The Greatest Generation - Home-Defense Mug (Holiday Party 2025)

Episode Date: December 17, 2025

When the Uxbridge-Shimoda company holds its first annual holiday party, everyone is invited and attendance is not optional. But after sharing a festive cocktail and suggesting attractive new possibilities for Lego, we’ll either bring back punch bowls or play a round of good keg, bad keg. What would constitute a very special episode of Factory Seconds? How does egg nog get weaponized? Where does Bill want to put his AP style book? It’s the episode that goes boldy!Make sure you check out the Yule Log video and subscribe to our YouTube channel.Support the production of The Greatest GenerationGet a thing at podshop.biz!Sign up for our mailing list!The Greatest Generation is produced by Wynde PriddySocial media is managed by Rob Adler and Bill TilleyMusic by Adam Ragusea & Dark MateriaFriends of DeSoto for: Labor | Democracy | JusticeDiscuss the show using the hashtag #GreatestGen and find us on social media:YouTube | Facebook | X | Instagram | TikTok | Mastodon | Bluesky | ThreadsAnd check out these online communities run by FODs: Reddit | USS Hood Discord | Facebook group | Wikia | FriendsOfDeSoto.social Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Here's to the finest crew in Starfleet. Engage. Captain Jean-Luccair of the U.S.S. Centiprise. Welcome to the Uxbridge-Shemota Holiday Party, 2025. I'm Adam Pranika. Thanks for coming. I'm Ben Harrison. and Adam, we're joined by the Uxbridge Shemota team. Team Shemota.

Incredible. Yeah. Woo. Not optional was their attendance. Kind of a lot on the line. I'm kind of hoping that this is going to be one of those holiday parties where I'm super drunk and I don't realize that my boss is right behind me. And my boss are the friends of DeSoto.

Guys, why don't you, I mean, this is a party with a lot of FODs in it. Why don't you just introduce yourselves to make sure that everyone knows who you are? Let's start with our producer. Hey, I'm Wendy. I'm the producer of Greatest Jen and Greatest Trek. Let's move on to the Card Daddy. I'm Bill Tilly. I am known as the Card Daddy far and wide.

Also a helper of social media things and keeper of the mailbox. So please don't send them things they threaten to send back to me. That's not good. And, uh, rounded out with, uh, the editor-in-chief of the greatest newsletter. Hey, I'm Rob Adler, Arbiter of All Things, Nuck. It's true. Is that why you wore that to the holiday party? Eh, you know, one of the reasons.

I feel like your camera's a little high for that, Rob. You need to be a little, you know, save something for later. Ah, okay. Okay. That's, that's deep into the party. After party. Uh-huh. we've been to

workplace holiday parties before right all of us yeah I mean judging from your reaction there Bill like is there something story worthy about a workplace holiday party

well two one good one started early I had a work study job in college and I just started working at a doctor's office had been there for a few weeks

and it was right before Christmas and they're like come to the holiday party and I'm like no and they're like yes And I'm going, okay. Doctors get fucked up. Yeah, well, no, nobody, all adults. I'm a freshman in college.

And they're like, we have door prizes. So put your name on the piece of paper. And I was like, all right, they handed it to me. Well, I won one. And when they called my name almost every official in the room, I could hear him go, who the fuck is that? Oh. And I was like, that's me.

I'll just, who are you? I'm like, I don't know at this point. I don't know. And one other time with my job, my first real corporate job was close to Christmas, had to go to the holiday party. You know, no wife, new girlfriend, so go stag. And the only seat available was with the boss of the department who had known for about an hour and their executives at their table trying to make small talk with someone who does not want to be in this old building trying to serve us food with slanty, that I'm afraid I'm going to fall through. Dang.

Yeah. I mean, that's a danger to the holiday party that I was not expecting to hear, the physical danger. Yeah. What kind of corporation was this that had slanty, fall-thruy floors? Well, it was when I worked for big basket company, but the place they took us was a little town with one of those, they called it the Buxton Inn. And the Buxton clearly had a caretaker of a structural kind for quite some time. I think they just went on the, as long as the floors there were open for business kind of mentality. Were the floors made of wicker?

