Krusty Burger with Henry Gilbert and Bob Mackey
Henry Gilbert (@talkinghenry) and Bob Mackey (@realbobservo) of Talking Simpsons (@talksimpsonspod) join the 'boys to talk theme parks, Illumination Studios, and LA's Tam O'Shanter before a review of Krusty Burger in Universal's Simpsons Land. Plus, another edition of Serving USA.
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Sources for this week's intro:
https://parallax-view.org/2022/02/09/breaking-new-ground-has-always-been-in-the-medium-itself-an-interview-with-douglas-trumbull/
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/2001-a-space-odyssey-special-effects-pioneer-douglas-trumbull-remembers-stanley-kubrick-1114803/
https://www.celestis.com/participants-testimonials/douglas-hunt-trumbull/
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/11/movies/douglas-trumbull-dead.html
https://allears.net/2024/01/23/why-universal-is-closing-the-simpsons-land/
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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Transcript
This is a head gum podcast.
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Check it out on our YouTube channel at youtube.com/slash Doughboys Media.
I find this little phone and I cold call Stanley Kubrick and I say, I've been working on these drawings and I want a job.
And he said, okay.
This was Douglas Trumbull, as quoted in a 2005 interview with Sean Axemaker, explaining how a bold and naive ask led to his role creating special photographic effects for the film 2001, A Space Odyssey.
Trumbull was still in his early 20s when he relocated from Los Angeles to London to work on Kubrick's sci-fi masterpiece, in which he oversaw the now-legendary psychedelic Stargate sequence, among other set pieces.
Trumbull, himself the son of an effects artist turned aerospace engineer, amassed a staggering set of VFX credits over a four-decade career, including Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, and Terrence Malik's The Tree of Life.
Trumbull would also direct movies of his own, though his most widely seen directing credit may have been another collaboration with Spielberg, a motion simulator called Back to the Future, The Ride.
The interactive version of Zemecas' time travel franchise opened at Universal Studios Florida and Hollywood in 1991 and 1993, respectively, and became a beloved attraction among theme park enthusiasts.
The neighboring park grounds also housed the similarly adored, though a bit of a non-sequitur, Doc Brown's Fancy Fried Chicken, named for the film's Einstein-Coated Inventor played by Christopher Lloyd.
However, in 2008, in the aftermath of the wildly successful Simpsons movie, Back to the Future, the Ride was replaced by The Simpsons Ride, and the surrounding environs, in time, converted into a simulacrum of Homer's hometown of Springfield, complete with food and beverages pulled from the animated sitcom.
Doc Brown's chicken was also a casualty, replaced by Cletus' chicken Chicken shack, the swapping of a brilliant scientist for a slack-jawed yokel, fittingly symbolic of a coarsening America's rejection of intellectualism.
But now, the Simpsons ride and Springfield itself seem likely to shudder in the near future, with Universal competitor Disney's acquisition of Fox and the Simpsons IP, which means to experience the Simpsons ride, as with the Trumbull-directed Marty McFly experience, one's only option will be to go back to the future.
Or I guess the past.
This week on Doughboys, we visit Universal Springfield to review Krusty Burger.
Welcome to Dough Boys, the podcast about chain restaurants.
I'm Nick Weiger, along with my co-host,
Philip C.
No Hogman, the Spoon Man Mike Mitchell.
Pretty good.
Hey guys, what are you doing?
Hope you like this roast about Mitch not being able to see his own hog.
It took me months to work up the courage to ask my wife to send it in for me.
Love you, Mitch.
Love the show.
Rob, roasted birdfuck.com.
God, what supermodel wife of his sent it in?
Supermodel wife factors into
Does Grew have a supermodel wife?
No, Grew does not not have a supermodel wife.
Grew's wife works for the Anti-Villain League.
It is the Maxime Lamal, the super villain that he is battling, has a wife voiced by Will Farrell.
His wife is a supermodel voiced by Sophia Vergara.
A lot going on in that movie.
Now, you told me not to date things before, but you're bringing up Despicable Me 4.
Well, that's Evergreen.
Because Windows crashed today.
That's right.
Today, July 19th, 2024, we're recording a big Windows crash.
So perhaps the country is still dealing with the aftermath of that.
We don't know what the long term is.
Has Y2K begun?
Who knows?
Is this a delayed Y2K?
It could be.
They finally got around to Y2K.
We know that it's November.
You're thinking Turkey.
You got Turkey on the brain.
There's Turkey on the brain.
But Windows just crashed.
And
listen to this.
Windows crashes in old Bill Gates cries.
Do you you
have my files coming back up?
Okay, okay, now I get it.
I didn't get it until you landed on the chorus.
Lightning Crash is by R.
Wait, no, it's not REM.
It's by
who's that?
Who's the REM type band that it's oh, live?
Live.
Oh, live.
By live.
It was by live.
Growing copper fame.
How about that?
Well, before I got in here, anyways, it was worth it to sing my Windows Crashes parody, I think.
Before I got in here, I saw you.
You were parking on the street where you could get a ticket.
That's right.
I said, Wages, no parking there today.
You said, Yeah, I'll just eat the ticket.
That's what you said.
Well, here's the thing.
Now, you eat a lot.
You eat a lot of things, but eat the ticket?
You're going to eat the ticket?
I, this is the thing.
I arrived very close to showtime.
We ended up starting late, so I was able to move my car.
But I arrived very close to showtime.
I was like, if I try to find a parking space, it's street sweeping day today.
We don't know, it's not normally a record day.
I was like, if I try to find parking space, I'm going to be late.
The street sweep is like, move your vehicle, eh, governor?
Yeah, we got old-time chimney sweeps.
A lot of British expats, they find employment in the States.
They're like, struggled, like, how do I use the skill set?
There's no chimneys out in LA.
I'll ticket to you, I will, if you don't move your car.
And then they can take a role sweeping streets.
So that's nice for them.
You're just not putting up with me today.
No, I'm having a good time.
I wish you were wearing the Bowser shirt.
It doesn't fit in.
So we got, for our audio listeners, Mitch and I at Universal, which we're going to be discussing at length today with our guests.
We hatched a scheme to get matching shirts.
And so Mitch got a Bowser shirt and I got a Bowser Jr.
shirt.
And I was like, that's fine.
Move your iPad for the camera.
Let me move my iPad.
Yeah, let's see.
I don't know how visible it is.
We thought it was good.
