The Morning Stream - TMS 2964: Give A Hootie, Don't Polluti

Episode Date: February 17, 2026

Amy Smoke Wagon Robinson. Cloacal Kissing. The very fine TVsTravis. Dr. Niki: Title Factory. Shaved Greg Maddox. This Is The WORST Gusher Ever!!! Unihole. A Hole In One with Dr Headbutt. A Man Chicken. We all start butt first. Chewing Chud. Dino's did it in the shower. Incoming Sheep Sound. What A Man Chicken Has Downstairs. Chuck Style Bullshit w Amy and more on this episode of The Morning Stream. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If you guys want to compete in the Monobob event in the next Winter Olympics, you best get over to patreon.com slash TMS and support this show today. Coming up on the morning stream, Amy Smokewagon Robinson, Cloakle kissing. The very fine TV's Travis. Dr. Nicky, title factory. Shaved Greg Maddox.

This is the worst gusher ever. Unahole. A hole in one with Dr. Headbutt. A man chicken. We all start butt first. Chewing chud. Dinos did it. in the shower. Incoming sheep sound.

What a man chicken has downstairs. Chuck style bullshit with Amy. And more on this episode of the morning stream. The enormity of their flat brain. The enormity of their stupidity is just overwhelming. You have to do yourself a favor when you're out in the countryside and you see chicken. Try to look a chicken in the eye with great intensity. And the intensity of stupidity.

that is looking back at you. It's just amazing. Once I pooped in my pants in school, and I just left it in all day. And that, to me, was pooping. She's only your girl, because she ain't had a taste of the Duke yet. This is the morning stream.

Hello, everybody, and welcome to TMS. This is the morning stream for Tuesday, February 17th, 2026. I am Scott Johnson and sitting in for Brian Abbott today. We have the very fine TV's Travis. Well, hello. And happy Tuesday. I called you very fine. Sorry about that. Very fine. I don't know what that means. No, this is nice. We usually just get you on the once monthly or so for some trivia from Travis like we did last week, was it? No, it'll be next week. When did we last do it though? When did I... Three weeks ago? My gosh, dude. I know. What is... No, trust me. I know because I have... have a Depticon coming up, which is the wargaming convention that I go to every year.

And it is fastly approaching. And I have one project I'm trying to get done in time that I desperately hope I can. Well, I hope you can too. I hope it all works out. But it's good to have you here. Glad to have you hanging around. We'll talk more about some of Travis's fine work later. And what he'll be doing at Nerdtacular, 2026.

Get your tickets now at frogpans.com. We're doing something a little different, though, this morning. I am bringing in pretty much immediately a friend of the program because there's a long-running question that I've had on the show, despite the fact that I keep bringing up a thing that I don't know anything about. And we're going to see how this goes. So bear with me. I wish I had an intro for this. Maybe I do.

You know what? I'll bet I have a sheep sound or something. Let's see. You got to have something. Yeah. Let me see what I got here. Hold on. Sheep.

I don't have any sheep sounds. Here we go. Okay, here's a file. I don't know what it is. The Army denied having anything to do with those dead sheep in Utah for 14 months. Oh, that's actually kind of perfect. Got a Utah reference and everything. Welcome everybody, Dr. Nicky, to the program.

Hey. Hello. How are you? I'm great. I have video if you need it. Oh, I can definitely get that from you. I'm worried about the dead sheep in Utah, but we'll get to that, I guess. Yeah, I don't know.

I mean, that thing was super old, so maybe they're okay now. I don't know what that was from or where I got it. But let's see if I'm not sure. I don't read it out that quickly though. Well, if I'm anything, I'm fast. And that's not always a good thing. All right. Here comes the, there you go.

There's your video. Let's get Dr. Nicky in here. If you're not familiar with her work, she is an expert at things that I am not, for sure, among many other great attributes. And, oh, look at her with the thumbs up. That was awesome. I love that.

Welcome. Anyway, it's good to have you here. You reached out to me and said, look, if you ever, you bring up cloaca a lot, and you're right, I do. And first, let me give you what I think the definition of a cloaca is. Great, because that was my first question. Why do frogs wear pants? Exactly.

See? Right. There may not be a good answer to that question, but there is a good answer probably to this one. As far as I am aware, let's use a chicken, since I played that Werner-Herzog chicken clip at the top of the show. chickens have like a uni hole where eggs

excrement all things all needs for entrance and exit I don't know about entrance what are we putting up there nothing well we'll get to that we'll get to that maybe there's more too this I thought but there's like that's one of the weird things about

maybe not all birds or maybe all birds but they got this one thing And I always think it's interesting that humans decided in our evolutionary timeline that we were just like, nah, we like having a bunch of ways of doing this stuff. We'll just go ahead and deal with it that way. But there you got a chicken going, you want an egg? I got to take a dump. I got a pee.

Whatever you need. It's all coming out of hole number one. So can you? I mean, that's basically the scientific definition. Look up whole number one and you'll find all you need. But what is the actual number one? Given your animal science experience and everything else, you probably have a better answer than whole number one. Yeah, and I appreciate that the other day you said that I was a cloaca expert, which is now going on my CV.

Yeah, perfect. I was. So, okay, I'll give you the definition, and then we'll talk about what animals you think have a cloaca. So, you know, frogs have a cloaca, hence why they wear pants, but we'll get to that. So it is a multi-purpose opening, as you mentioned. It can also be called a vent, although I don't know if I like that. I don't like that at all. So it's used for reproduction, excretion of pee and poo, and eggs.

Some animals can also use it for scent marking. They have glands. It's basically the rectum, the ureth, and the vagina, if it were human, you'd call it that, together in one opening. A really fun fact is that when animals mate with the cloaca, it's called cloacal kissing. So Brian's not here today, but maybe that's good for his next mystery date. You can try that out. Cloacal kissing. I don't like that at all.

That's horrible. So wait. What gross got out the most? So wait a minute. So if you're a man chicken, your rooster, what do you got downstairs? We got one of these? You have a cloaca and you basically put it on top of the female chicken's cloaca and then you transfer your sperm packet into her cloaca and then later on the baby chicken

comes out of the egg. Now, okay, so I know people think we're just doing this for laughs, but we're really not. This is a science understanding. Do you tell me what a sperm packet is? Is that just like, oh, his, like, they're not making like a little pouch and then shooting that through the... I know, I've never seen it in person, but it's like a, you know, you know, like a gusher. Yeah, like gusher gum.

