Chuck E. Cheese 2 with Griffin Newman

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We didn't do a square ball in Pong because we thought it was cool.

We did it because that was all we could do.

This was Nolan Bushnell, one of the most important figures in the history of the video game industry.

Born in Utah and raised in the LDS church, Bushnell worked at theme parks as a student and found himself drifting away from his faith as he focused on his career in innovating electronic amusements.

The first and most notable was his founding of Atari in 1972, whose revolutionary monochrome table tennis simulation Pong would help birth both the coin-operated arcade cabinet industry and the home console industry.

But Bushnell's actual passion, which had given him dreams of working as a Disney imagineer, was animatronics.

And so in 1977, Bushnell parlayed his Atari Clout and Warchest into a new enterprise, Pizza Time Theater, though the pizza was actually an afterthought, behind the animatronics stage show featuring an anthropomorphic animal band fronted by its rodent mascot.

Bushnell's background in video arcades also led to expansive kid-friendly amusement areas with games that dispense redeemable tickets.

After merging with competitor Showbiz Pizza in the 80s, the brand achieved hegemony in its unique niche.

But the rise of adult-oriented concepts like Dave and Busters led to a decline in the 2000s.

The chain then resurged in relevance in the 2010s due to another video game designer with a religious background, Scott Cawthan, whose 2014 indie mega hit Five Nights at Freddy's would spawn countless follow-up games, a Blumhouse-produced film franchise, and an obsessive Zoomer fan culture drawn in by its creepy cute vibes and arcane, secretly Christian mythos.

Yet instead of leaning in, the chain moved to abandon its foundational gimmick.

Starting in 2019, it began removing animatronics from all but a handful of locations, replacing the costly to maintain but signature robotic characters with video screens.

To quote Bushnell again, I just want the future to happen faster.

I can't imagine the future without robots.

And with the long after effects of the COVID-19 pandemic leading to closed locations and cratering sales, perhaps neither can the Pizza Rat chain he founded.

This week on Doughboys, we return to Chuck E.

Cheese.

That's what we're going to boys.

Welcome to Dough Boys, the podcast about chain restaurants.

I'm Tiger Weiger, along with my co-host,

Slim Jim Pickens, the Spoon Man, Mike Mitchell.

This is some sort of joke about the drugs I'm taking.

It's a reference to Slim Jim and a reference to Slim Pickens, the actor, Mitchell.

Oh, I thought you thought you were like, okay, I thought it was a Slim Jim.

It was a little too soon for any Slim jokes, I felt like.

No, I think it was talking about Slim Jim's the snack.

I get it now.

I got it.

Yeah.

I got it that I eat the Slim Jim.

Snip into a Slim Jim.

Pickings.

That's good.

Oh, yeah.

Yahoo!

Because he also falls down on the bomb.

All right.

We were just talking about Kubrick.

Mitch, this is why I picked this.

It's love week.

I usually, and happy love week, by the way.

Oh, happy love week.

Wow, we're really on.

Look, you love children, and today's episode.

Jesus Christ.

I'm saying you love kids.

I do love children.

Yes.

And today,

that's how we're going to ham-fist.

That's how there's nothing to ham-fist.

It's just a matter of love week is just a celebration of each other, of the show.

We have a guest we love.

We love our staff.

We love our listeners.

And that's what this is all about.

Love children.

Okay.

I usually pick a toast spoon man for love week, but I pick this roast because it's again very wholesome and the email is really nice and ties in with our guest.

Thought of this roast while watching 1941 in preparation for your blank check appearance.

Okay.

I've been a fan for a long time and wanted to send a roast because I think you two are really funny.

How nice is that?

I hope you keep a podcast after you stop eating so much junk food.

Love you big time.

Eddie Spaghetti.

Roasted birdfuck.com.

eddie spaghetti guess what we're gonna keep eating junk food even after the podcast it doesn't matter right why because you're not gonna give up you'll

just give up junk i can't imagine just giving up i loved eating shitty food so much i true passion of mine i've been eating much healthier and i've been doing well i've been i've been you see my air fry meals i'm showing you my air fried meals that's right but uh i i'll get i'll get a little mini jersey mike sub that's all i'll do now for lunch But I still get a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos.

I don't give up.

Come on.

I can't have a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos with lunch.

You can have a treat with lunch.

Come on, what the fuck?

No one's telling you you can't, Mitch.

Mom.

My mom watches the show and yells at me.

I know my mom never watches the show.

Where do you stand on spaghetti?

Eddie Spaghetti writing at.

Eddie Spaghetti was very kind.

I liked Eddie's spaghetti.

Spaghetti, I was just talking about this the other night, speaking of children.

Such like a little, because I was talking about, I was talking to one of the friends of the pop.

I was talking about to Susser.

We can say this.

Okay, yeah.

Yeah, we can say it.

And I was like, no, you can't mention it.

And he was like,

he was like, he was like talking about like uh he was here by the way to eat food that's right he showed up

he showed up to eat bad food and had us order more food that we didn't want well we'll get into it um but i was just talking to him i was like i was i was like he's like i gotta go home and make you know make dinner i was like how is that it seems like a pain in the ass as a man who just makes dinner for himself and mostly gets takeout which is not a good thing but i do do you're referring to yourself as susser has a family obviously he's making dinner not just for him but for makes and i was like and i was like what are you using i I was like, let me guess, pasta for the kids.

And he's like, yes, kids love pasta.

And I can't remember the last time I made pasta at home.

I never make pasta at home.

But I do like a good, I like, that used to be a thing I ate more than anything.

Spaghetti.

Spaghetti and red sauce was like when I would be in high school and I missed dinner or they were like, we're eating something you don't like or something or something I didn't like, I would do spaghetti and marinara sauce.

It's been a long time since I lived alone and cooked for one, but I will say that pasta is great because the thing you always run into when you're cooking for one is like, well, shit, I got it's hard to make up exactly one portion, you know what I mean?

So it's like, I got pasta.

Well, that'll keep.

I got leftovers all week, you know.

Hey, that's true.

It's like making a soup or a stew.

Are you an al dente man, or are you like a little bit al dente?

Okay, I like I don't mind if it goes a little soft, but al dente is what I'm aiming for.

Yeah, I wish that was true of everyone.

I wish everyone didn't mind if it went a little soft.

you got any Valentine's day plans this year no but I thought of a parody song right before the show started what is it is it Valentine's Day related no okay

well I sang one right before the show started that you heard that's true but I also had a

broke into Joe's apartment

this is where the roaches live oh god

So the reference is the MTV film

Joe's Apartment from the 90s about a man who lives in a roach-infested apartment where they like talk to him, right?

Yeah.

I never actually saw it, but I know what the premise is.

But what is it a parody of?

The old apartment broke into the old apartment.

I don't know if I think it was.

We used to live.

Anyone know the song?

Oh, my God.

What the fuck?

Whose song is it?

Bare Naked Ladies.

Oh, boy.

Why did you change the locks?

You don't know this?

No one knows this?

I know that we can't use this on the show, but I have to play some of the song for you.

Amelia gave me a ride to the studio, and she played some chapel roam for me.

So I'm getting, I got familiar with some of her catalogue.

You did not know a lot of pop culture.

I thought that you would know something from the 90s.

No, a lot of that, too.

I was just like listening to other stuff.

Yeesh, yikes.

Rocky start to the ep for old.

We're doing great.

We're doing all right.

My other parody song right before we started, I forgot what it was.

I think I wrote it down.

Oh, Conover.

I want to be Conover.

I want to have higher hair and smarter thoughts like Conover.

It's pretty good.

You already did a parody.

I did a Frankfurter parody, but I like Conover.

Yeah, yeah.

Thank you.

Yeah.

He's not here today.

We can sing it.

So if you want to sing it for him, you can.

Maybe I'll sing it to him.

Maybe I'll sing it to him.

How could he be upset with that song?

I bet you didn't know that.

Only I do because I'm Conover.

Actually,

actually.

I don't like that.

Conover.

I don't like you getting more laughs for my song.

It's a good song.

It's like Amelia attributed a joke to you earlier in the break room, and I got very mad at her.

That was not my joke.

That was your joke.

That was my joke.

And a joke I don't even feel comfortable repeating.

So.

Can we remark on something?

So I'm wearing my Kirkland signature crew neck.

I wore that in honor of our guest.

And Emma brought a hoodie for Gemma.

Gemma is usually nude, but Gemma is wearing clothes today.

And Gemma is wearing a Kirkland signature hoodie.

How cute is that?

Gemma?

What did I say?

You said Gemma.

People do this all the time.

They combine our names.

Jemmy.

I apologize.

Jemmy.

Jemmy.

Jemmy is generally nude.

Yes.

Jemmy is generally nude.

She doesn't even wear a collar.

Generally.

Or and genuinely.

Yeah, genuinely.

Earnestly nude.

Earnestly nude.

Also,

if I start conflating Gemma, if I start saying Gemma, conflating Emma

and Jemmy, not even Amelia.

Like if I start combining the names

of all the females involved in the show.

Jamelia Donahue.

I'm just saying put me in a home.

It's just like, like, I just need to be institutionalized at a certain point.

I just put them on TV.

Does the TE theater count as a home?

We'll put you in there.

Wise, you're doing great.

We're both doing great.

It's a really cute hoodie.

To Spoon Nation.

And welcome to Dough Boys.

Welcome to Dough Boys.

Happy Love Week.

Happy Love Week.

Hey, we love it.

We love it.

We love, hey, we love LA.

Nice raining.

Look, we were going to record.

This is old news by now.

We were going to record an emergency podcast about

the Luca Doncic.

How do you say Doncic?

Doncic?

How do you say his name?

Rotting down a monologue.

Gonna tell people how things really are.

I'm con over.

Luca Doncic traded to the Los Angeles Lakers.

This is 10 days old at this point.

This happened over the past week.

And we were going to record an emergency pod for the episode that came out last week with our buddy Carmen.

And then we decided that by the time we were going to do it, it would feel like a little bit too late because it would come out after the trade deadline.

But crazy news.

Wild.

I'm so glad you saved this combo for me because I have a lot to say about it.

Why do these trades always work out in this way for the Los Angeles Lakers?

I don't know.

Yeah.

It's annoying, but also, does it mean that maybe there'll there'll be a Celtics-Lakers final?

So it's probably good that the league is rigged.

It's probably a good thing for the Celtics that the league is rigged because now

they'll play the Lakers, it seems like, possibly.

I think it's a good thing.

Here's what I say: rigged for my pleasure.

The Lakers.

I can tell him a joke that I was afraid of telling.

Jesus.

I don't like the trade, of course.

You guys benefit.

It's impossible to fully put into context as someone who doesn't follow basketball specifically, but it is

how I mean, like, I guess I would say it would be like

the Empire trading Darth Maul to the Rebel Alliance for C-3PO.

You know what I mean?

It's like...

Uh-huh.

Like C-3PO is good, but Darth Maul is like really good.

You guys are the Rebel Alliance?

I think so in this analogy.

All right, how what would you say?

You guys are the fucking Empire.

Okay, fine.

So we're the Empire.

So we're getting...

You get Chewbacca.

Yeah, we're getting Chewbacca in exchange.

Chewbacca.

Yeah, Chewbacca's like Luka Dantic.

How is that bad?

I would say maybe Luke Skywalker.

Okay, we're getting Luke Skywalker.

Luca Skywalker in exchange.

This fucking works.

You're lucky.

Casey, you're lucky, dude.

Luca and Luke worked really well.

The Empire gets Luca Skywalker, and in exchange.

In exchange, exchange, we are sending to the Rebel Alliance.

Um, not general, not even General Grievous.

It's like, well, I guess General Grievous is pretty good.

Yeah.

Because

AD is good, but he's not in the elite company.

The problem is that

there are the good-evil connotations of the two parties in the Star Wars universe.

Like, I was thinking, like, I was trying to come up with an analog to ask if it's like this.

Okay, great.

And what my mind jumped to before you started touching on the Star Wars world.

Yeah.

Is it like Marvel letting James Gunn get away to DC?

Sure, yeah.

I think that's pretty good.

Right?

Like, this is one of our best guys.

And we don't have to come to this hat.

I don't know if this works for me now.

Well, this is the problem.

This is why I was tentative to even throw this off.

If, like, Marvel let DC get James Gunn and DC was like, we'll give you our best PA in exchange.

Yeah, but this guy's so good on set.

But AD is also good.

So he's very good.

It's kind of like, okay, hey, it's kind of like Marvel and DC.

We're engineering a trade between our two universes.

DC is sending over Superman

and Marvel is sending over Hawkeye.

Hawkeye.

There we go.

Okay, I get it now.

Yeah.

Who's still good?

Who's still good?

But

he's not Superman.

I think a lot of casual fans and even knowledgeable fans would be like, these two things do not seem like Superman cap is a straight trade.

Yes, but they are maybe betting that Superman is going to, I mean, they're betting that Superman's going to decline.

That's their internal thinking.

Which is also what Marvel's betting on this summer, I think.

That's true.

How do the Mavericks benefit from it versus the Lakers?

And it just is overwhelmingly in the Lakers' favor.

I think most people would rule it a pretty unbalanced trade.

I was shocked by it.

I thought it was fake.

But was the presumed logic that they and I like Anthony Davis.

Anthony Davis won championship for the Lakers.

That they think the guy they gave up is his best years are behind him.

And he's on, this is the beginning of the decline.

So the comparable players are guys like Joel M.

Biade, Zion Williamson.

Yeah, Luca Doncicz has has more success than either of them, but they're both like, hey, these guys have health issues that could

shorten their careers.

And Luka Donchitz was due an extension of something like $345 million this summer.

This is the conspiracy part that I buy, Mitch, which is that the owners are some of the true goblins in sports, the Adelson family, who are huge Trump donors.

And they made all their money in casinos.

And I think there's a chance they had sticker shock at this huge $350 million contract they're going to have to pay out for the superstar.

And they're like, get him the fuck out of here.

We don't want to pay that.

But how does LA keep?

Whatever.

It's fine.

I don't.

It is what it is.

The league is rigged, we know.

I'm fine.

It's for his pleasure.

Oh, man.

Disgusting.

Neil Campbell said a funny thing to me.

He said,

it would be a good time to open a restaurant in LA

because Luca's coming.

Famous Luke.

He's He's a big fat.

He's a big fatty.

He's a guy who's a big, fat, fat.

He had some struggles with his weight.

What's that?

Buy him on the pod.

We should, game.

Hey,

I would love to have him on.

Three-inch hair flip.

We love it.

Four-inch hair flip.

We love it.

Five-inch.

We love it.

We love it.

We love Connover.

That's a good question.

I I think that worked for the chorus.

What do you think?

Yeah, I think it was really good.

Man, you guys really didn't know

Joe's apartment.

You didn't really know Old Department.

I cut you off.

You're going to play a drop.

All right, we got to play a drop.

There's also some news.

I can't believe how long we're going up top.

We just have a guest who famously goes for the best.

He's gabbing with us.

He's gabbing with us.

I haven't been introduced yet, but I'm gabbing.

We have news with the trade tariffs.

We're banning all Canadians from coming on the show.

Yeah, it's hard to say during love week, but Canadians are not welcome on Doughboys, at least for the next 30 days.

Yeah, we got that in last administration, but things have changed.

Apologies to Carson and Taylor, my friends.

You're lovely, but I bet you can't come back on the show.

The knife, there's plenty of people who now banned from the show.

Ackroyd.

Ackroyd.

I will say.

See Roy Ackroyd.

There are behind-the-scenes talks going on right now between Evan Susser and Norm Sousa.

So

there's a Susser-Sousa accord that

could come together.

We're going to just keep an eye on it.

Zeukes had a great idea.

He says we should charge a

35% tax on Patreon episodes with Canadians in it.

So if you want to listen to a Canadian episode,

there's a 35% tax on there now.

Fair.

But I just want to let

the world know.

We're sorry, but hey, USA all the way.

Am I wrong?

No, you're right.

Anyways, hit him with a drop, Emma.

The The toe boys said a lot of wow.

Now they know how many wows it takes to fill the taco bow.

Boy fun

ran away.

They didn't sell me to do that part, but I couldn't help it.

That wasn't a wow at the end, was it?

Or was it another wow?

It was a while.

It was another wow at the end.

Wow.

I shouldn't have sang over it.

No, it was good.

500 Wows Drop.

That's the title.

Wow.

Hey, DK, had a 500 Wows idea, and now I'm subjecting y'all to it.

If there's only room for one 500 Wow, my vote is for the one

Lee 10 tickles added in the Dose Chord.

But if the pod can handle another breezy 45-second multi-wow, here it is.

Lyrics.

The Doughboy said a lot of Wows.

They had to count them all.

Now they know how many Wows it takes to fill the Taco Bell.

500 wows.

And then they did all the wow.

That's good.

That was good.

Thank you.

I liked it.

Thank you to Ben.

Thank you, Ben.

That was was great.

Nice work, Ben.

And I think 500 wows, I think we've got, we've kind of maybe exhausted that premise.

How many are 500 meows?

Pretty cute.

Do you think that we did it?

Do you think Irma did 500 over the course?

I think she probably did a lot.

She probably could pull enough Irma meows over the course of the video.

I mean, you could remotely catalog, yeah.

Wow, drops.

All those meows in the moment of meow and stuff.

That's true.

That's true.

I forgot about moment of meow.

Drops at birdfuck.com.

Our guest today, very happy to have him back from Blank Check and the George Lucas Talk Show.

His new movie, Turn Me On, is now on VOD.

The King of Cranch, The Man of Steelbook, Griffin Newman.

Steelbook.

I forgot we added that.

That's right.

Thank you for that.

It's a pretty good title.

It means a lot to me.

We were talking steel books just before we started recording.

Now, there's a Tommy Boy Steelbook on the way.

Right.

So they announced a standard 4K of Tommy Boy, which is exciting.

We were discussing it beforehand,

and you got a big kick out of me asking Griffin if there was going to be a Holy Schnikey's edition to the steelbook, which which there was a Holy Schneider edition to the DVD, which I bought.

Can I go through this quickly?

A thousand percent.

We would love to hear it.

So, like, Paramount, I feel like in the early days of DVDs, was notorious for bare bones releases, no special features.

And then, maybe about eight years in, they went double-dip crazy.

And especially on their comedies, because Paramount has a lot of the like Wayne's World, airplane, naked gun, Tommy Boy, like the sort of infinitely re-watchable planes, trains, a lot of the John Hughes catalog.

They reissued almost all of them with like silly named editions

and worst cover art, and then like a ton of special features.

So there was like the Bueller-Bueller Bueller edition, the Those Aren't Pillows edition, the Holy Schneides edition, the Don't Call Me Shirley edition.

And the special features are all kind of janky.

Yeah.

I remember there being like a 20-minute featurette with Ben Stein talking about what his day was like filming Ferris Bueller, but he very quickly gets into like, well, I had one scene, it took like an hour to film, but then I had had a very lovely dinner with my wife.

I snuck away and like, and they're like putting like cartoon like graphics around to make it more exciting.

I snuck away and wrote like a speech for Reagan or something.

Yes.

And then Blu-ray, I feel like when they re-released these winters for Blu-ray, they put the special features on from those editions, but they took off the silly names.

Now they announced 4K edition, which I think will have most of the holy schneiki content

on there as legacy material, but they announce standard 4K.

Now, I love steel books.

Some studios go, hey, standard steel book, same time.

Some put the standard out.

You wait, you're like, I guess steel book isn't coming.

You buy it.

Next day they announce, here's a steel book.

So I always try to sit it out, but then they very quickly announced, no, here's a steel book.

So I pre-ordered the steel book, which was a Photoshopped piece of art of like great things come in bears style.

Spade, Farley, and deer.

Deer.

That's yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Pre-order that, which is what you said you had pre-ordered or were planning?

I planned on pre-ordering it, yes.

Canceled my pre-order because they announced third-release Walmart steelbook exclusive

original theatrical poster art, which is always what I love in a steelbook.

Sure.

Unmodified with included fold-out poster that charts the road trip of all the stops.

I said, you got to go for that, Mitch.

Come on.

Well, how did Walmart end up having all these exclusives?

Because for a while, for a time, it was a purview of Best Buy.

Best Buy completely discontinued their physical reaction.

That's what happened.

And Walmart very smartly was like, we will jump in.

Wow.

So

they bought a lot of the dead stock of old Best Buy releases.

Best Buy releases that were limited that people still are fighting over and go for hundreds of dollars.

They're like, we'll recommission that.

Run another print.

We'll sell them in our stores.

Wow.

And now they have this whole display in Walmart that says like steel book obsessed,

media cased in steel or whatever.

And they're trying to like own that lane.

Because you don't think of like.

You got to walk out, by the way.

Yeah, Amelia's leaving.

That's fine.

Amelia laughs.

The

this is this.

I mean, this is very up my alley.

But, Nick, go on.

Sorry.

Oh, no, I was just going to, like, like, I feel like

Walmart generally does not appeal to like the

maybe I could be wrong here.

I'd be talking about too generally, but it doesn't seem to appeal to like an AV enthusiast sort of demographic.

Like, I don't think of them as having, you know what I mean?

Like, I think of them more as just kind of being like a catch-all retail shop.

This is what I think was smart about what they were doing.

Best Buy had like basically the exclusive domain of the steel books, and they would get all this business.

Whether or not it like moved the needle enough for them,

it was like, look, there's a certain devoted audience in these active subreddits.

They're scanning for any new release.