They were made of what was left of wood and shalack and probably asbestos in the bones of union soldiers. I don't know. I don't know. That'll fuck you up. Yeah, it wasn't great. I'm going to have to ask my cousin Pete famously, the play-by-play announcer for the basketball's Memphis Grizzlies, what it's like working for big basket company. That's what the NBA should be called. Big basket companies

They can't go after you They're gone So trademark open I've never had a corporate job Or I guess I've never had one That I held long enough To get through the holidays And therefore be invited

To a company holiday party Lucky bastard But my wife Had this corporate job Where I like I flew out and it was like I don't know why they planned it this way But they put their company holiday party

On Christmas Eve And then these fucking terrorists break into the building start shooting the place up I'm stuck crawling through the duct work it was crazy making fists with my toes nobody likes my bit

this is what it's like to work at the expert Shimata Corporation silent head shakes I feel like I'm on a team of Adams here now you all know how I felt at my office party. I don't know if I told this story on the show, but like my first job was working for a local grocery store, and the parties were legendary.

Like, when you're a kid at a grocery store, like, that's your first job. And most of the employees of the grocery store were teens like me. So it's like a gymnasium-sized room full of teenagers and then like the eight adults who represent management. And all of us are hammered. And there's a karaoke machine. And I somehow got roped into choosing for karaoke, baby got back at a workplace event. And it killed like Ben's joke a minute ago.

Like that was, that was the feeling in the entire room. You should have done my posseys on Broadway. More Seattle specifics, you know? For sure. Yeah, yeah, that didn't go great for me. I was once in charge of throwing the holiday party and as far as I know, it is still regarded as the best holiday party company's ever had.

Pretty good. What was the secret you think? What's the secret to throw in a great holiday party? Spring for the keg, man. Get the keg. People love seeing a keg. That's all you need. We didn't do a keg for the expert Shemota holiday party.

I mean, none of us are in, only Adam and I are in the same city, and we're not in the same room, obviously. There are very few keg-worthy events in an adult life. You know, like there's wedding, maybe. Wedding is the one. Is that it? Funeral, it feels weird, right?

Look, I'm clearly going to die before all of you. Make sure there's a keg of my funeral, okay? Okay. Please. We got you. Wendy, I'm putting you on this task. I trust you more than anyone. Sour beer, here we go.

I didn't know they made kegs of white cloth. Are you going to play good keg, bad keg? Like, we all know we do. You get your real close friends and go, don't drink out of the keg by the door. You drink out of the keg by Adam's casket. Wait, what's in the keg by the door in this? Bad beer. How many Ohio funerals have you been to, Phil?

You say this like we all know about good keg, bag, keg, at the funeral. You don't play good keg, bad keg at parties? Look, man, you can't be a party legend in college or as a young person on your salary. So you go and you get the one good keg. a keg of bud ice good beer in air quotes and then you go get three kegs of natty light and you pull all the little tops off that have the brand name on them and you take the good one and you throw it on the shit beer everybody's too drunk to know they're not getting shit beer but you keep the good stuff and you tell your friends hey man no behind the curtain by the washing machine that's that's you're drinking premium that is slow down wow and it's great and people love your ass Love it. Legendary. The first beauty of every starbeat officer is a truth, scientific truth, or

an historical truth, or personal truth. Well, we didn't have a keg for this party, but we are having some drinks. And, I mean, maybe we should have done this earlier, but should we talk about what the premise of today's little special episode is? Nah. I think it's going great. We're having a little company holiday party, and all the FOTs are invited. and I think everybody, almost everybody, if not all of us, have brought a little holiday beverage to the proceedings.

It's going great because Rob planned it. Best one ever. I mean, we did have a company holiday party where we got food poisoning one time, right? It was just you and I went out to lunch somewhere and got food poisoning from the restaurant. Yeah, let's do better than that. Is this the lost episode of Factory Seconds? Or is this what started Factory Seconds? You know the factory is not sending anyone home with bugs in their guts.

No. Yet. That would be a very serious, very special episode of Factory Seconds, the one where one or both of us gets sick. Yeah, that would be pretty cool, like, to have it start to happen on Mike. Like, oh, fuck. The dozen raw oysters from Cheesecake Factory may have been a mistake. Wendy, you can edit that one. How about no?

She did it live. That's the show that we pitched to San Francisco Sketchfest this year. It's a mystery to me why they turned us down. Couldn't find any room in the schedule for a little old factory seconds. Yeah, weird. What are you guys drinking? I'll kick us off. One of my favorite holiday beverages I had for the first time in a cocktail bar up in Seattle.