It's like that. Okay, so you chew into that, and then the middle bit, it's like a, um, you know, It's got that burst of flavor there in the center. Yeah, exactly. I mean, obviously. That gets transferred from cloaca to cloaca. All right, during the kiss that you were mentioned earlier. Mm-hmm.

Okay. Yeah, and I will break down the etymology. So cloaca comes from the Latin of cluo, which is the word for drain or sewer. So I think that's appropriate. Are they having any fun during this process, meaning do chickens enjoy the mating process at all, do you think? You know, I don't think we know. I've had chickens before, and the females can sometimes. get all the feathers like plucked off of their butt because the roosters are a bit too

aggressive. So I'm not sure. I don't know if anyone's measured that though. Well, my experience has been with you and people like you in the in the expertise areas of science that you are in, just about anything is possible. Like I'm learning a lot right now. Do we worry? Why do you, okay, let's say the other day my brother-in-law, he has chickens and he brought

over a container of eggs because they have too many and they're like, hey, do you want some of these fresh eggs? Wonderful. Which is great, right? Fresh eggs. These eggs came out of a chicken's cloaca, which means that eggs are disgusting, right? On the outside. Okay.

So what? But just a good cleaning and you're good. Don't lick a fresh egg if you don't want to. Well, that's my question. But you just crack them open. It doesn't get into the inside. You're good. Okay, but in the olden times,

let's say the year is 1741, and I'm out there going, Mother, I'll be doing the chickens this morning, and she's off, I don't know, beaten a rug with a stick or whatever. So I go to get the chicken eggs. Did I know that back then? Was I just taking an egg?

It doesn't matter. Because you're not eating the shell, right? Oh, that's true, yeah. Either way you're cracking it. I wouldn't, like, drop a raw egg with the shell into a boiling pot of soup or something, but I don't think, I mean, you can sometimes see poop on the other.

side of the egg, so I think it's pretty self-evident. But if any, in case anyone's eating their breakfast, we can maybe, I would like you guys to guess what animals have cloacas. Oh. Or cloaca. All right. So I was already wrong. I was already surprised by the frog one.

I did not know that. Yeah. I'm going to say. I should give you some hints if you know your animal tree of life. Yeah, I'm going to guess like a lot of lizards. I'll say a monitor lizard has a cloaca. Uh-huh. Correct.

Travis, you got one? I mean, we know frogs do, so I'm going to say toads as well then. Yeah, so all amphibians, all reptiles. Birds are reptiles, so also birds. Snakes? And then there's some, yeah, snakes are also reptiles. They have a cloaca. However, it's really far down their body.

Like, it's, you'd be surprised. Most of the middle part of the snake is like thorax, and then the cloaca is really close to the end of the tail. Yeah, and it takes, I had a snake named Norman who would eat his mouse. And then obviously they're famous for that whole, like put a huge mouth over it and then slowly it digest down. They have a really slow metabolism. Yeah, and I would assume that the length is very helpful in that regard because you need the time and the time and the length equals digestion or whatever the math is on that. Yeah, time plus length equals digestion. It's well known.

Squared. And then being rep. So what I'm, so what I under. So if I'm getting anything out of this, amphibians, reptiles, all of them? There's all of them for the most. I mean, you know, there's always exceptions to the rule in biology, but let's say all of them. Also fish, specifically like the cartilaginous fish, so like sharks and the like, they have cloaca. If you think about the tree of life, right?

Like if a bird has it, then probably anything beneath the bird, as in reptiles, amphibians and fish probably also have this trait. So we branched off and developed something different. but embryologically, like when we're a little embryo, we also have a cloaca in the beginning. Oh, oh, really? But there's also some, like, extra lucky animals that decided they evolved not having a cloaca. And then they're like, you know what? No, we want to go back. And we want to convergently evolve a cloeca a second time.

So this is the weird animal. So monotrems, which is like platypus and echidna, of course, because they're weird in every other way. So why not have a cloaca? Sure. Also beavers, which is ironic. And African trues. Oh, what a weird mix. Yeah.

Because you basically described very different things. I thought they would all kind of fit in the same. Well, it makes sense for platypus because they lay eggs. Yeah. Beavers, you know, I didn't look up why they do that. But rodents can be a bit weird, so it's probably something to do with rodents. I always forget that a beaver is a rodent. I always forget that.

They got massive rodent teeth. Well, how come a gerbil then? isn't walking around going look at my cloaca you know what they might i didn't look it up but some some of the some of the rodents have them oh also insects have something it's not exactly a cloaca but it's similar like it's a general like hole um but it is evolved in a different way okay and that means that dinosaurs also have cloacas and so if anyone draws a dinosaur with like balls on the outside that's wrong oh have people i was unaware of any yeah no people have done that There's also a theory that we don't know how really big dinosaurs had sex because they're too heavy.

And so they think that they had to climb into lakes to like float a little bit to do their cloacal kissing. Oh. Why is that funny? Why is it hilarious? There's really good art about it about like a beautiful sunset and a lake and then two like bronosaurus. It's something about also the cloacal kissing just has great alliteration to it. It's just fun to say. All right.

So let me let me ask you if any. Well, we know some mammals do because you just mention them. But it's rare in mammals, right? Like, that's just not a good thing. Yeah, like basically some of the rodents and the weird platypus and friends. How about fish? Like a big old fish. What do they do?

Definitely. Oh, I didn't know that. Red on air shark. Oh, did you already say fish? Red on air shark. We did, I did say some cartilaginous fish like sharks. I think the cartilaginous part threw me off and I forgot everything. Yeah, I figured that was three.

I just wanted to be accurate. A cartelaginous. I'm doing the fish philogony with my. my students right now, so I'm trying to get all the words right in case they're listening. Yeah. So it's good practice for it. So the chances, though, of humans in the next, say, million years, re-evolving Cloaca for convenience or whatever uses we need, that's probably not going to happen, is it?

Well, I'm glad you asked. So because embryologically, we initially start out with cloaca, because a lot of the times in embryology, we kind of start out very similar to what our ancient form was. So, like, fish-like. I mean, you know, when we have like four cells or whatever. But if you have an embryological like abnormality, one in 20,000 humans has basically a cloaca. Whoa. That's a higher rate than I expected.