And the second you drop one, they're going to just fucking slam your site.

You're basically guaranteed to sell these things out.

Right.

And they were like, eh, it's not enough for us.

This isn't the kind of margins we're looking for.

And Walmart was like, we'll take any loyal, committed audience.

Right.

If you're saying these shoppers will like follow us over to our web store, go check stores in person, because we're the only people who sell this, we'll take any exclusive thing.

And maybe while they're in the building, they'll, or, or on our site, they'll get an HDMI cable or some patrolling jelly or something.

Yeah, whatever the fuck.

Patrolling jelly.

I don't know.

I'm just thinking, like, it's just kind of.

Well, I just got a night planned out.

Me and that tummy boy steal book.

Hey.

Bullish Nikes.

That's right.

Isn't it Bo Derrick who's in it?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yay.

Give me that extra large patrol.

I said I'm going to jack off a lot, but I'm fine.

Oh, okay.

Got it.

I didn't say.

I'm not going to fuck the patrol.

Yeah, I know, I know.

I didn't say this earlier because he hadn't introduced me yet, and I thought I should hold off from speaking until, of course, I needed to be brought into the Lakers' trade conversation.

We couldn't have missed out on my detailed thoughts.

I think Superman for Hawkeye is like a pretty good thing.

I thought we actually landed on something really useful for a sports fan.

I was going to say about 15 minutes ago, you were talking about how hard it is to, as a single person making dinner for one, figure out the right amount of pasta to make.

Right.

To guess the right sort of amount for one portion.

And what I was thinking is maybe the better strategy

is to, is to, because you always end up with more than you want.

It's true, yeah.

So if you're looking to eat one portion, you want to maybe scale down a little bit.

Maybe you want to try to make one one quarter portion.

I thought you were being serious.

You pull it off on me.

Where I thought you were being serious, and then I saw the glint in his eyes.

You knew where I was going.

And he knew where you were going.

And I thought that he was going to go there.

For audio listeners, Griffin is pointing at our UNCAR Plutt figurine that is on the tableau.

I think if you attempt to make one quarter portion, then much like Ray's quickbread.

Yeah.

You'll look at it and go, this isn't enough.

And then you'll find suddenly it rises to be just the right amount.

Man, an unkarplet pasta maker would be great it just put it squirts out one quarter portion yeah i mean a unkarplet food processor you put in your food it and it just gives you one quarter portion of the food the issue is you got to make sure you're eating your own portion because if you're eating unkar's he's going to be like that's mine

There should be, Disney should do a Star Wars branded like factor meal kit where they're like, we're trying to control your meal sizes.

It's one quarter

portion.

I like that.

It's sticky, Mitch.

You have to admit, it's sticky.

It's very sticky.

We like sticky.

It's very sticky.

We do like sticky.

Casey, as a film freak, are you much of a steel book collector?

I don't have any steel books.

And you don't have any.

Do you have any physical blu-books?

Do you have bell Blu-rays?

Can I be a dumb person and ask what is a steel book?

Not dumb at all.

Oh, this millennial deus.

I have a bunch of Blu-rays at home and I love them.

I love physical media, but I don't know what, I guess I just don't have never bought one of those.

You might have a steel book.

Is what I lean towards.

They never do steel books.

They're usually the plastic cases.

Sometimes they'll do the digi packs or weird cardboard foldouts.

Oh, is it literally just a steel case?

Correct.

Oh, cool.

Yeah, then maybe I do have

a case.

Right.

So it's, because I've had certain friends who have been trying to get into physical media ask me, can you guide me what's the difference in the formats?

Steelbook is not a format thing, it's just a packaging thing.

But they're really nice.

And you've gotten me into them to a large degree.

And I will repeat an anecdote that we shared on our blank check appearance appearance where we talked about 1941.

Very fun episode.

People haven't checked that out.

I had ordered Ninja Scroll, Classic Anime.

I had a pre-order for Ninja Scroll, and it got canceled.

Like they rug-pulled my, my Ninja Scroll pre-order.

I was like, how am I going to get this thing?

It's like out of print.

I'm not going to get a best buy used to do.

It would cause a lot of ire.

Maddening.

And it's like out of print everywhere.

I'm trying to find it on secondary markets.

They're charging like 200%

markups.

And I go to the market.

You went to the dark web, didn't you?

I went to the dark web.

Oh, my God.

And yeah,

I'm in my darkest hour, and I go to Griffin and I'm like, hey, can you help me out?

I'm trying to find this.

And you immediately track down this site that I'd never heard of.

Bullmoose.

That bull moose that I was like, I'm not even sure this doesn't, you know, Bull Moose?

Yeah, they have physical stores in New England.

There's one in Portsmouth that I used to hold with my dad.

They used to sell my dad's CDs in the Bull Moose in Portsmouth.

Hell yeah.

That's awesome.

Yeah, very cool.

They're super cool.

The people in there are always super nice, very knowledgeable, huge nerds.

I love it in there.

Because I'm looking at a site and I'm like, I don't, I've never heard of this.

I don't know.

You know, I'm assuming it's reputable because it's from Griffin.

It's janky, but it's still janky.

It's look a little like 2005, though.

Exactly.

This store feels that way too when you're in it.

Yeah.

But I ordered it from them and it was a good price and it arrived in pristine condition on time.

And I was like, this is, this is amazing.

And as I shared in our group chat in Elation after I received it, all caps,

I told you that I told everyone that Griffin Newman has a 10-inch cock.

That's right.

I was on that text.

Yeah, that's how you.

I thought you guys went to the gym together or something.

No, I sent him a website to buy a copyright.

I recently, it ended up not working out, but I was going to call in the return favor,

which was Barnes ⁇ Noble had a 50%

off sale on all Aero video titles.

Whoa.

And they recently put out a new and Glorious Bastards 4K that I really want that is sold out everywhere.

And the one place I could find it in stock for pickup in store was in Santa Monica.

I would have gone.

And I was going to text you and be like, if I place this order, can you pick it up?

And then I think it sold out.

He would have to.

Before I could pull the trigger, he would have loved to do it.

You know, I've used the dark.

I will do this at some point.

Okay, great.

Yeah.

I logged onto the dark web.

I was looking for some stuff.

And I looked and I'm like, what's this?

The Batarang?

A Batmobile?

I was on the Dark Night web.

Yeah.

My issue with the Dark Net, my issue with the Dark Web, Mitch.

I'm on the Dark Web.

I was like, I can't see any of this shit.

I need a flashlight.

You know, I was, uh, I'll admit this, I don't know if this is intimidating, but I was going to some dark corners of the internet

and I couldn't see, I couldn't make out the text on the website because they were covered in bandages and I had like a fedora pulled down very far in front of me.

Yeah, I was on the dark man web.

Bandages everywhere.

Some say Venom is the original dark web.

Have you heard that?

I have heard that, Mitch.

Um,

look, there's no steel books of your stranger things, man.

You don't got, I'm talking to the Deus again.

I'm yelling at the Deus.

Your Marvels.

Actually, there's probably Marvel steelbooks.

Oh, Marvel totally steel books.

Stranger Things, one of the few Netflix titles that they themselves put out on physical media.

I think they stopped at a certain point, but their gimmick was they put it in plastic boxes that looked like VHS cases.

Okay, so what happened here in the episode is Mitch just kind of went on this unplanned tirade

that we collectively decided

was best kept behind the paywall.

So if you want to hear Mitch's potentially career-damaging rant, you can find that over at patreon.com slash Doughboys.

Enjoy the rest of the episode.

So, Griffin, I realize this, and I'm not sure if you've made this connection.

Okay.

We're inadvertently in a bit of a pizza cul-de-sac with you.

If we're looking back on all the chains we've covered,

Tombstone Pizza for Tombstone Week, Costco,

famed for its pizza, of course.

That was part of a green grocer Mitch's grocery store model.

That's correct.

But the pizza was a focus.

The pizza is a focus.

Italy.

Yeah.

Sparrow.

Yeah.

And now this week's chain, your fifth main feed appearance.

Wow.

The one exception was a live show, which I guess this makes you makes it your sixth main feed appearance.

Wow.

Live show Nathan's Famous, which is a hot dog chain, but of course, hot dogs in New York City, also famous for its pizza.

Yeah.

It's a kind of a pizza episode.

You're a true New Yorker.

I'm a New Yorker New Yorker.

I'm a New Yorker.

I also like.

Slices.

I feel like I've talked about

slices.

I know shit that only New Yorkers would know, like slices.

Just got talks to talk.

Hey, one slice, please.

No, pizza is my favorite food.

Wow.

Spitch too.

Yeah, too.

I feel like

I have expanded my palate palate and I expand it every year and I work really hard to kind of like open myself up to trying more things.

But for the first 15 years of my life, I would say I basically only ate five foods and pizza and hot dogs were two of them.

And they're kind of just like, I go back to them as like a real base source of comfort.

I mean, I love it.

Yeah.

Hot dogs also fantastic.

Hey, speaking of slices, like you said, you're both wearing the Kirkland signature.

That's right.

And I have my Kirkland signature sneakers on.

We've complained about these not being branded enough.

Yeah.

I wish the logos were more visible.

It is red on the sole of the table.

It's red on the sole, but it's and then it's here on the tongue, but it's I wish it was in white because I want people to know.

Right.

But these cost like $30?

They look comfy.

Yeah.

$30.

It's a purple.

$30.

But in a good way where you're like, I can't put $30.

$30.

Yeah.

That was a good second read of that.

What was what cost $30?

It was like some t-shirt, wasn't it?

No, it was

all movies.

It was Neil at movies.

It was the cockknocker chicken sandwich, I believe, from movies.

$30.

I think so.

That was the original Outrage, $30.

I believe so.

Yeah.

Let me look up what the name of it was.

Cock Knocker is the Mark Hamill character in Jay and Solomon Bob Strike Man.

Right, right.

Which character?

Mark Hamill plays him.

He's Blunt Man and Chronic Supervillain Cock Knocker.

Do you guys know

Chronic?

What is the name?

Blunt Man and Blunt Man and Chronic.

Blunt Man and Chronic.

No.

No.

Do you know?

Do you know Chris Farley?

Yes.

You know Chris Farley.

Have you seen Tommy Boy?

Yes.

All right.

Okay.

Okay.

That's good.

Well,

I was trying to think of how, I mean, just the term Holy Schneides is so funny.

Yes.

Holy Schnei's Edition is great.

Yeah.

But I'm like, that's such a funny.

I think Farley came up with Holy Schneides, right?

He has to have.

Which is such a funny phrase.

And I love that guy so much.

And also, I was just thinking, I was like, as time goes on, he becomes,

you know, you forget about this guy who's been gone now for, God, Jesus, 30 years.

Yeah.

30 years.

He died 97 or 98.

Yeah, almost 30 years.

Yeah.

But I'm just like, I don't know where he, but we were, because I was, and the reason I bring this up is we were talking about Macaulay Culkin.

And we were trying to think of how famous Macaulay Kulkin was because people, because people, because he appeared on Raw.

He was on Raw.

Huge pop on him.

He got a huge pop on Raw.

And then someone was like, oh, I don't think that he's like, do young people know him?

Like, every young person watches Home Alone.

Yeah.

Who doesn't know Macaulay?

He was unquestionably one of the 10 biggest movie stars in the world

for like three years.

Yes, and that's why I was saying he's like and quickly became one of the highest paid as well.

I'm saying he's like right below Santa still, probably, right?

What wouldn't you say?

As far as

Santa, Santa is the most famous person in the world.

This is interesting.

This is

the most Christ.

Yeah, are you, are you, are we?

I think Santa's more famous than Jesus.

A little kid, have you talked to little kids?

Do you know Santa?

Yeah, I know Santa.

Do you know Jesus?

But in order to celebrate Christmas, you have to be Christian, so you must know Jesus.

That's true.

And there's no true children.

Also, not true at all.

You just said that's true.

No, Christmas is a Christian holiday.

Yeah, but my family was big on Santa.

There's a secular

Christmas.

That's fair.

I was also going to say, like, if we're going to play that game, there are more Muslims of the world.

So, like, I would think, like, you know,

how famous is like, I think the Muslim population is bigger than the Christian population now, in absolute terms.

Sure.

So we're going to be Santa.

Okay, can we make a Mount famous more?

I think Santa and Jesus are on there.

Sure.

I'm going to put forth Spongebob.

SpongeBob?

I'm like, who's the most famous cartoon character where, like, visually distinctive, you feel like you could get off a plane anywhere in the world and there's a good chance a kid would know?

I feel like if you're going to see, like, yeah, like a bootleg in any country, there will be a bootleg SpongeBob.

Yes.

And that also brings me to...

Sonic the Hedgehog.

I kind of feel like Sonic the Hedgehog is going to be

like Mario?

I probably do Mario over Sonic.

Sonic has a list of the top 10 most famous people in the world.

Is Santa on there?

No.

Okay.

Well, now, see, now this list might be human figures.

Are any religious figures on there?

Walt Disney's on there.

Walt Disney is number one.

Amelia, Walt Disney is real.

Amelia thinks that Walt Disney is a character created by Mickey Mouse.

I think Macaulay Culpin's pretty damn famous.

I think Santa is the most famous.

My friend Alex and I talk about this a lot, how like in the early 90s, when we were children, we feel like there were 10 famous people.

There were 10 people who were arguably famous, and we'll sometimes like text each other and be like, you know, who's another one of the 10?

But we like talk about this group of like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Danny DeVito.

Macaulay Colkin.

And part of it for us is like people who would have appeared on the Kids' Choice Awards and the Oscars in the same year.

Arnold actually maybe does

beat Mac.

I think he beats Mac Culkin.

Michael Jackson's one of the 10.

Michael Jackson probably still.

He's number two on this list.

Michael Jackson still probably is.

Is Tom Cruise number one?

No, Walt Disney's number one.

Oh, Disney is number one.

Whose list is this?

Who made this?

This is IMDB's list.

This is actually the IMDB that's not a fan creation.

Oh, no, it is a fan creation, I think.

I feel like if we're talking in absolute terms, again, just

we're viewing it through our own prism.

We're thinking of like a very, you know, western-centric sort of thing i think there's probably some indian or chinese celebrity who we're not familiar with or political figure who is in abs in absolute terms more famous than a lot of people we consider extremely this is an americanized list this is a westernized michael jordan being at 10 i would say inarguably if we're talking the american

we get that look and we're not trying to be problematic it's for my dumb white guy personally i wasn't even saying problematic i was just saying like like what list are we making are we making the mitch list because that's its own thing you're right let's put gerard depardu in the 10

He's in the 10.

I'd like to have him in there.

Who made that?

I think Gerard Des Pardue, by the way, is a very funny select.

It was a fan list.

Tommy Disney or some shit trying to push fucking Walt up the chain.

Jemmy's probably pretty famous.

Jimmy is pretty famous.

Jimmy

is in the 10.

Jamilia Donahue.

I can't be this fucking old.

I can't be getting people's names wrong.

I like Jamilia Donahue.

Jamilia Donahue.

This is just produced by Jamilia Donahue.

I own it.

I own it.

Okay.

It's on a million dollars.

It's a spike in there somehow.

Yeah, I'll wait a minute.

Casey, do you own Dune on Physical Media?

Not to go backwards and further away from talking about our chain.

Great question, Griff.

I do not yet because I don't feel like they've released a version that I would like to own.

But I do own it digitally.

Let's stay in conversation about this.

Okay.

Well.

I'm going to get you a steel book.

At some point, I need you to buy a steel.

I want to see your ass in a steel book.

I'm going to get you

in a car car dealership.

You look so good with a steel book in your hands.

I'd love to see what you could do with that bad boy.

So much spice in this.

Can we agree that Santa is just one of the most famous people in the world?

Yeah, I agree.

He's one of the more famous people.

I think Santa is maybe the most famous.

Santa, he's got a whole month, first of all.

The month of December is his.

And then there's different iterations of Santa in every culture.

But I'm really now sort of circling back to Mario.

Mario is very famous.

I think Mario is very famous.

Is Mario more famous than Arnold?

Yeah, now he's 100%.

Ooh, okay.

Wow.

Okay.

All right.

All right.

Because I also, you know, like,

we have friends with kids.

And

they'll be like, who is that?

Or they'll be like, it's funny that that old man has muscles or something.

You know what I mean?

Like, they won't like, they won't, they don't understand the cultural cachet of Arnold Schwarzenegger of the 80s and 90s.

No.

Mickey Mouse probably at one point was, but now is less.

I think Mickey has maybe declined a little bit.

Although there's a lot of awareness of mickey do you think mario more famous than mickey i think mario is currently more famous i think so yeah i think so i would put that biggest ip in the world the most successful ip in the world is pokemon that's like that's like but in terms of

more famous than i'm not saying pikachu is more famous than mario but i'm just saying like that kind of that's where you know the world that's where the global culture is i think pokemon as much as pikachu is the face of the franchise i think there's more spread power across the entire tapestry, especially since there's so many characters.

I think Mario is a singular singular figure.

Yeah.

Is maybe the most recognizable fictional character pop iconography in the world.

Yeah, I think that's fair.

That would be my guess.

Does Sonic beat Arnold?

Yes.

Yeah.

Today, yes.

And

you don't think Sonic beats Mario?

Mario?

No, I think Mario beats Arms.

I think Mario's ahead of Sonic.

Of course, they did compete at the Olympic Games.

Here's the big question.

Yeah.

Does Mario beat Santa?

Yeah, I think so.

You think Mario beats Santa?

You might.

I think think so.

I think Santa's the most famous person in the world.

This is interesting.

I haven't heard this from you.

Expand on that.

This is a new thing.

Santa is so famous.

Two of us are disagreeing.

Santa, Mario, Mac.

Those are my, that's my rank.

You say you're saying Macaulay Culcan.

Number two.

Macaulay Culkin is, I think, as a human being, is one of the most famous people in the world.

You should call Susser's kids and ask if they know who Macaulay Culkin is.

They do.

That was a part of the test.

Oh, okay.

I was talking to this with Suss too, because, and it was like, yeah, kids watch Home Alone.

All young people watch Home Alone.

They all watch Home Alone.

They know Macaulay Culkin.

I just think that he is one of the more famous people still in the world.

Except for him.

He stuck around for a long time.

Forbes has discontinued this, but for many years, they published the Celebrity 100 and the top 10 most powerful celebrities was part of it.

1999, if we go back to then, Michael Jordan won Oprah Winfrey 2, Leonardo DiCaprio 3, Jerry Seinfeld 4, Steven Spielberg five.

Yeah, and then Michael Jordan has been taken over by Oprah at this point, I would say.

I think so.

And, you know, in 2010, which is 20, you know, not 20 years later, but, you know, over a decade later, Oprah is number one.

And then in 2020, which I guess was the last time they published it, number one, Kylie Jenner.

Number two, Kanye.

Number three, Roger Federer.

Number four, Cristiano Ronaldo.

This is where the things that, and number five, Leono Messi.

So it's like, this is the kind of thing which is like.

Yes, even back then, that was.

Oh, sorry.

Well, no, but I think, like, I think in a global, it's just a global perspective.

We're thinking in global terms, it was just like, yeah, Messier is so, and I'm not even saying his name correctly, I don't think, because I don't follow, I don't follow soccer, but like, soccer is so fucking huge.

Messier, yeah, yeah, yeah, messy,

messy, messy, messier, messier is the hockey player, yeah,

yeah.

Um, do you, I think Michael Jackson's still when we had uh, when we have lunch together, you get a little messy, but I get a little messier,

dear god, all right, let's talk about the restaurant.

Five.

There was more.

I guess we shouldn't discuss how famous is Cupid more famous than Zeus?

Cupid is very famous, but no.

No, what about

Zeus?

No.

Then Santa?

What do you think Santa is?

What is this?

I wouldn't be incensed.

What about Jack Skellington?

No.

I think he maybe makes the 10, though.

Yeah, he might make the 10.

He might make the 10.

Jack Skellington makes the 10.

Jack Skellington is really famous.

That That motherfucker's bony face is on every.

Yeah, you seen how many hoodies there are out there with Jack Skellington on?

The image of a poke ball, perhaps more famous than Santa.

Okay, Amelia, that's an object.

That's a good take.

That's an object.

That's a good take.

Poke ball.

Is a poke ball more famous than Santa?

Yeah.

Shit, I hope they didn't get.

I hope Santa doesn't get trapped in the poke ball if it's out there.

Here's a question: Is a poke ball more famous than a snake?

Like, you're like, what is this?

And you point to a a snake and a poke ball

who's are people going to be able to identify one more than the other

just any snake any snake

just a snake like if someone's like what is that they're pointing at the snake it's like i know that poke ball the idea of someone seeing a snake go what is that yeah okay here's my question

if you if you show someone a picture of a snake yeah and you go what is that and they say diamondback Yeah, and they've misidentified the species.

Do you still accept the answer as yeah, I'd still give them credit for that?

Okay.

Because you're identifying a snake, you just maybe miss that.

That feels like you're trying a level.

I'd almost just say, like, okay, then I've

so basically saying any snake, any snake, any Pokeball, just knowing it's a snake.

I think snake wins.

Okay, I think snake is more famous than Poke Ball.

Okay, got it.

But now it makes me question: is snake more famous than Santa?

But then what's he know what we're talking about?

This is getting so abstract.

If you look at a snake of any snake, any representation of snake type of snake.

I don't know if a snake is more famous than Santa.

I think there's a chance.