I'd never heard of it before having it But one ingredient in it caught my eye And that's why I ordered it the very first time Allspice dram Allspice being a very holiday associated spice Comes in a bunch of things It tops your eggnog and so forth So what I ordered at this cocktail bar

Was a lion's tail And the ingredients for that Are two ounces of bourbon whiskey Three quarter ounce allspice dram half an ounce fresh lime juice and my tree has exploded with limes. I should mail you bushels of limes, all of you.

Yes, please. I've got giant bowls on my counter full of limes. I need to just mail them to you guys. All right, I'll do that. Half an ounce of fresh lime juice, half a tablespoon simple syrup, two dashes, Angostura bitters, give all those things a shake, pour it into a glass. No ice in this glass.

We're just relying on the chill shake for this. It gives you a nice brown cocktail that is just delicious and like holiday spiced in a way that I relate to this time of year. And really good. Yum. Wendy, what do you got? Okay, I've got the Rum Chata Coconut Snowflake Cocktail here. Yeah.

Credit for this one goes to, I guess, author Genevieve Morrison. So, cheers to Genevieve. But this is Rum Chata, two ounces, with a half an ounce of peppermint shnaps. and a half an ounce of coconut rum and Genevieve recommended powder sugar but I said chocolate sauce instead for the rim coconut rum being Malibu I did have to get Malibu sadly

okay so I was just in the Caribbean there's a long story here do they reverse ID you at the liquor store when you buy Malibu like to make sure you're underage when you buy it was the only one there isn't it so sad how sometimes there's only Malibu and the real kicker about that was I was just in the Caribbean. I bought rum there as I always like to do when I'm

there because I love coconut rum. And I just misremembered my like flight situation back home and I had that domestic transfer where you have to go back through security. And so me and my travel buddy were like in the security line chugging rum before we had to throw it in the trash can because I did not check a bag for that trip. So I lost my Caribbean rum, had to get Malibu, but honestly it's delicious. It's three ingredients I would not have expected to work together, but it's lovely. That is so fucking gangster that you were just chugging it in the airport. How much do you think you took down before you reach the front of the line? Maybe like that too big gulps, nothing too crazy. Okay. So like several shots? We each did several shots. Just a few small shots before you get to the front. I think that's good.

Okay, coconut rum is very shootable. Like, it might be the most shootable liquor, I feel. I think Ben and I have done it on stage at a Washington, D.C. show, thanks to you. Yeah, because I brought you Caribbean rum, yeah. Yeah, that's true, yeah. Yeah, most shootable liquor might be the thing that follows up mug draft in terms of structured competitions that take over our show for some reason. That's on the list for Greatest Gen Drive this year. Perfect.

Ben, what are you drinking? Oh, I'm just drinking an eggnog. I got store-bought eggnog. My wife was very mad at me because she was the one that went to the store and I made her get the glass bottle kind that's organic. This is the Strauss-creamery fancy ass. Hell yeah. With Smith and Cross rum and the Meg of One Nut graded over top of it. That is a gorgeous looking glass you're drinking out of.

What's the viscosity? How would you describe its thickness? It's a thick, boy. It's not as thick as homemade, which can be... Is it like a ropeable thickness? No, I don't think it's quite there. I think homemade can sometimes get there, though. There was a time in my life where I did go to a company's holiday party a few years in a row, and it was this green screen production stage in Midtown Manhattan that they were very nice to me and they let me use their sound stage many times

to shoot music videos for free because I also sometimes brought in corporate clients and shot things for money and they just liked me and let me come to their holiday party and I would make a big ass bowl of eggnog for the holiday party which would have like hundreds and hundreds of people at it and this bowl would just like by the end

you'd just like look down at the bottom of the bowl and be like, there's so many raw eggs and so much booze, but also so many people have dipped a ladle into this that it's just like, this has got to be like new Vairai are developing in the bottom of this bowl right now, and we could be at like the ground zero of the pandemic that takes out humanity. Punch bowls are fun.

We got to bring those back. I agree. Why aren't we drinking out of punch bowls? That's how it goes airborne. You don't want that. All right, okay. Yeah, you weaponize your nog that way, don't you? Yeah, this is as pourable as heavy cream, I would say.

But it's real nice. Not too sweet. That's what I like about the Strauss family cream. They're sweetening it with a soft touch. Nice. Okay, Bill, what you got? So I've always yearned to be a sophisticated drinker, and I've always failed. You can speak normally, Bill.