I got to lose a few pounds.
Look.
I'm just going to say it off the bat.
Mitch has his effort in Mitch's defense, he has it draped over his torso, which makes me look like a jackass but uh i was gonna say silver spoon man this guy's eating tickets i don't know i think we should try to i was going to do because it's going to be late i don't want to make our be late for our episode i was like well that's a cost of doing business oh my god you're a fucking martyr yeah i am thank you mitch
uh it doesn't fit me i'm gonna say this i mean our listeners will just be like
You eat hot dog hamburgers all the time.
I don't give a shit.
Universal is a little bit sizest.
Can we agree here?
It'd be nice if they had some more sizes.
Yeah.
They should have some bigger sizes.
I was in there.
There was a bunch of fucking tubbos walking around, including myself.
Yeah.
A lot of big people.
And they fucking the, you can't get on the Harry Potter ride.
Some of the rides are, yes, they are.
The only ride ever.
And I was in the elevator with like seven people when I went down.
We've also heard this about the Secret Life of Pets ride.
Yeah.
That can be an issue.
We were told this yesterday that the Secret Life of Pets ride was,
and you basically were trying to get us to ride it well i heard it was good and it's also from illumination who makes the despicable me franchise and as we were hearing that like i definitely won't fit on i wasn't gonna try to to bully you into turning and then the mario kart ride we have some fun you might not fit on we really were hoping that jemi goes in the empty chair yeah so there's an empty chair today
It's not a spiritual thing.
It is just because our guests are remote.
So you have an empty chair.
Some days it is a spiritual thing.
Often it is.
Jemmy is eyeing the empty chair.
She normally cozies up next to Mitch.
Right now, she's just kind of at my feet.
We'll see where she lands.
Mario Kartride, also big.
And I know.
Yeah.
I know.
You eat cheesesteaks.
You don't know anything about me.
Shut the fuck up.
Anyways, that's to our listeners.
It should fit a Wario-sized human being.
Yes.
If Wario can't ride, you've got to get
something going wrong.
You know, what's he going to do?
He's going to get on there.
He's going to go, ah, you know, he's going to be all pissed off.
Yeah, he's going to be pissed.
Because his whole thing is.
I think it should fit a Bowser-size or a drive.
It should fit a Dowser-sized person.
Yeah, of course.
Yeah.
Anyone from the game who gets in those carts should should be able to.
Morton Koopa Jr.
He's got a fit in there.
I agree.
It's a big dude.
It would have been fun.
Yeah.
We got the 2X.
I needed a 3X.
That's just the way it works.
Yeah, they look like they were in the store.
They look like they were big.
And then
when I went to put it on this morning, I was like, oh, the bottom is pretty tight.
I knew I was in trouble.
But lengthwise, pretty good.
Look, I was in Canada the past week.
That's right.
Shot the first episode of Twisted Metal Season 2.
It's done.
It's in the can.
Wow.
How about that?
Going back.
Yeah, you have a little bit, schedule-wise.
Small break.
We're able to record this episode, which we were supposed to record earlier.
We'll get into that.
But we're able to record this week because we have a surprising window where you're back in LA for like a week and a half.
Careful with Windows.
You know what happens?
They're breaking today.
Yeah, they might crash.
They're crashing out.
Also.
Windows goes too fast.
Watch out, boy, gonna crash.
See?
We're having
fun.
Also, a former president was almost assassinated.
We don't have to get into that.
We don't need to get into that.
We don't have to.
We don't get former,
now maybe current president.
Well, it wouldn't be current, but, you know,
president-elect.
Oh, president-elect.
Possibly a Grover-Cleveland situation.
We didn't need to get into any of this.
We're quite in July.
I said in advance, we don't have to be able to get away from that.
Biden dropped out of the race.
We should just guess things.
We should just guess things.
Josh Shapiro, the new vice presidential nominee, we should just guess things.
Can I, can I, can I, Pennsylvania governor?
Can I say, you know, you know, who saw that Trump
attempted assassination and have a big sigh of relief?
Trump's ENT.
His ear, nose, and throat guy.
He breathed a sigh of relief because he has one fewer ear to tend to?
Is that your logic?
Wouldn't he be concerned?
Because that's like, hey, that's the thing I have to take care of.
I would say he's a sigh of relief.
Like, thank God I wasn't there, like, checking out the ear.
That is so complicated, Mitch.
This is not only super dated, but the most complicated joke I've heard about this topic.
Can you
tell me that?
Do you agree with me that EMT gave a sigh of relief whether it's like, well, one last ear to work on?
There's going to be so much crazy shit that happens between when we're recording and when this episode comes out that people are going to be like, oh, yeah, I guess someone did shoot Trump in the ear.
I don't think people will forget.
And I'll say this too.
Look, I don't want anyone to die ever.
That's my whole, that's my statement.
Yeah, you're kind of just generally anti-death.
I am anti-death.
You know that you do fear the Reaper.
I do fear the Reaper.
I don't like the Reaper is up there with the devil.
I don't like the Reaper.
I do fear the Reaper.
Less cowbell, if you ask me.
Come on now.
I back out.
I back out.
But I just want to say this:
with all the seriousness of this past week, it is just funny that
to get shot for Trump to get shot in the ear is funny.
It's funny.
If Joe Biden, if you got shot in the ear, I'd be like, oh my God, that's.
And then I would be like, it's pretty funny.
It would be kind of funny if I got shot in.
If you got shot in the ear, a little piece of your ear went off.
It's the same thing.
I mean, like, if it happened to Joe Biden, he would probably just burst into dust, as you said.
But still, I would be like, oh, that's funny.
It's a funny thing to happen.
The thing surrounding it, awful.
People dying, awful.
It's an awful thing.
But someone getting shot in the ear is kind of funny.
I'm sorry, every comedian that's afraid to say it out loud.
I mean, I think people probably have said it at this point.
And then again, just like enough time has passed.
We're talking about that.
I mean, I'm saying the week of right now.
You need a TikTok account.
You just, you need a TikTok account.
You need to get on there.
You'll be like, hey, it's the Spoon Man.
I got to,
this shit's going on.
I got to get my thoughts out on the Windows crash.
You can do your thing.
You can get it out of your system that way.
And then you don't have to say it on this podcast, which very often is recorded well in advance.
You want my TikTok to take off and me leave the podcast?
Hey, you know what?
That would make all our lives easier.