I think there's a chance someone could look at a snake and Santa and not really have an idea of what either is, but know, like, have be better able to identify Santa's like, I think that's like the winter like holidays, man.

Who the fuck is this Santa?

And the snake, they'd be like, I don't know.

Like, that's weird.

Is that like a green worm?

Or is that like a, like a, or just some sort of reptile?

You know, is that like a lizard?

You know, hold on a second.

The winter holiday man?

Well, like, they're like, they've seen them around the season, but they don't know specifically who they are.

This is where the conversation is.

Yeah.

Dog is infinitely more famous than Santo.

Yeah, dog is more famous than Santa.

Dog is more than

any dog.

You don't need to show anyone a picture of any dog photographed or drawn and be like, that's a dog.

Who's going to say, I don't know?

Yeah, I would trust that you'd say that's a dog if you saw a picture of a dog.

Is dog more famous than any other animal?

Like, is dog more famous than horse?

I think dog's the most famous animal.

More than cat and horse.

Dog's more famous than cat, yeah, for sure.

Oh, relax there.

Dog's more famous than kitty cat.

Yeah, that's okay.

Fine, I won't argue dog versus cat.

Cat's a type two.

Horse is a slightly more distant third.

Let me throw something at you: bird.

No,

dog.

Is bird more famous than horse?

Dog is more famous.

Dog versus Santa is a good argument, but now here's

Here's the big question.

Yeah.

Person.

Okay.

Person versus Santa.

If I considered this a couple minutes ago and I didn't say it, I stopped myself because I think genuinely dog is more famous than person.

Wow.

I think if you show a picture of a dog to a person,

you would have a better chance of identifying it correctly.

And then this is another picture.

I think so.

I think so.

I think Santa wins

in the three-way competition between dog, person, and Santa.

I think Santa's the most famous.

So you don't think Santa's a person?

Santa is a person, but he's a very specific person.

Here's where you're starting to win me over.

Yes.

Now that we've gotten to the animal and object territory.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think if you're trying to show someone any visual representation of a person

and approach it with confidence that they will be correctly identified.

Santa is the person you want to pick.

Right, because I'm trying to think of like who has

more like specifics that are immediately identifiable to everyone.

And my mind goes like Captain Hook, but it's not Captain Hook.

No, it's not.

Captain Hook is not more famous than Captain Hook, but he has distinct qualities where you'd be like, okay, he's got an eye patch, he's got the hook hand or whatever.

Captain Hook isn't more famous than dog or snake or anything.

It's way lower.

Hook also isn't like more famous than Peter Pan.

That's what I was just, I was just throwing an example out there.

I didn't think that.

but santa you could like you could identify santa even through multiple layo layers of abstraction right do you know what i'm saying yes like you could someone could probably identify santa from silhouette without colors i agree you could do like a hyper pixelated fuzzy version of santa where the color scheme was clear and people be like that's probably santa you know it could be a drawing it could be a person in a santa costume Here's a question for everyone.

Hold on a second.

Yeah.

Where does Minion go?

Because Minion in the past 20 years, I feel like, has skyrocketed skyrocketed up the awareness.

I wonder who the fuck that is.

You're doing the silhouette test.

So this is a thing in animation where if you can see someone with just

from just their shadow, basically.

It kind of does look like Link.

It does look a little bit like Link, but that is very much, it's very much.

But like Homer Simpson passes the silhouette test with flying colors.

If you see a silhouette of Homer, you know exactly who it is.

Well, I mean, hold on a second.

Santa versus Homer, we didn't even talk about.

I think it's Santa.

Maybe it's Homer.

But this actually does bring me to who's the most famous yellow character?

Because you've got SpongeBob, you've got minions, you got Pikachu, you've got Homer.

Like, there's a lot of like big yellow titans out there.

I mean, minions is tough because minion.

Okay, Mitch is just showing up a silhouette of a person, of a human being.

Is that more famous than Santa?

That's like the kind of thing.

Yeah, it looks like an anatomical drawing that was like hanging at the doctor's office.

Like, that's like a thing you put on, like, the Voyager space probe in case Aliens discovered it.

Yeah.

I also think some people would see that and guess alien.

That's true.

Right?

Like, when you're making that generic a silhouette, it starts to look a little bizarre.

If it was a silhouette of me or susser or something, people would be confused.

They guessed Santa.

They would guess.

Sorry, you led me right into that.

I am.

100%.

You know what?

It's an honor to be confused with the most famous thing in the world.

You were talking about...

In a recent episode, but also I feel like multiple episodes, how you feel like Santa has been taken away from big guys, that now buff guys get to play Santa.

And then there were

even after.

They announced this fucking Schwarzenegger Santa card.

Which Which Kyle Moody's in, which we're very excited about, but it is a Buff Santa.

And then there was an ad right after I did that where there was another Buff Santa in an ad.

J.K.

Simmons is fucking a little bit more.

J.K.

Simmons is a good thing.

It really does feel like big guys don't get to play Santa anymore.

It's fucked up.

All right, one last question.

I'm just now,

this is maybe crazy.

Okay.

Santa versus like water.

I'm thinking of like elements.

Do you think like

what's the most recognizable thing in the world?

I take water in that one.

I think people know water.

I think you need water giver of life.

I think people have to drink it every day.

Yeah.

Trees.

Trees.

Fire, maybe.

Yeah, yeah.

I think fire is the most famous element.

If we're saying what is the most famous thing on the planet, I'm sorry.

We hate that we die too soon.

We don't like, we don't like wind and fire.

But that does kind of just prove its cultural stickiness.

No, yeah.

Unfortunately, right?

I mean, is fire the most famous element?

I would go maybe water over fire, but it is very.

The hard thing is, how do you, how do you see water?

Are you saying like a water droplet, like a cartoon drop?

Are you saying like a glass?

Are you saying an ocean?

The cartoon droplet, though, is pretty.

The droplet's powerful.

Yeah, we know what a droplet looks like.

And we know what it is.

I think it's Earth.

Because I think we walk on Earth.

I think we just see it.

We're like immersed in it.

And I know air is all around us.

Air is omnipresent.

We need to breathe air, but I think people don't think about it.

I think, yes, there's no visual.

I'm not saying Earth is in the element.

The element.

You're making me think something else.

Is the planet Earth the most famous person in the world?

Mother Nature.

Like a cartoon image of the globe.

I think everyone recognizes that's the pale blue dot upon which we live.

Can anyone misidentify that?

I think some people will.

I think there are maybe some people who live in.

Hey, if you go to the silhouette test, Santa's going to win it.

Versus a circle.

It will be a circle.

Yeah, he's kind of right.

It does fail the silhouette test.

He'll be like, that's a Pokeball.

Yeah, exactly.

Which makes the case for Pokeball.

That's true.

I think mostly people will identify the Earth.

I think there maybe are some, you know,

you have to have like a

like some awareness of that the earth is round, you know, I guess it's like one hour into this episode.

Or if the Netflix conversation is cut out 15 minutes.

Flat Earthers exist.

So there are some people, but I think even flat earthers would be like, well, but I know that's supposed to be the Earth.

Right.

They wouldn't deny.

They'd say not my Earth.

Not my Earth, but I know what that is.

They're not trying to make me identify.

I would say if you show many Americans a picture of the Earth without the side with the United States on it, they won't be able to identify that.

Casey, that's a good point.

Casey, it's a great point.

But here's my argument.

I think there is an abstract, I think it doesn't have to be accurate in any way, but like blue circle with green shapes within it.

With green land masses.

Right.

Even if it doesn't look like the fucking country lines at all.

People be like, that's supposed to be the Earth.

I get it.

That's supposed to represent the Earth.

Like a version of drawing the Earth without having a proper sense of geography, I still think reads.

Here's what I say to you.

What do you like less?

Flat earthers or thin santerers?

I hate thin santares.

I think the thin santa movement is more destructive.

They're more dangerous.

I would just take the earth thing and

the next step I would make is it's the thing on which we live.

It's the thing in which society is built.

It's the thing in which we stand, but it's a thing that we have to observe via aerial photography, via space probes that have taken photos of it.

I think the thing we see every day with our own two eyes is the sun.

And I think the sun is more famous than the earth.

Wow, fuck.

And I think even people who are like, maybe don't have, you know, maybe they live in an isolated community and they don't have like any sort of like connection to the outside world.

Yeah.

They're still like, I know what that is.

That's it's got arguably the big, the most famous element is a big part of it as well.

Fire.

It probably would also pass the silhouette test because it's like, you know, it would have a little bit of sensitivity.

Right.

It's a great point.

All right, Sun one, Santa, Tena two.

All right.

Dog three.

Dog three.

And then Mario 5.

Yeah, Mario.

Mario then.

Mario then Mac.

So we're folding fire into Sun.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

And then Pokeball six.

Pokeball six.

Snake seven.

Snake, yeah, snake is in the top down.

Snake is high.

Chuck E.

Cheese.

Chuck E.

Cheese was founded in 1977.

Mouse.

By Nolan Bush.

Now, is rat more famous than snake?

Oof.

I think it might be.

I think it is.

I think it is.

You see rats more.

They live amongst humans.

Is rat more famous than mouse?

Fuck.

Mouse may be more.

I think people think of them as the same thing, even though they're not.

I think rodents are just kind of like the umbrella.

Yeah, I think rodents.

Which Chuck is.

Chuck is a rodent.

Chuck E.

Cheese.

We didn't even bring up bug.

Oh, my God.

Bug is huge.

Bug is huge.

Bug might be bigger than any.

It's one thing.

Bug might be bigger than any individual animal.

If all bug is one, I see bugs all the time.

All the time.

Who doesn't see bugs?

Yeah.

I see bugs all the time.

Do you not see bugs all the time?

I do see bugs all the time.

They're everywhere.

Do you see bugs right now?

I don't see bugs right now.

And I could go outside and see the sun.

So it's bugs bigger than sun.

But I bet if you look down, you'd catch a bug.

Well, you probably would.

Look,

sun is more famous than I think sun is more famous than bugs.

Because I think

there are arid climates and there are very cold climates where there are not a lot of insects.

But you are going to see the sun.

I have a genuine question.

Yeah.

Okay, go for it.

Is moon more famous than Earth?

I bet you I was thinking this.

I think moon is more famous than Earth, but moon is not more famous than Sun.

Okay, okay, okay.

I think Sun is more fun.

Sun is more fun.

I think it's more famous because people think about it.

I gotta tell you something.

Moon changes.

There's a lot about Moon that's pretty fucking cool and famous.

Moon would pass multiple silhouette tests.

It's true.

That's true.

That's a great point.

Back tonight, the fucking voyage to the moon with the rocket in the air.

That rocks.

Made of cheese.

Yeah.

Tonight, tonight.

Yeah.

It's got that element on its side.

The sun has fired.

Seeking a like Raisin Brand Two Scoop Sun.

And I'm like, that feels about as famous as you can get.

The fucking sunglasses.

He doesn't have them.

That's a Mandela effect thing.

Wait, really?

Yes.

Wow.

It's like Baronstein Bears that we all remember him wearing sunglasses and he doesn't and he never has.

This is also like Tony the Tiger's nose being blue, which I remember is black, but no, it's blue.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Wow.

Crazy.

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chuck e cheese was founded in 1977 by nolan bushnell uh better known for founding atari speaking of all with all the video game talk we've had nolan bushnell a huge figure in in video games huge figure in in uh you know in-person entertainments was inspired by disneyland's country bear jamboree and the enchanted tiki room in fact animatronics were at the core of the concept yeah that's the basis of chuck e.

Cheese is I want this to be an animatronics attraction.

And I think like, how do you bring animatronics to the masses?

Yes.

Like, it was kind of the domain of Disney.

Right.

And he figured out a way to scale it up and put it in shopping malls.

It merged with Showbiz Pizza in 1985, which we had in Lakewood, California.

Actually, knew more, I knew better than Chuck E.

Cheese as a boy, and then

it turned into a Chuck E.

Cheese.

The entire Showbiz brand merged with Chuck E.

Cheese, and Chuck E.

Cheese was, you know, all those stores became Chuck E.

Cheese.

I'm saying that in a clumsy way.

It was acquired by, as all these chains have been, acquired by private equity fund Apollo Global Management in 2014.

It survived the pandemic partly through its ghost kitchen component, Pascali's Pizza, which we will talk about based off of.

Pasqually, right?

Is it Pasqually?

I think it's Pasquale.

Pasqually?

Pasqually's Pizza.

And it has resurged in the Zeitgeist partly due to five nights at Freddy's, but...

Kind of shooting themselves in the foot here.

In May 2024, they announced plans to discontinue animatronics from all but a handful of legacy locations, including one in Northridge, California.

The location we went to in Eagle Rock had a total of one animatronic.

Disaster.

It was really, really a bummer.

We were, let's just get ahead of it.

We were there for an hour and a half.

Yeah.

And he was turned on in the sense that he was like literally just doing this, like turning, and he'd like look and his eyes would shift and he'd blink.

He did not do anything beyond that.

Yeah.

There was a curtain up on him the whole time, video screens playing musical numbers of various stripes that we'll talk about.

But Chuck was just sort of scanning, like he was a security guard.

He didn't talk.

He didn't sing.

Yeah, there was a point.

Where there's a point where I thought he was going to talk and then he didn't.

And there was a certain point where their spotlight was on him and I was like, okay, is he going to do like a little speech or a little numbers?

He didn't react with the story.

It didn't seem to happen.

He was kind of moving when we first got to the table, right?

It seemed like he was a featured thing on him when we first got there.

Maybe you guys did not see it.

I caught a little bit of it.

You know, he didn't speak.

Yeah, and I feel like it used to be a like.

The band performed every hour.

There was a whole fucking show.

Yeah.

And it was like a whole thing.

And it wasn't pizza, which I remember.

It was gay.

It was like, it would happen on a regular rotation.

It was ongoing and you wanted to be seated by the stage so you could see it happen.

And this is the thing, like, like it's easy to say, hey, everything's getting worse.

Everything's getting shittier.

I think this is the case where this actually has gotten a lot of people.

I actually think it's one of the clearest distillations of that philosophy.

Right.

Right.

That we're paying more for less.

We were discussing it because we were like, hey, we're adults.

So does this just suck because we're older?

But then I told you, I was like, I remember going to bonkers as a kid, bonkers,

a fun house or whatever.

And it was just like a Chuck E.

Cheese type place.

And we looked at a video of it, and it looked so much better than the Chuck E.

Cheese we were in.

And then I was like, I remember my, I remember the Chuck E.

Cheese when I was growing up going to Chuck.

I didn't go often, but I went once or twice.

And I remember there being like little things where you could crawl under the stage.

It was way more interactive.

It was, and this just, this felt so flat.

It felt like you were in a room

in Eagle Rock filled with arcade machines.

In a dead mall.

Yes.

Yes.

100%.

I mean,

it is very easy to be like, well, obviously the place we went to when we were children in 1992 was great, and this is bad now.

Right.

I know there's the nostalgia.

Look, there's the nostalgia lines of it, but here's the thing that fights the nostalgia.

There was actual just hard math.

That when we used to go there as children, there was a band of five robots that would perform a full concert.

And now you have one robot just kind of creeping on you.

Yes.

Doing nothing.

Well, two of you got Wigger.

All right.

The two robots creeping on the children, Nick and Chuck E.

He was kind of behaving Weiger-esque, just kind of like scanning,

counting how many children were there.

Looking.

Chuck E.

Cheese, like kind of his in his status of

at the Eagle Rock location, he was kind of in a liminal state, like a space between life and death.

Like it was kind of like you would bring a doctor in there and there would be like a court case to say, is this guy alive or should we pull the plug on him?

Because he wasn't interacting with anybody, but his eyes were sort of like finding things.

And it's their consciousness.

Is there any internality to that?

Lights were on, but no one was home.

Exactly.

And it's honestly distressing.

It could go to the Supreme Court.

If they brought that robot in front of the Supreme Court,

it was hard to settle.

It was a very...

First of all, let me say this.

Yes.

It was one of the most grim experiences I've ever had doing this show.

It was truly miserable.

It was an absolute fucking nightmare.

It was bad.

This whole day, I pulled up into this old dying mall.

So malls are dying on top of this anyway.

Yeah, yeah.

It's sizzling.

It's raining, which is a particularly bad mall, I will say.

It's a really bad mall, but there's some great Filipino food there, and this is where we went to Jollibee.

So, there is like, sure, there's some stuff in this mall that is worthwhile.

Like, a lot of dying malls, it's turned into kind of this place where some,

you know, kind of the working class has kind of occupied some of these spaces.

Like, there's a church there, there's some independent restaurants, but it's mostly dead.

It's mostly a dead mall.

There is a Target, which I think probably helps keep it.

But like right next to it is like the Husk of a Macy's that clearly used to take up 50%, 25% of the entire space, and it's been filled with nothing.

So when you're like driving into it, it's just like giant, empty, unmarked, like cavernous space.

It is such a dead.

quiet mall already.

And then it was, so it was raining.

We were there.

It's, it's, it's gray and raining.

Yeah.

It's 11.30 or whatever.

It's, it, it's just, everything about this is grim.

Shirley Manson is smiling ear to ear, but for us, we're like.

Yeah, we're not.

Shirley Manson's having a blast.

I mean, for the rent, I guess just for the rent.

She's only happy when it rains.

She's only happy when it rains.

She's only happy when it rains.

Is she happy about Chuck E.

Cheese at all or no?

I'm not sure.

I don't know if it's raining.

She's paranoid, too.

She is paranoid.

Yeah, I think she's right.

She is paranoid.

Well, she, all right, so sorry.

Shirley Manson is happy.

Yeah.

This is very grim for me.

I told you guys that I was walking in and there was a guy coming out from a gym because this is what this mall has become.

There's like a gym there.

And I just felt so embarrassed.

I nodded to him.

And like, I, not that I thought he thinks I was going to the gym, but I was like, this guy doesn't know I'm about to go eat at Chuck E.

Cheese with a bunch of other adults.

This is very simple.

Yes.

This is, but it felt pathetic.

Right.

Going in there.

And then I opened the door.

And this is the thing that we all agreed on: is that there was just a wall of stench.

It was one of the worst smelling rooms I've ever entered.

It smells fucking awful.

You mentioned it.

You mentioned the gym and it smells like a gym.

It smells like a gym.

It smells like children's gym.

It smells like man sweat.

It's so, it's absolutely putrid in there.

I will say, my memory of Chuck E.

Cheese is it smelling like diapers.

And there was some diaper smell, but it was not like an explicit, an outright shit.

It was a subnote, though.

Yeah, it was not mostly shit.

It was mostly just like stench.

It's not like I would have welcomed the diaper smell, but it would have made sense to me.

Yeah.

It makes it because we were talking through it and we were like, do they just not clean here?

I guess kids are like...

Did you just

directly into the Chuck Espines?

Could be part of it.

I was saying that it genuinely might be part of it.

I was saying that I would like to wear a dirty diaper N95 to get around the smell in the Chuck E.

Cheese because I think I would rather just smell a dirty diaper.

It smelled so bad.

And I was like, I walked in.

I was like, man, this is like overwhelming.

I said that you guys,

I was the last one there.

I showed up.

I was like, I need a coffee.

We're still waiting on Mitch.

I did get there before him.

Yes.

You did.

You make me feel on time.

And how much later did I get there than Griff?

About 10 minutes.

But Griffin was still getting a coffee while you were.

There's no way it was 10 minutes.

What do you dramatism in?

about eight it's like eight minutes

oh so you got there right when he got there I got there right after you guys got there yeah

he was there so I like went to get coffee and then like re-entering I was like it's even worse than I remember and then during our meal I went to the bathroom and I came out and I said this is the only time I've ever been to a place where the bathroom smells better than the restaurant itself

and Emma you said the same thing and that when you were in the bathroom someone was actively changing a diaper and you just did what I did and you called Amelia Emma I'm sorry

I wasn't gonna correct you

there were there were dirty diapers in the trash can and it still smelled better in there than fucking awful Amelia by the way I gotta say Christ

we appreciate it so much that you volunteered you wanted to come you were like I want to come to Chuck E.

Cheese all the restaurants you can go join me for meals that's the one you chose to join us for you're freak but you but also thank you because you saved us from being three childless men at a Chuck E.

Cheese, which is,

I was already incredibly uncomfortable there, but just like having a woman at our party made us feel,

I feel like

maybe less threatening.

I don't know.

A part of me felt like it was my duty to help out that way.

I will say I have never been to a Chuck E.

Cheese without a child before.

I've like in the times I've gone last 10 years, it's been like with friends of mine who have kids or when I'm like babysitting or like little relatives or whatever.

I took my sister who's a bunch younger than me when she was growing up, whatever.

I'd never been there as just an adult party.

Yes.

And I feel like it was floated at some point that maybe Susser was going to meet us and bring his daughter, depending on when we went.

And I got there and realized that was not the case.

No, he was going to instead join us for Chuck E.

Cheese Pizza later without his daughter.

I was like, so is Susser coming solo?

And you were like, no.

And then we ordered Chuck E.

Cheese delivery here.

He showed up to eat Chuck E.

Cheese delivery and then left.

And added meatball dunkers.

And added meatball dunkers.

Which they didn't give us.

They just gave us regular meatballs.

I think that is what the meatball dunker is.

On the app.

It shows them wrapped in like a pastry.

It's a different item.

It's like a completely different thing.

Yeah.

So Amelia like correctly ordered the right thing, and it was like two separate items: meatball or meatball dippers or dunkers or whatever they're called.

And then we didn't get that.

