a child. And so I just did. I just took a fucking bath this morning and I really enjoyed it, got bored pretty quickly. I do like the bath. I definitely find myself enjoying it when I'm in the bathtub, just like scrolling through your phone or whatever for a few minutes. But I find it's harder to clean yourself. You know, it's definitely harder to wash your hair and then rinse, harder to get in all. I don't know, it's much easier to get at your body parts when you're standing up, I guess, and the water's raining down on you. I definitely, I don't think I'll be taking a bath tomorrow morning. But while I was in the bathtub and I was thinking about how rare

it is that I take a bath. My wife, however, she takes baths pretty regularly. I would say she takes maybe a bath a week, usually to relax after a long, difficult day at work or whatever. And I just assumed that almost everybody takes showers, that most people take showers, but I don't know that. So while I was in the bath, I decided to do a little research on baths. This is what I found out. I got a lot of different information from a lot of different quasi-official looking sites. I don't know what to, percentage-wise and stuff, I don't know what to believe over what else, but I'll just read most of what I found. Apparently, showers are significantly more common for daily hygiene than baths. More than 60% of U.S. adults shower daily, as opposed to the

UK, where 76% of people shower daily. Now, I don't know if that means they shower daily. Now, I don't know if that means they shower daily and they don't do anything else or if that's shower versus bath. And a lot of this information is not super clear, you know, unfortunately. I did find a 2019 article from The Independent that had some hard figures in it that it just seemed believable at least. More than half of the population prefer showers to baths with 57% saying they chose a shower compared to just 32% who chose baths. This comes from a study of 2,000 adults commissioned by Victorian plumbing.

I wonder, I guess, what is Victoria? I guess it's something over in the UK, huh? Let's see. Oh, Victorian plumbing seems like a major bathroom furniture store. So this is according to the study they commissioned, which means these are people in the UK. The average time spent in the bath being almost half an hour or twice as long as the average time in the shower. That makes sense. Most shower users, 41% tend to do so every day, where bathers were most likely to go for a soak on a Sunday. Yeah. Baths seem like a Sunday thing to do. Anyway, I wish there was better data for this. I did find a website that has bathing habits by country for 2026. But this is people who take at least one shower per week. According to this world population review.com. of bathing habits by country in 2026. Brazil is the, I guess, the cleanest country? People who take at least one shower per week in Brazil, 99%. People who take at least one bath per week in Brazil, 6%. Average

showers per week, 14. Average baths per week, five. Interesting. They don't have that information for everybody, but the top, I'll go all the way down to the UK. Okay, we're going to go with this information, and we'll just disregard everything I said before this. If I didn't say anything before this, it's because I already cut it because this is better information. The UK, 83.4% people take at least one shower per week. About 33% of the people take a bath a week. The average showers per week in the UK are six, average baths four. United States, 90 and 13, average showers per week seven, average baths per week three. That feels about right to me. Take a shower every day. Then it goes Germany, Italy, Spain, and then France, 97.3% of the French take a shower, at least one shower a week.

12% take a bath. They don't break down how many showers or baths per week. So Brazil is the big cleanliness winter. With 14 showers and 5 baths per week, Brazilians are in the water 19 times in a seven-day period. That is a clean, clean group of people. Let's see what the largest percentage is for people who take a bath per week. It's Russia. Okay. According to this, 50% of Russians take at least one bath a week. I wonder if it's just because it's so fucking cold there. You got to warm up. Average showers per week is definitely the highest with Brazil. Average baths per week. Oh, according to this, India takes on average seven bats per week and reports zero showered information. Well, there you have it. I guess.

I think I'm going to go back to showers. I found them to be much more efficient and enjoyable, and I feel like I get cleaner in a shower than a bath for sure. Regardless, that's probably enough time in this podcast devoted to bathing. Let's go on to the next thing, which was actually a recommendation from somebody in my community. And I wrote down their name. Oh, yeah, here it is.

C-Rob 47 asked if I could look into bands with animal singers, of which I knew a little bit already because there was a band called K-9us that was a like a heavy metal band with a pit bull singer that would be on the Howard Stern Show from time to time. And so I decided to do some investigating and holy hell, there's a lot more going on in the animal-fronted band scene than I realized. For instance, have you ever heard of the band Hate Beak? Yeah, hate beak. It's a death metal band featuring Waldo who is a gray Parrot known to be the first avian vocalist to feature in a band. Hate Beak.

Probably a play on the hardcore band Hate Breed, very popular Victory Records Band, or least they were. I don't know if they're still on Victory. I don't know. Victory is and was a very popular band, so I can only assume that hate beak is a clever play on that. I have not heard Hate Beak, but I will. I will listen to them.