You wouldn't be eating tickets anymore.
That's true.
We got to introduce our guest.
We got to introduce our guests.
I just want to say that I found out, like, in Canada, that Trump was, there was an assassination attempt.
That's wild.
So it was like, hey, it's like some hoser almost assassinated Trump.
Someone said that to you?
Like a mountie pulled up?
Now let me say this in French, Canada's other official language.
Strange country up there, I'll tell you.
We'll get into it.
Well, yeah,
we'll get into it.
Emma, let's hit them with a drop.
I used to work at The Simpsons.
I used to work at The Simpsons.
When I worked at The Simpsons.
And I started working at The Simpsons.
I worked at The Simpsons.
Because I worked at The Simpsons.
I worked at The Simpsons.
I worked at The Simpsons.
Did you work at The Simpsons?
I worked at The Simpsons when I was working at The Simpsons.
When I worked at The Simpsons.
I was working at The Simpsons.
Did I tell the story when I worked at The Simpsons?
Do you get deishu?
It's true.
I did work at The Simpsons.
Yeah, we'll get into it.
I'm impressed by how many clips that had.
Yes.
That was an impressive archival job.
You know, who's a really good drop maker?
Who's that?
Finky.
Oh, this is that's a classic Finky.
You know what's funny?
Was that The Simpsons just isolated?
Because it's
strange.
Hey, Mitch, if I had worked at The Simpsons, I wouldn't stop bringing it up either.
Chris Finky.
Thanks, Finky.
Drops at birdfuck.com.
We got to introduce our
fitting.
What's a fitting drop for
long overdue guests on the podcast?
Oh, so Anya's just yelling out here and that something's going on.
Yeah, Anya, what is she doing?
She's just, she's going crazy.
She's yelling at someone.
She's yelling at somebody.
I wouldn't want to be on the the receiving end of that.
This is this is Nick and I are scared.
Okay.
All right.
She's, yeah, she's way she's wagging her finger and she's making a scene.
I don't know what's going on.
There's a lot of finger.
There is a lot of finger wagging.
What is happening?
Anyway.
I think it's okay.
I think it's all right.
I think we're okay.
I think it's maybe not as heated as it looks for me.
It might be more just like a general excitement energy.
I'm actually surprised that anyone's in here.
Head gum employees are,
they kind of act like teachers.
They take the summer off usually.
Yeah, and it feels like there's kind of like an ongoing four-day weekend just year-round.
So like for anyone to be here on a Friday.
Not for production.
Not for production.
Okay.
Not for the people who make the podcast.
Just for Casey.
Got it.
Casey is in here by himself, like that Twilight Zone episode with a guy who wants to read.
Anyways, we should introduce our guests.
A lot of excitement out there.
A lot of excitement in here with our guests today.
They host a great podcast, Talking Simpsons, Bob Mackey and Henry Gilbert.
Hi, Bob.
Hi, Henry.
Ahoy, hoy, everybody.
Thank you for having us.
Thank you for having us.
God, Jesus Christ, you're blowing it.
And we don't work for The Simpsons, but in a way, they work for us.
Wow, there you go.
Business is good.
Business is good.
Great to have you back on, you both on.
We've been on your podcast.
Mitch and I have
a few times.
A great podcast, really fun to do.
We were talking with Susser about.
Susser was raving about your podcast.
It's really great.
And I wanted to ask you, because we'll have plenty of Simpsons to talk about, but since we got to the topic of Canada, Bob, you now live in Vancouver.
Is that correct?
That's true.
The rumors are true.
How long have you been there?
It'll be a year in just a few weeks here.
Okay, so I haven't spent a lot of time in Vancouver.
When I've been up there, it's been for work, but my understanding is that there's a great food scene up there.
Yeah, I used to love going to different cities for the food, but now I'm incredibly spoiled, especially in the neighborhood I'm in now, which is right off of Commercial Drive.
I'm in Little Italy, and believe it or not, there's fantastic Italian food in Vancouver if you know where to live.
Wow.
Wow.
How about that?
So far, my experience with the food in...
But you're in Toronto, which is like, it's a completely different region.
No, I know.
It's the other side of the country, basically.
But so far, my experience with the food has been very good.
Yeah.
It's been great.
I've heard Canadian food is great.
Do you have to?
Oh, I do have to tell you about, you know, about this, the great burger heist.
Explain.
I got a burger.
I was, I was staying at the four seasons, which I know the silver spoon man thing is just, it's going to come back.
Let's just be clear.
They put me at the four seats.
Because of you have a strong union behind you and you're able to, one of the things you're able to do is that they are able to get you the perk of you have a nice hotel room for a job.
So that's that you should be staying there.
You're not going out of pocket for it.
I got a burger at their bar D bar good food.
Uh-huh.
I asked for medium rare It came out just a it was like super cooked.
I never say anything ever, but I ate like half of it and I was like, this is bad and I was like, this is like a $50 burger.
You know what I mean?
Like, Jesus Christ.
$50 Canadian.
Well, this is the part of the problem.
I was like, this burger was so expensive.
It was 50 bucks.
Yeah.
And then the lady's like, like, was like, what?
It was like, how was your burger?
And I was like, oh, it was like, like, did I, I actually said, like, this this is I immediately was in my head I was texting you about this yeah but I was like did I say immediately I was like asked what temperature I said immediately I was like why did I say this this is gonna lead down a path of and then she was like oh no I don't know and then she was like I'll make you a new one and I was like oh god she's gonna make a new one I never do this I've truly I was mortified at myself yeah for saying something I was just alone for too long it's fair to send something something back if it's overcooked if you're spending that much money it was fifty dollars but it was Canadian but still a kind of expensive burger What is that?
Bob, do you know offhand roughly what the conversion rate is there?
It's like 30-something bucks.
I would say it's 70 cents to the dollar, maybe?
Okay, something like that.
So that's still an expensive burger.
It's still an expensive burger.
But, you know,
I sent it back.
They sent me a brand new burger.
So I got one and a half burgers.
Why do you call this the burger heist?
Because I got one and a half burgers.
So that's why it's the great burger heist of 2024.
Is that the burger conversion rate in Canada, too?
Is it 1.5 burgers?
I have to eat one and a half burgers to be full.
We should also,
I want to remark on something that people who have, I think, seen it by this point on our social media.
If you haven't, go check it out.