It smelled terrible.

We didn't have case.

We didn't have to like ass no matter what.

So So it doesn't matter.

Yeah.

We looked like creeps.

Amelia did help the case.

100%.

Amelia was going to get on the trampoline.

You were going to jump on the trampoline until they were like, you're eight inches too tall.

We thought

because it was 56 inches and you were like, I'm 5'5.

And it was like, that's not how it works.

She was like, you need to be 4'8 ⁇ .

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah,

you were like, you were like almost a foot too tall for it.

It would have been fun.

No.

No ballpen.

No ball pen.

Are those gone?

I think they're gone.

They had this ninja run thing that looked like kind of just a mcdonald's play place but now costs an additional ticket yeah to run through it wasn't that big it wasn't that streamed it was just like a couple tunnels and like i don't know like things you knock out of the way and then they had the trample docks and filled with norovirus i mean like that was the thing like amelia was like when we were touching i think she's like i was i was so aware of like not touching my mouth again but anything i touched i was like i just need to get hand sanitizer it felt like we were gonna get sick it felt disgusting yes and they're on top of it but that is just any i guess children's place that I would go to.

It's also decidedly not for us.

Like, like this is, and they've tried, they have a grown-ups menu now, which they're pushing.

Yeah.

They have beer and wine.

I don't think they've always had beer and wine.

They are trying to get at least like either kids with

kids and their parents.

They want their parents to stay, or they want adults to come in on their own as a nostalgia play.

They're trying to make some sort of, and it's just, it's not their lane.

Or kids that like to party.

Or kids that like to party.

I think we should put a pin in that because I think they, if they are trying to make this work as a nostalgia play for adults or teenagers by their own, I think they're failing conclusively.

Oh, so bad.

And it feels like they're not even really trying.

And I think that would be a smart business strategy

to sort of like post six o'clock, it's like Chuck After Dark.

Chuck After Dark.

Let's say it's like Chuck After Dark.

Let's make it feel more like a Dave and Buster's, more like an adult hang.

Right.

Well, hey, we'll throw a bar in there.

And it can be the salad bar while kids are there and have pizza by the slice, but then at night, you know, you can get yourself a cocky.

When they're already serving beer and wine, and I feel like John Oliver did a segment on this recently, but there's like a weird like rabbit hole on YouTube of like a drunk adults getting into insane fights at Chuck E.

Cheese.

Yes.

Who are like parents at birthday parties fighting with each other and it getting like physical.

That's good.

And I'm like, I don't know if adults bringing children should be drinking.

No, for sure.

I think they shouldn't be drinking enough to be drunk fighting.

Totally.

In the middle of the day.

Like, I've been to kids' birthday parties.

You have to be drinking pretty fast to get that hammered in that amount of time.

Right.

So I'm like, if you're serving beer and wine, then make that a like after six o'clock kids aren't allowed, then it's for adult

thing, like more of a Dave and Busters thing, and then like play up.

Chuck After Dark is great, Chuck After Dark is good.

I need some strange, you know, like have him just being like,

That's what he should say.

I'm saying, full blue, yeah, why not?

You do it.

Look, you keep it really simple.

There's a switch that's x-rated, you turn on when the kids leave, and then you make sure that the switch is flipped back in the morning.

But to this.

Now, make sure you flip the switch back before the a.m shift okay boss my middle name is erection

that's perfect that's pretty good saying that at 9 a.m to a bunch of toddlers

oh i didn't flip the switch back boss It feels like all their like plays to adults are to make the adults that are accompanying children hate being there less.

Like they're like, can we elevate the food a little bit?

Can we help

this a little bit?

Can we offer you alcohol?

Whatever.

I'm like, that's not helping anything, it feels like.

No, you're not actually going to make the adults enjoy it, or they're going to get drunk and enjoy it too much.

And you're not making something that adults can enjoy on their own.

And I also want to call this out.

The last time I went was the last time I was here in LA.

Met up with my buddy Derek Simon, who's my oldest friend.

He's got a young daughter.

And he said, She's never been to a Chuck E.

Cheese.

Yeah,

there was a child.

Important part of the story.

And he said, she wants to come.

Can she pick the restaurant?

Right.

Or I said, why doesn't she pick the restaurant?

Is there a place?

He says, she's heard about Chuck E.

Cheese.

She's never been.

Do you want to go to Chuck E.

Cheese with us?

And I was like, yeah, that sounds fun.

Fun to watch a kid experience Chuck E.

Cheese for the first time.

And she had a ball, right?

But I get there.

They had been there for like five minutes.

I just walk in and join them.

We play games.

We eat pizza.

Then when I'm walking out, there is a woman at like the checkpoint desk who is like, can I check your stamp?

Yeah.

You're walking out with them.

Are these the kids?

Like, is this the kid you walked in with?

And I was like, oh, when I got here, no one was manning the station.

And they were like, you didn't get a wristband?

And I was like, no, I didn't get a wristband.

I didn't get a stamp.

And they were sort of like,

I guess we can let you leave, but we're not supposed to.

Wow.

So I was like an adult joining an adult

and his daughter.

Yeah.

And it wasn't like they were trying to block me from coming in.

They were like, we don't know if we should let you leave.

I think they were scared you left a kid in there?

Something.

Thank you, Amelia.

It was huge that you were there.

We would have definitely been stopped.

I'm like, to that point, this is not a place where they're like, hey, come hang out solo.

No, no, no, for sure.

Now we walk in there and there's like the security checkpoint and they don't stop any of us.

And I feel like you went up and were like, are we supposed to get stamped?

And the woman was like, don't worry about it.

Yeah.

I think it was so dead.

We were there at like, you know, we're basically, we're there at 11.30 is when we all started to gather on a weekday.

And so it was like, how many other people were there?

10?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like total, like other customers?

Yeah.

It was, it was a pretty lighthouse.

I thought they felt like they could pop yourself.

There was a lot of moms in there,

children.

And that I understand.

Hey, if you're a single parent, you got to occupy your kid for a little bit.

Yeah, or whatever.

Sure, it makes sense.

But it was a lot of moms and their kids.

And

I would say there was like seven to eight moms and two dads I saw total.

Yeah.

I gave one of the dads a nod and he did not like it.

I sort of were like, hey.

And he was.

He probably saw the man in there standing with you that had short shorts and a tiger tattoo on his side.

thigh.

This most scary stamp you can have at the fucking Chuck E.

Cheese.

I want to go back to something, which is,

you know,

I felt this way while watching, re-watching recently a movie I really love, Paul Schrader movie with Greg Kinnear about Bob Crane, the star of Hogan's heroes, and his sex addiction called Auto Focus.

That's the first time you brought this title up on this podcast, isn't it?

Yeah, I don't know if we've talked about Auto Focus before.

I've talked about it before.

Anyway, so Auto Focus, which includes a scene you know, famously where Greg Kinnear and

Willem Dafoe are in a basement watching porno together and they say, oh, this is getting me hot.

And they start both start jacking off.

Kind of pulling an autofocus.

Kind of pulling an autofocus, yeah.

But that's not what I was talking about.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That term.

They have a, there's a, there's another part where they're like, you know, Greg Kinnear is going to strip clubs and he's being the drummer in the jazz band at a strip club.

But then you have a moment of he's like, wait, there used to be like a jazz combo that would play live music at a strip club.

Sure.

And you have this feeling like you're watching this of like, we used to make things in this country.

Like, this used to be like a thing

at Chuck E.

Cheese back in the day, and at my equivalent, Showbiz Pizza, we used to have the Rock of Fire explosion, which I will show to everyone.

And you might be too young to remember this, but this was, there was a fucking gorilla on the keyboards.

There's an animatronic gorilla.

There were other, like, they're just a bunch of different creatures playing different instruments.

It was like a full fucking band of animatronics.

And they, they, you know, they made a, they later made a documentary where somebody documentary is great.

Documentary is really cool.

The Rock of Fire Explosion.

But, but it's like

that, that

also used to be part of the experience.

And Chuck E.

G's had the equivalent thing.

There were a whole bunch of animatronics doing cool shit, and that was part of what was fun about it.

This is a thing, I'm not just watching what you're watching now, which is like literally blippy videos.

They had licensed blippy videos and license and licensed kids bop videos that they were playing on a loop on video monitors.

And that's the entertainment for kids versus it used to be something not that you could see on YouTube, but something that was unique to this experience, unique to this individual institution.

And it's just been completely ripped out.

We saw two different Sabrina Carpenter covers done by Kids Bob with zero appearances by Chuck E.

Cheese members.

Then there were some original songs with like Chuck E.

Cheese and his pals as puppets.

Yes.

I feel like there was at least one number with like people in full-body mascot suits.

We were talking about how fucking fudgy the branding is.

Completely eradicate.

Yeah, you were saying how there was like a CGI Chuck, a bad puppet Chuck, an animatronic Chuck.

There was so many.

There was a full-body mascot Chuck.

And they also redesigned Chuck E.

Cheese in the 2010s, I believe.

Yeah.

Maybe earlier than that.

And now voiced by the bowling for soup front man.

Is that true?

Yes.

And he used to have more of this kind of voice.

Like he started out as like old-timey show biz kind of like sleazy agent.

Yeah.

And then the 90s, I feel like they were like, Chuck is cool.

He skateboards.

But he still had that kind of like off-ramp bunny voice.

And now he's bowling for soup guy and he's like very skinny.

He's got sort of like lengthy pistortions.

And yes.

And yeah, he's got a little bit more.

He's more like a kid.

Like he got turned into a cool teen versus like this kind of weird older cigar chunk.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah, Borschpeld.

Yeah.

Which, so

Munch, who's also a character there, I think

Munch is a much more, first of all, it's like Mitch, but Munch is also a much more enjoyable character.

And I asked, I like Munch.

I said, is Munch popular?

And she said, yeah, Munch is very popular.

I'm like, Munch has got to be more popular than Chuck than Chuck.

I think so.

I mean, I think no one cares about Chuck.

I don't think Chuck is like.

Chuck is like Mickey Mouse.

It's like Mickey Mouse isn't anyone's favorite, but everyone recognizes Mickey Mouse's affiliation with Disney.

But like people are like, oh, I like Donald, you know, or whatever.

I like Princess Jasmine.

I mean, people have the tertiary characters, peripheral characters, what people are interested in.

I'm going to put forth a really bold statement.

Go for it.

It's a question.

Yeah.

Okay.

Is Pasqually now more famous than Chuck?

Chuck?

Now let me make the case.

Okay.

Yeah.

In store, they're minimizing Chuck more and more.

It's true.

Right?

Like, Chuck is getting kind of like nerfed.

On top of that, there's a real lack of clarity on what Chuck looks like.

We're seeing five different representations of him.

He's abstracted, right?

Pisqually is pretty clean, is pretty consistent.

It's just kind of a classic Italian pizza box chef.

Right.

And now that they've branded into this new ghost kitchen delivery thing,

his name is on the fucking box.

It's called Pasquale's Pizza and Wings.

Right.

I'm like, there's a clarity and a focus to who Pisqually is.

To To me, Italian to rat is kind of a one-to-one.

They did give us, they gave us like children's paper plates and cups for soda and pizza slices.

And we got a munch, a Jasper the dog, a Pisqually, and a chuck.

And a chuck, yeah.

And you made Amelia take

the Pasquale because you're the most Italian.

That was me.

It was, I think it was why.

It was me.

Oh, you said it.

You just reversed 40x.

Okay, so now it's even.

That's even.

I was the brutalist 40x Joe.

Say it.

That's right.

Well, he said 40x.

And by the way,

is that, I mean, is that line from that scene going to be the new, like, because squeal like a pig for a long time was like the, you know, is

late, you're a lady of the evening going to replace squeal like a pig?

Ooh, I don't know.

It's a pretty funny line.

I mean, but I don't know.

I don't know.

I don't think so.

You don't think so?

Okay.

I don't think so.

I don't think it's going to replace Squeal like a pig.

I don't think so.

Okay.

By the way, in their adult branding, as of this recording, some local area Chuck E.

Cheeses will be known as Chuck Eagles Cheese.

Depending on who won who won the Super Bowl or Chuck E.

Chiefs.

Just so people know, because they'll come in the Super Bowl.

Go Birds.

Oh, you know what?

Go Birds is right for this episode.

We'll see.

I'll say this.

I said this when we were walking out of there.

I was craving fresh air more than when the Los Angeles fires hit.

When I walked outside, I was like, oh, thank God I can breathe again.

It was, it was air-wise, it felt worse than the beginning of January.

Yeah, absolutely suffocating.

It was like, I've been seated in the back seat, like the very back seat right next to the airplane lavatory, and that's better air than what we were breathing in inside.

It was fucking Chucky Cheese.

It was absolutely awful.

You also become like a little bit accustomed to it, which is bad.

And then you get wafts.

I remember when we were eating, you're like, I just got a waft of something.

I just felt, yeah,

there was a point where I was just like, I feel like someone just emptied their diaper.

Like, it's just like, like, it's, I'm getting that smell.

I had a big smile on my face.

I, I really, I'm buying into Emma's theory that they were somehow funneling the

gym air in because it was so distinctive.

I don't know.

I don't, I, I, Amelia's first text said, it smells like old piss in here.

And I was like, well, that makes sense.

There's probably been a thousand accidents on that carpet.

Here's what we're going to do.

Here's, I'm going to conduct some recon at some other area Chuck E.

Cheeses.

I'm going to go into each one of them and say, like, I'm conducting a smell test.

I'm just going to breathe in the air a little bit.

Get on all fours for sniffing the carpet.

Another thing about the smell is not only did it smell like an old dirty shoe, but

there was a humidity to that.

It was too good.

It was too warm in there.

Second of all, I was, I mean, and maybe just for kids, they keep it warmer or whatever.

But there was, it was like,

it was moist in the air.

It was disgusting.

It was a place to be a bad scene.

It was not a place to be be eating food, which we, which we which we did.

And it's the kind of thing of like, you know, the employees who I have a lot of empathy for, because I mean, I can't, I imagine there's so much, you know, like just like kid mess they have to deal with.

And yeah, drunk adults or demanding adults is probably a thing they have to deal with.

But also just that, that, that must and that stench, which I'm sure you get desensitized to over time.

But I don't know, it can't be good for you to be breathing in that air for eight-hour shifts.

I told you that I took Mirlax last night.

Yeah.

And I haven't gone to the bathroom yet.

And I said this to you, but I was afraid.

But it was also befitting if I shit my pants and Chucky Cheese.

I said, and I said to you,

I said, if you did that, I think it would improve the smell of air.

It's just a very real possibility.

I'd stand next to you like an air freshman.

The last time I was there with my friend Derek and his daughter,

the employees at the sort of main, like, I don't know, the ticket cash in there where you get your like

power cards or whatever the fuck it is behind the counter ordered like a Starbucks delivery.

and so like a door dasher came in with like a tray of Starbucks and dropped it off for them and was like thank you turned walked out and then turned back walked over to them and went

what is this is this uh

is this for kids

and they were like yeah and she went okay got it

and walked out it was an interaction that stuck with me that's wild it was one of these guys if you showed the earth to him, he wouldn't know what the hell.

It was a woman.

It was like a middle-aged woman.

And she seemed genuinely confused.

Like, she's just like, another drop-up.

Here I go.

I'm going to walk out.

Wait a second.

Turns around, scans the whole place.

What is this?

Is this for kids?

What a psychopath.

I mean, look.

It's getting less.

Chuck E.

Cheese on the famous scale is way low.

He's way down.

We're past the 90-minute mark.

Should we talk about the food?

Yeah.

Okay.

So

we got a barbecue chicken pizza on stuffed crust.

This is part of the new grown-up menu.

Well, yeah, also Griffin wanted to do Chuck E.

Cheese.

So that's another aspect.

Griff, you want to do Chuck E.

Cheese, we're mad at that.

And then when we pick, we were like, okay, let's do, there was a meal deal and you could get a large pizza, four drinks, and an appetizer sampler.

Correct.

Both of you were like, I just want plain cheese pizza.

And I was like, what if we do large barbecue chicken with stuffed crust?

It didn't even start that way.

It started with, we were like, you were like, how about stuffed crust?

And we were like, okay, cheese pizza with stuffed crust.

That's cool.

And then we were going to get pepperoni pizza.

And then that's fine.

And then you asked Griff.

You were like, do you want toppings?

And you're like, pepperoni.

We were like, and I was like, I want cheese pizza.

So we're going to order like a small cheese pizza.

Yes.

Then

you,

and then about three minutes in, we were talking to the person at the front counter, you decided we needed stuffed crust, barbecue chicken pizza.

I was doing like three card Monty.

It was like, I kept being like, what if actually we take that out and we put that in and move this around?

And somehow I got you guys to agree to an order you hated?

I hated on site before we even tasted.

I broke and was just, I don't like barbecue pizza.

I think it shouldn't be a pizza.

It sucks.

I hate barbecue pizza.

Amelia, you agree with me?

Yep.

And the results, check out with that.

Barbecue sauce as a base instead of tomato sauce is disgusting.

I disagree.

I like barbecue chicken pizza.

I think it works in some context.

I really like it.

I don't think it's.

Unless it was fresh veggies, which were good on it.

But you don't think this is what?

I don't think this was a good execution of it, but I will say I like the

chicken was the chicken itself, I thought, was just like a really bad protein, low quality protein, some good crispness, yes, from the peppers and onions.

But the vegetables on it were the highlight.

Yeah, the vegetables were a highlight, but I did think that stuffed crust was quite good.

Can I defend myself for a moment?

Please.

So I was going to be in town this week.

You said, hey, we'd love to have you do an episode.

I said, what chains are on the board?

You said, I don't know.

We're trying to figure out a few records.

We're getting ready for like

the timing is a little weird.

Different munch.

Different munch.

Different munch.

Yeah.

There weren't clear options, right?

And it was.

There was so much madness today in a different way.

There were some things you threw out where you were like, I guess we could do this.

I guess we could do this.

And I said, I eat so much shit.

Right.

I eat so much like chain food, both good and bad, various tiers of quality.

Feels like a waste to pick something that I don't care about a little bit or have some feeling for, right?

Some history with.

Yeah, fair.

So then I went to the Doughboys Wikia.

And I was like, what chains has it been the longest since it was covered once?

I was like, I don't want to pitch doing a five or a six.

Sure.

But I was like, what has it over five years since it was covered?

And I saw The Chuck E.

Cheese was 2016.

Aaron McGathey.

Aaron McGathey got a very low score.

I had had this experience with my friend Derek a year ago.

And then during

Derek and his daughter.

Thank you for clarifying.

Which is, which

sounds very, that sounds like an indie band.

It was a very nice indie movie.

Which I'll also say, like, well, I'll get to this in a second.

But then

Derek and his daughter.

Derek and his daughter at The Chuck E.

Cheese.

during lockdown yeah we did these George Lucas talk show marathon streams where we'd go for like 12 hours raising money for different causes and businesses that were affected during the pandemic and so part of it was me as Watto a disgusting character ordering like the grossest food I could and eating it on camera and just being like what's the funniest thing I could order as delivery and it was right when I hesitate to call it a scandal but this thing happened where like a bunch of people started seeing Pasquale pizza show up on delivery app and they were like where's this pizzeria I've never heard of Pasquale's before.

They'd get it delivered.

They'd be like, this tastes familiar.

They'd look it up and it was like, oh, Chuck E.

Cheese at a time where no one can come in person and touch a bunch of games

is trying to just straight sell their pizza to adults.

Yes.

Which was kind of funny.

It was, and it was, they were tricking people, but it was fairly clever.

Like, cause, and there were a lot of those ghost kitchen ploys that were happening at the time.

Most famously, Robert Earle of Planet Hollywood fame had all his celebrity ghost kitchens, some of which persist, one of which has an integration with Chuck E.

Cheese, Buddy V's cake slice.

Interesting.

Which they sell at Chuck E.

Cheese, is a Robert Earl brand.

We did not do a fundraiser for the fires, by the way.

We actually, we did a fundraiser for the Element Fire.

You came on the George Lucas.

We did.

You helped raise a lot of money.

We're going to do something.

But

I ordered Pasquales at some point, like 2020, summer 2020, Peak Madness.

And it was a thing of like, what's the worst thing we can make Griffin eat?

I feel like Sharpling maybe like suggests suggests it when he was on the show or whatever.

I got this like Pasquales and I was like, this is not terrible.

This is better than I remember it tasting.

I had a lot of fondness for Chuck E.

Cheese as a child and I was a kid who mostly ate junk food but didn't eat very much.

Was there a Chuck E Cheese in New York City?

There was not.

There now are a couple.

There's one in Harlem.

There's one near the Barkley Center in Brooklyn.

I think there's one in Queens.

In my memory, there was not one within the five boroughs.

Wait, why me for the Barkley Center?

I had basketball.

I don't know.

Oh, yeah.

I know it's Barkley.

Is it Fort Charles Barkley?

No.

No, it's not.

Barclay is the bank.

Oh, Barclay.

Oh, right.

Sorry.

But when my family would go on like road trips and stuff, it was one of the most exciting elements to me of like, are we going to a place where there's a Chuck E.

Cheese?

Right, right, right.

Barclay Center would be funny as hell.

Charles Barkley Center.

I mean, he's the funniest.

We said it before.

He's the funniest man in the world.

Yeah.

He's maybe my favorite SNL host.

He's always the best.

Truly.

He's good.

But it was like a very...

exciting, special occasion treat for me.

Yes.

And yet I have this very distinct memory.

