The Adventure Zone - The Adventure Zone: Dadlands 3: FAMLEE Business

Episode Date: October 26, 2023

Live from the Balboa Theater in San Diego, Game Mom Brennan Lee Mulligan returns for the third installment of DADLANDS! The Dads discover they are not alone in the universe: there are also . . . ants? Addition music in this episode: "Checks for Free", "Whadafunk", and "Dirt Road Traveller" by Jason Shaw: https://audionautix.com/; and "Spaceship Ambiance" by Alexander Nakarada: https://soundcloud.com/serpentsoundstudios. Happy MaxFunDrive! Right now is the best time to start a membership to support your favorite shows. Learn more and join at https://maximumfun.org/jointaz

Envision a world where rocky desert monoliths of ancient stone swelter under the scorching sun. In times long ago, fables and legends once existed of others, rumored in myth alone, the fanciful playing of creatures known as children warm loving embrace of the mott hers this age of ruin we know ants

without further ado behold the wrath of the dead land hell you previously on the daddlance our wonderful dads have been adventuring the dadlands for some time we've done two of these

prior what a wonderful thing that bits become stories and then stories become worlds and things that were supposed to be dumb and silly, you instead love with your whole heart. How about that? Aw. If the answer to this is yes,

please clap. Who in this... Now, you've given Travis a lot of power. Yeah, he's not fucking Jeb Bush. Calm down. Yeah. Who in this room knows absolutely nothing about Dadlands?

That... That is... That's fucking... Killing. Okay. A lot of you, huh? From up here and you're in the darkness

felt like the entire room, if I'm being honest. But that's okay. I'm sure Dad doesn't remember anything about it. No, do not. Not a single word. I had to write my character's name

on this band. The Clint McElroy's story. To catch everybody up to speed, The Dadlands is a post-apocalyptic dad-based role-playing game created by the McElroy's as part of a... Max Fun Drive, yeah. Part of Max Fun Drive. They envisioned a world where there are only dads somehow and said, this is going to be fun and funny and not existentially chilling. And credit to our friends at Together Studios, they really help to make it into an actual game.

So thank you. And also, it should be noted at this point, Brennan has put statistically as much thought into the game as we have. So you've basically also created that. If not more. Yeah, really. Thank. For those that don't know to catch you up, this is a token-based system in which each dad has a fanny pack. filled

each fanny pack has tokens red and blue representing chaos and order or law respectively the two elemental

forces that dads are in this world composed of and in order to achieve certain results you need to pull a certain

number of tokens declaring what kind of elemental force you want to use also in the last session we introduced

a cornhole mechanic and learned we're all pretty bad at cornhole. And hey, now I'm thinking about it, I don't think any of us even took one practice throw on it during sound check. I remember the last time I threw a beanbag at a cornhole board. It was the last time we did this show. The cornhole will only be called for in extremely dire circumstances.

And it is up to the dads themselves to determine the distance from the cornhole. they'll be throwing from. The farther away they stand, the greater the effect on a success. The three levels are labeled. You'll get them next time, champ, is the nearest. The next one is... That's my boy. That's my boy.

And then the greatest one, the one of the highest possible success, is, I love you, son. Yeah. The rarest. And that echoes with my children. before we introduce the dads themselves, we'll be cutting back sort of to the moment we left off last episode. You all remember.

All you gotta know to catch up is dads live in the dadlands, post-apocalyptic wasteland of dad tribes devoted to different aspects of dadness. In our first adventure, we went and got the clicker from the lumberlands with the craft dads, defeated them.

A barbecue spirit named Chokie overtook them in Inferno and the dads were victorious. We burn their shit down. Yeah, we burned that entire town. In the last one, the science dad talked to you about continuity obliterating recurrent neutrinos, C-O-R-Ns, and the cornholes that they create in space and time.

And you had to go into hard-ass country. Real quick, just show a hands. Who thinks that Brennan is making a bunch of shit up on the spot right now. That's good. I like that. I'm not making it up right now. I made it up on the drive here.

We also, at the end of the last episode, dealing with these hypothetical particles, these neutrinos, were contacted by none other than Captain Mary Amalfia of the Ursa Major, mothership of the meritorious alliance

of maternal astrospace. From here to maternity. Without further ado, in the moment where you are surrounded by light, deep in this gulch of sandstone where the hard-ass scientists have concocted this terrible cornhole device, let's go down and everyone introduce your dad. Start over here with Justin. Hi, everybody. My name is Chip Hugginsby, and I'm a bit of a Disney nut.

I believe, even though it has fallen out of fashion, that Disney was real. I'm coach Fred Ruffinsaw. I'm a sports dad, and I am the only one that keeps aflame, the torch of athletic endeavors, the thrill of victory, and the agony of the feet. And I'm Guy Ferrari. I'm a car dad who at the end of the last episode touched the chaos. I stared into the void, and the void stared back, and now I live my life one quarter of a mile at a time.

I'm Brickett Hoggins, the former proprietor of Waco Wasteland's Premier Rib Joint, Hoggins is Sloppy Dog on Hogspot. Oh, wait, y'all haven't heard this show before. It's Hoggins' Sloppy Dogon Hogspot, and until it was stolen from me in a shady bet by none other than Walton Goggins. and so my en way still just kind of was not addressed in the last episode and it's just still kind of rocking. That's what keeps them coming back, those dangling plot threads.

That's it. I know my boy Walton Goggins showing up in this one. Come on out, Walton. Don't talk about your shit, though. Oh, Walton Goggins. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I got it now. We're good.

We got it. My mustache just went in my mouth. Oh, yeah, one of the other essential Dadlands plot point is that Griffin's spirit comes a mustache on every time and then we get to thrill as it falls off. And the more you last, the faster it falls off. Griffin simply cannot em out. So the better the show, the faster the stash.

In fact, part of the reason I'm suffering for such a terrible onward, is that it makes me not have to make expressions with my face very much. I do enjoy that we don't even have a very visually compelling show to begin with, and you three have gone full Unabomber here, just absolutely fucking police sketching it up. Removing the slight bits of individuality you have. Now you're just three brimmed perverts. Wait a minute. But not you?

I don't have sunglasses. Oh, okay. These are tinted, not sunglasses. Yeah, and these are prescription, Justin. Do you want it to not be able to see? Weave, Weaver. Wait a minute. Let me...

Oh, my God, we're about to... Thank you. I'll take mine on. Oh, that's good. Good pop reveal. Oh, geez, look at all these people. The bits are simply unrivaled. Um...

Light. Surrounding you. the red sandstone of the deserts of the dadlands fades from view. You feel law and chaos coursing through your body, a desire to impose order on a chaotic life, world, existence. And another impulse, perhaps equally as strong, sometimes more, sometimes less, saying, Let's do some dumb stuff.