It's not that high, but it happens. And you can get plastic surgery to reconstruct because it's not very practical when you're not built for that. No, although I'll bet there's some nightclubs that would hire you. in Germany probably in Germany always in Germany okay so that's interesting if we are all at some point in our fetal development cloacal animals listen to me I sound like I know things you do um is that a bit like once in a while someone shows up with a tail or once in a while somebody shows is that that's just like weird genetic information that maybe got into the code we'll start like that and then someone yeah like they had this maybe a malformation genetically early on and it just stayed and it basically the tubes didn't close up but you know we are deuterostomes which means all of us start out with the butt first embryologically oh i didn't know that yeah my students love learning that one we really do we start out with the bum yeah us and starfish oh my gosh when i say us i mean like all vertebrates and well what does a starfish end up with a full they start with the well

they just have kind of like a mouth butt they start and end with their butt that's fantastic yeah i don't think that's like even more than a cloaca because it also has the mouth inside. So there's a true input output. But they like algae, so it's like less of a deal than us. So what I've learned. It's not like the Big Macs coming in there. No, no, no, no, no, exactly. If I've learned anything today, it's two things.

Cloacal kissing is kind of beautiful in its natural way. Yeah. But also that Starfish have a butt mouth. That's also what I've learned. Yeah, and I have three more fun facts for it. Oh, please. Please do. You may have heard about this if you're in the cloaca world that some turtles can kind of breathe out of their butts.

Yeah. When they're mating, they do that weird, but that's not what you're talking about. That's not the same. So some of them, like the ones that live in the water, they can absorb oxygen through their cloaca. So they're kind of like stick their butts out of the water. And they have a lot of blood vessels around there that will absorb oxygen so they can stay underwater longer. Wild. Okay.

It's pretty cool. Me too. I do that. Go ahead. Keep going. Some other reptiles use their coika as a kind of biological. air conditioner. This was discovered recently. So they'll like, didn't you

say Heel Monsters earlier? I might have. Did I? I said, oh no, I said. Or lizard. Yeah, I think I said monitors. Close enough. They're cousins. Heel monsters have been observed protruding their cloaca out and using it to cool themselves down in the desert.

Protuting it out. Yeah. That's a fun thing to say, isn't that? Protein. Yeah. Just basically flipping it inside out. Yeah. It's really hot. it like evaporates a bunch of the heat and then they can cool down human deadlifters do that by accident yeah we don't we're not supposed to do that yeah you don't mind we don't mind an inverted cloaca it's uh it's the other business we don't like all right what else you and then finally um this is if

you're an animal fun fact enthusiast you'll know this one but some ducks have dicks and i say it like that because it's iteration um but it's an extension of their cloaca and it's part of their lymphatic system so if you ever heard about mallard ducks and how they have like corkscrew yeah it's like a corkscrew wiener yeah yeah And a lot of people studied that, but they never studied the female ducks, which have like a maze vagina. And it's for a whole kind of like selective competition thing. But that's also a like modified cloaca. Oh, interesting.

Oh, I was wondering about the maze bit. I understood the court, you know, we got the maze and you got the corkscrew and the corkscrew works through the maze. So is this just an issue of like which duck is better with their weird corkscrew? Yeah. So mallards are really rapy. Oh, man. I met the ductic lady at my last conference. It was awesome. And so they basically, it gives the females, like, choice of which sperm packet they want to accept. And, like, they get to, like,

block off certain areas of the cloaca. So it's actually really cool evolutionary, like, really complicated, overcomplicated evolutionary system. That's amazing. Man, I feel like... The next time you go to the park and you see, like, Mendoza or some random books. Sure. Sure. You can think about their cloaca. Are geese the same? They got the same kind of weird business? Not as complicated as the mallard, but they might have some weird anatomy, I'm sure.

Birds are weird. Birds are actual dick. So that bird's an actual dick. I go for pretty regular walks around a lake and pond in my area, and it's just totally changed how that's going to be. I don't change everything. You're welcome. Yeah.

Thank you. I'm going to the zoo. I'm going to the zoo with some of the little soon, and we're going to spend some time in that iguana. Yeah. think about your philogony and who has a cloaca and who does it well uh so that we never forget these things are there is there something we can send people to where they can find more dr nicky acrimans and her fine work yeah uh first of all i'm going to be at nertacular uh i think i'm going to be doing a science

panel i'm also be doing stuff with d tns but i haven't thought about exactly what yet so i'll be there yep uh and then all my stuff is at nicoacrimans dot com and i'm also at the handle on blue sky and my lab has an Instagram now, which is CVN.com. Oh, very nice. We just pet a baby goat, and there's pictures of that on there. That's great. Forget the science. They don't have cloacas.

By the way, you guys want to see? Check this out. Let me go to Nerdtacular. I got a picture of Dr. Nicky here. Yeah, I'm on there now. She's right there. Look at her holding a goat skull. Yeah.

Do you kill that goat or? The Fish and Wildlife sent me that one. Oh. It's a big horn sheep. Fantastic. It really bookmarks well with Travis's frog hat. Yeah.

And just added to the bottom here, Scott Fletcher and Amy Robinson. Look at Amy. I can't wait. She's a smoke wagon in this picture. Look at this. Holy smokers. Like the hair. Anyway, more at Nerdtacular on frogvance.com.

It is always good having you here, Nikki, and I hope we get to do this again soon. So happy to invite myself on the show. Absolutely. Stay out of trouble. And Chloe Ac is what I always say. Bye now. How do I hang up on you? I don't know how.

Here we go. There we. We've done it. Hey, Travis, so that was fun. It was. I learned a lot for that. You know what? I did not have cloacal kissing on my bingo card when I woke up this morning.

Me neither. We are. Here we are. Talking about one of the most important subjects of the day. Loakle kissing. Thank you again, Dr. Nicky. Let's get into a couple of quick things. I just wanted to give a shout out to Dustin Nickerson,

stand-up comedian I saw over the weekend at Wise Guys in downtown in Salt Lake City. That is a fantastic comedy club if you've never been in there. They have two locations, but in particular, they may have more, but two I know of. But the main one downtown is amazing. They've got three main theaters. Everybody goes there,

like from big comic names down to upstarts, like just walk through their wall and you'll see a picture of anyone who's anyone in comedy. And Dustin Nickerson's, this guy, been following online for a while, very funny guy. And turns out, it was not just a great show. We had a really good time there. The food's always good there and all this stuff.