There were very few places I wanted to eat that didn't have some kind of gimmick.

I was so into theme restaurants and any fast food chain that would have toys.

I think it is really what formed my bad diet.

Is as a child, I was not that interested in eating.

So there always had to be some other incentive where I was like, I'll eat this if it means I get to see a robot show, I get a Toy Story toy, I get whatever.

And Chuck E.

Cheese is one that I remember as a child being like, I love this place.

I know this pizza isn't good.

Like even as a five-year-old, I know this is substandard pizza.

And not even coming from like a New York pizza snob perspective, being like, I wish this was dominoes level.

And when I got Pasquale delivered in 2020, I remember thinking, huh,

this is closer to Domino's than I remember it being.

Had they stepped up their game a little bit, especially if now in this crisis moment, they have to just sell the pizza.

And then I went with Derek and his daughter last year, and I was like, hey, your wife must be really happy that I like,

I took the bullet and spared her having to go to Chuck E.

Cheese.

This seems like the kind of place she would hate.

And he was like, no, my wife loves Chuck E.

Cheese.

She got so angry when she heard I was going with you.

Wow.

And she has to work today.

She asked that we order a second pie for takeout to bring to her.

That's wild.

And we ordered, I believe it was a plain cheese pie with stuffed crust.

And we were all like, fuck, this is pretty good.

This is like pretty good fast food pizza, right?

And then he was like, she's going to be thrilled when she takes this home.

So I see you haven't done it in eight years.

I've had two experiences in the last five years where I was like, I think they've stepped up their game a little bit.

And also, I have some fond associations with this place.

We can talk about the sort of like collapse of their branding.

I take a bite of this pizza.

I'm like, this sucks.

I regret what I did.

This was a mistake.

If you were trying to win Wags and I over on the pizza at Chugg E.

Chi.

I thought it was going to be a good thing.

The large barbecue chicken pizza over stuffed crust was the worst way to do it.

My strategy, I'll explain this.

And I was, there was a hubris to this, which I recognize now, right?

The two times I've enjoyed it in the last five years were getting the single most basic option possible.

Right.

And the one plus-up that I was vouching for was the stuffed crust execution is good.

I think there may be good at melted cheese and nothing else.

I will say this.

Yeah.

The stuffed crust is good.

I like the stuffed crust.

The stuffed crust, they do a good job.

I'm a bit of a stuffed crust skeptic.

And like Pizza Hut stuffed crust, I don't like it.

There's something about how this crust is actually still kind of like crunchy and then you get the cheese in there.

But I said this.

We ordered that pizza and i said let's get just a cheese pizza and we got a medium cheese pizza with it on traditional crust not on not in stuff on traditional crust and that i said this was a life raft it was it was a savior yeah i would we would take i would take bites of stuff and then i would chase it with a bite of cheese pizza right because all the other stuff was

horror was was horrid i was coming to this cocky and i saw that they were calling out on the sort of like big video board like new adult menu new barbecue chicken pizza and i was like if they're proud of this and they're showing this off and i think they've improved their shit in the last couple years then maybe we should taste what they're boasting i know i think it was good it was but i was wrong i was no i don't think you were wrong

i think it was worth it to try it i think he's got a more honest assessment exactly that's where i was going i think i think from our standpoint of like we're trying to review this place that was my case i'm gonna go like i think it was a great thing to try and i don't think it really works or it got a bad score why not try the more daring options and see if it improves it and unfortunately it maybe is going to knock it down and honestly it sucked it was so bad yeah i mean like

just the smells in the place and then we got the app we got the app sampler yes we got all the food at the same time the medium cheese pizza yeah so it's basically the way the system you order at the counter um and then you are given a uh a pager when the pager beeps you go up to the pickup window to pick up your order and you bring it you walk it to your own table and we got all the food at the same time the rest of the order was we got the medium cheese pizza and traditional crust we got the app sampler which comes with your choice of meatballs or wings.

We ended up getting an extra order of wings, so we got those as well.

But on our app sampler potter, we got the barbecue, a Korean barbecue meatballs.

We got the, it also comes with cheesy bread and fries, just regular fries.

And then we also.

The fries sucked.

We got boneless.

We'll get to all of it.

We got boneless buffalo wings with ranch, and we got a chocolate chip cookie, which is like kind of a pazooki style form factor, like

a big, you know, a big boy that was, that's warmed in the oven and cutting pizza slices.

That should be a a slam bread.

And then fountain drinks, and I will say they had wild cherry Pepsi in the fountain, which was great.

I like that.

Besides the cheese pizza, the highlight for me.

That was the best.

Well, here's the other highlight for me, Mitch, and this comes down to just keeping it simple.

I think the cheesy bread on the App Sampler plotter, which actually had some Italian seasoning on it, one of the few things that was actually seasoned in the entire

meal.

Some garlic taste to it.

And it might have just been garlic salt and oregano or whatever, but it was a little bit of seasoning.

That was like, to me, my favorite bite.

I think bread, cheese, marinara sauce,

and seasoning are the only things that taste good there.

Yes.

Anything that's a combination of those elements with nothing else added is at least functional.

I thought the boneless wings were really bad.

I thought the texture was horrible.

I thought they were clearly like from frozen.

Look,

a little spoiler alert.

We also ordered Pasquale's pizza when we got back here.

Let's see if it traveled any better than pizza.

It traveled better.

We got a stuff crust, large stuff crust.

We had large cheese pizza on stuff crust.

We got bone in buffalo wings with ranch, and then we got meatball dippers with marinara, which ended up just being meatballs without.

Susser added the meatball dippers with marinara to beat it.

The meatballs were revolting.

They looked really bad.

Horrible technique.

Meatballs were the worst thing of both orders.

Correct.

My first order and here.

My first bite.

The ones here were so dry.

They look like cardboard.

Yeah.

They look like paper-mâche balls.

Yes, yeah.

Which is funny because I looked in the kitchen and there was a dune worm and it was just, they were shooting out the meatballs.

So that explains why they ran out of the way.

Shy Halud was regurgitating them.

So like, yeah, of course, they'd be extremely dry.

And on the other side,

on the other side, the wings here and there, so soggy.

And when I walked by the kitchen, you know who I saw making the wings?

Who's that?

This guy actually used to work at the

Sabaro.

Oh, wow.

The Abyss.

The Abyss was there.

The Abyss was working in the kitchen.

Yeah.

The Abyss himself.

The Abyss himself.

Wow.

The titular Abyss.

Wow.

Yeah.

I mean, that would explain it.

Yeah.

Didn't you see someone back then?

I did see a pair of things.

Yeah.

I mean,

I took a bite of the

taste of my mouth.

And then

Beetlejuice went, hey, look out.

And a sandworm came out of my mouth.

A different sandworm, not the dune one.

I'm not saying the same thing.

No, that would explain.

And also, I hate him.

And we thanked Beetlejuice for the warning.

We did.

That he said, hey, look out.

That we were very appreciative of that.

We said, thank you, Betelgeuse, each, and then he disappeared.

He disappeared.

He made the mistake of doing it three times.

Yeah, yeah.

But then, alternatively,

when I bit into the wings,

I was like, who's making these?

And I looked in the back and it was Ocean Master Orm, played by Patrick Wilson from the Oncle Man for Act.

Right, yeah, that would explain it.

Yeah.

I had, and this is weird because I didn't know that.

And he used to work at Zabaro.

So him and the Abyss were working back there?

They both were working there.

They both jumped over.

We didn't discuss this in advance, but I'm realizing I had a similar experience.

Because

I've been in that meatball and I was like, oakers really dry.

I wonder who made this.

And I just happened, I was like, you know, I just was going by the kitchen.

I was like, I got to review, refill my drink.

Beetle just disappeared.

We all three of us said, thanks, Beetle just at the same time that they disappeared.

And you went to the

I went over to the kitchen.

I just looked in the kitchen.

I saw who was making the meatballs.

It was, of course, Poke, the cactus enemy from the Mario franchise.

That makes sense.

And that was like, okay, well, that explains that at least.

But, like, what's going on with these wet wings?

You know, that's what it was, right?

The wings?

Yeah, the wings are wings.

Yeah.

I was like, what's going on with these wet wings?

And I look in there, um, and you know, who's making the wings is

who's that?

Uh, it's uh, it's, of course, a

Darwin from the TV series, uh, SeQuest.

The dolphin, the talking dolphin from SeQuest.

I feel like I'm just remembering something else you told me that you saw when we were there.

What's this?

Did you say something else?

I remember you turning to me.

You had taking a bite of the meatballs.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm really crying.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then you wanted to sort of counterbalance it with the wings.

Yeah, but they overdid it.

Yeah, so it's dripping down my face.

Yeah.

And you were like, who's making these?

And you looked over to the kitchen.

Yeah.

And it was the Sandman and Hydroman from Spider-Man working together.

Thomas Hayden Church.

One-third of the Sinister Six.

Yeah.

Right there.

Yeah.

Which is funny that they're in there in the back.

In the back, yeah.

That is really wild.

Hopefully, that, hopefully, there's not a new Sinister Six with the Abyss and the Sandworm from Beetlejuice.

Right.

Also, the Sandworm from Juice.

Also, the Sandworm.

Darwin from SeQuest, yeah, DSV, who I realized used to work at Zabaro.

That's where I knew him.

That's where you knew him from.

That would be a heel turn if he was.

It really would be.

Yeah, no, you were right.

That did have that did.

I did remember that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Really wild.

Anyway, so I took a bite of that.

I took a second bite of meatball.

Yeah.

And

why would you describe the texture?

I would say it was extremely dry.

I was like, man, this is so

what is going on with this?

Yeah.

I go into the kitchen.

Because I just like, I don't like, I'm sorry.

I don't, I'm not so, I'm not supposed to be in here, but this is so dry.

I honestly worried this might be a health hazard.

Like someone's going to choke on this.

And the employee in there goes,

It's a sand person from Tatooine.

A Tuscan Raider.

It's a Tuscan Raider from Tuscan Raider.

Yeah, I shouldn't say sand person.

That's a pejorative.

But yeah,

it's one, it's a Tuscan Raider.

And I'm like, okay, well, that explains that.

And then anyway, I went back and I had some of my wings.

And I was like, this is way too wet.

What's going on over here?

I go back into the kitchen.

I do another check.

And boss Nast is working.

That makes sense.

Sam Gungan making these wings that were so wet I used to work at Sparrow yeah I think he used to manage it I think he used to manage Sparrow

you know what's funny

what's that I remember taking a bite uh of uh was it meatballs yeah yeah and they were really dry that's right mine was super dry like this yeah when I was like taking a bite and then I took a bite of the wings yeah and they were so wet yeah my fingers were like dripping and I went to the manager and I was like I'm sorry I never do this but

can I go check in on the kitchen?

I got to see who's making it.

I wanted to get permission.

It was super cool there.

They were super like,

I'm not going to be rude.

I'm not a Karen.

I'm not trying to like film this and post it online.

I just kind of want to know.

And it was the mummy, Ardeth Bay.

Wow.

And the creature from the Black Lagoon.

Wow.

Well, that explains.

It was a mini monster mash.

Yeah.

Wow.

That's

wild.

And I was starstruck.

And the reason I was starstruck starstruck is because I remember the creature from the Black Lagoon used to work at Saborro's.

I recognized him from there.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, it's wild.

God, I can't think of a wet third.

I took a bite of the, I didn't have the meatballs, but I took a bite of the wings and they were really wet.

Yeah.

I want to work in the kitchen, too.

And what was it?

It was just like, it was a really wet guy

that's making them.

And he was just covered in wet.

And he was just so wet.

And also, I remember the person who was making the meatballs was my ex-girlfriend.

Very dry.

Very, the most

chronically dry.

So

I think I know the wet guy Emily's talking about because I think he did used to work at Sparrow.

Yeah,

that's what it was.

Sounds like the guy who used to work at Sabaro.

All right, so the meatballs were.

I didn't tell you that he had had this, but when you guys left the table to go work into the back, I put the meatball and the wing into a shaker and I shook them up, and they were perfect.

Wow.

It was hacks.

Yeah.

It was the meatball was perfectly moist, and the wing was now dry and perfect.

It's crispy.

Yeah.

But I'll say this.

Meatballs are horrible.

We got

wings are really bad.

Really dry.

Yeah.

Really wet.

We got bone.

We got bone.

We got boneless wings for the app sampler, and then we got bone in wings here.

And I said, for little kids at Chuck E.

Cheese, let's do, because in my mind, the idea was a large cheese pizza, boneless wings.

This seems like more kid stuff.

And also, I like that too, on top of it.

But the boneless wings were better than the bone-in wings.

The bone-in wings were disgusting.

They were,

they were bad.

They were so, it was the wettest wing.

Yeah.

How wet were they?

They were really wet.

I mean, I didn't see the delivery guy, Amelia, but what was the deal?

What was the deal with the delivery guy?

He was just dripping.

He was such a wet guy.

Oh, right.

Okay.

Oh, he was just another wet guy.

Yeah.

Okay.

I actually saw him like as he was because I got saw him get back into his car and it was like oh and I saw that and he has like a Honda Civic, but it had a little

delivery icon, like one of those things they put on the top of the car.

Sure.

And it was a Sparrow delivery vehicle.

Oh, it was a submarine.

I think it was a sub mention.

All right.

The chocolate chip cookie, which we got, look, the app stapler was, the fries were horrible as well.

They were just like really inert and really like flavorless.

No seasoning, which maybe kids don't want, don't want them seasoning.

I don't know.

I feel like I wanted salty fries as a kid or seasoned fries.

You know what's interesting?

Yeah.

Those fries were

really,

they had the worst structural integrity of any fry I've ever seen.

I don't, I don't mean this hyperbolically.

I held one up at one point like this, and it literally went boop.

It just fell over

all the way over and it didn't like break.

It was just like so, it was kind of soggy.

It was really soft.

And it was really soft.

Yeah.

And I was like, where are they getting their potatoes from?

Right.

And then I actually saw, it was just weird timing.

I looked out the window and I saw the delivery truck coming and delivering the potatoes.

And it was a Boston duckboat tour

vehicle.

And it was dripping wet, and they dropped off the potatoes and then they drove straight into the ocean.

That makes that makes that.

What's wrong?

Because they had, so they have like these, you know, and a lot of it's a shopping center.

So a lot of them have like these bays that they kind of open up for trucks to back into.

And they're like, okay, well the potato delivery is done.

Go ahead and close up the bay.

And the guy's like, nah, we got another delivery coming.

Meatballs are on the way.

And you know who pulls up?

Who?

I couldn't imagine.

It's, of course,

sauce.

Sauce.

Sauce.

The power run out.

The power went off.

We're at two hours.

Okay.

Who was delivering the meatballs?

Oh, right.

I mean, of course, it was Muaddib writing a sandwich.

Okay, so

the chocolate chip cookie I thought was, I think a kid would like this.

Yeah.

I just, I mean,

it was pretty bad.

It was bad.

It tasted like the thing you get at the grocery store and make it to your oven at home.

And for $10.

It should be a slam dunk.

I mean, I was going to say, if that was like a Pillsbury...

like roll, you know, you take it home, you undo it, you lay it out, you put it in the oven for five minutes, I think it would taste better than what we just got.

I am such a big pazuki fan.

Yeah.

And this not even attempting for anything as elevated as a pazuki, I was like, this can't miss.

And there was nothing bad about it, but you're like, this should be an automatic like basement three-star item.

Here's the thing.

They have, I know they have ice cream there because they offer it.

Put a fucking scoop of vanilla on there.

Yeah.

How much is that going to cost you?

Yeah.

Why, why not?

Why not do that?

It doesn't make sense.

I mean, it just felt so, it came out at the same time as all of our other stuff because that was part of the issue it just looked it and it also it looked shitty i've never seen a big cookie that looked so it was a bad cut like that it was poorly sliced yeah i feel like uh wags remind me because there was basically we got a we got like a prefix right that was okay

go on

oh go no go on

The one large pizza,

the app sampler,

four sodas, and the cookie were all one.

The number four combo is a large pizza, the appetizer sampler, and four drinks.

That was it.

How much was that?

I don't have to bring up a photo there.

But then we added on wings and

seconds and all the same pizza.

Yes.

I believe

it was $49 or $59.

Amelia, do you remember for the combo?

Jesus.

It was not cheap.

Yeah.

That's not a good deal.

It was not a good deal.

It was $15.

If that was $29, I'd be like, look, it's not good, but for $29, you feed a family or whatever.

You're also paying a premium for the experience.

That's part of it.

Although, of course, you're paying more for games on.

Right.

It's not like that's, because I'm not including.

I was like, oh, how many points did we get to play games with that meal?

Yeah.

And you were like, no, separate transaction.

There was a thing that said $99.95 for six kids.

It was a birthday, and I showed Jusweiger at the top of it, making a joke about it.

But I was like, $99.95 for six kids when you think about it.

I'm like, that's still expensive.

To feed six kids.

That's like, it's, you know, $15 per kid, but like

we were just talking about this in San Francisco with Micas too, I think that he was saying that that's the case, but then when you get there, you

with Changtin, sorry, and each individual parent also still has to buy the Chuck E.

Cheese socks for the kids because you can't bring socks from home.

Yeah, Chankin was bringing my goddaughter to Chuck E.

Cheese.

And

by the way, they won't sell you those used socks.

Rules.

I saw.

When we were ordering the combo,

you said you were like, is there a number eight, like a sock?

Let's try to just slip it in there.

We'll get a number five.

Let's get another small pizza on the side, four or six socks.

I, what was I going to say?

I saw they had signage that was like the Chuck E.

Cheese Play Pass or something like that.

Yeah.

that was like 7.99 a week for unlimited games which i was like that's not a bad deal but it's also like 7.99 a week rather than a month i don't know if it means they bill you weekly or you're getting a 32 bill once a month which does feel a lot more significant that's insane yeah if that's the cost that's insane because that's also banking on you going there enough to how

are you possibly going to take advantage of that unless your kid abs it's your it's their favorite place in the world only place you take them after school every day yeah maybe if they're and maybe there's a certain age, they could like I could feel like maybe a four-year-old could like love Chuck E.

Cheese that much where you get value out of it, but for the most part, it seems like a like a bad value.

Well, we also, when we bought one card, I mean, we've gone through the food enough, right?

Yeah, well, I guess we could say in studio, I would the large cheese, first off, the cheese pizza, the only things I actually like, the cheese pizza and liked is, is you know, kind of whatever, but marginal.

But the cheese pizza one large, one topping

four sodas.

Is that what it was?

The number four.

The number four was $54.49.

That's $54.40.

that's way too expensive

thank you emma the that's insane the um and then in studio so so the the medium cheese pizza and then the uh the cheesy bread which came with the appetizer tamplar in studio the bone and buffalo wings we already talked about weren't great the meatball dippers were horrible

and then the the large cheese pizza on stuffed crust i thought was fine It was fine.

Right.

Like, was it?

Again, the stuffed crust was overperformed.

I think you and I both liked it okay, although I would never say it was good.

No, definitely not good.

I think the crust is really good.

I think barbecue chicken pizza is just an acquired taste.

You and I like it.

I like it, yeah.

It was not a great execution of it, but it was serviceable.

If you're not a fan, it was not going to win you over.

Absolutely not.

And you were sort of disgusted visually from the moment it came out.

I mean, it didn't look good.

None of us thought it looked good.

I mean, it wasn't like the worst thing I've ever eaten on the podcast either.

The stuffed crust was a huge savior of it, but like I said, the life raft of that meal was the cheese pizza.

Here's a thing, Wags, I think you probably noticed.

The sus test.

Sus had one slice of pizza.

That's true.

And one wing and one meatball.

And the meatballs were just so bad.

And then Carmen Christopher was here, who just was a guest.

That's right.

Last week's episode.

And he texted me just out of the blue.

He texted me after he left.

That one slice of Chuck E.

Cheese gave me a worse stomachache than all the KFC we ate last week.

Wow.

That's what he's saying.

I mean, I don't feel good.

Yeah, I don't feel good.

I don't feel good.

And I never feel great.

I felt a little like, I didn't think this was going to be a platinum plater, but I feel like last time when you did it with McGathie, it like was a 1.5 or something.

It was, I remember that being pretty rough.

Yeah.

And my experiences these last couple of times had been like, this might now be a three

star chain.

This might be a two and a half fork or something.

I was like, it might go up a little bit.

And I was getting a little bit adventurous in the ordering and pushing us into weird directions because I was like, let's give them the chance to like show themselves.

And I very quickly felt like, no, I gave them enough rope to hang themselves.

If we had just gotten one cheese pizza and four sodas and the cookie, we would have been like, eh,

fine, whatever, serviceable.

And I think by trying more, even though the pizza, the cheese pizza was a life raft, I'm now judging it more harshly because it wasn't like a savior.

Do you know what I'm saying?

It kept us alive, but it wasn't giving like joy.

By being more comprehensive,

we ended up kind of

seeing this place for what it actually is.

We've eaten worse pizza.

We've eaten worse pizza.

Okay, so let's talk about the experience a little bit because part of why you go to Chuck E.

Cheese is because there's a bunch of games.

Where a kid can be a kid.

Where a kid can be a kid.

Another thing that's happened.

Where grown-ups can do recon for a podcast.

Or if Groma can awkwardly stand around and see the Chuck E.

Cheese that looked like he's hung himself and gone to a coma and now is just comatose.

And then you were playing more.

Wait, is that Chuck E.

Cheese or was that Toys R Us?