The essence of dadness. The stone fades and suddenly I'm in around channel, channel, we have this signal coming in now. Three, two, one. Beautiful chrome, polished, stainless steel. A wide viewing mirror. The mirror flickers

showing a panel of glass beyond which uniformed officers of the Ursa Major behold you in the teleportation chamber. You have been beamed aboard the ship. A science officer leans forward and says, commence Fabrizing. I fucking knew this day would come. Brickette, your thick, smoky musk,

the natural mesquite of your arreasing. is covered with something that lives in a canister labeled Teddy Bear Picnic Glade. In this moment, you feel cool mist surrounding you as you are freezed. It's like a sprayable air freshener. An airlock opens up. That's fucking crazy. You just watched four human minds completely freeze. How would that even work? You see that an airlock swivels

and in a full sort of hazmat suit one of these beings, not a dad, but something else. Like a tall dad? Sometimes, but no. A dad with a feeling of some kind of, there's an energy that's similar here, but everything here is clean

and high tech and put together. I got it. Guys, it's aliens. All right, I've been ready for this day, actually, for a long time. Here we go. Let me try some. Wait, are you going to do something, or? No, I'm just, I'm opening myself up to the experience, you know,

whatever they have planned. Here we go is more of a meditational, you know what I mean? Right on, actually. I just want to be present in the moment. Here, I got an idea. Meep, mop, moop, Mop moot. Somewhere all the city's octogenarians are like,

my people need me. Beyond the bay, you see a science officer looking at a screen and a little thing blips, dated movie reference. And you see, you see this, Brennan.

This is a terrible weapon you've created. You see, you see the maternal. scientist goes, dated movie reference. It's dads. We got them. It's real dads. The woman walking into the chamber with you in the hazmat suit looks over and says, air freshener, perhaps, but in truth, the febreze, it only suppress the stains. Are you a vampire? Great question. Alien vampires didn't see that one coming. First of all, I am a human. mother, I am science officer Magda Karkova.

Second of all, if anyone hear an exoform, it is you. Me? All of you. You're sweeping the aliens the whole time? Man, it's all about perspective, isn't it? Oh, you really just fried my being there. Thank you. Woo!

Where are the aliens? Everybody's an alien to somebody. Woo! Well, that actually is sort of true, you know? It's a relative. But no, you abducted us, so I do believe in this instance, you all are the aliens. Very well. She takes a sort of little scanner out.

Oh, God, it's a probe. Oh, my God, Dad. I pull out a laser thermometer just in response. Like, she... I've got a tire pressure gauge. I've got a battery charging cable. This is not probe, it's scanner. What tools you've been?

Are these weapons you threaten me with primitive weapons? I mean, if you're fighting a battle against low tire pressure, absolutely. It's a thermometer, and also you have a low-grade fever. So you might want to get that checked out. See, she puts the back of her hand to the hazmat suit and goes, later. I do this later. This is just a little thing here where you put a ball. You put your balls in this.

For those of you get home, it's not what you think. Or is it? She passes over you with the scanner. Is that a stud finder? Nice. I need, so we cut to a black title card that says 20 minutes later, and the laughter begins to die down at that point. You see, yeah.

We cut to all of you at a massive, sleek, white, obular sort of conference table where you see also in hazmat suits the other members of the bridge crew, the sort of leaders of the starship, have come and sat opposite you and are kind of waiting for this pun

fever to die down. Sort of fingers on the table. I sit in the captain's chair, but it's way too far forward. At the console, I have to scoot it back. Travis. As they walk in, you see Captain Mary Amalthy looks at you and says,

Mr. Ferrari. That's my chair. Oh, yeah. Thank you. My God. All right. Dad's. Yeah? Mm-hmm.

Your presence on this mothership. It's our present. No. No. We're very honored and pleased to meet you. This is one of the most important scientific findings. of our civilization. It's a zoo.

It's a zoo. I told you it was a zoo. I was thinking zoo. All right. I'm open to it. The Ursa Major has been searching for years for a cluster of these continuity obliterating recurrent neutrinos, powerful enough to have us contact and prove correct a theory that some of our most brilliant scientists generations ago.

and here you see all of the moms stop as the word generations doesn't make sense in their head because they're also from a world of all moms. So what is generations? What is that even mean? Yeah, sure. Let me stop you. I think I can explain to you what's going on here.

You are briefly turned into a hologram and slapped into the wall. We are looking for a theoretical particle that could help us reunite what we have come to term fractured astramaterial, liminal elemental energy. I wish I could spell that fast.

Femers. I got Fulmy. Family. No. No. Okay, you're right. Do it again. For miles.

We believe that the cataclysmic event, which fractured our universe, originated in the Dadlands, which explains why your civilization is... So cool? You know, lots of spiky cars, and it seems... They're kick-ass, yeah. Yeah, it's really awesome.

There's sort of, yeah, there's sort of a dystopian... Yeah, yeah, man. Have you seen the world's biggest pile of beer cans? That's us, too. We didn't know. Great. You don't need to fill that space up. You just need a bed, maybe a chair, and we got the TV.

That's all you really need in there. Stereo, yeah. We made all the animals go away, too. You abducted the wrong people, my friend. Mary, you just got to push through. You just got to push through. Don't address the bit. If you don't address it, you just push through.

There is a theoretical particle that could potentially reunite this fractured space and time. Here you see a hollow. hologram projection hovers in the middle of the table. Is that LED? The holograms? Yeah, is it LED? No, and I don't understand how it could be. Okay.

Did you want me to know that you knew what an LED was? Do you know what an LED is, Travis? It doesn't seem like it. Yeah. It's lead. It's lead. I thought we all smelling things. out. Sorry.

Listen, any possible acronyms are, I'm sure, incidental. Fractured astro-material, limited, and energy is what, you know, you did it fucking fast again. You got to slow down when you say it. Is it famal? Flame? Is it flame? F-A-M-L-E. Factimilar.

It is family. Okay, I got, I got you. You see that the hologram moves through space. she says our instruments have been able to pick up locations beyond the alliances space in other dimensions. Neither are home worlds

nor the dadlands. We believe that the particle needed to reunite this liminal elemental energy may exist in some of these other spaces. Yeah. As exoforms, I'll thank you a part. You, I'm gonna, the science talk seems to be upsetting slash arousing.

We're loving. It's like, it's like agitating, it's that sort of agitating you guys. Sorry, well, there's this, there's this dude who we had in the last couple episodes of this. It was just a real wild character, and he did science stuff, but he also accidentally, like, burned a bunch of birds and lizards. You'd like him. You'd love him. He's great. He's great, man.

Maybe you should have abducted him. Or did we kill him? Is it too late to abduct him too? No, we didn't kill him. Would you want us to abduct another dad from your homeworld? I mean, I do not know that you got the most representative cross-section assembled here. I will say, though, in all fairness, if we abduct him, it's just going to be Brandon talking to him. She says, look, I would be happy to, if there's a dad from your home world that is a capable scientist that's always useful.

but science is not what we need help with. We do all right. No, you're right. What is the issue is that... You need me to drive? Travis? I mean, the man drove here from Los Angeles. I'm going to need you to pull four chaos tokens.

This is such a big swing at the very first... Let's see. All right. I got three. You got three chaos, one law. Okay, so that's a failure. Oh. Does that mean he gets rid of the law that he pull?

Or I think you can get rid of whichever one you want. You can choose the one to get rid of. Oh, okay, I got you. You see that science officer Magda says, I think you'll find that the driving is all handled. By the way, I come from a world of all mothers, but if you ask any insurance company in a hypothetical world with both

who they prefer behind the wheel of a car you're going to find that really fast, okay? Okay. I guess just sort of quick follow-up, what is insur-a-s? Every mother on the starship goes like face palms at the same time. You see that she says,

your composition from the irradiated, hellish world you call home, means that you have the biological capacity to survive these extra-dimensional spaces. With our technology and research and your freakish constitutions, we believe we may be able to make contact with some of these locations, a black hole at the center of the galaxy, beyond which neither light

nor perhaps even time itself can escape, orbiting it just beyond the event horizon, a partially destroyed space station. Debris floating in orbit. The space station is known as Antioch, and that black hole is the evuncularity. Okay. Oh, shit.