K-9is I'm familiar with. As I said, it's Pit Bulls as lead singers and a grindcore band. I think the dog's names are Budgie and Basil. They're the lead singers. But there is... There's another band called... Cat Terra, which is a New York City street cat

named Rup Shakir who released a song called Hunger of the Beast. I haven't heard Cattera, but I need to listen to that. And then this one probably made me laugh at the most. Pug-Topsie, a metal band featuring a... pug named Puppcake

lovebackin. Pug-Topsie might be the funniest fucking name I've heard this year. Granted, and we're only about 25 days into the year, but I think it's going to be hard to beat Pug Topsie for a while. Let's look up Hate Beak.

Hate Beak is an American death metal band formed by Blake Harrison and Mark Sloan featuring Waldo, a gray parrot. Hate Beak is reported to be the first band to have an avian vocalist. They never tour, so as not to distress Waldo. That's good. are on reptilian records. That seems appropriate. Their catalog, the catalog is awesome.

They had, here's their discography. They had five albums. Or maybe they still do have five albums. I don't know if they're still together or not. Oh, the drummer died in 2024. Oh, that's so sad. Oh, well, maybe they are, maybe they are no longer active then. Beak of putrification, bird seeds of vengeance. That was a split with caninous in 2005. The thing that should not beek, from 2007 with a band called bird flesh. I wonder if they're an animal band too. The number of the beak from 2015 and then birdhouse by the cemetery.

Jesus Christ. That's really funny. They have a song called Molt Thrower. Bird seeds of vengeance. Hellbent for feathers. Oh my God. That's really great. How about canines?

What are they up to these days? Oh. one of the dogs died in 2011 and so they ended. That's really sad. Actually, both of the dogs have since passed, but that makes sense. This band was from like the early 2000s. And I didn't realize it, but in 2008, Richard Christie of the Howard Stern Show played drums on a number of their songs. Interesting. They had three albums.

The Now the Animals Have a Voice album, the split with hate beak, and a split with cattle decapitation. Good Lord. The names. Did you know that State. The Staples Professional can tailor a custom program to make running your business easy. With a Staples Professional account, you get one vendor, one delivery, and one invoice for all your must-haves. From tech to cleaning supplies and dedicated support from Staples experts who guide you on everything, from product selection and ordering to payment.

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Drive design, deliver, make it sing. AI builds the deck so you can build that thing. Learn more at adobe.com slash do that with acrobat. All right, let's look up Kattera and Pugtopsie so we know more about them. Cat Terra. Oh man, you guys got to look these album covers and stuff up. It's really funny.

From what I can tell, Katara has released one album, Hunger of the Beast. So the lead singer Rup Shakir is a rescue kitten from the mean streets in New York City. Anna Mirzglaki of Fearless Records said, I knew he had star power the minute he walked into the apartment.

I heard his emotional meows and knew he needed to be the leader of a feline metal band. Okay. All proceeds from the band go to help the shelter responsible for rescuing the cat. That's really cool. All right. And the last ban is Pug Topsie. Oh, Christ.

Pug Topsie apparently has been a ban since 2013. As I said earlier, led by the Pug Pupcake. They donate portions of their money to neuterhead, Ace of Spays, a non-profit animal rescue organization, spays, and neuters stray animals to prevent overpopulation. All right, from what I can tell,

Pug Topsie has two albums, Milkbone of the Christ from 2013, and Snorts of Sorrow, a single from 2017. But that's not all. There are more. There is a band called Insect Grindr, it's a Russian Experimental Grindcore project that captures the sounds of a swarm of crickets

trapped in a jar. There's a band called Borglu, which I think was a band that did, I think they did one of the splits with one of the previous bands I mentioned. As pets of former death drummer, Richard Christie, Richard Christie was the drummer of death, but he's also obviously Richard Christie from the Howard Stern

show. His guinea pigs, Tico, Taco, and Sugar. I knew he had guinea pigs. I didn't know that he turned them into a real band. Borglu sound like brutal death metal being played at the smelliest corner of the pet store. Borglu is also a name for guinea pig semen. Disgusting. Which guinea pigs excrete in such massive amounts, even grosser, that their owners regularly need to brush it out of their fur. Okay. All right. Well, that's close to making me throw up. That's fucking heinous. It seems like as gross of a place as any to leave off on animal-fronted bands. It seems like it's mostly used in.

in niche heavy metal and death metal and grindcore scenes. I didn't see any like, you know, what is the carpenters of animal-fronted bands? You know, that wasn't there. There was no, like, where's the Beatles but fronted by Beatles, you know? I guess maybe it just doesn't lend itself to more accessible music genres. Speaking of music genres, my song of the episode today was going to be a song by the band

the California punk band, I think they're a Bay Area band, Tilt. Really great band from the 90s. They came on my playlist today randomly, and I got to thinking about them, and I decided to make them my song of the episode. But I was trying to remember where I first heard him. And then I realized,

I think I first heard him on a compilation from Fat Records called Fat Music for Fat People. And as I was remembering that, I got to thinking about the importance of that comp in my world and in my scene. It came out in 1994. It was the first compilation for fat records. I think that they had started... Fat Mike from No Effects founded this label, and I think that he had started putting out some No Effects 7 inches, but it wasn't until, I don't know, 91 or 92 that they started signing bands like Lagwagon and no use for a name and strung out,

and then actually releasing their music along with some No Effects stuff as well. No FX was signed to epitaph records, I assume they still are. So most of their music went, went out via epitaph, but they did some singles like the longest line on fat records as well. Anyway, once they became a full label and they had a full complement of bands from TIL to Propagandie to Rancid to, et cetera, et cetera, they put out a compilation in 1994 called Fat Music for Fat People, and they charged $4 for it. This was unheard of. This is back when CDs cost $11 to $13. I was 19 years old in 1994. This is pretty accessible internet.