But, Bob,
your lovely wife, Nina Matsumoto, put together some show art for this episode, Simpson-fied,
Simpsonized all four of us.
And it's a really awesome rendering.
Can I just even, can I say this?
Like, i think did a better job than the show itself of rendering the doughboys i don't know if you should say that i'm gonna say it i think it's great as and the show also did a good job the show also did a good job but you know look i can burn bridges i think she did a better job yeah take this job she did it she did it fantastic great job yeah and also take that film roman
the drawing now is a lie because we never met in person to eat we'll cover that later i'm sure yeah we were hoping to do this and that that's a whole thing well Well, why don't we just get into it now?
Well, hold on a second.
Can I just quickly say that with that burger heist, it came with free fries, so it's maybe more like the free, it's the fry heist of 2024.
Well, you got to get an extra half burger and then another full order of fries.
Oh, full order of fries.
Did you eat all the fries?
Yeah.
It was a small order of fries.
Oh, yeah, sure, yeah.
But also, I gave her 100%.
I gave her like 100%.
I was so ashamed of myself.
And she came over and she was like, thank you for that.
She was very, she was always, she was great.
Yeah.
I just, you're a generous person.
I never sent anything back.
It was like one of the, and I didn't even mean to send it back, whatever.
People make it.
You're so in your head about this.
It's fine.
It was completely reasonable.
I hated it.
You're fine.
I hated it.
And I was mad at myself.
But, anyways,
because you know what happened in the kitchen?
They're like, need another burger on the fly for table six.
He's like, all right, sure.
And the guy just threw another patty on the grill.
And it was like, fine.
It was like an extra five minutes of work.
He looked out the window and saw me.
He was like, oh, I get it.
The conversion.
The conversion rate.
I fucked everything up for you guys.
I got COVID.
Yeah, we were all supposed to meet in person.
We were supposed to have a universal trip, and then we're going to record in studio while y'all were in town down here.
What happened is that Mitch got COVID and tested positive.
We don't know when I got it.
We didn't go to Vegas.
We don't know when he got it in Vegas.
And
then we recorded a couple of days, like right afterwards.
Then we were supposed to go to Universal together.
Mitch tested positive for COVID.
I started feeling symptomatic.
And then I also tested positive for COVID.
Completely separately, though, as it happened, Bob, you also got COVID on this trip.
Is this correct?
Yes.
In my defense, I wanted to fit in.
And Henry, you didn't get COVID, but you had some travails of your own.
Unbelievably, I did not get COVID, even though I was everywhere Bob went.
And I also went to Disneyland before Bob came.
And then after that, I did more flying because I did a family reunion.
That's also why I was like, oh, I shouldn't get COVID.
I might give it to my over 70 family members.
And then the next day I went to Seattle's Pride Parade, and so I did all of these things and I negative every time, no symptoms.
So, yeah, I, it was, uh, I felt very lucky until my uh dish, uh, my, my washing machine sprung a leak.
It leaked for a whole hour before I noticed it.
It leaked from my floor down to the next floor and so much that the floor below that person, it was leaking into their apartment.
So that, that's how much water there was.
Yes.
What a nightmare.
Yeah, that's that is a true night.
We were saying that we would, we would rather have COVID, though.
The COVID did, I didn't know COVID was back first.
It's back.
It's back.
It was back big time.
It kicked my ass.
We might have forgotten about COVID by the time this episode comes out.
Oh, yeah.
There's a thing that was going around.
It kicked my ass.
Yeah.
You took it pretty gnarly.
I know some other people who got this pretty bad this round.
Mine was Ferguson had it.
Saunders had it.
Yeah.
Matt Mazzani got it.
A bunch of people had got it at the same time that I got it.
I gave it to you.
I gave it to you.
Look, I probably did get it in Vegas.
Yeah, and then we recorded together in person, and then you got it, and I had got it.
It's fine.
It's totally fine.
Did it happen in Vegas?
Probably.
I believe Vegas stays in Vegas.
The only time, the only time I did get COVID was attending all in, or sorry, not all in, double or nothing, the AEW pay-per-view in Las Vegas
in 2021,
or 22.
Yeah, so I think Vegas is COVID central.
Yeah, we're it's a COVID hotbed, just like Universal Studios is when we were on a ride yesterday, and I heard 1 million people coughing the entire time.
Um, the flirt, the flirt variant, yes, right now, yeah.
Kazama flirt.
Remember, is that R.
Kelly?
Should I not?
I forget who sang it.
You can sing an R.
Kelly parody song.
You're making fun of this bad man.
Yeah, we don't like the bad man.
I think that's who's saying it.
But
we were saying before, too, that like
with it's like my COVID passed, but like with Gandalf, we were saying that's hard.
I can't believe this myth that did not work off pod.
You want to recreate.
So, yeah, basically, what we were saying was.
Like, Gandalf is famous for saying, like, you shall not pass.
But with COVID, he's got to let it pass.
He's got to let it pass.
And then we were talking about how Gandalf dealt with Kobe.
I mean, we said.
Yeah, Kobe R.I.P., you know, didn't maybe didn't like to pass all that much.
He wanted the rock.
He wanted to take shots up, put shots up himself.
So he was happy when Gandalf was.
He was happy when Gandalf said, you shall not pass.
It's like, yeah, man.
So we just want you guys to know.
I'm going for 60.
We just want you guys to know that Kobe was happy when he heard Gandalf say, you shall not pass.
That's my life philosophy.
He had more assistance than he got credit for.
I think the show is, I think we're having a great episode.
We're having a great episode.
Yeah.
I think we're having a great episode.
I just want to give you space, Mitch.
Look, I felt very bad.
I ruined a meetup for all of us to be in person.
And
it's not my fault.
Look, I masked
on the way to Vegas and on the way to Canada.
And people looked at me like I was a freak, by the way.
Anytime you're just around a large group of people, you have a chance of infection.
It's not anyone's fault in particular.
Yeah, it was a bummer.
Suss was trying to
drive a wedge between us too.
He was really eager to get because he wanted me to get mad at you for getting me COVID.
Not only did he, so Susser was like, like, like, was like, wow, like, you, like, yeah, he was being very like, this is your fault.
Yes.
Then Amelia told us that her cat had COVID.
Right.
And then Suss immediately texted our text story with me and Wags and was like, you gave Amelia's cat COVID to me.
I'm like, you're a fucking asshole, man.
No one, this is 2024.
It's not 2020.