Did that actually get you, they got you? That's really good. That's pretty good. Yeah. From the man who told us not to do puns. Yeah, that was good. Just beyond this star, the last star before the evoncularity known as Prime Zero, we believe that a location may exist past the avoncularity known as, well, we call it Ever, Everland.

Okay. That's a wild. Sorry, no, that's a wild name. You've been so science-based with all your other shit. And then here in the ninth inning, you come at it with a really wild swing. You see that another one of the officers speaks up and says, it's purely theoretical. It's not discovered yet. There's no evidence of it. It's just something that a lot of us back home,

Think must be real past the singularity there. Oh. Well, now I'm the asshole. If you would be willing to accept this mission, we... Okay. Now, hold on. Wait, now, wait a minute. Let's find out the stakes.

Oh, sorry. We have... I open up my chest cavity microwave warmer station and I pull out a couple steaks. Did you... No. Well, now they're fucking compromised because they've been out of my cooler

for more than five seconds. What am I going to? Now I just have two stay. We have retrofitted one of our escape nooks for you to be able to pilot it in the direction. Are you okay?

No, he'll be all right. Come on. You can't actually, Brendan, you've got to be careful. You can't do jokes while he's. breathing. You see that they open a door right in the room

to sort of what would look like normally like an escape pod, but you see it's a sort of arched bay window with a built-in seat, floral patterned seat, lovely little throw cushions, a small table.

Every mother of the bridge crew goes, ah, I love a nook. Here, here. kind of, this kind of reminds me of a cranny. Sorry, that's stuff that we... All right. I just have one question.

I've always wanted to ask this to somebody, but it never felt appropriate. Have you seen my damn keys? You see that the pilot speaks up and says, why would any of us have seen your damn, what the fuck? You know what? It's, uh... It's always the last place you look, isn't it? Because you stop looking after you find it.

You see, Chip, the pilot tosses the keys to you. It's thought against my chest and then I bend over and pick him up. Incredible. So. Indeed. You see the escape nook before you. Captain Amalthea looks and says, The Nook will be able to bring you through this dangerous astrospace.

We'll be in constant communication and we'll be able to provide any reconnaissance intelligence resources that we can remotely. But once feet are on the ground, we're going to rely on you to help us try and find out if this theory is true and there's a particle somewhere within this dangerous astrospace that could help us reunite the A-A-M-L-E. facsimile Unite the facsimile Okay, before we go I just have one question Oh God Oh boy

Are we gonna have dinner here tonight Or do you want me to pick something up While we're out The pilot says Why would we pay you pick something up Why did I say that? It was reflexive Yes

Yes, get something on your way We'll text you, just text us When you're headed back Okay great Piling into the escape nook, the doors closed behind you. Chip, you got the keys in your hand. Let's, what? Can I say something hot rod?

You've been firing quite a bit tonight. You've been on a real hot streak. I'm not sure I want to toss the keys your way. But I drive. I make really good time, though. I can do the West Virginia and Orlando. Really quick. All right.

You know what? Yeah, go for it. I'll toss the keys over to Guy Ferrari. He's a car dad. This is his way. That sounds like a tough task to me, Brennan. That really sounds like a challenge. This is not a car.

We're all saying a lot of shit right now. No, I'm talking about the tossing part. No, no, no, I know that. But if a Formula One racer went to NASA, they wouldn't be like, all right, get on up there, man. Show us what you can do, drive guy. I've heard it's easier to train a Formula One racer to become an astronaut. I'll say, Chip, you toss the keys over.

But I think, yeah, you know what? I think this is going to be potentially very challenging. You're in this new space. I mean, this is a chaos action, right? The law action would be handing them to them like a normal human being. But not only do anything. this is chaos. I think there's a potential for this to have grave impact

on the adventure. No, come on. I'm going to need to see a corner of them. Yeah. I'm going to see a corner of them. All right. How many bags there, Captain? I'm going to say it's going to be one bag because it's one set of keys. All right. Don't

shoot the moon here, man. Don't kill the lily. You'll get them next time, champ. Does that be a difficulty? That's, that's correct. That sounds good to me. Unless you want to see if there's a better result, you could potentially get. For throwing the key, you throw them cool. Yeah, I can think of 1,000 bad versions and just the one normal.

Justin's moving bad. Here we go, baby. Here we go, baby. Okay, I move back to, that's my boy. Here we go. Wait, he's got a... What? He's got to focus.

It sucks. I know, man. Sucks. It sucks, man, yeah. I believe in you. Here we go. Way off. Wow.

Way, way, way, way, way too far. That was a little north of the board. If you're listening later, that was, I threw it over the board. He was just too strong. Yeah. Chip, as you go to throw the keys, fuck. The fob becomes entangled on one of,

of many VIP fast-pass entrance badges. Magic bands. Magic bands. Flying forward, it careens past Guy Ferrari, lands in the console at the end of the escape nook, and the nook rockets off into space, spinning wildly, gyroscoping. I need everybody here to give me a pull.

Two order tokens. I only have two order tokens. Oh, sorry, give me one, one order token. You do two. You do two, give me two. Nope. We're looking for blue tokens, correct? I got one.

Hey, I got one of my two. You got one of your two, okay, partial, partial. Okay, chaos, or, okay, got order right here. We got law and then go out, okay, law here, awesome. So, for briquette and coach, as this vehicle goes careening, you see a guy and Chip goes spinning ass over tea kettle throughout the nook. Cozies, doilies, so many slip covers flying in all directions. What do you do to gain control of the escape nook?

Jeez. You got to throw me. Okay. Do you just say you have to throw me? Yeah, yeah. I don't know. I was thinking like a Wolverine Colossus sort of situation. Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. Fastball special. Are we zero gravity right now? You are not zero gravity right now. So you are like closed in a washing machine going around and around and around. But you do see far at the distance of the nook, there is a button saying grab drive. So if you hit that, if you got to Fastball Special there. Oh, wait a minute.

Wait just one minute. I'm going to throw my little buddy in the direction of that thing with which you had mentioned. The button. The button. Coach Red Ruff and Soar, you get deep in your quads and glutes. A real athlete never skips leg day. No. It's all about that core strength, and you hurl your Grilledad compatriot through the air across the nook.

Brickett, as you see that grab drive button coming up, what do you do? I'm going to hit it with my hand or it? You hit the grab drive, and suddenly, you are floating in air. A console at the end of the nook beeps, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. As you approach dangerous liminal astrospace. In this moment, anyone who wants to can attempt to make an order pull to orient the nook in the direction of where you want to go. But that begs the question, where are you trying to go? You know that there's a singularity.

You know, there's a space station orbiting it, which is the last place life was seen. Yeah. But you also know that beyond that singularity is where it is said that there will be a potential for even more. From what little I do know about singularities is that it's sort of a one-way situation, famously. So maybe we could go to the thing before we are consumed by the darkness

forever. Yeah, it seems reasonable. Yeah. Just if we're routing it out, I know this ain't our specialty, but it seems like we save the thing that consumes us forever for last. But it's on the way.