Oh, shit.

Oh, you're right.

Yeah.

Wait, what did you say?

Where a kid can be a kid.

Whose motto was that?

I think that is because Toys R Us was I don't want to grow up.

I'm a Toys Check.

I'm a Toys R Us.

You're right.

Okay.

Okay, you know.

Yeah, yeah.

Is it was Chuck E.

Cheese is where a kid.

Is that what it is?

Yeah, Chuck E.

Cheese is where a kid can be a kid.

That sounds right.

Yeah.

By the way, and this is the thing Amelia pointed out, a thing that I knew I think a lot of people know, but that the E in Chuck E.

Cheese stands for entertainment, Charles Entertainment Cheese.

There is a bit that they do in store.

There is a chart, there was like a thing, my middle name is Entertainment.

That's one of the videos that plays.

So they lean into it a little bit.

And they did play, they played a Hamilton rip-off that we all thought was pretty good.

It was not bad.

It was not bad at all.

Amelia asked, do you think Lynn Manuel actually wrote this?

This was insane.

No, no, she didn't ask that.

She was adamant that he did write it.

Yeah.

And we were like, no, he didn't.

And you were like, yeah, he did.

And we're like, no, he did not.

That sounds exactly like a Hamilton song.

It sounds exactly like a Hamilton song, but we're pretty sure.

I'm almost 100% positive that he did not write.

I think they

look so sad.

He's done some work on the side.

You don't know.

he could have done it secretly it's possible but i think they probably commissioned a far less expensive talented musician to do a simulacrum that's that's usually how these things go there was a really weird song that was called like dino disco

yes that was original bizarre it was a new character who was like a dino disco lady who was having a party at her apartment there was a karen next door who calls the cops on her and the cops were like i don't know seems like a pretty fun party and amelia called out that it was the exact same beat as um uh The Bad Touch.

That song gets ripped off a lot, doesn't it?

Yeah, that's exactly the idea.

It was very close to that.

But that seemed to be an original song.

That was an original song.

There was, I mean, stolen, it seems like, in some way, but then there was a Sabrina Carpenter song

that were both kids' bops.

Kid Bop versions of it that was in the song.

Please, please.

Please, please, please.

That says like a motherfucker.

Yeah, and they say, I you don't embarrass me or my mother

which is very funny

but all of it i guess i should say all of it sucked and was so all over the place and the mouse never really did it and it was just a tv you guys pointed this out right when you got there it's just three monitors at the front that you're just watching fucking tv on it's just looping it's basically looping youtube videos i will also say for the the handful of children that were there not it was not holding any of their attention none of the kids were fixated on these couple commercials that was really strange right like i'm I don't want to see ads.

How do I, do I have to pay for Chuck E.

Premium?

Fucking everything these days.

You got to do an upcharge to opt out of ads.

Yeah.

If I want to see the full cuts of the office, I have to pay for Chuck E.

Premium.

We're here on Chuck Plus just so I can skip the ads.

Chuck E.

Cheese.

It's unbelievable.

Can I, let's go full circle back to this robot.

Yes, please.

Right.

Because I think more than the food, this is the fundamental failing of the place.

Because, as you said, Five Nights at Freddy is huge.

It has been taken like 10 years.

Gigantic IP as a video game.

You know, like, especially for people much younger than me, now as movies.

20 like paperback books.

They're like all these like fucking things.

Kids love this.

Kids are fascinated by it.

And if they could go and see, like, hey, this is the thing that inspired Five Nights at Freddy.

Instead, their response is to rip all of that out.

They just try to create, like, like try to sever themselves from that.

The exact like 10-year arc of Five Nights at Freddy is getting bigger and bigger basically corresponds directly with every year Chuck E.

Cheese being like, we're scaling this down.

Yeah.

The bigger it got.

And I like I have like a nine-year-old cousin who's like really into retro shit.

I think that's part of Five Nights of Freddy and Minecraft and these kids being like, I like games that look pixelated or things that are a little bit more like 80s or whatever.

And Five Nights of Freddy is...

kind of building off of the inherent creepiness of that stuff.

I'm not saying they need to go full whore with Chuck E.

Cheese, but the other side of this is the Rock of Fire explosion characters who were really beloved.

And when there was the acquisition and Chuck E.

Cheese merged with Rock of Fire and they took those characters out and replaced them with the Chuck and his make-believe band, the Rocifire purists were like, these were better characters.

It was a better band.

It was better electronics.

I think they overstated a little bit, but the documentary is pretty interesting.

And there are some people who have like spent a lot of time and a lot of money and a lot of upkeep.

recreating the band in their like garage, like buying the robots and piecemeal putting them together.

And there was a big thing like 15 years ago where this one guy would program the robots to do modern pop songs.

Yes.

And would do like users love in this club or whatever.

And it would get really big.

And it was just like, this is so clearly like, there is an audience for this, right?

There is an audience that would love to see.

Like, I don't care about watching a monitor with kids bop kids singing espresso.

Yes.

But I think it would be cool to see some robots singing espresso.

Yeah, if you're going to maybe license the kids' bop version and maybe revoice it and have the animatronics perform it, all of a sudden now people are like, I think adults and kids are intrigued.

Exactly.

I think that is still appealing to both age groups.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I got a pitch.

How about some fucking candy?

The little kids in there, I don't see an ounce of candy.

Yeah.

Skittles?

No, they don't.

Yeah, they don't have.

I mean, like, you can buy ice cream.

They did have an ice cream vending machine, which we didn't mess around with.

They have dippin' dots, right?

And they have dip and dots as well.

There was like a machine for ice cream bars, and it was a lot of like strawberry shortcake, like sort of like classical.

But then the top row was four of the Chuck characters represented just by cartoon icons without any clarity as to what the bar looked like or the flavor was.

And I forgot to get one.

Yeah, I was really intrigued by those, and I forgot to check in on it.

There was some, I went to the counter and they only had Skittles Plus.

There wasn't a fuck.

I know that's enough charge.

Yeah, enough charge.

If you want regular Skittles, it's only yellow.

Yeah, yeah, Skittles.

You have to pay Skittles Plus to get the other cutscenes.

A monthly subscription to Skittles Plus.

Longer cuts at the office.

Yeah.

There was a funny moment where, Griff, you brought your old card.

You had a lot of points on there and you played it this time.

From when I went with Derek and his I need to clarify that I don't go there a lot as an adult by myself.

I searched my wallet and I was like, oh, I still have this card.

I have tickets saved up on here.

Yeah.

Well, so you did a coin game where you got a lot of coins, and then we were trying to figure out what prize you should get.

And I was like, look at that.

It's like a Chunky Cheese with lights around it.

That's kind of cool.

And I look back at Weiger, and Wigger's just like,

here's what it was.

We had to put 1,100 tickets.

That thing cost 4,000 tickets.

4,000, 5,000 tickets, whatever it was.

It would have cost you it.

We would have to pay out-of-pocket tickets.

We're going to pay like 40 bucks out of pocket.

And I was just like,

there's no justification for this.

Do you really want it?

And then you give him the look, and Mitch says, What?

And he said, I just want to make our boy happy.

It really felt like my parents were fighting.

And I'm like, guys, you don't need to do this for me.

I'm happy just getting the shitty stuff I can get with the points I have.

And you were like, if you really want it, we'll do it.

If it means a lot to you,

it looked fun.

And you were shaking your head no.

And I agreed with in that moment.

I was like, okay, you're right.

So you did get some gifts.

We can go over those, but also, why because we also played, this is, this also sucked to me.

We played some skeeball.

That's right.

Me, you and Amelia.

So me, you and Jamilia played skeeball.

Yeah.

And we, we all did pretty well at that.

I won.

And then

we played some basketball.

That's right.

You won, but the fucking, it was broke.

Mine was broken.

This is, this is where this is, this is the thing I should have just said no when it was when you said let's play basketball.

I said I don't want to do it you said come on Yeah, and I was trying to talk you out I was like I said I'll be bad and you're like I'll be bad too and then I know how competitive you are We go in there We play one round.

I win why is this Luca donchik with the ball

I'm gonna say this yeah I beat you in that first round, and in the second round, you kicked my ass and you lost.

The machine was fucked up.

This is the thing.

You said

you lost the the first time, and then your response was that it was rigged, which fine.

Then we switched machines, and then you won the second time, and

you thought I won the second time?

You did win the second time.

That's what I'm saying.

Even the machine was broken.

The machines were broken, but that's what I'm saying.

You did win the second time.

Okay.

I hit like no shots the second time.

I wasn't sure where you landed because it sounded like to me in the score

that you won both times.

No,

I lost the second time bad.

Okay.

The first time, I think I did beat you.

Okay.

But the machine's fucking broken.

The scores were a little bit out of whack.

It felt like they were not recording every basket on both machines.

That's what I'm saying.

It's like, okay, so we're going to get a game.

Even that is my game.

That's like the whole point of the game.

That's the whole point of the game.

You're playing a person in the game and then it doesn't

work.

It was very funny.

Like, I mean, just how consistently you guys are, yourselves and the two of you as a dynamic in all settings off mic.

That I was like, I think we should play some games before we leave because you can't really review the experience without doing that.

And you were very wisely like, I think the problem this place has that, like, Dave and Busters has as well is that like a lot of these games have just become scaled up iPhone apps.

Yeah, it's just a big iPhone, it's just a, it's just an L C D T V that's being used as a mobile fruit ninja or whatever.

Yeah, exactly.

And I was like, I don't want to do any of that.

And I very much on brand for myself was like, I'm going to try to play all the high ticket games, the things where you drop coins and try to hit the bonus prize or whatever.

My goal was just like, can I hit a jackpot on something, win a bunch of tickets, and test what I can score?

You seem to be doing well, but the ticket ROI is so insane.

It's insane.

I kept thinking, at no point was I like, I killed it on this, but I kept thinking I was doing pretty good.

And basically every game gave me two tickets in return.

You guys immediately just went to anything competitive.

The only games I didn't even want to were ones that were head-to-head.

Yes.

And then Mitch is like scoring buckets, complaining in real time.

That it's not working.

It wasn't.

Immediately after the first round, storms off, goes, it's broken.

And now all the listeners are going to complain that, of course, I think it's broken.

I didn't want

immediately

thinking of the Redditors being like, Nick's right, he is competitive.

You hadn't said it on Mike, you were upset already.

I was just assuming you were going to litigate it later on, Mike.

The dweebs who get mad at me for pushing a cat on Amelia, these same dweebs.

Yeah, I was just thinking about them being like, uh, like,

he is so competitive.

But I'm going to say this: Wages, I'm actually the competitiveness.

It is that you just, here's the nice spin on it.

You give me the opportunity to win, which I never get ever.

So that's, it's nice for me.

And you don't care.

And it's very nice.

Flip the score.

It was funny, though.

Just, I imagine you like in your home by yourself, stubbing your toe and being like, fucking Redditors complain.

And it's just so clumsy stuff his toe.

I hate those things.

You immediately, anything you do in any area of life.

It's only, there's, it's like seven guys.

First off, the Reddit is good now.

Yeah, the Reddit is good.

Second off, it's love week.

It's love.

It's love week.

We love the Reddit.

We love the Reddit.

We love the Reddit.

And then, hey, I loved

doing a spirited game of pop a shot with you.

That was.

It wasn't competitive.

It was broken.

But

it was all in good faith.

I mean, we did pretty well in that as well.

You were rocking the chest shot.

Thank you very much.

But there was no game I loved.

I felt like, as you said, the return on tickets was pretty low.

I had some points saved up from the past,

and I went and they were like, you have 1,100.

And I was like, that sounds like a reasonably large number.

That's like a lot of tickets.

I don't assume I'm getting a PS3, but I assume there's something.

And immediately they're like, this corner only.

This corner again.

Which was not a good corner.

And I'm like, this is like a fucking inflation.

Like fucking really fucking bad.

Like ring pops are now 500 tickets or whatever.

Like everything's gone way up.

So you were trying to make me.

Biden was actually saying that like ring pops are actually less expensive than they were.

Like his economics team.

Who was saying this?

Biden was saying this.

Yeah.

That he brought the the ring pops down.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They were closer to 550 tickets earlier.

People just forget that, that actually they went down in ticket value.

My thing was there were, there were, what do you say?

No, I just, that's too much for me.

Too many.

Yeah.

Yeah, it was way too much.

Then I'm like, I don't have a lollipop that I'm in my house.

I'm sucking Wally's dick.

That's a lot of fun.

Thanks a lot, Biden.

Now I have a Wally Pop instead of a Lollipop.

Oh, the Redditors are going to talk about this.

Yes.

Oh, now I'm in trouble because I'm sucking my cat's dick.

Jesus.

Look, there's a a lot of Monday morning.

My man enjoys Wallypop.

There's a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking.

There's a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking you can do to try to, like, after the fact, analyze how and why Trump won.

Right.

I do think his most effective piece of messaging was just telling the public, if you vote for me, you'll never have to suck your cat's dick.

That was a promise that Biden was unwilling to make.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Wow.

You know what I was going to say, Wags?

In the competitive world,

we played It Takes Two

with each other.

Oh, yeah, and there was a time where you team up, and it was a button mash competition.

I could never beat you, and we played it like five times.

This guy's good with the, he's good with the, he's good with the joystick, the, the, the, the, the twitch, like, you can do, I can click a button too.

Oh, that makes sense.

I cannot do that, but yeah, I went to the counter, they were like, only this can be cashed in.

Yeah, you were like, dude,

would it make baby happy if we could do a thing that lights up?

And I was like, no, I just want stuff with Chuck on it.

Right.

So, this is the entirety of what i got quite a haul here

now i ended up getting a decent piece count but like all of this how much do you think you spent to get to 1100 tickets i'll say this i believe i put 25 on the card in terms of gameplay yeah how much did you put on a meal we did the lowest amount yeah we which was 30 points and each game is one point so we probably played between a couple of basketball games ski ball we probably used like eight to ten and then between the three of us but it was twenty five dollars, right?

Yeah, it was twenty-four.

Yeah, then you handed the card to me, so I had like a combined like fifty dollars worth of cards.

I guess you had taken maybe 10 off of it, sure.

Uh, and there was a Spongebob game that I've done very well with at Dave and Busters in the past.

That's like a timing out where the coins go.

And I just was like, okay, we need to leave to get to the studio.

There's like 35 points left between the two cards.

Let me scan it 35 times, and then I can just kind of machine gun, like rapid fire the coins and assume just by by button mash.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll get a decent score.

And I came away from it gaining like 25 tickets.

It was like less than the amount of plays I had.

That's

so it was like, yeah, like $40

basically of play to get this, which is just all very 2D and flat, right?

Like you could have purchased for like the same quality items for less than $40.

For sure.

Yeah.

Like $5 on it.

The actual retail price of all of that stuff is it's not worth

it.

These are party favorites.

Yeah.

Right.

And there were like a couple.

There was something in a glass case called Goofy Monster Glasses that you were really interested in.

I was really interested in the Goofy Monster Glass.

They were pretty funny.

They were pretty funny.

But they were 800 points.

They would have taken up the vast majority of what I had, and they weren't Chuck E.

branded.

And I was like, I want Chuck E-Wares.

But that sign was, so you could also just buy it.

If you want something, you can also just buy it.

How much were they charging for the sign?

The sign was, like Nick said, $5,000.

I think it was $40 extra.

I think it was $80.

$5,000 tickets.

Yeah.

So it's like,

it would have been super

$5,000 tickets.

It seemed like it was basically $10 per thousand tickets of value.

Yes, right.

So I had a thousand, and it would have cost $40 more to get it.

This is like a color form set, I guess, with like

vinyl clings on cardboard.

And that's the new, that's the new design of this.

It's the new Chuck, right?

Ozempic Chuck.

I got a Chucky puzzle.

Amelia was very helpful in gaming this out.

She called this one out the sort of like neon, yes, kind of black light Chucky sticker.

This is like a foam tic-tac-toe game.

Fun, and then I think I only had enough points left for four bookmarks.

She kind of, I think, out of sympathy gave the full set.

Yeah.

So we have the CGI redesigns of everybody of Munch.

Bella, who I don't remember.

Yeah, who the fuck is Bella?

A bit of a Mary Sue, if you ask me.

Helen Hanney, who's good.

Okay, I like, they do like Helen Henry.

Pasqually and Jasper T.

Jowls.

But this, like, I did ask her for munch.

I was like, do you have the munch one?

She's like, yeah, don't worry.

We have much.

She was kind of, I think she was done with us.

I love dumb bullshit, and I would say this sucks.

Like, I would say this all sucks.

And our friend Matt Singer, we have a text chain with him.

That's right.

Shitty tie-in food society, where we talk about, especially like movie tie-in menu shit.

And he's always complained to me as someone who has a bit of a garbage belly like us, takes his daughters to these places, and he's just like, the kids' meal toy quality has gone to nothing.

How often you get shit like this, like paper products?

And I felt like, yeah, like the lowest point count case used to at least be like I don't know toy spiders or shit shitty little car

or something right yeah it just felt like spider ring you're right that's a big one I remember right spider ring yeah

spider ring yeah yeah is there if you if you get if you got the the fragile rock

the the fragile rock racers from mcdonald's come on

so was it the tiny tune ones that flipped or was yeah all right so you got the tiny tune erasers that flip right you put that one side was one character one side was the other character and the driver could change

If you put that out now, is that like the best Happy Meal Toy in like 15 years?

If you put that out tomorrow, it would win Best Picture at the Oscars.

No, I think so.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I do think so, but it just speaks to like, what are we doing here if this place doesn't have good prizes and a fucking robot band playing pop songs?

Also, if a little kid just got a bunch of bookmarks, do you think they're excited about that?

No,

what are they going to do with it?

I am because there's characters on them.

I wasn't excited about that.

Other nonsense.

I asked if there was a remote control cover instead of a bookmark.

I'm not going to fucking use a Chuck E.

Cheese bookmark.

I'll take the munch one, though.

Yeah, okay.

I mean, it's going to, it will fit the style of book I read for my next book.

Primo Nintendo 64 strategy guide for ocarino of time.

We've got to get to our fork score.

So here's how this will work.

Griffin, you know the drill.

We'll each go around.

We'll give our final thoughts on Chuck E.

Cheese and assign it a score from zero to five.

Griffin, you're a guest.

We'll begin with you.

Yeah, this place kind of sucks.

Yeah.

I feel like our friends at Podcast The Ride have talked Chuck a lot over the years.

And Gerdner is a big pusher of like the full munch band.

I think there is one full animatronic band left in the world.

And it is.

It might be in Northridge, California.

Correct.

So I think he's done a birthday party for his son there, has taken him there a couple times.

And it's just like, why isn't this?

everywhere, you know?

And these couple of isolated experiences I'd had with the pizza being like, have they stepped the quality up by 10%?

Yeah, made me think, look, if I can just get this to a slightly better score, it was worth doing.

And I don't regret it because I don't think there was a better option on the table, but I don't think anything that happened today was impressive.

I found it pretty depressing.

The smell alone was hard to get past.

Awful.

And I just like to-can I just quickly interject?

You could have had the first episode of our Munch Madness tournament, which is the 10-year anniversary Munch Madness tournament.

That's true.

Every winner goes against each other, or we could have done the diaper shop, which we did.

That's what you chose.

It was a little, look, Wages was like, well, we don't have great restaurant options.

We could do the first Munch Madness with you, but it's a little ahead of schedule, so it might be tough to figure out what it was.

Yeah.

And I just kind of felt like maybe Chuck E.

Cheese could be a sleeper surprise.

But I think, yeah, like even if we had gone with the simpler order and just gotten the cheese pizza and it had ended up at like two and a half forks or whatever.

I'd still be disappointed by the entertainment and the games and the smell and the inflation on the tickets.

And I'm just like, second Five Nights of Freddy's movies coming out later this year.

Yes.

What the fuck are they doing?

How do you not lean into this?

Like in our text chain with Singer, we were trying to predict which chains we think are going to tie in with movies this year.

And then you wrote a great piece about that.

Yeah.

And one of the endpoints of the piece was just like, if Chuck E.

Cheese doesn't fucking own this,

like just go like, you know what?

We're leaning into this in some way,

then they should die.

Like, they should go out of business.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What's your fork score?

Fork score.

I have a lot of nostalgia for this place.

Yeah.

I'm like,

cheese, pizza, and soda alone, I think I would have given it like 2.5.

But then I'm like, the smell, the quality of the games, the show, I'd like knock it down to a two.

And then some of the other items were so bad, were like total like one

fork shit.

Yeah, yeah.

I think I.

You can be, oh, it's okay if you like it more than us, too.

Yeah.

I'm going to say this.

I'm going to say this.

The experience we had today was a 1.5 at best.

Wow.

I'm going to fold an experience I had in a year ago and say I even it out to

past experiences count.

Yeah.

I'm going to get I'm going to give it a

1.75.

Wow, one fork, three tines.

I wanted to do two and I couldn't get there.

Yeah.

I wouldn't let myself say it.

Shout out to Father Tine, Matt Soman.

Yeah,

integrated tines into our system.

1.75 forks.

Mitch, what say you?

Jemi, by the way, stood up and she told me that she was upset that we said

son is more famous than dog.

She still is upset about that for the

episode.

We'll talk about that off pod.

Sorry, sorry, Jimmy.

I think she was upset that you said you sucked Wally's dick.

I've never sucked Wally's dick.

It's a comedy show.

It's a comedy show.

Man, this is Chucky.