No, I feel like this is a presentation. So I decided to do what I do best, which is fake it. So I went to our bar cart, and I did it backwards because I'm not so much of a drinker, but I love a good pun. So I have created a drink that I have called the Cocoa Nut Tutti Fruity in honor of the Koonut Kali Fee, which will make you forget everything you have learned before. And inside this gigantic Star Trek tankard, oh, shit. I went and bought some tropic can and refreshers fruit crunch for the base. I then put in a splash of Sprite Zero for bubbles and then loaded it up with, wait for it, Malibu Coconut Rum, and a healthy shot of smoke wagon straight bourbon.

Okay. All right, left turn. It is a lovely shade of Vulcan Desert, which I imagine will probably look the same if it shows up again later in the evening, but so far it's good. How's everything tasting, Bill? Are we enjoying this concoction? It's not too sweet. The bourbon actually took a little bit out of all that sweetness

and just gave it a little bit of taste at the end, a little smoky zing when you take a drink of it. So I like it. It's pretty good. For folks who aren't watching the feed right now, the live feed, what Bill has is a Viking-style enormous silver mug. It looks like a home-defendant. Fence mug.

Emblazoned with James Kurt's visage on one side with McCoy and, I mean, the best drinkers of the 23rd century right there. How much alcohol is in there? And you'll notice that my hand is shaking because this mug weighs about three pounds. It looks like it belongs at the Renaissance Fair a little bit. Did I ever tell you I entered a contest at a bar where you, like, you hold up the giant mug of beer and it's like last person standing, like who can hold it up straight out. from their body. I was not the last person standing, but that looks like the sort of mug and the

amount of weight that would be good for a contest like that. Yeah, it's already painful. I'm not allowed to keep it in a regular mug cabinet. It has to go in the sturdy shelf above the sink. Bill, we do have a way of getting rid of mugs around here. Maybe. I mean, we can get it into one of the rounds, Bill. Just let me know. It could be wrestling rules. When one mug seems to be down and out, they could reach outside the ring and tag that one in? I'd just like going to like your AAA farm team when you're like, nope, you know, we've got

nine, when you guys should have got ten, we better get one more, bring them up. Oh my God, I did not see this coming. Bill Tilley's Star Trek mug is coming down the ramp. This is unprecedented folks. And it's got a steel chair.

Oh no, it's put a ladder up on top of a folding table. at ringside oh what has it got in mind i love it you guys have wrestling nailed love it when you do that rob you got to tell us what you're drinking i mean this is the perfect transition i'm going to tell you what i'm drinking out of first because it's the mug draft 2025 whoa wow it came out great look at that yeah pretty good thing of beauty so you're the person who bought one it's even more mind-blowing to see the mug side of that mug

in person. Pretty nice. Wow. Available at Podshop. Top Biz. Do you ever accidentally reach for the other, like the handle-less side of the mug because the picture of the mug has the handle on that side?

It might happen. It might be catastrophic for my desk setup. We'll see. Depends on how drunk you get, I imagine. Yeah, that's true. It's true. Well, I might get pretty drunk because I made a Swedish mold wine called Glug.

Pretty fun. name. It's mold wine with liquor on top of it. So I used a bottle of Temporeneo, two cinnamon sticks, 12 cloves, 12 carbon seeds, about an eighth cup of sugar, let all that marinate heat it up. You're supposed to, well, you can set it on fire. I opted not to. But I added like four to six shots of Aquavit on top of it. Okay. Pretty good. Did you say four to six? Yes. so you might be grabbing for the wrong handle in a real way wow yeah you definitely consult your lease before lighting your glug on fire FOD is now making bets in the comments for who has the incident at the Uxbridge

Shimoda holiday party why did Rob Adler's Christmas Carol sound like fire engines Cheers. Cheers. Another great year at the Uxbridge, Shimoda, corporate head office, and very glad to have all of you aboard. Unfortunately, we do have to announce some restructuring. I'll just turn my camera off now. You need me to finish mug draft. I'm good for another week.

You seriously do. That's the most. job security that anyone has at the company at this point. Adler taking the stand in front of the HR desk. Hey, buddy. You need me on this wall. Let's add like three more rounds while we're at it. Again, how about no?