Yeah. I don't want to make two trips. That's a good point. Yeah. Because we'd have to come back. Yeah. And there'd be traffic. Yeah.

And we're not exactly sure the directions. We think we know. Yeah. Um, yeah, let's go for it. The space station. Hmm? The air station.

That's space station. All right. Someone give me a pull for a law token to orient the nook towards Antioch. Could not be worse for this. Please, no, I won't. Please be blue.

No, fuck. It's not me. Guy, as you try to approach Antioch, you gotta make a call here. Pulling chaos tokens, I'll give you the choice between veering wildly off course or coming in too hot. Oh, I'm coming in too high. Wasn't really a choice. You hear, this is Captain Miriam Alia. We're clocking at high altitude or approach to Ant.

tiles, ping, pang, ping, peeling off a beautiful ceramic tile of a little illustrated rooster flies flies off the nook. Captain Amalia goes, no! Antioch approaches rings and rings

of a partially destroyed space station. What could have destroyed it? Boom, boom! Crash! The lights in the nook go out as you pierce the hull of the space station. The nook destroyed. Critical system failure on the breakfast nook.

As the doors... I can fix that. As the doors open, you see dim flickering of backup emergency lights that have been draining limited battery power for years or maybe decades.

At the end of a long hallway, you see a pair of irising steel doors, like an airlock with an emblem of a wine glass on it. What do you do? I walk over to the giant hole we've made in the space station, and I say, that ought to buff ride out. I've got a cousin who could probably fix that up cheap.

It's mostly paint. It's mostly paint, yeah. Don't turn it in for your insurance, because that'll just drive your rate right through the ceiling. Again, this word. Emerging from this place, you look at the door, look

at the sort of wreckage behind you, and you can hear that there are like emergency places that have like sealed off as the vacuum of space. sort of opened by the approach and crash of the ship. As the irising door opens up, you see a hologram flickers into life as a computer-generated image appears. It goes, starlog, whatever dang dang day it is. These are the recordings of Vinola Veritas, the leader of the wine ants.

You see that the AI flickers for a second and regards all of you. He goes, well, this isn't a sight for sore eyes. Who am I beholden? What? Are you? I think it's LED. The only LED around here is someone leading me to a box of Francia. I can say with 100% certainty when you find out about it, Disney, you're going to shit your ass.

I have good news for you. Sorry, this is the second alien abduction we have been party to today. Do you want us to just tell you what we told the other ones? Well, listen, your sailor. I say it, don't spray it, first of all. Don't make him laugh, Brian. That's really goddamn funny. What was it again?

What's that? What was it again? One more time. Me, my name? No, no, no, say it, don't what? Say it, don't spray it. You are so much fun. I hope so.

I'm the leader of the wine moms, or at least. least I ding dang was. I am a freaking hologram now.

I'm an artificial intelligence. I'm just composed from the memories of who I was when I

was when I was alive. Who even knows if my body's in cryosleep or hopefully I'm somewhere

enjoying a nice penel. You don't know if you are alive in cryosleep or dead. Or drunk.

Hey, dead or drunk, I'd rather be dead drunk. That's good. Sorry, I thought our existence was a sort of existentialist nightmare of unparalleled scope, but that's some next level shit right there. You're Schrodinger's cadded yourself. Hey, listen, there's two things I know. Number one, you gotta know how to pair your whites and your red. and number two, something horrible happened here.

I do enjoy Britten's impression of what he thinks wine people say. Don't let them know I've never had a drink in my life. Something about tannins. I mean, do you want us to go check in the fridge for you to see if you're in there? Would that help or hurt? Just rip the Band-Aid off or the mustache. Hey, the only ripping off happening around here is the guy at my local store up charging for Merlin. I think something terrible occurred.

Do you want to just, okay, you want to tell us about the terrible thing that happened or? Well, we were all, there was a plan until we could figure out this ding-dang of vuncularity. Yeah. To put ourselves into cryosleep. But there was a problem with the fuel center of the space station. And we had to choose whether to maintain the Frion energy in the cryosleep chamber or in the chilling station for a really lovely set of whites. Yeah.

And we chose the ding-dang whites. Now, hold on. You know that if you're dead, you can't drink wine, right? Never tell me what I'm capable of. So I don't know what kind of ding dang ants you are, but you better get to step in, Buster, because it seems like you have bodies. Thank you for noticing. Hey, this many glasses in.

You're lucky that I'm a hologram. I'd be pinching those cheeks. And the other ones. What a strange feeling I'm having. So are you saying you're melting somewhere? I'm trying to do you want us to check? on your corpses. Look, we might be

melting somewhere. We were not the only ants that were on the space station. You had like bugs? I'm having a hard time because you are not, you have no thorax or antennae. That we can see. That we can see. And so

if you are some sort of flesh-walking ant creature, that's fine. I just want to check. You see, she takes a big sigh and thinks for a second and goes, the only antennae I care about is when an aunt and I get

a nice glass egregio stoppable of it. She says there were many other ants here and I just hope given all of our experiments that if

something went wrong that nothing got out. Deep in the space station, you hear... And she goes, Beth? I can stop the first half! People say not to judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree. Which is why here on just the zoo of us, we judge them by so much more.

We rate animals out of 10 in the categories of effectiveness, ingenuity, and aesthetics, taking into consideration each animal's true strengths. Like a pigeon's ability to tell a Monet from a Picasso or a polar bear's ability to play. basketball. Guest experts like biologists, ecologists, and more join us to share their unique insight into the animals world. Listen with friends and family of all ages on maximum fun.org or wherever you get podcasts. It's the final week of Co-October. I'm Kira Gowan at Operation Specialist and I'm here with Daniel Barwella, Technology and Data Specialist. To cap off National Co-op Month, we're sharing how worker-owned co-ops can benefit their communities. Read about it

in our newsletter or on social media. MaxFundHQ. We're also trying to do our part. We're volunteering at our local food bank this week and we encourage you to volunteer in your area too. On Friday, we're announcing the donation that you helped raise in the post MaxFund Drive sticker sale, going to five food banks across the U.S. And we want to make sure you know that this is your last chance to get our limited edition co-op launch crew merch. Grab a pin, hat, shirt, or hoodie before they disappear at the end of the month. Details on merch, resources for volunteering, and all things. Co-O-O-O-O-O-T-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-T-O-O-O-T-O-O-T-O-O-P-O-T-O-R. Thank you so much for your support and have a great co-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-W-O-E-R-E-R-E-R-E-R-S-E-E-R-S-E-E-R-S-E-E-L-E-R-S-E-E-L-E-L-E-R-S-E-L-E-L-E-L-E-E-L-E-L-E-L-A.

Climax and see the night of climax. Thank you. Thank you to Gross. Again, thank you to Matt H. Taylor, who did our poster for this show. We bring up here. See, my tiny little, Brennan. Did you see that little you? Oh, my little, Brennan.

About to get squished. Oh, my God, that's me. Let's hear it again for Brennan. And thank you to, thank you to Paul and Amanda and Rachel and Shannon and, and Carol for and Christina.

And Christina for everything. And let's hear it for our dad. We don't know how many more of these we got with him, so. Weave. Weave. I love it. Nobody else that I play with

commands me to do my job. We actually get that feedback a lot when we work with other creative types. It's weird. Coming into like a playful creative space and hearing, do your work, storymaster! Dance, a weaver of tales! Well, who am I to argue? We return.