But he had, he was filming his special there. We didn't know this. But Kim and I got front row seats to a thing that means I'm probably going to have my dumb, ugly face in his special when it hits YouTube. So watch for that, I guess, and then let me know how bad it. I cannot, I can't go, look, I can't see. I don't want to see it.

Someone else sent it to me, screencap it, whatever. I don't want to know. I can't stand seeing myself in public like that. Anyway, it was really good, really fun, and had a great time with my wife over the weekend. Not much else to add, except we just needed some time away, and we did. So we did it. Yeah, no, it makes sense. And it was great.

You know, mentioning the comedy store or whatever it's called reminded me of we have a comedy festival coming up in my town. Oh, nice. Who you got, you got any who's headlining or anything? Let's see. Roy Wood Jr. Sarah Sherman. Shit. You had me at Roy Wood Jr.

dude. Oh, Meg Stattler or Stalter and Sarah Sherman. Sorry. Damn. Yeah, Roy Wood Jr. He's one of the funniest people on this planet. Joe DeVito. Joe DeVito. Is he related to Danny? I don't know.

How many DeVito's are there? Jeez. So, yeah. That's coming up in April. I might have to get myself a ticket for that. Very nice. They do that annually and I usually can't make it because it falls right in a time where I just don't have time to go. but with NerdTacular this year instead of TMS Vegas,

I've got a longer stretch between Adepticon and my next thing. Oh, right, yeah. That'll give you. So you can thank us is what you can do. Yes, I can't. So thank you. For this window of opportunity that you've been given. It's perfect.

I also have a quick call for help. This is a little unusual, but we're a community of people who like to take care of each other. At least we try. And one of our own, essential tremors is what he goes by in the Discord and all the sort of social things. He is a guy who is always around and is in our guild. He plays World of Warcraft with a bunch of folks that are in the community as well.

His real name is Borel, Jeff Miller. And the reason I'm bringing this up is he was going, he's gone silent. He was supposed to go in for kind of a routine sort of doctor thing. And then we haven't heard anything since then. It's been a while. So maybe a little too long. People are concerned. So the reason I'm doing this is nobody knows how to get in contact with anybody.

I'm not asking you for public, you know, to publicly docks this person by any means. But maybe just reach out by email or a quick DM on Discord or something and let me know if you know anything about how we could maybe just check as somebody maybe lives around him or we can find a phone number or something so that we can try to help this dude out and make sure he's okay. It's really just like a community frogpants wellness check. And if you have any knowledge of essential tremors, you've talked to them, had back and forth with them before, emails. If you're in the guild, you've had some conversations, whatever. And you know how we can get a hold of Varel. I would be really, really awesome.

So reach out and let me know via all the methods. Frogpants.com if you need to find a way to get a hold of me. So there's that. What do we have time-wise? We have one minute. not even that, about a half a minute for this news story. All right. So we're going to do it right now.

Here we go. Today's news is brought to you by the N26 board game room, and I'm going to tell you this right now. We have some amazing people who are going to be running the thing. Matt and Ducey are both kind of in charge. That already means they're going to bring more board games than we'll ever have time to play. Yes. That's what they do. In previous years, Matt would bring like a van full of games, and it was already so much.

now with him and Ducey combined, all the best stuff's going to come, and it's all going to be amazing. And the best part about this year's board game space is that it's A, large, and B, will run 24-7 for the entirety of the event. So there are going to be people who are like, I love Film Sack.

I'm going to watch Film Sack, and then I'm going to be in the board game thing the whole rest of the time, which is totally fine. However you want to play it, you can do it. But super jazzed about it. Check it out. I'm looking forward to it.

know the board game room for TMS Vegas was always such a fun time because it was just drop in, drop out, wander around. I wouldn't play a lot of games. I would just kind of wander from table to table and hang out with people. It was a great. So to have that 24 hours is going to be super fun. Yeah, I agree with you. And let's see. I can show you guys a quick screen cap, but it'll even show you. If you go to the site and look at the schedule, you just see a little note there. It says board game room open 24-7 throughout the event. Anyway, it is all the details are available at frogpans.com slash Nerdtacular. You can just click Nerdtacular at the top and you'll find out how to get tickets.

Reserve your hotel rooms. Get your stuff. Get your things. Be there in June. We can't wait to see you all. All right. So get out there. Probably the last huge one of these we do. And I want it to be huge. All right. And it can't be huge without you. It can't just be Dr. Nicky, Travis, me, Bobby, Brian, and for other people. It can't be just that. It has to be all of us together at last.

With KT Data in the back, making sure the mics work, which he's dutifully taking care of all that stuff for me, which is nice. All right. That's it for that. Let's not do us new story because it's already time. I took too long promoting the board game room. And as a result, Blackshould see if she's even online. Nope, she's not here yet.

So as soon as she joins, we'll do that. Let's start with this story. Raising Cains. Are you familiar with the franchise? I am familiar with. I have never been to. Okay. They're really good.

Mainly it comes down to the sauce. the chicken's fine but it's not any I don't think it's any better than the rest of the world but it's okay the sauce though really good

and here locally Post Malone owns one of these locations and it's weird because most of the canes have a very specific look to them the locations anyway when we started getting them but when he opened his they went with this like mob

almost bright pink color around the whole thing with a giant like almost relief-looking face of Post Malone on the side of the thing. And I'm told, I never have been able to do it myself, but you're supposed to be able to see him pretty often. He likes to go there. He likes to hang out and meet fans.

But every time I've gone, he's not there. Anyway, that's not what's important. There was a Raising Kane's lawsuit. Did not affect Post Malone's location as far as I know. But Raising Cain's file the lawsuit as landlord tries to evict them for chicken smell. Forget about the Clovis. Waco kiss. Let's worry about the chicken smell. Maybe one leads to the other.

I mean, listen, there's a very distinct smell of chicken. Right. I've been to years ago for work, I had to go to a poultry and pig plant in Iowa. And I'll tell you what, you can smell that from literally over a mile away. Yeah, it's a thing, right? It's a deal. I don't like a chicken smell. I'll tell you what's worse, though.

the Danin yogurt plant near us. When you drive past it, you think that you're in a diaper. Like literally inside of a diaper. I could imagine. It's so bad. Oh my gosh. Speaking of the city's Cloaca, I think it's the Danin plant. Yogurt manufacturing.