No. I mean, FODs are the boss, right? They're right behind you, Ben. Oh, fuck. Have I been talking shit? I can't remember if I've been talking shit. Well, I'm full of holiday cheer. Did everybody order yourself an Enterprise D on Black Friday this year?

Like, what do we got coming up for the holidays? I am not going to get one of those because I think it is ugly. I thought you were, I thought the agreement was we were going to smash two of them. them together. Wasn't that the plan? Oh, I think that's the only possible outcome suitable for a butter ship like that. They shot it from below, which is where the edges are sharp. Like, what are they doing? They should have shot the pictures from the top and put that on the front of the box. You're totally right. And every social media video I see of a person putting this together always shows it from the back, knowing that that's the best angle for the thing. You get up

underneath the front of the saucer, it's just, oh, oh, it's awful. So yeah. I got served an advertisement for a kit that you can buy to add lighting to that Lego set. And I was like, I don't even have the Lego set. Why are you advertising me a lighting kit for it? The lighting kit, we can afford. We should smash those together. Yeah, yeah. It's just, just some like loose LED wires. going, I went to a Lego store in the mall and saw their $1,000 death star. Yeah.

Like the biggest Lego kit of all time, the cutout thing. The cutout one, not the, not the sphere one. Yeah, the cutout one. And it's like, couldn't we get inside the D? Couldn't we do something interesting with the ship? I wonder if there will be subsequent kits coming out with different locations. The D seems ripe for a, okay, if this one sells really well,

I feel like the licensing seems to have been put in place. Like, why not give it the same treatment they gave the Millennium Falcon where it's like a 10,000 piece kit and you can pull off the top of the bridge and see the bridge in there? Ben, they should do a Borg's cube that is like dense with bricks.

Like it's a 10 million brick Lego. And you start in the middle and it's just concentric, squares outward. It's a strangely generalized design with no specific departments controlling any one thing. It's a half ton. Like it weighs as much as a pickup truck. Yeah, I like that.

And like the one thing that you can do is like there's like a secret place where you can push and an aperture opens and a sphere comes out. That'd be great. Yeah, give me that. Hopefully on that 10,000 piece version of the D, they'll actually run spell check on their dedication plaque before they put it out into mass production. Yeah. Oh, no.

Did they misspell something? How do you spell boldly? B-O-W-L. It meant it to be funny. I didn't mean to put you on the spot. Bill, as of this recording, I spent all day yesterday being asked questions like that and failing miserably. I'll just say most people spell it with two L's. Lego did not.

Okay. Unbelievable. Go boldy. Boldy. That's going to be worth something. That's like a misprinted stamp with that upside down airplane. Don't justify this ineptitude in spelling. No, that made my journalism diploma glow beat red when it saw that.

No, that's bad. No. No, Lego, no. What's it like having a diploma? It's just a piece of paper. Expensive piece of paper. Bill, it's a good thing you don't proofread the newsletters because you would be appalled by all of my spelling mistakes that get corrected by everyone else. I actually love that.

It's only me that's hot. It doesn't matter. There's no rules anymore, spelling, grammar. I mean, you know, hollabacks in the dictionary, so I'm fucked. It's just whatever. That scratches my copy editor itch. I love going through there. I know.

I'll put my AP style guide in one of those Dazbot torpedoes and shoot it into the fire pit. It could be the surface of the sun. I'm just shocked to learn that Bill Tilly ain't no hollaback girl. Around here, you hollabot back. you get slapped. They're ready. That's all I'm saying. Watch out.

And if you have any holiday traditions, Star Trek related, I know Adam Pranaga, you've got a number of the hallmark ornaments in your collection. I do. We put up the tree a couple of days ago. My favorite ornament being, for some reason, Commander Riker sitting on a rock while aiming a phaser, like as if he's standing guard but has gotten too tired. So he's just going to set it down a little bit and wait for whatever's coming.

I think that one's great. But he's shooting? Yeah, but that one doesn't light up or do anything. You just put it on a hook and put it on a branch. That one's my favorite. But I've got all those lights and sound, Star Trek ornaments. Yeah, where you pull the bulb out of the string of lights and plug that into it.