We return to Antioch, frigid space station orbiting the evolution. the avuncularity, a black hole at the center of liminal astrospace. This frigid space station that our fearless dads have only just discovered aboard Antioch. Our four fearless dads here screeching of a beast deep within the space station. as Vinola, the leader of the wine ants, rendered here as an AI hologram goes, Beth? Oh, you're Beth.

Let me tell you, she's a piece of work. What is a Beth? A Beth? Beth was the lead bioengineer here on Antioch. And let me tell you right now. Beth, she hit the sauce a little too hard. She was a master of the forbidden wines. And here, Brickette, you feel forbidden meats.

Deep within your own grilled dad satchel. Oh, yeah. She did a Pino-Noir, Prosecco. frosé blend, trying to create a kind of bio-exoform hybrid body that would be able to survive, you know, the avuncularity. And, you know, she was stressed, she was tired, and she went mad with power. And that, and that's the fatal combo. Yep. So, if I could ask, where do you all keep your?

flame throwers and whatnot. We don't have any flame throwers to speak of, but we do have one of those little torches that you used to put a little crisp on, like an orange zest. Like a bruley torch.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So we have those. They're itty-bitty, but if you put a bunch together, I don't know. Do you have hairspray? Sweetheart, do I have a hairspray? I'd hope, yeah. I've only heard it in legend, but...

Is it getting closer? Is this sound, the screeching sound? Did it sound free? You begin to hear... Okay, I immediately start rooting through my chest refrigerator. I'm looking for prosciutto. I'm looking for small pickles.

I'm looking for apricots. And this is the snickle fritz. of the meat cavity inside me. This stuff is low, deep in there. Do you feel this would be a chaos or a law check here? I think the many things that I keep inside of my body is a pretty chaotic action. Yeah, let's do it.

Just give me one chaos token. We're looking for a red. We're looking for red. You reach deep pulling out prosciutto, apricot. Now that's a forbidden meat because that's a fruit. Pulling all these forbidden. meats out, you find yourself armed with some of the strangest meats

available to grill dads. Chip, as you search for hairspray here, give me either law or chaos, whatever you think would make sense to find hairspray here. Probably chaos because I don't know where it would be. I'm just sort of randomly

looking. Hell yeah, go ahead and give me, let's get one chaos token. Chaos token. You pull out a scoop Batank with a picture of a woman with the craziest eyeliner you've ever seen and like flock of seagulls Kate Goslin hair on it going like eight different directions and it just says Goslin goo on the side.

And you see that there's a nozzle like a fire extinguisher on the end of this hair spray. I want to try to attach a lighter to the front of it. to try to make a rudimentary flamethrower. Hell, yes. I'm going to say flamethrower here. I'm going to have this. You found the hairspray. So if you have a lighter,

what kind of lighter does Chip have? Do you think you have a lighter on you? She said that they had lighters. Oh, I'm sorry. I have 19 lighters. You need a lighter man? Yeah, that would be great, thank you. I can pull them out of some holsters and do, like,

spin tricks. I'll get one with the, like, the trigger mechanism. on it. Do you want safety or not? Yeah. I got the BIC 950. Can you give me one where the safety's been pulled off? So it's just that fucking hair trigger?

I take out a small gilded box. And I open it up and I hand you just a just a brass, solid brass grill lighter. That looks like I built it myself. I thought these were illegal now. We're in, if this is not international water, my friend. Can I assist? Yes, absolutely.

I have a way for him to stick the lighter on the can of hair. Oh, that's good. Hell yeah. A big... Big league chew. A big, dad just pulled out a big old bucket of big league tube. My mouth is water and just look at it all that beautiful. Yeah, look at that.

That's so much gum, though. Oh, it's just little... Look at that. Look at all that. Oh, that's fun. All right. Smells good. Big League chew, the only gum that comes in a bucket.

So, the team leaps into action. While they're doing that, I want to talk to the captain and say, like, hey, where's, like, the helm? Do you guys have any, like, thrusters or anything? Because we wrecked our nook and, like, ships. You got ships? sir. You see that

Vinola looks at you and says you're looking for ships? I mean, this is a space station. You know, the ships come to us, sweetie. When I'm drinking, I'm not moving. Okay? This space station is like me at a pool party. I find my spot, and that's where

you'll find me. That's where I'm going to be. Yeah. So you hear and you can hear some beast right down the hall at your nook, at your crashed nook. And Vanilla looks at you and says, listen, I don't know where you're going to find other spacecraft,

but I do know who would know if they're still alive. As I said, the wine ants were not the only ants. There are ants that know everything about this space station. You need to find the gossip ants. They know everything, okay? They know everything. You hear a massive six-limbed ants. Longs.

Most ants have six legs. I mean, that's science. You want to talk about science. That's science. Brennan was really surprised when he started working with us to find out that some words sound like other words.

This is something that we've been very fixated. We go wild for it. It's just that Travis has these like delayed action jokes. that it's like, I heard those words, and then a second later I'm like, it's been four days.

Where am I in physical space and time? Brennan, do you know the key to good comedy? This is not a joke that works well on a live. Do you know the key to good comedy? No, Clint. What's the key to good comedy? The meal he is going to make. timing.

Very good. I'm done. Bursting through the door, this massive, uh, again, chitinous, exoskeleton, an aunt scientist that has bioengineered herself into some kind of alien

monstrosity, swiveling serpentine head. Comes down, uh, and goes, let me hope. I approach so, slowly with the charcutory board in front of me like

shh shh shh shh okay lulling this bioengineered beast ant into some kind of

peace or reverie with the presentation of these forbidden meats is a dire gambit we established prosciutto apricot and I believe you said one other type

tiny little pickles tiny little pickles three forbidden meats three throws wow okay we're gonna need quiet why did we not practice for real though

here it goes oh god that's one that was a miss off the board that is a success from the second line which is that's my boy I've never been so competent that's my boy this is from I love you son. I love you son difficulty.

I can go in. I still love you, son. All right. Sunk in. You see, Beth. And with a long tongue, with a smaller fanged mouth at the end of it,

she begins to suck down tiny little, what are they called cabachons? Yeah, sure. Cabochons. Cornish. Cornish. Cornish.

Cornishon. Cornishan. Corishan, thank you. Cabuchon is the Mancala beads, right? Not that. You're the only, what? I thought that was what. If someone else asked you that question,

it would be like, oh, let me ask Brennan. You're the... Okay, so, Beth begins to eat the forbidden meats from your hand. As this happens, what are you going to do? You have Beth momentarily feeding on these forbidden meats. What is the next move here? Cabin. Where are the gossip?

ants. Where would they be if they were still here? You're asking this to Beth? No, I'm asking it to the captain of the wine ants. Okay, vanilla. What is it? Vanola? Vinola. Veritas. Vanola veritas.

You see, Vanola looks to you and says, and says, here's the problem. You cannot find the lair of the gossip ants. But if you go go off to a corner somewhere and start talking some shit,

they will appear. Chip, chip, come here. Yeah, what's going on? Did you notice that they sprayed us with Fibrize? But it was one smell really better than another smell you know what I'm talking about. Maybe they like that smell, but I thought Fibre smelled bad.