I mean, I said that to him when he was trying to, I was like, suss acting like it's 2020 again, trying to blame me for giving.
You never, to give you credit, you never said anything about it.
Well, whatever, you know, people get sick.
It sucked.
And it wiped out a whole week before I went to Canada.
The bummer is that we didn't get to do this trip in person, but I do want to get y'all's opinions on theme parks in general.
And also, I want to hear about your LA food odyssey.
But, Henry, where do you stand on theme parks?
Like, are you a theme park enthusiast?
Yes, I am.
I love theme parks.
I have gone to them a lot.
I liked them just fine.
But then when I met my husband and especially when we got married, we went to Disneyland for both of our first times at Disneyland on a honeymoon, on our honeymoon, not a honeymoon.
Anyway, we went there and we loved it so much that it became like just our thing.
And we especially have been to Disneyland like at least once a year for us
when it's not in lockdown, at least once a year ever since.
Wow.
And
yeah, and I also, but I also grew up in Florida, in northern Florida.
So I did go to Orlando Park some as a kid too, though I'm not as in love with them.
It was California where I became a theme park enthusiast.
And I like Universal Hollywood as well, though Universal Orlando is like such a bigger, more rich park, but it just doesn't have the history.
But yes, I'm a theme park guy.
And Bob, how about yourself?
Not as much as Henry.
And I think it's because I grew up in Northeast Ohio.
And the the idea of going to Disneyland was similar to the idea of going to the moon.
And I feel like I still have that limited imagination.
I can't, I have to remind myself, you can just go to Disneyland.
You're on the west coast.
It's not an expensive plane ride.
It's a trip that's within my means.
But yeah, I would say
it was once a year in my late 30s until COVID happened.
And now I have yet to be back to the California park, although I did go to Tokyo, Disneyland
and Disney Sea with my wife, and we went to Japan late last year.
So that was a great, a great adventure.
I hear Disney Sea is like the best.
I hear it's the best park.
It is really good, but I think people underrate Tokyo Disneyland because it has a lot of the same things.
They don't understand that it has a lot of the same things, but they work better and you're not surrounded by other Americans.
Two things that are working in its advantage.
Two huge pluses, yeah.
Yeah.
Though the plus for Disney Sea is that Tokyo Disneyland is like the magnet for the children, so you'll have fewer kids getting in the way of your grown-up, childless Disney fun at Disney C
so you know people people were saying that Disney C was for a more adult audience.
You know, it's for the grown-ups, but ultimately it does feel like it's for the teenagers who think Disneyland is uncool.
They're going through that phase.
And then when they're adults, they'll go back to Disneyland, but we were just surrounded by incredibly trendy teenagers
at Disney C.
Wig's dream.
Okay.
Can I, we should, we should mention, because we were talking Mario shirts earlier, I meant to shout this out.
Bob, you have on a Boo and King Boo shirt, and then Henry, you have at arm's reach.
You have your own match, you have a Mario shirt that actually matches the aesthetic of me and Mitch's Bowser shirts.
Is that were those both universal acquisitions?
Yes.
Wow.
Yeah, no, I love the design of these.
I do feel, I should say for your new listener or anybody who hasn't heard us before, me and Bob are both big weebs and we love Japanese things,
but that
I love the design style of all of the super nintendo land stuff because usually it is it feels like it was designed first to be sold at the uh japan's universal studio that's in osaka and now it comes over here so i just love it's big bright colors big picture it's all of the character models like from the instruction manual art for for the mario stuff so right yeah i i just love it It's all it's all good looking stuff.
Actually, that was one thing about that I was not expecting because I have not been to the park since the opening of Super nintendo uh world
and like being being adjacent to all that merchandise i was like oh this is all quality stuff yeah i really like the i like like i i totally totally mirror your thoughts i really like the design of all of it just get it wario sized you'll be good to go yeah um
that was bob's first trip to nintendo land as well when we went i i had been before but yeah it was uh that it it's just so for me it's i wish it was twice the size but they they only have so much room to work with in hollywood yeah the merch and and the food definitely puts all the other merch and food in the parks to shame.
There's a little bit of, we were saying this, that Universal has like a little bit of, they need to re-figure out their the map of the park a little bit.
They're trying to be more Disney-like.
Yeah.
And they need to figure out the lands a little bit more in the Universal.
It's tough because you can only rework the geography so much, you know.
But I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's a little, it's a little anarchic, although
the cohesive biomes of Springfield, which we'll talk about, and Super Nintendo World, it's kind of cool that those are sanctioned off and they have everything in there.
You kind of wish there was something for Despicable Me, right?
Like, you kind of wish there was like an Illumination land.
And of course, Harry Potter land, which we didn't go to.
We were wondering
how long Simpsons land will stay there.
Another question.
We'll get into it, but that's...
By the way, I've got to say this.
Jemmy,
she didn't choose the empty chair.
She chose to sit next to me.
Next to Uncle Mitch.
How about that?
But I got to say this.
When I first came in,
and Emma will attest to this.
She left the room, but she will attest to this.
Jemmy, Emma, Jemmy was going nuts.
She was very happy to see me when I was there.
She's so excited to be back at work today.
She was very excited to see me.
When I told her we were going to work today, she got like squeaky and wiggly at home.
Like, she knew what it meant.
Oh, my God.
She's so cute.
I love that she was happy to see me.
That's all I wanted to say.
Yeah, she's a little angel.
She's a star.
On the minions land thing, i think it is they're close to a themed land like you walk down like the franch the french street which that fits because they the illumination's based in france and then and then it's you know you got grew's house right there and that takes you into the minion fun land they have that splash park that is the theme park from the first movie maybe it's in the other movies
I also love that you got, I appreciate that you guys got us back on.
We were just talking about a good dog and you got us back on topic.
The hosts of the show being like, good dog, cute, came in, happy.
And then you were like, well, anyways.
Look, these guys are pros, pros.
This is the thing.
I always feel so intimidated when I guessed on Talking Simpsons and Mitch.
I know you have the same sort of feeling because, like, because y'all are so prepped, and you're such professionals that I always make me feel like an amateur.
So it is, there is a little bit of
intimidation factor, I feel like, with I don't think I've ever prepped once.
I mean, that throughout my entire life.
I don't think I've prepped.
Well, thank you very much.
You guys are, you guys are great.
We loved having you on.
You guys knew if you weren't prepped for the shows, you always instantly, as we say, like, oh, this is like this episode or this, this reference is from this old TV show.