This is a time when if you wanted to find music, you had to hear it on the radio. And if you wanted to hear punk or avant-garde music or indie music, you had to find it on college radio. If that wasn't available to you, you had to take a chance on an album at the record store or borrow an album from somebody in your community or order through the mail via a punk zine,

or however you were able to do it. I used to order seven inches and CDs out of the back of maximum rock and roll and punk planet and profane existence and slug and lettuce and all these punk zines that I read religiously growing up that were such a lifeline to somebody who lived in an area that was so fucking far from the punk world that I might as well have been on the moon, you know. So for a label to put out a compilation and only charged $4 for it was pretty unheard of. It was a brilliant move.

And everybody I knew owned a legitimate copy of fat music for fat people. You wouldn't even need to copy it or steal it because it was so cheap, everyone could afford it. And what it did was it opened up a world of music to so many fucking people that had $4. Some really, really wonderful music. And as I was looking through the track list of that compilation, that got me thinking, I can't just pick tilt. There's so many songs on this comp I love. Let me just do the album. So the song of the episode today is the album, Fat Music for Fat People, Volume 1.

The track list is as such. There are 14 songs. First song, Propagandhi Anti-Manifesto. If you are not familiar with Propagandi, Fat Records put out their first album, How to Clean Everything. this song is such a great punk anthem. You will love it. There are two lagwagon songs on this album. Know It All and Mr. Coffee,

both fantastic pop punk songs. Strung out in Harms Way is a great song. Guns and Wankers is okay. No use for name Feeding the Fire was my backup choice for song of the episode until I decided just to do the whole album. There's a bracket song on there.

There's the aforementioned tilt song, Weave and Unravel, which is just such a fun, dark song to sing along to. The lead singer, a woman named Cinder Block, she just has this gravelly voice that just sucks you in, and it's so melodic but gravely at the same time. You just get hooked immediately. Face to face, a band that I'm not a fan of. I got to be honest with you. I never got into face to face. I never liked them. They were huge, huge band did incredibly well for themselves, but I just couldn't ever, it has never clicked with me. Good riddance is on there with a song

called United Sagar that's pretty good. One of my favorite bands of all time and one of my favorite songs of all time I discovered through this compilation, 88 Fingers Louis and the song Blink, which was, it's a top 10 most important song in my life for personal reasons, but I really, really love that song and that time in my life. And I am honestly forever indebted to this comp for bringing 88 Fingers Louis into my life. I've talked about them a few times. I talked about meeting the lead singer Dennis at one point at Victory Records and the things I learned from that interaction. But past mistakes by 88 Fingers Louis and Blink are two of the most honest songs I've ever heard in my entire life. And you can feel the emotion in the pain and the truth in those

lyrics when they're sung. And it just like, it just gets me in my core, even to this day when I listen to him. Was also a rancid song on here called Just a Feeling, very good song. Propaganda had a second song. Homophobes are just pissed because they can't get laid. Great song. And then the final song on the comp was No Effects, Kill All the White Man. Four dollars. It was the best money you could spend as a music fan in 1994. And I really appreciated that they did that. And I think a lot of the success of that label, outside of signing really good and talented bands, was practices like this that didn't gouge the customer, but instead gave them,

rewarded them for taking a chance. $4 is nothing to take a flyer on. And then for it to be such a great album full of so many great bands that I didn't know it at the time were going to be bands that would matter to me for the rest of my life. You know, propaganda, lagwagon,

88 Fingers Louis are bands I still consume and enjoy in 2026. And I still feel positively about most of those other bands as well. I don't actively listen to them anymore. But regardless, it was a really great way to introduce great music to people for a really cost-effective price.

And so for that reason, fat music for fat people released over 30 years ago now, which is crazy to me to think about, is going to be our album of the episode. I probably should have picked one of those animal-fronted bands, but I, you know, This is something I want you to listen to and enjoy and listen to over and over again.

And I think that maybe that wouldn't be the case with K-9is. So maybe one or two or more of those bands will connect with you. Maybe not. It is straight punk and pop punk from an era. So if you don't like that scene, you may not like any of this stuff. But you also might be surprised. It definitely captures a moment in time when the world looked and felt and sounded like exactly like that album. Thanks for listening. I'll see you here next week for another episode of So All Right.

Love you dearly. All right. This is the end of the show.