What do you think? Oh, you don't know how to talk shit. I don't. Oh. Now you go. Okay. Journey into your imagination, the recent rethame with Eric Idol, is actually a pretty shabby comparison to the original Escapade

featuring Dreamfighter and Figma and all his people. Now, don't even get me started on Bob Chaypeg. That's a whole other cattle fish. Hey, you know who's kind of a real jerk? Beth. Yeah. As you say that, you see Beth. No, no, no, no, no.

No, she looks up. Different Beth, different Beth. Beth is going to charge. No. But you did successfully gossip. So, I'm going to need Guy Ferrari and Chip Hugginsby to each pull the same token. It can be chaos. It can be law.

You each need to pull the same token. Well, the audience is. action is going to give it away. Oh. One, two, three, reveal. No. It was a law and a chaos. They failed.

Law and chaos together. The energy of this gossip, it's, there is a sort of, the insult against Beth breaks the boundary of shit talk to become sort of an actual insult so that now it's just,

juicier to gossip about you. I get that. Beth rears up and bam! I am going to pull, and if I'm going to pull a token, if I pull one chaos token, Guy Ferrari is bruised. If I pull two chaos tokens, Guy Ferrari is injured.

If I pull three, he's fine. I was just trying to follow your life. Can you stand, Brennan? Yep, stand. Brendan, first pull. It never ends with us. We stand, pull. Are you doing them one at a time?

Here we go. First pull is... I can't see. Chaos. It's red chaos. We're bruised. Oh, boy. Ow.

Having trouble differentiating? Blu-blown. One law. Okay. Guy, Beth lunges trying to bite into your neck, shoulder, chest, but you swivel to the side and boom are knocked back across the deck of the room. You see Vinola goes, holy smokes, no one hit the glasses. What do you guys do? Beth is charging and attempting to devour Guy Ferrar. I'm going to do, uh, Red's going to distract it. Red's going to

distract Beth. Just turn your head away from the microphone is all I ask. If you must blow the whistle clamp, please don't do it into the microphone. Red, how, so you want to distract. Beth. Yes. Go ahead. I'm going to say, would you call this law or chaos?

Let me think how many I have in my bag. Law. All right. Sports is law. It's rules. It's regulations.

Give me, if you can pull one law token, Beth will turn her attention to you for better or worse. If you can give me two law tokens

and even more advantageous result will occur. Go ahead and pull. Here we go. Yeah. That's one law token. Let's see if we can go for two. Here we go.

He's going for two. Please. Just pull the thing out. No, wait. What color? What color is it? No wait. That's two law tokens.

Okay, now I'm done. Two law tokens. Blowing the whistle, you hear a reverberating screech, whew, glasses start shattering. You see,

and all it goes, my flutes. Beth recoils with the shrieking piercing of the whistle, and as you all turn around, you see that an auditory frequency

alights in the side of the chamber wall, and zoom, an exhaust chute opens. All of you shoot down the exhaust chute away from the monster, away from Vanola,

and boom, appear in another chamber. As you are moving down the slide, you see certain words registering in ancient computers coming back to life around the space station, and you see something goes,

Chepec, Disney, and suddenly, you appear in a new chamber. An AI begins to boot up a spinning symbol of two masks, one smiling, One weeping. And you hear, hello, it's the Broadway.

Fabulous woman, a fabulous woman with big horn rim glasses, jewelry, bracelets. It's a big, a fun necklace. So fun appears and says, hello, who are these boys here all of a sudden appearing? I should tell you, number one, I'm an artificial intelligence, and I might. be melting in real life. All right. We've been briefed. Yeah.

Number two, we're doing the Hamilton lottery. It's a brand new musical written by one of our very own Lynn Manuel Miranda. TM, TM. You can't fuck, what? Yeah, that's right.

We own his name. We've taken his name. What's your name? I'm Chip Hugginsby. What's that? This is all great. She says, I'm Sue Ellen Star and I cannot wait to show. There's so many great shows.

Hey, wait a minute. Yeah. There were, there's something I recognize here. Is something, are you, have you ever seen cats, phantom? No. Uh, have you, what's your, oh, are you, like, you know, like, you know, like, Libby, can I ask a question? Yeah.

If someone talks to you about Sondheim, are you like, yeah, into the woods or are you like assassins? I do not understand your strange tongue, but I will endeavor to learn its ways. It's all right. Listen. Oh, wait a minute. Are you being hunted by Beth? Okay, that makes sense. Yes, we are being hunted by Beth. All right. Well, I suppose I could try to help you find someone who would know what to do. about Beth that it gets you off of Antioch, but you have to sing me a beautiful song. I can sing you the song of my people. The song of your people?

Yeah. Well, that sounds so touching. Okay. I would love that. And remember we were driving, driving in your car, speeds of fast, felt like I was drunk. That's all the words that Travis knows this song. And your arm fell nice right around my shoulder and I, I had a feeling that I belong. I had a feeling I could be someone, could be someone, could be someone, could be someone.

Travis, I'm going to need you to make a cornhole throw. What I love here, Travis, is that if you miss, you just sang shitty. So, Travis, I'm going to let you in honor of fast car. Yeah, thank you. I am going to let you throw all of those bags, but you cannot pause in between them. You have to throw them as fast as possible. Travis has a fast bag. That goes faster than all the bags.

Okay, here we go. Here we go. One, nope. Two. Nope. Three. Bad. Four.

No. Really bad. Really bad. No. I panicked. That was the worst possible way to have to throw a bunch of beanbags. Yeah. Hey, Brandon?

Yeah. That's the worst way I've ever had to throw some beanbags. Well, that's going to happen. You see that Sue Allen looks at you and says, That was beautiful. What show is that from? Show? Activate laser grid.

Activate it. These are Philistines uncultured exoforms. You mean like MythBusters? It's the only show we've got. Activating a laser grid. You see that alarms are to sound deeper in the station, and you can hear in the distance as you hear steel peeling and crunching as Beth begins to move from one level to the other,

tearing through the walls of the space station to find her prey. I should have done grease lightning. Is the laser grid between us and Beth? The laser grid appears to be blocking your exit, but you hear Beth tearing through the levels above you to come down. Hey, turn that off. Yeah, can you actually turn it off so we can leave? What's that?

Can you turn it off so we can leave? Please. Why would I turn it off? I love these lasers. These are my friends. See how they sparkle. You hear Beth approaching closer and closer. Hear the gnashing of steel.

Wait, is there, do I see, like, what one might refer to as a panel somewhere that maybe I could access the controls of these lasers or hack them? You do. You see that these different holograms are AI computer programs, but there are physical panels that the scientists who are ones here were using.

So you see a big control panel right in front of you. Okay. I'm going to attempt to access the controls of the lasers. Go ahead. If you can pull one law token, you'll be able to control them. You should have a pretty easy job doing that sort of statistically. That's not what it was, bad. It's bad. Now, you've pulled a chaos token. If you can pull another chaos token right now, you won't gain control of the control panel, but something else might happen to you've been. If you draw one more chaos token, I'm pretty sure Travis is going to go hard ass.

Are you, you only have two chaos tokens? How many more chaos tokens do you have in your, yeah, man. Yeah, dog. If that's red, Travis is, okay, sure. It's blue. It's blue. It's blue. So, go you over to the control panel.

As you punch in, you see it goes, password, please. Oh, I got this. Password. It doesn't go through. Okay. Iron sides. No way. Hamilton.