Anyway, they're suing because they think it's cool that everything smells like chicken. And the Boston landlord is trying to evict raising canes from the city's back bay neighborhood over complaints that the location smells like chicken fingers. I don't think they're going to win this. If it's business district and zoned accordingly, why would Keynes have to move? That doesn't make sense. Of course, it smells like chicken.

Right. I would be actually more concerned if it didn't smell like chicken at a raising canes. Yeah. And as I slowly over my lifespan look more and more like the Colonel from KFC, I think it's important to note that that guy probably smelled like chicken

everywhere he went. He probably got in bed. Mrs. Colonel was like, oh, get out of here, dude. No, that's a, that's a smell that just permeated every white suit that man owned. Yeah. And that's all he owned. Was it the one or two of those white suits?

All right. Well, that's the only new story you're going to get because now, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, gather around the fire. It's time for this. One of the things that I enjoy also is reading. Well, everybody, you know what time it is. It's time for us to do a little read this with Amy. I'm going to put her in video as well here if I can figure out my car. crap. There we go. Amy, how the heck are you? Welcome to the show. Oh, thanks. How are you?

We're okay. We're doing all right. You know? That's good. Yeah, just me and Travis talking about cloacas. Yeah. Well, hello, Travis. I wasn't expecting to hear from you until this afternoon. Oh, well, I wasn't expecting to be here until 25 minutes beforehand. So, yeah, that's cool. Yeah, it's good to have you here. How are things with you? Can we talk about this photo of you real quick? Yeah, we got to talk about this. So when was this? First of all, where is this?

Hold on. This was last weekend, I guess. Yeah, like, so the seventh was when I took that picture. It was, I was all dressed up for my dad's wedding. And, wow, I just realized, I don't know if this shows up like this for you guys. The Stripes. The Stripes is like, what? Whoa. Like I looked like a walking Doppler effect thing going. Anyway, so yeah, I was all dressed up for my dad's wedding. Thus, the fancy hat and, you know, all the hair and makeup and stuff. And then, you know, like I said, we realized, oh, you know, Scott needs like a like a headshot type of thing for, for the nerdtacular board. And so rather than, you know, do my hair and makeup and all that crap again and have Chuck take a picture.

or worry about lighting and all that stuff. I was just like, well, I have a selfie from then. Let's see if I can just like, you know, make it. I like it. I like it. I like it too. I actually made it my Facebook profile picture because I was like, oh, I like this picture. Look straight out of like a Vogue magazine or something.

You know, it's very good. There has to be a balance to the, you know, silly snapshot of me with a frog on my hat. The big cheesy Travis smile. Like, yeah. I love the Travis smile. smile, though. I do too. I do too. It's great. That's good stuff. That's like the rare occasion where I get all gussied up and stuff. Did you read my stupid description? Because it says, Amy Robinson, read this on TMS, voice actor, Muppet expert, and owner of Chuck. Oh, that sounds,

that's fantastic. That's wonderful. Yeah. And for those wondering, yes, I am slowly turning into Scott Fletcher. Look at me. He just looks like me. I don't know how to. You're merging into one entity. We really are. Which I'm ready for, you know? Let's get it done, Scott. Let's get this over with. We both are named Scott.

We already got half the legal room to take care of. It's the Scott singularity. Exactly. I have to say, I knew that that was, that that picture was a good choice when after I made it my Facebook profile picture, I had like old love interest from back in my college days, who I'm Facebook friends with, tried to neg me. And I was like, ha, ha, ha. Eat your heart out, sucker. Also, can I share something that just happened? This is how real time we are here in the Frog Pant Studios.

This image here will live with me forever. Look at you. Yes, I know. It's my office manager. That's beautiful. I want a dog. I already have three. Why don't I want more?

For those just listening what you would see on the screen right now, if you were not just listening to the podcast, you would see my little chihuahua Beauregard in my lap. He's so chill. He's the office manager. Yeah. He's breaking all the stereotypes about chihuahuas. They're supposed to bark incessantly, aren't they? Well, you know, like, just wait.

If one of my neighbors walks their dog past the window, all bets are off. Something might happen, yeah. Yes. He very frequently will, as I'm sitting here doing work during the day, he will curl himself up into like a little tiny bean like this on my lap. Just like, just like curled up as tight as possible on my lap. It's very cute. And then somehow, I don't know how they do this. I think they have their own weird cosmic control of gravitational pull, but they make themselves heavier.

Oh, yeah. No, dogs and cats can save their weight throughout the day and then distribute it as they want. I didn't know that. Oh, that's really, that's, I love that. I love that characterization of it. I'm keeping that. I didn't know that was a thing. That's wild to me.

I'd know. Yeah. It's a weird trick of physics that they can just save their weight until they want to disperse all of it. to usually, for me, it's Bella standing on my balls. Oh, fantastic. It's, yeah, it's really great. Unlike dinosaurs. Which is also why they can, like, they can, like, bounce up in the air, like,

just yeat themselves over fences and stuff. Yeah? Yeah. Oh, I love the term yeat. No, you say how Beauregard curls up into a ball like that in your lap. Bella would do that for me except that she weighs 70 pounds and physically can't fit in this chair with me. But she would still try.

She doesn't know that. No, she doesn't at all. Coco is the same way. You know, my niece's dog. she you know, Coco man, he gets up in, all up in your face. He's a huge chocolate lab. And he's just like, like a, he just comes barging in, you know, like a bull in a china shop. Doesn't, doesn't care. No regard for his size at all. So. It's fun side. No, Beauregard has a cloaca. I don't know if you guys knew that. But, uh, yeah. A lot of, a lot of Chihuahua was walking around with cloacas without anyone knowing it. I don't, is that, I don't think that's true. Is that true? It's not true. I was listening. to the Nicki segment. It's entirely untrue. There's no mammals that are walking around with Colica.

I delivered it in such a flat way I delivered it. It actually made you question it. You actually wondered for a second. Chuck is really good at that. Chuck is both really good at delivery that sounds plausible. And he has a font of really weird random knowledge that you wouldn't think, you know, someone like him would know that it's just enough to where you're like, really?

But he's good about it, though. If he tells you something that's complete bullshit and you say, really, he'll go no. Sounds like a Chuck attribute. I like it. Yeah. So I've gotten very, very good at like filtering Chuck style bullshit. Whenever my son brings home like a new friend or new girlfriend or whatever,

we have to have to brief them on the, you know, Chuck's particular style of bullshit and everything's fine. Yeah. I'm told with that beard, it's hard to ignore it. I like it when you. He still have the beard? He's still rocking the beard, yeah. He does, yeah.