You guys are really quick to just hop on it.
And you know what you're talking about.
God bless you for saying that.
Can we extend?
Because y'all are
so great at talking about animation generally, since we talked about illumination, which it feels like is universal's big you know animated set of ip uh where do you stand on the illumination films i know they're they're very much oriented towards kids well henry and i are big illumination haters and we've given many of their movies a chance right we've podcasted about quite a few of them and they just don't hit they just make the easiest choices i respect some of the artistry going on but I feel like they are going for the broadest possible audience and it works for them because they're incredibly popular and successful.
So they're really not for me and that's cool, but I detest the Super Mario Bros.
movie, and I know Henry does as well.
Yeah, no, it really, but though we weren't even the biggest haters on the episode we did the review of it for either.
Yeah, I guess we thought it was mid, but we didn't think it was the worst thing we'd ever seen.
That's generally how I feel about illumination is I don't like I've seen other ones that like bother me more.
And I think they have a good
best comedic abilities are at like things without dialogue.
When you mentioned that Will Farrell character in the new one, like that's one of the things that bothers me the most about Illumination is that they are so behind on like hip casting.
Like, it's you know, Pixar, it feels like they get people who were, you know, a hip cool comedy person like at least five years ago when they were doing casting.
But meanwhile, it's like, you know, Will Farrell, let's have him.
It's like 2024.
Will,
I'm sure he is funny in it, but he's 60.
He's like, it's a long time to put him in.
I was thinking of that when I saw Barbie.
Yeah, yeah.
They definitely will make
the most obvious choice a lot of times.
I do, I will say the thing that I totally agree with is
you're right that when they, and this is the genius of the minions, is that like when they are, when they're freed from dialogue, when it is, when they're just doing classic, like silent film, like vaudeville gags, basically, they are, they, the artistry and illumination, that they're really good at animating all that.
So like, that, that's the stuff that I think works.
and honestly, I think that's the stuff you're right that resonates with a global audience
Yeah, I think the issue is the the movies are just kind of mediocre and you can enjoy a good movie You can enjoy a bad movie if a movie is simply just there in middling I don't know what to do with it.
I it just doesn't isn't doing anything for me on any level really got it.
I'm not I don't love the movies No,
yeah, I get it.
But I like that you love them.
I mean, I'm of course furious at all this, but
I've liked some of the, by the way, I was was going through notes, by the way.
I'm not just texting.
I go through my notes.
I am prepped sometimes.
You know, a lot of my notes are like parody songs about windows or whatever, but still.
Crash through my window.
No, Mitch, by the way, that thing you mentioned before about the fat shaming of Universal, like I felt it too.
I've lost a little weight in the last year, which has been nice.
But
when I went to Universal on this trip with Bob and his wife, Nina, I was pointing out to him the shame seats of like, there's the test seat for Harry Potter that shames fatties who can't ride the ride.
Yeah, it's a public display.
It is.
It is.
It's like a public execution.
You got to go and fucking sit in the seat and then everyone sees the red light.
You're paying hundreds of dollars.
You're with your friends and family and then you have to be like embarrassed in front of everybody because of your body size.
I sat in that seat and Jack Allison pushed it so it did get
to the greens.
And then I got into the ride.
And I literally, like I said, I took the elevator on with like seven people.
And then, and I was like, oh, this doesn't make me feel as bad because there's a lot of people getting off the ride.
But the Mario Kart one, I heard that it can, it's so, I heard some people get, don't get on and some other people don't.
And, but I was like, I don't even want to go and sit in the test seat.
I'm not going down there.
I don't feel like, I'm not going to go and do it.
I mean, we didn't have time to do it, really.
We didn't, but
I will say, like, even in the dining areas, we were dealing with some snug booths.
In Krusty Burger?
Yeah.
A slim booth in Krusty Burger?
Come on now.
Well,
I want to talk more universal, but I do want to talk about L.A.
generally because.
And by the way, you thought those booths were snug.
I totally agree.
They were snug.
They were tight for me.
I want to ask about your L.A.
trip.
Did you have any great...
Pretty fucking.
Pretty fucking.
A fat piece of shit.
Yeah, that's what I was trying to say.
This XL shirt is skin tight, so what?
What did you get down to eating
when you were down here in L.A.?
Oh, well, this is...
Oh.
Oh, we went to Tamo's Shanter.
That was the big one for me.
Oh, wow.
I love it.
What did you think?
It was good, though.
I am on a beefless diet right now.
I have gout issues if I eat.
So I didn't have the prime rib, though.
It looked delicious on someone else's plate.
But I had like their Thanksgiving dinner there, and it was also very good.
But mainly
I enjoyed the ambiance of it, even though it was like bar trivia night at Tamo Shanter, which seemed low range for Tamo Shanter.
Yeah, I'm surprised they have that.
Is your diet, just to go on tangent on that real quick, is it just like no red meat?
Are there neither prohibitions?
Red meat is pretty much the only thing I stay away from.
I don't, there's, there's other things like shellfish or whatever.
It doesn't really give me a problem.
Not that I eat that that much, but
red meat is just gone for my diet.
That was why I did not eat a crusty burger on this, but the replacement, but that's that's for later.
Yeah.
Did you miss out on eating a krusty burger?
Hmm.
Yeah, but
there is a veggie alternative they have, which is based on something from the show.
Bob, what did you think of the Tam?
It was all right.
I also don't eat red meat because I'm a pescatarian.
So I do fish and dairy, but I had fish and chips, and they were fine.
They were reasonably priced.
My wife had the prime rib, and she thought it was some of the best she's had in her life.
Wow.
Fantastic.
Now, as like, you know, animation fans and scholars, the Tamo Shanter obviously has a lot of attachment to, you know, Disney and Walt Disney himself.
Like,
did you take any of that in?
The atmosphere?
Yeah, we sat right by the haunted booth.
Oh, where are you?
Where Walt Disney hung out.
Just directly across from it.
And it was, it was great taking pictures of all of like the old art they had of like wishing the Tam O'Shanter shanter a great 40th anniversary or whatever and like all the mickeys seated at it like yeah that was that was a big part of it we also went because our airbnb was like literally like four blocks from it we went straight to it so we're like well we can't we got to just go there we're we're so close by it was not part of our plan you were near a the a sizzler and a good costco
you were in a great little spot there that yeah
you know the beginning of atwater village there yeah i like that costco it is a good costco It's so far from where I live, but I've been to that Costco before.