Third attempt. The control panel opens up in front of you. What do you do with access to the controls of the room? As you hear Beth, probably one level above you. I'm going to point those lasers. At the ceiling where she's coming in. Hell yes. Oh, and why I do it and make it do a laser light show

so that the star will like that. You begin to punch in, there's so many different music files in here that you're quickly able to put some music files together that have their own algorithms that can make the lasers go. I'm going to go ahead and say, this is yet again a cornhole roll. Wow.

Here we go. Redemption time, Travis. It's wicked easy, man. Three password attempts, three bags. Good. Starting from the front. Starting from the front. And a little short still on the board.

A little short still on the board. Here we go, baby. Triangulation. You got it. You got it. Put some arch on it, son. It gives him more arch. He's in the right spot.

Stop yelling. You're not on the microphone. He didn't bring the microphone, Travis. Well, not what I said was. Why would I back up? You got it. I'm not going to back up. Shush.

He needs, Travis, you need this. Travis, hush. Shush. Shush. Shush. Shish. Yeah. Who said Kobe?

Whoever. Who said that Kobe? You. You did it. Straight up. What's your name? Rubin? Give it up for Rubin, an American hero.

Now, don't throw gum at Rubin. Here, Rubin. Does this set a terrible precedent for our life shows from moving forward? Here's why it works. Here's why you're a hero. I heard Kobe after it had left my hands. Yeah, that's the perfect time to yoke. It was the perfect timing.

If you had said it any earlier, I would have been mad. But it was the confidence I heard it in your voice. It guided the bag in. Someone saying Kobe doesn't make you better at third. throwing, it makes the world better at knowing you're a winner. Yeah. Right. That's what you did.

That's what you did. You all watch Guy Ferrari leap to the control panel. You've driven cars with complicated interfaces and strange apparatus in the before. You hit a button and all of you hear thundering over speakers that are normally playing only OSTs suddenly... Bum-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-l. Lasers dice through the room. Beth peels open, hit by lasers,

and just as she recoils, the lasers cut a hole in the floor, and you guys, drop another level. You are in a room. Oh. Oh, shit. I didn't see that coming.

I can picture it in my mind. It's like I'm really there. Let him weave. Weave on. All right, you want to be in a fucking antechamber, you fucking goons? You are in yet another command center where a hologram spins into focus. Prongs, a spinning marijuana leaf.

Oh, is it, am I there? Do you see me? I'm, I know how to work this. Welcome to the lair, not a lair, golly. And you see, a woman appears long, long, very flat flaxen hair down past her butt, little, like, string top, bell bottom pants, and just goes, um, this is the room, uh, sorry, room of the hippie ants. Hi, hi.

Hi, hi. We have been assaulted by so many different exotic scents. Since leaving our home, this one is the most enjoyable one yet. As one smoke master to another, I commend you. Yeah, like, if you guys are going to do it, I prefer you do it here. That's so chill. Yeah, that's so cool. Very cool of you.

Well, help yourself. We have some beanbag chairs. We have some... You got beanbag chairs? And you see a moment where two universes align. A theoretical particle manifests in front of you as this corner of Antioch, the realm of the Ant tribes. borders, touches, and unites. And you can see one of their computer screens

lines up as the coordinates of the Dadlands appears. There it is. Beanbagberg. The Beanbagg, Town from the Dadlands. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, Beanbagg. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I have the T-shirt.

My dad's in Beanback, but, wait. I must ask you a question. And it is imperative that you answer me, honestly. Yeah. How do you feel about Frisbe's? How do I feel about Frisbees? The only way I can describe it is through the majesty of dance. And then she just sort of sways.

Hands goes up and she sways. Is that good? A long time passes without us saying anything. All right, cool. So what's the answer? I love Frisbees. I love, well, so this is so, oh my God, I'm such a space cadet, sorry. My name is River Lake Stream, and I'm the, I always hate that they make me say this.

It's like, I'm not the leader of the hippie ants. We don't even really believe in that. Like, it's, we're a flat hierarchy. We make decisions by consensus. And frankly, we don't even really do that. We don't even really make decisions. because even that is sort of like, whoa, relax, you know? I get it.

Yeah, like live your life a quarter mile at a time, you know? I'm in love with all of you. You're my best friend. You're my best friend. Do you guys want this theoretical particle? Yeah. Yeah. I have, like, not even known what to, like, do with it.

We put it in a lava lamp, and it was just sort of there for a while. but I'd love to get rid of it because I'm going on a big trip with my college friends. Dad's chewing gum and it's just like not a bit. It's not going to be... The doors burst wide open. Beth leaps in and is going to attack the computer generating river. I put myself between a no fucking way.

Yeah, same. Same. We form a human wall. I strike a defensive position, too. Okay, anyone that is leaping in the way, does that feel like law or chaos to you? To throw yourself in the way of this oncoming

bio-beast. I think chaos. All right. Give it to me. Just one? Just one pull? I'm going to say, one means you take the full brunt of the attack.

Two means you are able to successfully thwart Beth. one one you leap into the way of Beth Brickette what power do you use to fully stop this barreling

bioengineered monstrosity from destroying the computer generating river I just hold out my refrigerator chest and just fucking open it and then close it on the claws like oh just got you there sorry do me one favor I just want you to draw one more time and see if you draw

another chaos token. You already are succeeding flawlessly, but I just want to see so I have so many fucking chaos tokens now. Let me see. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's see if you do. All right, you're good. Beth Claw goes into the fridge.

As it closes, the door shuts on her hand. You have added a new forbidden meat to your inventory. The rest of you, Beth is in the room. River goes, Hey, hey, hey, man. No fire. violence here.

It has no effect. The rest of you, what do you do? I can't tell if Dad is uncomfortable or if he has a problem. He has a problem. Okay, good. He's got a tiny ball. Red's going to chuck this ball as hard as possible right towards Beth's mouth. Mandible?

Mandible, feels right. Not towards Beth's opening. Well, let's go ahead and stick with mandible. Let's do mandible. Well, you've got a ball. No fucking way. That looks a lot like a mouth to me. Red, let's jump on up.

Y'all, oh yeah, make sure you use the... If you use that racket to throw the ball, you are going to kill someone in the front row. Hey, don't yell me! I get it, kind of. You want... And to be fair, Griffin, this year at San Diego, there's not a lot of more famous people to kill them.

You're right. You're right. So, like... You can do so much work. Here we go. There's no... Hey, anybody want to... I'm going to drop up on, like,

some online sports betting platforms right now. No way. You can... Dad looks like... Dad looks like the last fetish they discovered before they decided to stop looking for... This is it, everybody. This is far as we go.

It's only for one person, and they're like, let them have this. Here we go, Mac. Buckets, just like you taught us. Backyard playing Chicago 21. Come on, Mac. Come on, Matt. This is really low stakes, guys. There's absolutely no reality.

He got it on the bounce. Now I'm done. You know what? No one thought he could do it. I just lost $15,000. You know, people say that figuratively sometimes. Yeah. But no one thought you could do it.

No one believed. The ball sails through the air. Beth whips around. Secondary mouth erupts from her mandibles. And a tiny little novelty basketball. The brave little novelty basket Yeah, personify him, that's good. Enteres.

She swallows it the exomorphic material, another dimension, native to the dadlands. Shimmering light, courses along her veins. Not any... Boom. An ant appears in front of you. Let me just say, it is so shady. Yeah. It is so shady that they gave us the space station and didn't give us those, whatever.