It's wintertime. So, yeah, he has the beard right now. All right. Expect to see it in June. Helps keep him. Oh, no. It probably won't be there in June. Because he rides his bike a lot.

And so, like, you know, beard catches a lot of sweat and stuff. So, like, he gets rid of the beard usually, you know, by the time. cycling season comes around. Damn it, Chuck. Damn it. Yeah. Well, let's get to today's book. We've got a recommendation to make.

Why don't you set us up for this clip? What do we got to? Yes. So this book was a lot of fun. I'm going to go ahead and spoil the title because it's relevant to the clip. And the title of it is everyone in my family has killed someone. Oh, my Lord. All right.

So with that in mind, clip. There you go. Everything I tell you will be the truth. Or, at least, the truth as I knew it to be at the time that I thought I knew it. Actually, I'll prove it. The first deaths in about five minutes. I promise, that's the truth. Unless you listen to your audiobooks at triple speed or something.

There is only one plot hole you could drive a truck through. I tend to spoil things. There are no sex scenes. Considering what I've told you, it is tricky to know where to start. When I say everyone, let's draw the line for that statement at my branch of the family truth. Although my cousin Amy did bring a prohibited peanut butter sandwich to a corporate picnic once and her HR rep almost cucked it, but I won't put her on the bingo card. Look, we're not a family of psychopaths.

Some of us are good, others are bad, and some just unfortunate. Which one am I? I haven't figured that out yet. I know you're probably wondering something else right now. I did say, everyone. And I promised no tricks. Have I killed someone? Yes.

I have. It wasn't. Let's get started. Oh my gosh, dude. Well. Right. That leaves you hanging a little bit. Isn't that so fun? Sure. Tell us what you got here. So yeah, so this is everyone in my family has killed someone, a novel by Benjamin Stevenson, narrated by Barton Welch. Or Welch, I guess there's no S in there, so it's Welch. Gotcha. Yeah, it's a lot of fun. As you can hear, he does not. limit his fourth wall breaking to just the introduction there. It's throughout. He will, he will

periodically break the fourth wall and say, I should mention here that blah, blah, blah, you know, something or other. And, you know, or he'll say, you know, for those of you who've been paying attention, you know, note the chapter number or something like that. And yeah, so it's very self-aware and it's very self-effacing. And it's just a lot of fun for, you know, it's a, it's a murder mystery. and it's very clever. It's one of those where, I mean, I literally, when it got to a certain point in the book, I was like, oh, you know, and I didn't think with it being so lighthearted

that it was going to get me like that. I thought it would be, okay, this is going to be kind of fun and easy, and it's just going to, you know, it's going to be kind of obvious, you know, who done it or, you know, it's going to be a clue thing where it's like everybody done it. but yeah there really were a couple of times where I was like oh you know and it's it's a it's a fun book about murder I love this uh oh I just saw this so he's also a stand-up comedian one thing that's happening right now is that this is being converted or not converted but it got picked up by HBO for series treatment and it's called everyone in my family has killed someone they converted the name to

everyone on this train is a suspect. Mm-hmm. Let's see. That's a different book of his. He's got a whole series. It's called the Ernest Cunningham Mysteries. And so everyone on this train is a suspect, I think, is another of his. It's a little unclear, but it looks like it's this one.

Everyone in my family has killed someone as being adapted. And the others are maybe in line to be sequels to that or they follow-ups or whatever. So that's really cool. Listen to this review. I absolutely loved it. Utterly original. Hugely entertaining and a must read for any fan of the mystery genre.

What an exceptionally fresh, smart, funny book. I've never read anything like this before, says Jane Harper. There you go. It's pretty damn good. Yeah, that's high praise. It's also, it's quite a short read. So, you know, for those of you who are intimidated

by like big giant tomes or whatever where you have to keep track of 20 different people and if it's a mystery or whatever and you're at least trying to, to follow along. I almost never actively try to figure out a mystery. I kind of just want to go along for the ride. You know what I mean? Sometimes it smacks me in the face and I'm like, oh, I bet this happens, you know, but I don't like actively, I don't have like a spreadsheet, you know, I'm not like trying to figure it out as I go. But, you know, it's a very short read is what I'm trying to

try to say. So there's not, there's not a ton of different things. going on that you have to try and keep track of. It all happens. It's like one weekend where they're supposed to be on this family reunion at a ski lodge and mayhem ensues. Nice. For Wicked Kitten in the chat who asked who Jane Harper is, she's this author that makes these great mystery books set in rural Australia. They're really good. I've read Force of Nature, but you may know her from the lost man, the Survivor's Exiles. She's got a lot of books out. So anyway, just sorry to answer a little. For those who didn't know who Jane Harper was and why she was gushing, she's got the chops to do it.

Okay. Yeah. And as you could hear, the narrator there also Australian. So it was interesting because I actually, I took a break from the, he who fights with Monsters series, which also Australian. I took a break from that to read this. and I was like, oh, wait, this person is also, like, apparently I'm just reading Australian stuff. They're good. I don't know.

Nothing wrong with it. Yeah. I'm enjoying the accents very much. And it's, yeah, they're good fun. Nice. This is, here's the good news. You can get this book directly from the pumpkin cottage run by Hooty and his wife, locals and also fantastic tad pooligans in their own right. I put the link in the chat and you can go get it there.

so thank you to Hootie for that. You can also, you can get it in all the ways you're kind of used to getting it. Ebook format, paperback, all that. You just don't have to give money to Jeff Bezos. You can give it to Tadpoolers who could really use the help. Give it to Hootie. Give it to Hootie. Give it to Hootie. Don't pollute.

All right. That's right. Give a hootie. Don't pollutey. Don't pollutey. That's what I was looking for. That was good. Don't pollutey.

I love it. I can smell it. Yeah. Amy, this is fantastic. Is there anything else you got going on? you'd like to mention before we head out of here. Nothing I can mention right now. I do have a couple of things in the hopper that I'm excited to tell you guys about,

but I can't quite mention them yet. All right. So next month, look for exciting announcement. I was hoping at least one of them would be ready that Travis knows about, but it's still not. And Travis also knows why, and it's totally my fault. So, yeah. So I'm going to get off my took us.

get that ready and I'll be talking about it next one. Fantastic. March is going to be awesome. Amy, stay out of trouble. Eat your greens and tell Chuck to keep the beard. Bye now. You should keep the beard. That all seemed important at the time, but it probably doesn't matter.