Outdoor,
they got the snack bar outdoors.
Yeah, I like that.
That doesn't make sense in all climates, but I like when they have it in the outdoors out here.
Yeah, which means,
if you're not a Costco member, can you still just get the no, you can't.
You used to be able to, but no, they card check now.
Oh, wow.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And
we, we skipped going to, or I wanted, I consider going to Griffith Park, but I instead made the time for the Tamo Shanter instead.
Good Good choice.
I think you made the right choice.
I mean, honestly,
whatever.
You said it's a tree.
How about that?
Yeah, it's just funny.
It's a fucking break.
Yeah.
I mean,
also beautiful.
Also, beautiful, yeah.
But come on, it's a fucking tree.
You missed a tree or two.
An old abandoned zoo.
Isn't that what it's up there?
Yeah.
And it's actually a full zoo.
Okay.
There's something.
Yeah.
And me and Bob have been to LA a bunch or several times before, both in our pre-podcasting life and as podcasters.
And definitely, we always make time.
And we did it this time, too, to go to Little Tokyo.
Like, we really love, love eating in that area.
Fantastic.
Especially this,
I believe it's Hiroshima style okonomiyaki, which is really good.
Like, it's like a savory noodle, like cooked noodle thing.
The way if you do it, Hiroshima style, it's called, what is it?
Chi Chinkurin, I think was the name of the place.
I think so.
Yeah,
y'all were kind enough to invite me out, and I think we all kind of decided it wasn't wise, and that ended up being prudent because the next day I tested positive for COVID.
But I was looking at the menu.
I wish I could have joined y'all.
It looked great.
Little Tokyo is a, and there's also the Sautell neighborhood, which also has a bunch of great.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Great Japanese food in the city.
Yeah.
But I imagine
both of y'all have access to a lot of that where you live, respectively, as well.
Yeah,
there's no Okonomiyaki restaurants in Vancouver as far as I know.
So that's why we definitely headed in that direction for in terms of dinner choices in LA.
So there are a few things that I can't get here, despite uh, there's a Japanese population here, uh, there's a large Asian population here, so there's so many different types of people, so many different types of foods, but still there, there's not there's there's ramen here, but there's weirdly enough not a ramen restaurant on our street.
I think it's a huge, uh, just a huge missing puzzle piece in my neighborhood.
I'm hoping it's filled in pretty soon.
By the way, you guys missed a Disney's like early shitty attempt at at Disney.
Griffith Park is basically that, right?
I don't know that early history.
I just realized, too, that there's choo-choos up in those hills.
Yeah.
Wait, are you saying they tried to privatize Griffith Park at a certain point?
I think his first attempt at kind of like the train and stuff there was in Griffith Park.
Oh, okay.
I don't know the specific history.
But there's also choo-choo's there.
That's right.
You don't like it even more.
No, he was like, he, like, that was the whole thing was the land was gifted to the public.
It wasn't like a privatized.
Oh, okay.
But that guy was also kind of a piece of shit.
Who, Disney or Griffith?
Well, both of them.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Look, they're all, they're all bad.
Oh, and one other place I wanted to shout out that I enjoyed on my, my, usually most of my LA trips, I stay in the Burbank area sometimes.
And we, uh, I, I've been to a brunch place called BB's that I really enjoyed.
It's, uh, yeah, they, I've, I've met up with some pals there, though.
I keep hearing that, like, you'll find Jay Leno there sometimes, but I've been on Leno watch every time and I've never, never spotted him.
Oh, yeah, you're hoping like at a, like a vintage fire truck will pull up.
Hey, time to get a little omelette.
Hey, how are you doing, BB-8?
I assume BB-8 runs the diner.
They see one of the servers.
Will you recognize his new face, Henry?
Oh, that's true.
He could have been there in disguise, and I wouldn't have known it.
He's like Darkman now.
I gotta ask you, you know, I love Koth.
Do you mind if I ride on top of you for a minute?
Lee!
He's riding around BB-8.
BBA, my understanding is you were got inspired by the diner from episode two.
Is that correct?
When the Obi-Wan goes, the Attack of the Clones?
What's that guy's name?
Dexter's Diner?
Is that what it's called?
That's right, Jay.
Kevin's there too.
Kevin, Kimberly.
We rode over here in a Ford Model T.
Okay.
You know what?
Kevin might do a set at Old The Baked Potato in a nearby spot.
He's an awesome jazz guitarist he's an incredible musician kevin's country we're fans of kevin's country the song
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Okay, let's get into Universal.
Right near the baked potato, Universal.
Mitch, wow.
It's true.
You are correct.
It's right near Universal.
Baked Potato, where you can see live jazz is right near Universal.
Famous, a famous jazz where you can get baked potato dinners.
This is true.
There are fewer and fewer venues with live jazz music specifically.
So it's nice that that place is still hanging.
If you guys, when you're back next time, Baked Potato, great time.
We drove to Washington.
Just a quick tangent, and this is just sort of like speaks to the kind of rod of our culture.
I was talking to it.
I went and saw some live jazz.
I was talking to the pianist afterwards, and I was like, he was awesome.
And I just talked to him a little bit.
He was like a three-inch pianist or no?
He's like a, he's like a 10-inch pianist.
Oh, shit.
He's like a Milton Burrell.
Pulls out enough to win.
I talked to this.
I talked to this guy a little bit and I was like, I was like, oh, man.
Hey, man, you're great.
Like, where do you, you know, like, where do you play around town?
He's like, he's like, honestly, most of my gigs are at
nursing homes.
Oh, my God.
Oh, yeah.
Well, that's.
But it's just like, I get, it's good that you're getting paid, but it's just also like that you have to like, this original American art form that now
you're going around around and basically playing it to people who are in like assisted living because that's the only generation that still you know appreciates it man yeah can you imagine us doing live podcasts for our guests on assisted living
probably knowing our listeners probably in a couple of years I'm sure
the the Milton Burrell bit there I just heard reminded me I needed to I made a note of like if if big dong talk comes up on old celebrities do you guys are you aware of the F-troop star Forrest Tucker and his monster as well?
No, but do you
tell us the tale?
You have my interest and now you have my attention.
Yeah, universal monsters.
Let's talk about pant monsters.