By the way, hi, I'm Beth. I'm the leader. Hi, Ben. I'm the leader. I'm the leader of the gossip ants. And I just want to say thank you so much. Thank you so much. But it is so weird, right?

Yeah. Like, we have this whole space station. We don't have any of those little basketballs. Yeah. And you have to wonder, like, did they set up? us up? Like, is that a setup? Like, what is the sort of the point of that? Like, hey, can I just ask, do you want me to fix it or do you want to just talk about it? Um, she, she, she, she looks at you, smiles at guys' growth and transformation.

She comes over, gives you a little fun kiss on both. She says, guy, if you fix it, we can't have fun talking about how bad it is. Yeah, yeah. So throughout, while she speaks, by the way, Chip is just slowly lowering his flame thrower than he is about to. So like the slower the better, just as long as the conversation continues. She looks at you, she looks at you all and says, listen, like, anytime you guys want to come here, by the way, did Sue Ellen give you a hard time with the Broadway ants?

A little bit. Yeah. Listen, she is always, the only thing she likes more than drum. on the stage is drama off the stage. You know what I'm saying? I like that. Yeah, me too. Hey, I'm never leaving this place.

You see, she says, I know, I know, but you guys have been, I assume, if you have this theoretical particle, then you have what you need. I mean, you're welcome to stay for as long as you want. I can put on some tea, we can kick our feet up. Have you, by the way, speaking of tea, have you heard about, have you heard about the, have you heard about the, the cryosleep thing that happened? Oh yeah, where they, because they have the chill wine.

The wine ants, I know. Decided to, like, do that instead. Who does that? It's pretty messed up, am I right? So messed up. Because you can't get drunk of your den? You see, she uses her bioengineering. She opens up a set of eyes above either temple,

so she doesn't have to constantly look around to see. I know it's so. I hand her a set of side view mirrors. I'm like, there you go. I just keep it with you all the time. Our cultures have to come together. There's so much mutuality here. You have this theoretical particle.

I don't want to keep you guys any longer than I need you. I just want to say from all of us at Antioch, you dads are welcome here anytime. Oh, thank you. It's very nice. So we'll visit like every three years or so? What do you think? You know, around the holidays,

We'll see. We'll have to see. I give you the gift of extending the same courtesy to you because when you come to the Dadlands, you are going to find so many things so bad and gossipable about. A single tier rolls. It is non-stop clown shoes. We made all the animals go away.

A sweet as a sort of dimensional portal opens up in some ant technology. She sees wind-swept planes of just detritus and rubble, endless choking, you know, spike cars and war rigs. Poster just taped up, not in the frame.

I need you to know that the respect I have for you is so great, and the minute you are gone, I am going to light you guys up like a fucking Christmas tree. Fair. That's fair. Roses, mommy.

You get your theoretical particle. It is stored in a big, wide bottom wine glass sealed at the top. You see a river opens up, and you can hear all over Antioch, now that you have cured Beth. You've cured Beth. You hear the noises of cryosleep chambers opening as just slightly melted ants. It's fine.

They'll be fine. They'll keep. Open up as Beth takes the little bathe, coughs up the little basketball and says, I'm going to get working on engineering this, and we're going to find a way to unmelt all these little melty, the melty ants. And you see that a wine ant comes in, put like sort of, you know, like crusted and frost and says, a little melty, the only thing I want to melt is wine gritty. and just goes and she's like

see Beth goes we're gonna we're gonna fix all this just know that just know it looks bad I was a monster things went bad here we're gonna fix it all and she says is there any way

please take the particle but is there any other way we can repay you for your journeying here can have my ball back Or do you need it for your research? You see she goes, let me just ask real quick. And she turns to two other scientists and goes, it's like I just said we need the basketball.

Well, I know. Listen, let me explain something. What happened here about seven minutes ago? Well, I actually bounced the ball in the hole. That is never, ever going to happen. Ever, ever again. It's kind of the best thing it's ever happened in his life. It's the best thing it's ever happened in my life.

So he's going to need to put that in like a clear acrylic case and put it up on the mantle and point at it whenever people come to visit and stuff. So the thing I'm going to use to save our civilization, the priority is going to be putting that on a mantle. It's a very special ball. And it's a very nice mantle. I am a sports dad. I'll FedEx it to you this weekend, okay? Maybe clean it.

I do have a question. So we're trying to figure out. a family particle thing. We got to go into the evuncular. If you got like a ship or you can fix our nook, anything you can do. Oh, you want a ship? Yeah.

You see, River says, I got you covered. You're the best. You're the fucking best. You're the best ever. There's an old VW bus. Go on. It's in, it's in, that was, that was my cuckoo year after college.

Before you got it together. That was before I got it together, which let's be clear, I have. And you see that, she looks and says, it's, it's perfectly arrow sealed. It can survive space. It just needs some kind of rocket mechanism or something, it needs some kind of, it needs some kind of, it needs some kind of propulsion. Something with flames. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Sir, wait, no, wait. Now, hold on. I want to lean in, too, but just making a flamethrower out of hairspray and that jet propulsion system, everybody. I want to lean into the bit, but... Wait, why would we do that? Like, we're on a space station.

We can find rockets and stuff. Why would you think it was a flamethrower made out of hairspray? Because I don't want all of Justin's word to be for now. not. It wasn't. I set it down, remember? And everybody laughed and laughed and we all had a good time.

I know, but I want to see you use it. It was fun, right? No, you didn't need to use. Like, we all had fun. It was, yeah. Remember the Pinewood Derby? Remember when you did the Pinewood Derby? While this is happening, I'm just taking a thruster off the space station and attaching it to the, okay.

You see Beth goes, oh great, yeah, that works too. So just like help yourself to the thrusters, I guess. Those are for everybody. Do y'all need me to go with you or can I kick it here? Because I do think I would be extremely happy. I think we should stick together. Have them start posting on Yelp about Walter Goggins and it's going to put him out of business. Gossip moms, Joe, you got to hear about this total prick.

As you say that, the wine ants, the Broadway ants, the hippie ants, the hippie ants, the gossip ants all look to you. Beth goes, Walter Gaggins? What's Walton? Walton Gagins. I fuck Walter too, though. See, she goes, she says,

Walton Gagons, are we in the cabinet? No, but you're still about to dish. And as she pulls up a screen Galactic criminal Walton Gaggagins. we zoom through the portal

as this council of dads and aunts convenes to the dad fuck this guy yeah convenes we zoom out

back to the dadlands past the great sofa mountains past the great plasma screen over cliffs dune swept the great

frisbee canyon back to a glass tower the science dad in a darkened room looking up at a screen. And you see, he says, sir, there was nothing I could do. The mothership discovered them.

It was before anything. I had no idea that Captain Amalt, you hear, I'm going to need you to be quiet. We look up at the screen, a wisp of smoke. Well, gee whiz, Mr. Goggins. No. If your minion displeases you, I'd be more than happy to find this science dad, turn them inside out and put them on the smoker.

We see steepled fingers and the face of beloved character actor Walton Goggins. Chokey, that won't be necessary of that sloppy doggone hog spot. By all... Today, today. If you say it, if you say it, I have to make it true. You can't spell family without. And that's all for the dadlands. Thank you.

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