Well, first of all,

we were up at the front.

Nick and I were up at the front.

We were like, do you think we should get a cheese pizza?

Like, should we do it?

And then Lady Cameron was like, this isn't comic ping by the way.

We're like, okay, okay, good.

That's good to know.

Chucky, look, I have nostalgia.

We did keep asking for directions to the basement.

It is on the second floor, which is also kind of, I guess it's better than being in the dungeon of the mall, which would be dark and grim.

Ozempic Chuck, look, as a man who takes these drugs.

But the slimmifications happen to Chuck, too.

There's no charm to this guy.

I just don't think he has any personality.

There's something very like smarmy about.

It's the DreamWorks CG effect.

It's that kind of character.

He's very shark tail.

Yeah, he's like from Epic.

Yes, cocked eyebrow bullshit.

Or from the fast snail movie, of course, which is called Nitro.

Nitro.

Turbo.

Nitro?

Nitro.

Nitro.

Nitro.

Nitro.

The fast snail movie, nitro.

Nitro the snail.

No nitro merch there either.

No nitro.

They were cleaned out of nitro?

It's a bummer.

Is Chuck E.

Cheese

fun?

It used to be.

It used to be.

I was also a kid.

That's when a kid can be a kid.

I'm not a kid anymore.

It's sad to say.

I'm an adult.

For a child, did it look fun?

I mean, not really.

It looked worse.

It looked worse than it was.

The kids there, one was crying.

So

it just, it seemed,

it seemed depressing in there.

And God, look, we say thank you to your, thank you for your service to a lot of people that work in fast food and chain restaurants.

This is like gold star, purple heart service to work at a Chuck E.

Cheese.

Yes.

You're working for kids.

Yes.

Honestly, even the guy who picked up our Pasquales, I just think about how the poor postmates guy had to walk into a Chuck E.

Cheese to pick up the cheese.

I don't think they do them from Chuck E.

Cheese because you can't, they don't allow pickup.

That's great.

That's good if they don't.

So, you know what, to your point, let's thank some of those employees by name.

Hydroman,

the Abyss, Abe Sapien.

I think that someone I meant to shout out earlier who was, I saw preparing our wings in the kitchen, uh, Payakon, the mighty tall corner.

That's right, yeah, yeah.

Um, and uh, Piacon, of course, said, uh, these are coming fresh from uh, my home planet of Pandora.

Yeah, yeah, yes, uh, and then I saw the delivery.

Well, I was gonna say, I saw the fire and ash tribe working on the meatballs, yeah, they were, yes, right, right, right, yeah, right, the Ash Navy, yeah, the skim wing, an ilio.

Uh, Piacon also uh worked at Smarrow.

Oh, that's right.

So, anyway, so

Tonawari, that's okay, right, right, right, yeah, yeah, Cliff Curtis character.

I wanted to have.

Look, I had fun.

The four of us together.

We had fun.

We were having fun.

We were having a good time.

But almost in spite of.

Definitely in spite of.

It was the grimmest.

It was the most grim experience in

maybe in Doughboys.

Yeah.

I mean, we haven't talked to like a.

What's that?

I feel really confident about my decision to not go.

You were smart not to go.

It was a great move not to go.

Like, outside of like.

Hey, we like a grimace

experience.

We do like a grimace experience, not a grim.

Not a grimace experience.

Outside of us reviewing funerals, I can't think of anything that's like worse.

Can you, I mean, but bitch, funerals tend to have pretty good food.

They would have better,

and a lot of times they're celebration of someone who's

lived a nice long life.

This being like

a living funeral for Chuck.

Yes.

You know, like, is he still alive?

He's on display.

His

eyes are moving, but no one's home.

Yeah.

I,

the pizza, the cheese pizza was a life raft.

It was just for me, it was a miserable

experience.

And also, if I was an adult bringing my kid there, I'd be like, this sucks.

Like, I would want to get my kid out of there faster than I would want to stay.

And I know, maybe if the kid loved it, but I don't know.

I also make, I made this point to Wiggs earlier.

My, my little nine-year-old cousin loves Dave and Busters.

I tend to go see Moise.

He wants to to go to Dave and Busters all the time.

And it's made me realize: if you're a kid, why would you choose Chuck E.

Cheese over Dave and Busters?

No reason.

The lane they should be owning is like the shit that Dave and Busters wouldn't do because it's like dorky and babyish.

Yes, right.

They should lean into the history and the characters and the band and all that sort of shit.

And maybe they, maybe during prime time, maybe during evening hours, they have a walk-around mascot character.

I'm not sure if they did.

He certainly was not a presence today.

But like 85, 80% of the games between the two of them are basically the same.

The food's better at Dave and Buster's, 100%.

They have cocktails there.

It appeals more to adults, but like kids have fun at a Dave and Buster's.

Yeah, I would have so much fun if we all went to a Dave and

we would have had a blast.

We would have had one of the best days.

Dave and Busters, I'll say, is fun.

Chuck E.

Cheese, not fun for me.

It's hard for me to

half a fork.

Yeah.

So for

it's up there with caros, right?

I mean, like, this is.

It was really bad.

It was really bad food.

So, Mitch, your score has actually gone up because I believe last time you gave it a negative fork.

So I did succeed in bumping this.

You did.

It worked.

I will say that first, one thing I do want to correct, and shout out to Vinod, who runs the Doughboys wiki.

I said it was the cock,

what did he say?

It was the Cock Knocker chicken sandwich, the Cock Smoker chicken sandwich for movies that was the origin of the $30.

Oh, wow.

Anyway, the.

And also, I will say this.

I think that the pizza, actually, the cheese pizza, I think you were right, was better this time than when I ate it.

I think it's improving.

I think that.

I think so.

Everything else has gotten worse.

Really bad.

We didn't try anything from the salad bar, right?

We didn't.

Yeah.

Which I'm probably, I think, I feel like that's where you're going to get a food born.

That was the thing.

We had the wings on the plate and you pointed and you were like, I don't think any of us should touch the celery stuff.

Yes.

Because you just don't know.

Did you see that there was...

You're more likely to get sick from underwashed produce than from undercooked meat.

Did you see that there were adults in there and there was, they had a veggie tray and it was just fucking ranched out.

Did you see it?

It was like, it was the most ranch I've ever seen on a plate.

Wow.

It was, it was, I kind of loved it.

So the Pasquale's pizza was comparable to the pizza we had in restaurant.

I'm not sure if we learned much from that exercise outside of it just traveling and basically being the same.

Susser, as he was leaving, flashed two fingers at me to let me know, not peace, but that he's giving two forks to the Pasquale's experience in the studio.

So he is going higher than us.

He's going higher than us.

But the thing he missed.

He's missing getting it on its not being there.

That's the thing.

The thing he missed is the experiential side.

And

what I will compare this to, Mitch, is Pirate's Dinner Adventure, where Pirates Dinner Adventure, the food was execrable.

In fact, I'd say the food was maybe worse than the food at Chuck E.

Cheese's.

I think it was just so fucking bad.

There was nothing that I liked,

but the show was awesome, and the atmosphere was great.

And there were cocktails, and

I didn't feel uncomfortable or creepy by my presence, even though it was something something targeted for children.

I don't know.

I don't buy you.

And you kept asking for socks there.

This place.

The fact that you had to buy your Changton said you had to buy your kids socks when you go.

You're just, they're just like looking for upcharges everywhere, like fucking everything these days.

Every single place.

How do we get every single dime out of everybody?

More expensive for worse service.

Exactly, exactly.

Because absolutely everything.

It's all just eroding.

It's all just getting serious.

Amelia, what would be your fork score for this experience?

oh man it was a really bleak experience yeah it was really bad it felt like i was in the back rooms um and it almost felt like

is that the internet thing where it's yeah yeah yeah it felt haunted yeah it did

really the vibes were putrid in there it unintentionally feels like a five night it does yeah without owning any of the the kind of like shine of that yeah i would give it half a star you'd give it half a star and we'd do four

star

we do four

By the way, Amelia is currently wearing a five-forked sweatshirt.

All right, Amelia.

I admire it.

I mean, it's very funny.

Amelia, can you also, can you give your online theory that you told us about?

And then we thought that it maybe happened with the Pasquale's pizza.

Oh, yeah.

There's a conspiracy theory online that Chuck E.

Cheese takes old slices of pizza and puts them together to form a full pie out of it.

And that's why a lot of the time the slices look so hodgepodge.

The puzzle pieces don't

fit together.

Which wasn't the case at Chuck E.

Cheese's, but was the case when we got Pasquales delivered.

Yeah, I mean, like, I understand where the thinking comes from.

I'd buy that more if there was an in-store pizza buffet because then we have a source of it.

But my memory is they used to have it.

They used to have it.

Maybe they still have it at some locations.

And hey, maybe the ghost kitchen one we got delivered from does have that.

Although I think Emma's right, I think they're made at off-site kitchens.

I don't think they're actually made in storage.

But it was weird where you're just like, I don't even understand how the pizza becomes this asymmetrical.

Yes, yeah.

Yeah.

Weird.

I don't know.

I think it's just, they probably just can make everything so cheaply now that they don't, it's not even worth the trouble to do that.

But

I would say overall, I was just extremely uncomfortable.

I hated being there.

It was awful.

It smelled so bad.

I felt really uncomfortable.

The food was pretty awful.

I'm sorry.

No, I had a great time.

Like,

I liked being with my friends.

Me too.

I like that part.

But

the overall, like, just being inside a stench coffin.

As

an adult without children, like in a place, a place that is designed for families, a place that is designed for, like, hey, you know what?

The parents will find a way to occupy themselves maybe by just having an Amstel light just to numb the pain while their kids run around and do some bullshit.

Like, that's the reason this place exists.

Any sort of novelty that could exist for our generation, like the animatronics, has been completely neutered, has been almost completely excised, in some cases, just fully removed from these locations.

So it just has no charm anymore.

And so what you're left with is a restaurant that smells horrible, where the food sucks, and where there's nothing to do.

For me, if that's not a one-fork experience, I don't know what it is.

This is a one-forker.

And I think, Mitch.

We had a thing that we talked, that I actually found out about, again, was reminded of when I looked at the movies wiki.

We had the broken plate club, which is for

things that got underneath, you know, average under one fork or one fork or less.

And we also taught, I think we had the toilet club at a certain point.

What the fuck was it?

Porcelain Club.

Porcelain Club, yes.

We got to standardize what it is.

Whatever.

Broken Plate Club is pretty good.

All right.

So

I think we're bringing back the Broken Plate Club.

I think canonically, Chuck E.

Cheese belongs in the Broken Plate Club because I just don't, I don't think this place has anything to offer for somebody who doesn't have young children who are easily.

Yeah, and if you have young children, they're better options.

They're better options.

Yes.

It makes me a disappointing experience.

A place that I did, I like the idea of it.

I used to like it.

It makes me sad to say it's in the broken play club.

There's no denying it.

And there's no denying it's worse than it was.

Even if the pizza is a little better than it was like six years ago or whatever, it's like holistically this place is worse than it's ever been.

Yes.

And I also think it's telling that

Sus went higher than any of us who were there in person while also admitting the pizza wasn't good.

And part of that, I feel like, is him adjusting in his mind, like on a curve.

Well, I didn't get the complete experience.

I guess if you were there amidst the fun, it'd be like a two.

And those of us who went, were like, the experience made us like the pizza less.

100%.

Yeah, absolutely.

He should have eaten his slice in the

head gum bathroom with me taking a shit as he ate it.

That's the only way that it would be close.

And while you're just like button-mashing a cell phone game,

it's, I mean,

that is the equivalent, right?

I mean, it's not that crazy.

It's not that fun.

Let's just say it.

I don't know.

I have not accompanied you guys to many meals, but I've listened to every episode of this show.

I don't know if I've ever heard you describe an impediment to the enjoyment of a meal as bad and sort of like all-consuming as the stench of this place.

Yeah.

There was no way to get past that.

As soon as you walked into it, the notion of like you walk in and you're like, I'm going to have to eat stuff.

I'm going to have to touch food and put it in my mouth here.

It was like going into a bathroom that smells bad and you want to get out of there quick.

That's when you're stuck there.

That's what it was like.

That's what it's like.

Yeah.

It's disgusting.

It's disgusting.

But I think it is nice that they gave a job to Prince Saidon from Legend of Zelda, Breath of the Wild.

Okay,

hey, that was our review of Chuck EG's.

Hey, it's time for a segment.

Wow.

Or should we do a quick stop down?

Yeah, yeah.

All right, we're going to do a quick stop down.

We'll be right back before we go.

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Hey, buddy, we're back.

It's time for a segment.

And since it's love week, we thought we'd bring it back and make this into an annual tradition.

It's time for another edition of the Chuli Wed game.

Wow.

Wow.

Okay, so here's how this will work.

Mitch, you and I will be paired as a team against Griffin and his surprise partner live from New York, Blake J.

Carlos-Davidson.

Wow.

Oh, my God.

There we go.

Oh my God.

Hi, Simsy.

Hi, guys.

How are you doing?

Thanks so much for making time for us.

Of course, we are about an hour later than we said we'd be.

Please.

One day I will share the text Amelia has been sending me of like, it's going to be like 7.

Okay.

We're like 7.15, just on and on.

so sorry it's 8 30 now your time

that's right um wow live from new york i love this yeah

musical guest ben hosley

uh sims any any nba trade deadline thoughts well this episode will be out in a week but we're recording this basically the day of the trade deadline i shared a bunch so i don't know what there's left for you to say jimmy butler to the warriors looks likeler to the warriors we just found out How fun is that?

I wanted Durant to go to the Warriors because I want the Warriors to become like the

over 35 Legends team, which is like a roadshow tour.

I think I've expressed this out to you, Nick.

And Butler, it's fine.

They'll be a little more fun.

I don't care about the Warriors.

I'm intrigued by the

weird Bucs trade.

That was awful.

Yeah, what's going on?

At least it's something.

It's a fun deadline.

It's a fun deadline.

It's been a weird season, so it's a fun deadline.

The Luca thing is weird.

Luca thing is bizarre.

You got to be happy about your Knicks in general, though.

What a fun team.

I'm happy about them.

No, I am.

I just, it's just, I don't know what to do about a good vibes Knicks team that's just kind of rolling.

Like, where I'm just sort of like, well, then, okay, well, when, when will the hammer fall?

I just am waiting.

Right.

If Charlie Brown

gets the red-haired girl, the little red-haired girl, then does anyone still want to read the strip?

You know?

That's 100%.

Yeah.

I mean, I really want to read that strip.

It's disgusting.

I forgot that that children.

David, what did you make for dinner?

Oh, I can't believe you'd say something disgusting on the Chuck E.

Cheese episode.

Sorry,

Charlie Brown rule 34.

I didn't make it.

Hey, drawings ain't got no way, Joey.

I made the chili chis, chili crisp fettuccine alfredo from the New York Times.

Make it all the time.

Takes like 20 minutes to make.

I highly recommend.

Wow.

How many

fast meal?

How many people did you make it for?

Me and my wife.

Just the two.

Oh, so you had one half horse.

My daughter ate six spoonfuls of hummus for dinner.

So

what do you think of that?

I love it.

Sounds like quite a meal.

Is this a quick dinner, you're saying?

It's very quick.

Yeah, it's like 20 minutes.

It's really, it is, it's on the Times.

It's one of their most popular recipes.

I do, it is good.

Will you forward to me and also will you forward me that recipe?

And also, will you forward me your

New York Times login information as well?

I have a post login, New York Post login, but I don't have the time to do it.

Of course, of course, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Just a comment, just with a comment.

Yeah, Mitch wants to catch up on David Brooks' columns as well.

Yeah.

Okay, let's, Amelia, you're going to run this.

All right.

Hit it, Emma.

For you, recorded from Silverlake, it's the Chuliwed game.

I'm your host, Amelia Marino, and now let's meet our contestants for today.

Couple number one, friends for 12 years and co-hosts on Blake Check for 10.

We have Griffin Newman and David Sims.

Wow, wow.

Couple number two,

friends for 19 years and co-hosts on Doughboys for 10.

We have Nick Weiger and Mike Mitchell.

Hey, buddy.

Wow.

19 years.

That doesn't doesn't sound right.

It's a long time.

Is it not right?

No, I mean, I think it is right.

Our truly wives might be in for a surprise when they find out how much they do or do not know each other.

Now for the rules.

I'll ask a round of questions about your partner.

It's important that you answer the questions as you predict your partner will answer that same question.

For example, if I ask Mitch and Griffin, what's your partner's favorite pizza topping?

They'll write down on the whiteboard that I have here what they think Nick and David's favorite pizza topping is.

Nick and David will write down on these their own favorite pizza topping

and we'll turn around the boards.

If the answer matches the prediction, you get a point.

Each point brings you closer to the grand prize of nothing.

Wow.

Wow.

All right, let's start.

I'll hand off the board.

I was a little worried because this episode's already going long, but thankfully we have a nice tight segment.

We got boards, huh?

This is fancy.

Yeah.

How about this?

There's only two markers.

You guys have to share markers.

Thank you.

Okay.

We'll do it.

Yeah, yeah.

Did we buy these for the new Chuliweg game?

Yeah.

Yeah, last time we did it.

Wow.

Oh, these are from last time we did it?

They've been in the storage room for over a year.

Like the Warriors extended Butler.

They can't do that.

Wow.

Two years, 121 mil.

Okay.

Crazy.

Desperate.

Yeah, that really does seem desperate.

I'm holding the board in front of my mic.

Probably not a good move.

All right.

Let's keep this.

It's naturally going to be in front of your mic.

That's pretty good.

Hey, you know what?

I love you, Was.

I love you too, buddy.

All right.

Question number one.

This is for Mitch and Griffin.

What is your partner's go-to movie snack?

So we don't have to leave the room for this.

No.

Okay, got it.

Okay.

I'm sorry.

Wait, say it one more time.

We're guessing for who's guessing?

I'm asking Mitch and Griffin.

Okay.

what is your partner's go-to movie snack okay so i'm gonna go write down david's yeah

um

go ahead amelia should i write my answer down we write our actual answer

okay got it okay all right so so all right so okay so so wigs and sims are writing an answer and we're trying to guess what they're doing they're writing down their go-to movie snack on the board and you and griffin are writing down what you think their go-to

i'll hand you this right afterwards.

So wait, I'm...

He's guessing.

He's guessing your answer.

I'm ready for my real answer.

I guess you could just say yours out loud, but

it's better to write it down because then, yeah.

Oh, shit.

Well.

Are you ready?

I might write something else down.

all right i thought two markers wouldn't be a big deal maybe it is all right griffin uh

or um yeah griffin

what was your prediction i wrote down popcorn let's see it david

nachos baby

can i can i talk through my thought process very quickly yes griff you can because obviously i have popcorn at the movies all the time it's a very normal answer the answer that came to me first was nachos right and then i went wait a second is that Weiger's favorite movie snack?

Yeah.

Am I confusing Weiger and Sims?

Yeah.

And I over guessed it and then I went to popcorn.

That will happen in the Chili Wed game.

You will overthink the correct answer out of existence.

Also, people will confuse the other person's spouse.

That's true.

That will happen.

Yes.

I'm going to say that.

I love those nachos.

No, go ahead, Mitch.

The nachos are great, and I think that Wag's answer is the nachos.

Hollywood Handbook is glaring at us through the glass door because we've gone way over our studio time.

When are you supposed to start?

Like 15 minutes.

You need to leave?

I think we're doing two things.

Why don't you leave after the segment and then we'll do the question without you?

It will be my first answer, but it's big soda and then maybe a dog is what I thought.

And I think your answer is going to be nachos.

Well, here's the thing.

I didn't realize that drinks were on the table because if they were, I would have written big soda.

But instead, I went with what I usually get, which is nothing.

That is insane.

I mean, that is honestly, this is

the Nick answer.

But that's why I said big soda because I was like, he doesn't have to do it.

I don't usually have a snack.

I sometimes will have nachos.

I thought about writing nachos, but I think that's a good guess match.

Nothing.

Big soda was what I was like.

Big soda is the closest to something I get really.

That is what you were getting.

Yeah, for sure.

So we don't get a point, but we were, I was right.

Yeah, you were right.

This next question is for Nick and Sims.

Okay.

If your partner had to pick one movie to describe your relationship, which movie would it be?

Describe our relationship?

Yeah.

Oh my goodness.

Ooh, this is a tough one.

This is good.

By the way,

Handles very kindly is sending us ice cream.

And the most we've ever discussed anything

in the Doughboys chain was discussing how to get the handles.

How to get the most out of this ask.

It took me like two hours for us to collectively write an email.

We drafted like five.

You guys didn't see it, but on a side text channel, I said, let's fire Emma and Amelia.

Only after the ice cream has shipped.

So I'm guessing a movie Mitch would pick to describe our relationship.

Correct.

Answer the question as you predict your partner will answer.

This is tricky.

And just to clarify, it's like the movie that represents the dynamic, not the movie that's most important to your relationship, right?

I think that's up to you.

Yeah, I mean,

to best describe your relationship, I feel like it is like the what, yeah, the vibe of your relationship is also the vibe of this movie, maybe.

Okay.

That's what I put.

Griffin, what the hell did you put?

I saw your answer.

Look at this cheeky little smile.

This is tricky, but I'm going to take a guess here.

David, I'll say this.

In the last four months, I have said on Mike that this is the clearest representation of our dynamic in movies.

Like, and it's, well, okay, go ahead.

Guess away.

Guess away.