Good deal. Thank you, Amy, for that. Totally appreciate it. Again, you can get that book in, but Brian will probably put this up. I saw him in the chat earlier. I don't know if he's hearing this right now live, but who's out getting prescriptions or something. But anyway, we should have this up on quicktm.m.s.

Like we always do. And if you're at home going, man, I don't remember the title yet, or still, or don't remember it now. Everyone in my family has killed someone by Benjamin Stevenson is the name. Sounds interesting. Yeah, super interesting. Let's get some of this done, which is just sitting right here. Where is it? It's right here.

Nope, that's not it at all. Here it is. This is about the jugs of pee. Let's get to some emails. These are all text guys. one from Trent. Says, hey guys, I think I saw Scott downtown Salt Lake City over the weekend near the gateway.

Was that you? You had on a white long sleeve, says Trent. That was me. You should have come up and talk to me. That sounds right. That was me. I had that shirt on even. It was warm, so I didn't even have to wear a jacket. We went, that was where we were walking from where we stayed to the wise guys, the stand-up club over there.

And it's right there in the gateway, which is like a big shopping outdoor molly kind of thing. and you should have come and said hi. So next time I'm out there, Trent, wave me down, buddy. My wife was with me too, but he didn't mention her, but she was there. I wasn't by myself, everybody. I don't go anywhere without her.

Are you kidding me? She's like, yeah, she has to drive. Yeah. I mean, actually, I drove this weekend. She hated every second of it. I'm sure. She doesn't like how I drive. I don't know why.

I think I'm fine. I've had one ticket in my entire life. And it was just by myself out in front of where I live. Literally the cop came the final quarter mile of where I live and gave me a ticket. I've never been in an accident. That sounds about right. Yeah, I'm a good driver, damn it. I sound like rain man.

Excellent driver. Definitely an excellent driver. Definitely an excellent driver. Yeah, exactly. But I swear I'm better than it sounds because she just doesn't like how I drive. And for the record, she doesn't like how a lot of people drive. She hates how her brother-in-law drives. She can't stand how her sisters drive.

I did more people she doesn't like how they drive, the more it might just be Kim's picky about who's driving. That's all I'm saying. Could be. Could be. That's all I'm getting that. What happens? Yeah, there you go.

Here's another one. Racer wrote in says, I work in schools and well, it's true. For most trends, when the adults start doing it, it goes away. With 67, the kids seem to enjoy that teachers and adults are also doing it. They know it's a meaningless thing. Yeah, the 6-7 thing is weird. My grandson,

Van has, he just turned seven. And because he went from six to seven, I talked about this on the show before. He's got a hat that says six, seven. My wife got a, like a jersey. It says a six seven on it. He thinks it's amazing. Loves it, walking around going six seven, six seven. He thinks it's great.

And because of that, I'm cool with it. If it wasn't for him, though, I'd probably be very sick of the stupid trend. I mean, I get it. But it's, we had those things when I was younger that didn't make any sense to the adults. And, you know, it's just generational. Yeah. But now because of the prevalence of social media, it can spread so much further.

I feel like some of the Gen X stuff, everybody else stole it and they just keep using it. Like, Gen X used to say sucks before anyone else made it sound cool. A dude really took off in the 80s. Like there's a few phrases that just really popped off there. And now every, but they kept going. So we didn't get the credit we deserve. We're already the hidden generation.

People don't give us credit, man. Blame. You know. But the credit there is that it's still around, right? There's a legacy to it now. I mean, I've had an entire conversation consisting of the word dude. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, dude is, I'd probably say dude more in the day, in an average day than any other word. Probably. I say dude a lot. And I'm not sure that's... It's a good catch-all. Is it okay to still feel like that and, like, be all-in-in-on- dude. It's okay now? I mean,

I am. I don't know if it's okay or not, but just a couple of dudes doing dude shit. Thank you, Racer, for that. Here's one from Chuck. This is not Amy's Chuck. This is, I think, is Chuck fires. He says, hey, yin's guys.

Just listening to the beginning of today's episode on 1126 is an old email. I'm trying to get through some of the older ones. And I heard the name of an amusement park that was near where I grew up. Kenny Wood Park in West Mifflin, Pennsylvania. It's just outside Pittsburgh. Very old park and well over 120 years old.

And it has some great old coasters. Those would scare me. I don't like crickety old wooden ones. They freak me out. I need metal and stuff, you know. Can't be doing no wooden coat. We have an old ass wooden coaster here at Lagoon, which is kind of our thing north of me.

And it's been here since I was a baby. I mean, that should be a testament to how well built it is. I guess so. But the last time I wrote it, which is probably, 15 years ago or maybe more. Then even, it was just so creaky. Every turn you could hear wood just groaning under the weight of the car.

And I remember then going, I don't think I'm getting on this again. The thing with it is, it's like a wooden ladder. It has give to it and movement. And so that actually is better in some ways. That's true. That's true. That's right. It gives you, that's why we can't get away from rubber tires.

Right? Lots of solid alternative without having to have air in them have been tried and tested but we always end up with a freaking rubber tube with air in it

because it's just that's the best for like you know give a little bounce give a little hug a little bit of whatever yeah the ladder thing was something that I learned

I spent a little bit of time working on a roofing crew and that was one of the things we had like one metal ladder but everything else was wooden and my foreman said yeah it's because it actually has some give to it

So when you've got a bundle of shingles on your shoulder and you're walking up two flights or two stories on that ladder, you want it to have some give as you're going up. Yeah. It's a good point. BioCow says, things that don't creak go snap. Yep. That's a true. I don't know why I said it like Mario. That's a true.

I agree with that. Yes. Or just rubbers, says Luke. Luke. Put your cloaca away. Like, come on now. Let's see. That was from Chuck Byers.

Thank you, Chuck. If you guys like sending your own text, you can do it. It's super easy. Oh, no, did I get, I didn't finish his email. Let me go back to it. No. He says, one called Thunderbolt was, uh, in its time, the fastest around 55 miles per hour. I know there's some that go way more than that now, but at the time it was fastest.

That's there was, there was, uh, that's not there anymore called the laser loop. Uh, I missed that one. And Mr. Jeff Goldblum is probably West Mifflin's most famous son. I didn't know he was from there. Hmm. I could see. I, I, I, I, I really liked. the Thunderbolt.