That's the idea. But my tree, which we got like 10 years ago, it's not like super new or anything. The lights on it are already. too modern for those old hallmark light and sound ornaments so I can't make them light up or make sound I got dark ornaments on the tree

there's no adapter there's got to be an adapter I think there is but they're very difficult to get and I think they're kind of homebrew from what I've seen I don't know if I want to put that on a tree yeah that's gonna fucking burn your house down so what I've got is like you know those episodes where Enterprise loses

power and it gets real dark and maybe it's just sort of coasting out there that's what I have on my tree I got I've got dark Klingon ships, dark enterprises. And Commander Riker, taking it easy. They shoot it at like a listing angle. To list, yeah. Yeah.

That's what I got. Nothing says the holiday is like dead in the water. Yeah. Yeah, my official mascot for the holidays. What about you, Rob? You got any decorations up? Is this a time of year where you do that? We're slowly amassing our own ornament collection.

up we had the same Star Trek ornaments, the Romulan Bird of Prey ornament that would light up, Kirk sitting in the chair. I feel like it might have been a couple others. But yeah, I don't have any of my own Star Trek ornaments, which I think needs to, it needs to change. Oh, we're going to change that. We got a two foot tall tree on top of a, like a cabinet. So it's limited ornament space, but there's definitely room for a few Trek ornaments. Some friends of mine as a gift, received a tree topper in the form of the dress from midsummer at the very end, like the flowery dress as a tree topper. That's a real mood.

I'd go with my Swedish glug pretty well, I think. It really would. Are you tree people, Bill? Oh, we usually have three. The wife is a super Christmas. So I didn't just marry her. I married three full-sized Christmas trees. Oh, my God.

Welcome to the family. But one of them is mine, and it is bright red. In the very first year we were married, I was told, you have to make a theme tree. And I went, like, those aren't words that should ever be spoken to me, but okay. And so I pulled out a bunch of Star Trek crap, and I shoved it, and I had a Star Trek tree. And her mom in the basement had a Star Trek, like, bed sheet that she had been from the 60s that she'd used on her quilt rag. She pulled it down, made it into a tree skirt, and gave it to me. my gosh. Well, I plugged all this stuff all over the tree, and then for the tree top where I took my Migo Q and stuck him up as the Christ figures. It seemed appropriate. And that was my tree. You got to send that to us. We'll put it on the socials. I want to see this big red tree. Yeah, I think I didn't do it this year. Every year we changed the theme, but I know I have pictures of it somewhere. And then got a Jane Wayne of Picard that was given to me by the amazing Brie Belke over the years. So they sit. And so I like to put them on the main tree and crack open my issue number two of the original.

original TNG's six-issue mini-series from 8788 and read the episode where they meet Santa Claus as an alien. So there isn't that a Star Trek comic book where they meet Santa Claus. It's in the collection you gave me long ago, Bill. Oh, yeah. You gave me all of those. Yeah, I sent a whole set to you and Ben and I think back that like, boy, I thought that shipping was high then, but that would be like a $1,000 box to send now. Yeah, man. The post office would be so up.

upset at them. I've often said, you know, if you guys really want to keep it going into the many years, you can always review the comic book. There's some fucked up stuff in those books. Are those canon, Phil? Canon to me. Probably not, right? Well, no. I think they're now considered legends. Nah, but there was the comic, so you had to watch something between seasons, so what are you going to do? Fair enough. Wendy, what is your, what's your winter holiday tradition? Is there something that you do every year that that makes it feel special and fun? I think my special secret.

A Caribbean vacation? Yeah, sometimes that. But yeah, no, I just really opt out of the whole thing in a way that is wonderful for me. So this is a big lift for you to attend a holiday party? No, I love you guys. I just want to thank you for sending the other side. Yeah, I don't typically travel for the holidays. I don't stress myself out with big meals.

I don't. I really just take it as like downtime. That's great. If anyone ever, this is for the FODs out there, if anyone tries to make you feel guilty about doing that ever, you should tell them to go because the holidays are whatever you want them to be and enjoy them for yourself. Well put.