No, I'm just kidding.

Smart and smarter.

All right.

Sims, are you ready?

No, Nick and Weiger should go first.

I'm just, I'm pondering.

Nick and Weiger.

What the hell?

Nick and Mitch.

Jesus, it's late.

It's way too late.

Look, I think Wages would maybe put like of Mice and Men or something.

Yeah.

But I'm going to put.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

I think Wages has to remove.

Okay.

So here's the thing.

This is a struggle because I had some ideas.

I ultimately opted for what I know is Mitch's favorite movie or one of his favorite movies, which I think does have some Mitch Weiger dynamics within it, Goodfellas.

Very interesting.

I don't think it's the answer, though.

I don't think it's what you picked.

I think the thing that best describes Weiger and my relationship, we talked about it earlier in the episode, is autofocus.

I almost wrote autofocus.

I was so close to writing autofocus.

Ah, I overthought it.

All right.

It's a movie we've covered in the last six months or so.

I put Midnight Run, but I could not really, really, really think of what this answer is.

Well, now I feel bad.

Antonio and your Groden.

Sure.

I led you astray.

Because

I did.

There was a misunderstanding.

I said I saw this on Mike.

It was not a movie we covered, which I feel like misunderstood.

I assumed that was true, but I was at sea, so I just went for it.

No, it's fine.

I will say the movie I picked is the same dynamic you're describing, but I think it's the most extreme representation of it.

I'm excited.

Wow, Shrek.

Shrek is pretty good.

David is Shrek, and I'm Donkey.

Yeah, sure.

I can absolutely see that.

We We also have, it could work for us too.

But I would start talking to David.

It's like, get on my swamp.

Get on my swamp.

Shrek and human Shrek.

What's the dynamic?

The fuck?

Shrek your human Shrek?

Fucking bullshit.

All right, I think this next one might have to be the last tied at zero.

Oh, no, come on now.

All right.

For Mitch and Griffin,

if your partner could replace any actor in a movie, which role would they take?

Wait, I'm sorry.

So they're guessing what we would think for a role that we would play in a movie.

Yes.

Could replace any actor in a movie.

I'm having trouble even wrapping my mind.

I'll do this.

Mitch,

if Weiger could replace any actor in a movie, which role would he take?

Okay.

And then Griffin,

if Sims could replace any actor in a movie, which role would he take?

I have an answer.

It would be insane if Griffin could guess this because this is essentially a new question.

Do you have an answer in mind already?

I don't.

I'm thinking.

Yeah.

I have an answer.

So, so, Weiger, you're writing down the role that you would do.

Yes.

You got it.

Is everyone ready?

I have an answer.

I have an answer.

All right, let's see it.

I go first.

No, I go first.

Oh, sorry.

Fuck.

So, for my answer,

this is the first one that popped into my head, and it's maybe not fair but i i think this is i think i think you think i would say this

i said dustin hoffman and rain man it's pretty good

we were in the same ballpark because i guess lobot in the empire strikes back

fuck maybe a half point for that one we were close we were close I can't believe I didn't get autofocus.

I'm so fucking stupid.

Griffin, are you ready to reveal?

Yeah.

You didn't get this, honestly.

I took a big swing, and I don't know if I can even explain it.

I wrote Renee Zellweger and Jerry Maguire.

Wow.

Great answer.

That's a great answer.

I'm not totally off, right?

No, I thought about Cruz and Jerry McGuire in particular.

I'm so stressed out.

That's my thing.

I was like, I don't think you want to be him.

I think she's more the energy you want, even though she's going through her own struggles.

Yeah.

She does have her own struggles.

I tried to think of any movie where someone gets to kiss Colin Farrell.

Actually, can I see that?

Yeah, but none of them felt like a perfect fit.

Yes, I put

Russell Crowe and Master and Commander.

Wow.

This is one of my favorite movies.

Just get me on the sea, you know?

Get me on the sea just with my boys.

But I don't know.

I don't know.

There's a lot of answers that would make sense there.

Definitely in the all-time dad canon, Master and Commander.

Oh, yeah.

Get me a 4K.

I have a new answer behind me.

All right, so Mitch is changing his answer.

I think Wags would be willing to throw an auto focus.

This is getting me hot.

Amelia, let's do more.

Make Sean wait.

All right.

This next question is for Nick and Sims.

Okay, so we're guessing for Mitch and Griffin.

Yeah.

Got it.

Who is your partner's celebrity crush from a movie?

Well, I guess current celebrity crush from a movie.

Okay, current celebrity crush.

Or like that clarifies.

Is it current?

Let's do, yeah, sure.

Let's do current if if it helps people.

Because I feel like you've talked about celebrity crushes as a kid versus a teenager.

I think I know.

I think I know what you're doing.

We're saying like Hall of Fame or we're saying like recent.

I think

what I heard was current, right?

Is that what you're going with?

Sure.

And are we saying like, are we naming the actor, the actor in a specific movie, the character?

I think the actor.

Okay.

Have you written that much?

No.

I actually.

I think it's up to the interpretation.

Okay.

I made my interpretation.

I feel pretty confident.

I just want Sims to score a point here, and I think this one is gettable.

Mitch, are you Googling?

Googling people?

I got it.

I'm trying to think of what.

So, Mitch and Griffin, you're writing down your own celebrity crushes.

All right.

Let's get the reveal from Weiger first.

Okay.

I would like to reveal my answer to everybody from the movie Amelia Perez, Selena Gomez.

Let's see it, Mitch.

And I would like to reveal

to my friend Nick Weiger that he was right.

Good answer, Wagger.

You'll know.

Okay, David, come on.

I feel, I mean, I think, unless it's change, Griffin, it's Sercia Ronin, right?

Sir Ronin and Wild.

Okay.

Yeah.

You're Alfred Austa Dean.

Yeah, you know.

You guys know that.

I was going to say,

says a lot about the relationships.

There are certain things we talk about with each other extensively.

Now, you guys are tied.

Wow.

Time, I mean, how much time you got?

Let's just do one last one.

Want to do one tiebreaker?

Yeah, let's do a tiebreaker.

We have to.

If your partner could live, so this should go to.

Me and Griff.

Okay.

Yeah.

Mitch and Griff.

If your partner could live in any movie universe, which one would they choose?

Okay, and once again, specific movie.

Pick one title.

Movie universe.

Movie universe.

So I guess there could be multiple movies from this universe, if that exists, as long as it's the same universe.

All right, I got an answer.

And I'm guessing Sims is here.

Yes.

And then, Nick and Sims, you're putting down your own thoughts on what movie universe you would want to live in.

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay.

All right.

Can I reveal?

Yeah.

I think that maybe you thought I would say like Pleasantville or something,

but I went with a autofocus universe.

Mitch, I wish I'd written down autofocus universe.

I was thinking it.

Unfortunately, I had to go with what was in my heart, despicable me.

Oh, my God, of course.

Of course.

My guess was that we were going to pick Avatar.

I thought about Avatar as well, but then I thought that I thought Mitch might

overthink it and not put an avatar.

All right, should have just gone with autofocus.

It's always autofocus.

Griff.

I might have been a little sneaky here in going pretty broad in the tent I pitched, but I wrote down Studio G, bleed.

Oh, wow.

Great answer.

Oh, yeah.

Give me that food.

I wrote down the Matrix.

Plug me in, baby.

Get me out of here.

It was one or the other.

It had to be one or the other.

We're going to do a double tiebreaker.

What's the next question?

Oh, no.

We got to do more.

All right.

All right.

I was going to say, that's a good one.

All right.

This one's for Nick and Sims.

Okay.

Rank the Star Wars movies in order of your partner's favorite to least favorite.

All nine?

All nine canonical movies?

Or are we including?

Should I pick a shorter question?

Maybe you pick your partner's top three.

There you go.

No, that's too easy.

Too easy.

I say all nine.

Okay, all nine.

So we're not, but we're not ranking the spin-offs.

We're not ranking solo.

We're not ranking Rogue One.

Okay, gotcha.

And then the closest wins.

How's that?

Just Skywalker saga?

Okay.

All nine.

The Skywalker saga.

Yeah, one.

Yeah.

I regret picking the most complicated question for the saga.

So, Mitch, you need to be writing your sound.

I will as soon as.

Oh, yeah, you don't have a marker.

That's right.

Griff, I thought that at first.

Never mind.

You were just numbering them, and I was like, what?

We'll fast-forward this in the edit.

Yeah.

What the silent.

The silent scribbling.

Maybe we put some music in a little music bag maybe that could do it

yeah sure

the wedding music

This is insane the way this is being written out this is taking me 30 seconds I'm just gonna put the numbers I should have just put the numbers down but I'm writing I started committed to writing out titles Griff is changing his mind

So, to reiterate,

Mitch and Griff, you're writing down your own favorite order.

Okay.

Yep.

I got this.

I can do this in five seconds once I get a marker from one of these two freaks.

Hold on, hold on.

I'm almost done.

Are you writing out the full titles?

No, I was trying to do code words, but I went back and forth between

abbreviations.

Yeah.

I'm fairly confident, but there's a couple I think I maybe have flip-flopped.

So we're saying most out of nine matched wins.

Yeah.

This is very high stakes.

Yes.

And it's going to lead to very normal emotional reactions.

The best way to end the episode on a calm and pleasant note in honor of love.

Hey, you know what?

For Love Month, I think the fans love a little extra content.

There you you go.

I also said love months lovely.

Might as well be a month at this point.

All right, here we go.

I'm done.

All right, Mitch.

All right, so how are we revealing this, Amelia?

That is a great question.

Nick and Mitch, you want to go first?

Okay, great.

All right.

All right.

I'll give what I believe to be Mitch's rankings.

Turn yours around and wire you can read yours.

Number one, Return of the Jedi, episode six.

Number two, The Empire Strikes Back, episode five.

Number three, Star Wars, episode four, aka New Hope.

Number four, Phantom Menace, episode one.

Number five, Revenge of the Sith, episode three.

Number six, Attack of the Clone, episode two.

Number seven, Rise of Skywalker, episode nine.

Number eight, Force Awakens, episode seven.

And number nine, Last Jedi, episode eight.

He's almost exactly right.

What did I get wrong?

The only thing got wrong is four and five or flip.

Oh, man.

I thought you liked Empire more.

Wow.

Oh, my God.

Pretty good.

That's really eight out of nine.

That's not bad.

That's really good.

Riff, am I going to beat that?

I'm worried about that.

I'm going to have to seven out of nine.

Honestly,

I was

four and five.

I was flipping back and forth on.

Wow, you guys really love each other.

Talk about Star Wars and jacking off.

It's my good friend Rainman.

Strokes and snokes.

Strokes and snokes.

David?

All right, here we go.

I had you as here.

I've got it here for posterity.

Flip, Griffin, so we can monitor.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Number five, Empire Strikes Back.

Number four, Star Wars.

Number six, Return of the Jedi.

Episode eight, The Last Jedi.

Episode seven, Force Awakens.

Episode one, Phantom Menace.

Episode two, Tackle Clones.

Episode three, Revenge of the Sith.

And at the bottom, Rise of Skywalker, episode nine.

Pretty good.

That's three.

Was that three out of

seven?

Yeah.

I had

three out of nine, I mean?

I had Star Wars number one, which has always been my ranking since the beginning.

Sorry, that is the one I couldn't remember.

Number two, Empire.

Number three, Last Jedi.

number four return of the jedi number five you have last jedi over return i do number six force awakens number seven clones eight sith nine skywalker

wow you have phantom over force awakening the fuck is last jedi get the out of here

episode over

get the out

get out honestly griff i think i did my ranking basically yeah i think that's what this is you can stay wait what's your ranking no you're not gonna like it all right don't worry about it well congratulations to nick and mitch you won the truly wed game i think you're undefeated in every single

pretty good so far we know way too much about each other we get also we got two questions right um but pretty good

and mostly just wrote autofocus

uh griffin i know you got to do handbook i thank you so much for going so long please my pleasure um and should we should we get you out of here should you do you do so you do your plugs and we can do a question or do you want to stick around i kind of want to stick around okay

all right at this point i'm just going to say if handbook is mad at anyone, they can't be mad at us because we offered to get you out of here.

Sims, will you text Sean and ask how he's doing?

I'll send him my Cinematrix score.

I should put autofocus above

at the top of my summary stuff.

Hey, that was a Chulu again.

Thank you, Amelia.

I thought you were putting that together very well.

Just like a restaurant evaluate your feedback, let's open up the feedback.

Oh, Sims, do you need to go?

I guess I'll go.

Okay.

I mean, you want to answer the question?

You want to

stay in Hang?

I'll stay for the question.

Here I am.

Just like a restaurant evaluate feedback, let's open up the feedback.

We have a voicemail today.

Let's take a listen.

Hi, this is Kevin, a longtime listener.

I'm also a lifelong surfer.

Wags, you get it.

And I love the idea

for the segment, Thirst Responder.

I got to say that when I get out of the water after an early morning surf, I love reaching for my Yeti thermos of a coffee and taking a sip of that hot coffee while I'm still in my wetsuit before I've started changing into my street clothes.

Love that.

So, yeah.

What would be your preferred post-surf beverage?

Later.

Can I just say that was kind of a hot question?

Really was.

Yeah, it was

great, great, great energy from Kevin.

Yeah, it was a hunk.

Yeah.

Post-surf beverage.

Post-surf beverage.

And I think, you know, a lot of times if you're a surfer, you're going out

when the surf is good, you're going out very early.

When the water's maybe a little bit cold, it's a little bit brisk out.

So yeah, a hot beverage might do you right.

My issue is that coffee can sometimes be a little dehydrating.

So I would worry, even though as much as I love morning coffee, I'd be worried about like a sip of coffee after I'd done some physical exertion.

So I'd lean more towards,

I kind of honestly feel like I'd want like a Gator light, like a Gator light zero because I don't want to have sugar.

Like then I'm just being actively counterproductive, but I do want to get something to get my electrolytes back.

And I feel like that approximates kind of like a morning beverage.

I think that's probably, that would probably be what I'd lean into.

I feel like if I've been surfing, which I often am,

I've been riding some tasty waves.

Sure, yeah.

Doing rip curls.

Yeah.

Right.

This all sounds right to me.

Yeah.

I, I want to calm the waves inside my stomach, which is why I would reach for a packet of AG1.

Wow.

And pour that bad boy straight into the ocean, grab a straw and start slurping away.

Wow.

AG-1.

AG-1.

AG-1.

What an answer.

Yeah.

Pretty good.

I read that they're trying to get bigger sponsors on board.

They're going after like major celebrities, and I don't want them to stop sponsoring blank checks.

So now I decide I'm going to start pushing it everywhere.

Well, guess what?

I get so excited to do these ads.

It makes me so happy.

It's my favorite product.

They stop sponsoring old Doughboys.

I'll say that much.

But let's, maybe not.

Maybe they'll come back.

Sims, let's hear your answer.

I'm a pink lemonade guy.

I love

it.

I do want to say that I also, my water bottle of choice is a Niad-branded water bottle that Netflix sent me a couple of years ago, and I've never let go of.

So I've always got Niad on the brain.

Remember, Niad?

Niad.

That's a great answer.

A pink lemonade is just a great, what a refreshing answer.

I love a pink lemonade.

Love that.

Look, I just dominated the element of water while I was surfing.

Yeah, sure.

And then what a better way to dominate with a glacier freeze.

Now you're really dominating it.

You know what I'm saying?

A Gatorade Glacier Freeze is my answer.

It goes along with the water.

I think it's the most refreshing post-workout.

Unless, honestly, the answer is just water.

A very cold water can be great after you worked out.

But Wagsa, Gatorlight is a good answer.

And I know that Gatorade is very syrupy, but Glacier Freeze, can you beat that?

Yeah, I mean, when you talk about dominating the water, you know, I'm thinking of like,

again, I'm thinking about the poachers who are threatening Payakon and the other, mighty Tolkoon.

Scoresby.

Yeah, exactly.

Scoresby is

namely Scoresby.

And so I'm glad that that's not who you're thinking of.

Like, is your name dominating the water in a different way?

Scoresby.

Yeah, Scoresby.

Scoresby.

Bad news.

Yeah.

Yeah, they're like, they're trapping.

Like, PyCon has a shift at Chuck E.

Cheese.

Hey, David, just one quick question.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Devoid of context, I just want to see what your first answer is.

Who is the most famous person?

Uh-huh.

Oh, I'm sorry.

That's the entire question.

Who is the most famous person?

Yep.

Urban most famous personality, maybe.

I don't know.

And then once you say yours, can I follow it up with something

and just tell me if you're great?

Okay.

And I can't say Willem Defoe and Auto, folks.

You can say anything with easy, whatever you want.

I'm going to say, who's the most famous person?

I'm going to say Ronald McDonald.

That's always been my answer.

Wow.

That's a good one.

That's a good answer, but you're going to be blown away by my answer, which is Santa.

That's actually a better answer.

That's a better answer.

Now, all right, we have one other question.

We have a follow-up question for you.

What's more famous, Santa or the sun?

The sun is more famous.

I think the sun.

I think it's the sun.

What's more famous?

The sun or dog?

What the hell has been going on in this episode?

That's why I was an hour later than Gas Quest.

Exactly.

That took up most of the episode.

What did you say, Emma?

He said, what's wrong with this episode?

I said, a gas leak.

This is a gas leak episode, guys.

It's the fumes from Chuck E.

Cheese.

Sims,

you were going to say something else after Ronald.

Well, I mean, my Ronald McDonald defense over, it's like, you know, I think Ronald McDonald is everywhere in the world, whereas Santa, I guess, in the non-Christian nations,

less famous?

I don't know.

There's the nations of Santa.

There are secular Christmases, but yeah, it is kind of a Western-centric POV to think it's Santa.

I don't know.

I don't know.

Sun wins anyways.

We always think it's a good one.

It might be sun.

We think it's sun.

Can I ask you one last question?

You definitely can.

What is more famous, moon or earth?

I think moon is more famous.

We agree.

I agree.

Moon is more famous.

I agree.

I think about that all the time, man.

Imagine, you know, 20,000 years ago, there's just people walking around on Earth, hunting and gathering, and they're like, by the way, the fuck is that?

We agree with you.

What is it?

And they don't know.

He's locked in.

He's getting

it.

They don't know they're walking on another orb, like a similar heavenly body.

They just know that they are on on terra firma and there's a thing up there

what is that changes shape what's going on with okay but david one more question yeah what's more famous dog or bug

bug actually can i make it can i make

can i make it can we make it a three way a three-way most famous yeah yeah dog or bug or pokeball

i think it's bug i think it's still bug i think bug still win.

Because there are also.

Everyone deals with bugs.

They're also our bug-type Pokemon, right?

So it's like,

that's just like even if you know what a bug ball is.

Super effective against psychic.

Just FYI.

That's a good tip to just have in your back pocket.

If you have a question or comment about the world of chain restaurants, you can email us at feedback at birdfuck.com or leave us a voicemail 830 go to that.

That's 830-463-6844.

And I hate to get the Doughboys WA Weekly bonus episode, plus our entire pre-2018 back calig.

Subscribe at patreon.com/slash doughboys.

Our producers, Emma Erdbrink, our associate producers, Amelia Marino.

Our supervising video producer is Kissy Donahue.

Our video editor is Mike Dorfman.

Griff-sized episode.

A blank check-sized episode.

That's right.

Fitting for love week.

David, thank you so much for joining us.

People should listen to Blank Check.

Yes.

My favorite podcast.

I listen to it all the time.

I love it.

You guys are great.

And

you do great work over there.

And hey, the Doughboys were on a recent episode of 2021.

1941.

Spielberg series.

A great episode.

Great episode.

Everybody loved it.

Yeah.

God bless.

And

Griffin, anything you'd like to plug?

Yeah, George Lucas Talk Show I do with Connor Ratliff.

We're traveling around.

I don't know if we have any shows coming up in the immediate, but you can see all the old ones on YouTube, and we'll probably put other stuff on the calendar soon.

And then I'm in this movie called Turn Me On that got put on VOD without any of us knowing.

Wow.

So I'm trying to catch up and let people know about it now, but it's Bell Pauli and Nick Robinson, Patty Harrison, Darcy Cardin.

It's got good people in it, and I'm in it.

And yeah, it's rentable most places you rent movies digitally, but not on Netflix.

Wow.

Wow.

Give it a rent.

Check it out.

Turn me on as the movie.

I'm going to say this like Matthew Littard.

Matthew Littard.

Matthew Lillard.

The Hollywood handbook's going to be so mad at us.

They're going to be so mad at us.

I'm expecting the entire

Mitch's head.

Hey, that'll do it for this episode of Doughboy.

So next time for the Spoon Map and Chill, I'm Tiger Weiger.

Happy eating.

See ya.

Hey, buddy.

Want Dough Boys merch?

We're talking hats, shirts, sweatshirts, patches, glasses, all sorts of stuff, aprons.

It's all available at kinshipgoods.com slash Doughboys.

That's kinshipgoods.com slash Doughboys.

Sources for the intro are in the episode description.

Hi, I'm Alana Alana Hope Levinson.

And I'm Dan O'Sullivan.

And this is The Outfit, the new podcast from Higher Ground and Head Gum.

You know, we're two journalists who are slightly obsessed with the mob and organized crime and other nefarious stuff like that.

Every week, we're going to bring you a story about a mobster.

Some you've heard of, some you definitely haven't, but all of them are going to help explain why America is like this.

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Who knew?

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That was a hit gun podcast.