Now I just want Jeff Goldblum with saying things like Yen's guys. Yeans guys. Oh my gosh, dude. He probably shook all that free before he went to Hollywood. He says there's a documentary called Kennywood Memories. If you can find it, it is worth the watch. Anyway, love the show, Chuck. I will

seek that out. Yeah, that sounds cool. I'm into it. That is going to do it for today's show. Keep those messages coming. You can find all the ways to contact us, if I can talk, at frogpants.com slash TMS. You can find our Patreon links. You can find all the stuff we do here on the show.

It's all there. And while you're there, click on that nerdtacular link and get yourself here in Salt Lake City in June, the most beautiful time of year in the valley. It is amazing. It's going to be so green. You'll think you're in Hawaii for a hot minute because we've got mountains everywhere

and they're all going to be so green. You'll be like, what is going on? But it won't be humid. It'll be nice and dry, perfect temperatures, sunny days. Oh, man. it's going to be great. I'm excited for it.

I've never been to Salt Lake. Oh, you're going to love it. So, you know, I'm looking forward. Do you ever do it in the snowboard ones? Can I remember if you're ever. I did not, no. I wasn't able to. All right.

So you're going to love it. But you at home will also love it because Travis is doing various things on stage with us, helping us out with a bunch of stuff, including doing his own show on Thursday night as a little bit of a bonus kind of wet your whistle for the events to come. Yeah, I've got a busy Thursday. Thursday, actually. Yeah, there's a lot going on there. He's going to join me and Dunaway for a little retro watch thing we're doing too. Yeah. And then my show and then Gore right after that. Oh, I forgot. Yeah, you're doing a three-peat that night. I'm just going to be parked on that stage for the entire night. Oh, my gosh. Well, we'll see if you get up on time the next day. Man. You'll be fine.

Oh, yeah. Travis, tell people where they can find more of your stuff. I do way too many shows, and you can find all of them at TVsTravis.com. We are currently recording the next season of 24 FPS Presents, we are talking this season all about martial arts films and have been having fun so far. We're going through different kind of legends of the genre. So you're Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Donnie Yen, all of them, but also people like Cynthia Rothrock, Michelle Yo,

Michael Jai White. We're finding movies from all of them and talking about just the different eras and styles of martial arts films. So I'm really excited about that. And of course, wait, you haven't seen every week. But all of that's at TVsTravis.com. Nice.

Nice, nice, nice. Go check it out. That is going to do it for today's show. I think I've got a song. Oh, do I have a song? Brian and I didn't talk about a song. Let's see if I have a song. Let's find out.

Yeah, I don't see. Well, it would have been me putting in the notes and because I'm just now thinking of this. It was all a little last minute today, everybody. So you can know. If you need one, there's that song I sent you over the weekend, I think. Uh, what's, um... Oh, that was cool.

Yeah, that guy's great. Mac Glocky. You know what? Maybe we will do that. Did you... It was via Discord, wasn't it? Uh, it was a text. Crap.

I can find it because I have it in my, uh, YouTube history as well. Yeah, if you've got something. Oh, here it is. Oh, yeah, yeah. This is it right here. Okay. Yep. Yep.

I can totally do this before we put them in post, but I can get all that done before I post it. All right. me tell you what this is. There's this guy on YouTube, or on TikTok mostly, but he's also on YouTube. But where I ever see him is on there. His name is Mack Galaki, like you said. And he's really interesting. He's kind of this like unassuming looking guy. But he does this amazing stuff where people will ask him in his comments, hey, can you make, I don't know, a certain Food Fighter song, Everlong, can you do that but in the style of Barbara Streisand? That's just an example.

He's never done that combo. And then he'll do that. And it's amazing. And they're really good. It's incredible how well he translates it. So this one in particular is Clint Eastwood by Gorillas. Oh, can I admit something to you? And if Brian's listening, he's going to be in Paris about this.

Okay. Okay. So Brian, if you hear me say this, apologies. I didn't know that the guerrillas guy was the blur guy. Oh, you didn't. Oh. That's the same guy. Yes.

I had no freaking idea, dude. Yeah, Damon Albarn. Now I can hear it. Now I can hear it because I can hear him doing his thing. Even that song that got overplayed. Woohoo! I can hear him in parts of it. And now I can hear it totally hear it.

But for whatever reason, it never clicked that that's the guy. So I'll tell you a real quick story. The first time I heard Clint Eastwood was, I think it was MTV the video played. I had no idea what it was. It just started up. And immediately I was like, that sounds like Damon Albarn.

But this isn't blur. You found it out at the beginning. You figured it that. And I realized it right away. Because I was a big, I had been a fan of blur for a while. And Damon Albarn had done the score for a movie from the late 90s called Ravenus.

I remember that movie. That I love because the music was just really out there and kind of weird. So yeah, the first time I heard, gorillas. I was like, that's Damon Albarn, but this isn't blur. What is this? Or I thought it was, at first I thought it was like a new blur album, but then I saw gorillas. I'm like, what is gorillas? And so, wild to me. That's crazy. You get two careers, one with cartoon guys and one with your band. Also, I love the story that the beat for Clint Eastwood was just demo on his little

keyboard. That's amazing. It's literally just the demo from the little synthesizer keyboard he had. And he built the song around that. That last album was so good, too. The recent was. Was that called? Real good. I forgot. I don't remember.

It's the name of one of the tracks. The big track. Eh. I remember. Anyway, so what you did is you sent me this. What if 311 wrote Clean Eastwood by the guerrillas? And it's crazy how good this is. It's really good.

And if you watch the video of it, it's hilarious because he gets the mannerisms of all the guys from 311 down perfectly. Oh, yeah, without a doubt. And I'm a big. 311 fan and same i came away from this going well i should go listen to 311 again like that's the vibe i walked away with it was less about let's go listen to the guerrillas or listen to the guerrillas and listen to these guys instead anyway they make some really good recent stuff too go check that out we're going to play that now thanks for the recommendation uh and thanks for joining me man it was

super fun having you thanks for having yeah always good uh chat room stick around for some title picks and uh we'll do a photo and hang out and talk a little bit more right after this uh here is that song and we'll see you guys tomorrow. If 311 wrote Clint Eastwood by Gorillas. This is Clint Eastwood in parentheses for a while.