Yes. I like that a lot. Ben, you have a growing family. I imagine that comes with a lot of fun holiday responsibilities. and events and stuff, what are you doing? Yeah, I mean, so we celebrate Hanukkah at my house, and then my mom and dad still do Christmas for the kiddos. So we'll do Jewish stuff around L.A.,

and then we'll drive up to the Bay Area for a couple of days and do Christmas with my mom and dad. It's definitely interesting as my three-year-old becomes, like, aware of the world around him. He goes to a Jewish preschool, like he's in a, very Jewish context, but he's like, what's up with Santa? Like, when's Christmas? And it's just like so omnipresent already that it's... Christmas marketing is hard to beat. Yeah. And I mean, like, not that anybody's trying to beat it, but it's pierced his awareness in a way that is like

way more noticeable than anything else. But my Hanukkah presents for this year, he's really into Thomas the Tank Engine. And I've been on eBay ordering like vintage Thomas the Tank Engine Brio trains so they're like they're all like four or five dollars each so like I can cover eight nights without like breaking the bank too bad and every night of Hanukkah he will open a new beloved character from his favorite show. Bill I think you're going to love this suggestion. Ben I think one of the things you should get young Jerome who has an enthusiasm for you know trains with faces maybe a copy of maximum overdrive. It's a great call.

A film famous for the things with faces. It's got a semi that delivers toys right in the movie. Yeah, exactly. I'll get it on criterion for him. Kids love it. I love that Ben's plan for distributing these trains is the same as modern-day Amtrak trying to stay alive. That's great. Do you alternate between like rank and bass cartoons and Hanukes?

like a hairy episodes from Saturday Night Live, keep the holidays in balance. Yeah, he can't tell the difference, you know. Perfect. Jamok, Angela, and Tanaga. Well, I know we said no gifts at the holiday party, but I do have to say I got one gift for only one of you attending the party. Wow. Wendy, I got you a gift. What'd you get me?

And I opened it. Okay. That's because I looked high... Like Forrest Gump eating all the chocolates before he gets to Jenae. I looked high and low for this thing. And for a long time, I didn't think it existed. But then I finally found it. This is a cough button.

Wow. And it's a... I plug it in line with the microphone. XLR in, XLR out. You got it. And it's got a super silent button that you can't even hear on the track. So once I get this baby plugged in, you are on Easy Street. I have been an absolute nightmare for three months.

It's really a gift for the Friends of the Soto. I know. By way of me, yeah. So this is for you, but I'm going to keep it and use it. Yep. Hey, did they make a mouse click one of those for me? Yeah, like a camera blimp. You just put your hand in a bubble around the mouse and then you're good.

That would be awesome. Something for that chair. I mean, come on. My chair is dead. My chair died a long time ago, Wendy. Give me a break. It needs to be buried. Well, is there anything more to say?

Well, thanks to the Friends of DeSoto for an awesome year. And also, shout out to Michael Rizzo and Rob. Because last week we published a very funny YouTube video. If you haven't seen it yet, you definitely got to go check it out on the YouTube channel. Yeah, go check it out. I'm going to expect that it is going to be an attendee for many people's holiday events. Just gone on the background, I would like to see pictures of this. Yeah.

If you have them, send them. And then we'll share them on our socials. Ben and Adam at your holiday gathering, not fighting. Yeah. I mean, not too much anyway. It's only been 40 minutes. We're enjoying it just as much as you are, you know. Ben, I wish you had that on in the background.

I guess I could have figured out how to put that up on the poop, too. Yeah, I don't know. The fire's nice. Let's redo the whole thing. Yeah. Okay. Back to one. Well, thanks you guys for being here.

We love you and appreciate you. I'm saying that to both the employees of Uxbridge Shimoda and also the FODs who make our work possible the whole year through. Yeah. I love the work that we do and I love the people that I do it with. So thanks a lot, guys. Thank you. Thanks, Adam. Very, very grateful for this team

and grateful for maximum fun and all of the members of maximum fun. I'm looking forward to making a lot of great comedy in the new year. I'm looking forward to next year's holiday party. I think we should do this again. This was super fun. Happy holidays. Happy holidays. Happy holidays, guys.

Pod bless us, everyone. Daddy says, whenever someone hears a fart joke on a Star Trek podcast, an angel gets its wings. You're going to shoot your eye out. You will not reach Stovul Corps with honor. Ho, ho, ho. Was that the ho-ho-ho-ho-ho-Picada?

The U.S. Make it so. John Ruccaut. Was that the ho-ho-ho of Now I Have a Machine Gun? Which one was that? No, that was the Santa from Christmas story. I got it. I got it.

Yeah. It's what I haven't seen. Oh, my God. What? That's the perfect way to end. That's where we close it. Directed by M. Night Shyamalan. Oh, my God.

Okay, next year's bonus episode. Gene Shepard. Maximum Fun. A worker-owned network of artist-owned shows supported directly by you.