This is one of these things that comes up in
our deep
podcast research for Simpsons, where on a commentary, they joke about Forrest Tucker having a big penis, and we look into it.
And yes, that him and Milton Burrell disagreed over who had the biggest one.
That it was apparently, and there's videos of like the guy who played the manager of the Partridge family on the Partridge family saying, Oh, yeah, he whipped it out of me.
It was crazy.
Like, it was nuts.
Wow.
Oh, my God.
The F-Troop guy.
Yeah, Forrest Tucker of the F-Troop.
Look it up.
Oh, he's going to be binging that later tonight.
I mean, and I'll be googling it.
I mean,
we're going to text about this for sure.
More like D-Troop.
What's the angle there?
Oh, that's a good one.
Oh, man.
I don't know.
Maybe it's Hog Troop.
Is that it?
I think it's a F-Troop for Hog.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
You know, they shoot a cannon off at the start of every F-Troop
opening and the cannon connect.
Yeah, maybe that's his hog.
That could be a thing.
This is great news.
This is great.
This is great.
You've given us a tremendous gift.
Yes.
You're doing with Forrest Tucker of F-Troop for another year.
I was thinking, and I'm glad Henry said it.
Well, thank you both.
I'm just sad to know that I'll never get into F Troop now.
We're more like the goof troop.
Forrest can't tucker, couldn't tuck that thing away.
Anyways, anyway, Wags and I drove.
We did a carpool together.
We carpooled together.
I met you over.
You had an appointment.
I met you afterwards.
A dermatologist appointment, which, by the way, went by, you can tell from
my arm.
Yeah, Mitch is for audio listeners, Mitch has a bunch of attempted needle pokes in both of his forearms.
They were trying to get a vein.
I got.
Wouldn't have trouble getting a vein on Forrest Ducker of F shoe.
Look right in that main vein.
I fear I've broken the podcast with that information, though.
This blood is very white.
I just looked at our guest.
Our guest looked disgusted.
Justifiably.
I got stuck like probably seven or eight times where they were trying to find a vein and
they were in there and they were like moving the needle around trying to find a vein.
And they're like, are you okay?
I was like, yeah, I'm fine.
And then they try to get it out of my hand.
They're gray, by the way.
The The staff is great.
Yeah.
But they try to get out of my hand eventually.
And the woman who usually takes my blood wasn't there.
But I was like, it's usually right in the middle here.
But they went on both arms.
There's this bruise here from one of the attempts.
And then they finally got it.
And I had a, what was, I told you the name of it, a venal, what was the response?
I had like a venal something.
Venal.
I don't remember, yeah.
Venezuela.
You may have texted it to me.
But I think I did text it to you.
But, but, but I, basically, they were drawing blood and they're like, you okay?
I was like, I think I'm going to throw up.
up and then i got lightheaded and they had to like put me backwards and i didn't i didn't pass out ever but they put ice packs on me and i think it was because of because of the attempts or whatever i don't know why i don't i never had a reaction to getting blood like that yeah but it was an hour i from the time that i they first tried to get blood till when they were getting it it was a full hour that's awful and then uh i went and picked you up I got my head needled.
I went and picked you up.
And neither of us were in the mood to go to Universal at that point.
Yeah, I think we would maybe, I would say the crank factor was maybe a little bit high for both of us.
And we're not talking statham crank.
We're talking
Weiger and Mitchell.
No, we're talking high voltage sort of
situation.
So we had a,
but, but I will say, once we landed,
even though it was a warm day, even though we were maybe a little bit cranky.
It was like 90, almost 90 degrees.
Yeah, but we, we, we bought some sunblock there, bought some some overpriced sunblock from the gift shop.
We got priority parking.
We got priority parking.
We shelled out for priority parking.
I will say, once we settled in, I started to have a fun time.
Me too.
I did.
And a part of that is, I'll say it.
We, we, we, we went to Krusty Burger and then we had a friend join us.
Yes.
Uh, which maybe we'll get to.
Should we just say it?
I wonder if our listeners can guess who that was.
Who might have showed up at Universal?
Who can guess who would show up at Universal?
Who can guess who get has a pass to get into universal for free first of all uh and doesn't have to pay for parking so just to let to know so and maybe likes having a free meal like who could like i'm just like who that potentially fits that template so when you mark off the thing of having to pay for parking yeah and getting into the park so those are just those are taken care of and then just gets a free meal who would show up might might do that
Can you guys guess?
Well, you know what?
This is going to be what we got this.
We got Talkin' Simpsons on here.
This should be like a who Shot Mr.
Burns style mystery.
And we can't.
Which, by the way, Henry corrected you on.
Oh, yeah.
I got schooled on some trivia.
We should get into that here.
But we should let our guestners, our guests can guess, hashtag Universal Mystery Guest.
Yeah, okay.
And let us know who you think might have showed up to accompany the Doughboys.
Let me just say that this guest,
when he came, went...
Wags and I agreed when we got in the car afterwards that he went to town on the fried chicken.
Yeah.
Did he grab a piece of chicken before sitting down?
Yeah.
Did he eat one of Wag's pieces of chicken?
Yes.
Yeah, he did.
Did he eat one of the other biscuits that we were?
I ate half a biscuit, and then did he eat a whole biscuit?
Yes, he did.
He did.
Oh, boy.
Just like in 1995, I'm going to just have to guess it's Mr.
Smithers, right?
That's a good guess.
Very strong guess.
Maybe it was some sort of starving dog you guys know.
Henry, I want to get, because this is something that came up on the podcast a while ago, but you corrected me on it.
This is a thing that's been shouted out on social media a number of times, and
I was repeating it.
There were Vegas odds for who shot Mr.
Burns back in 1995.
I believe that was the correct year.
But that was actually like part of a publicity stunt.
It was not a real thing the odds makers had put out there.
Yeah, me and Bob have gone over this a number of times, but yeah, it gets shared around.
We're hardly the first people to pedantically point it out.
And one thing I like about having an access to texting people on podcasts I listen to is I don't have to like go on a message board to complain and correct them.
I can just text them directly.
But yeah, no, it was not real Vegas odds.
It spreads around every once in a while, but it was part of a promotional campaign, a specific promotional special for Who Shot Mr.
Burns Part 2.
You fucked up.
Yeah, I fucked up.
No, I mean, Bob, Bob's, me and Bob have gone over it a couple of times.
It's Springfield's Most Wanted.
I think it was hosted by John Walsh, the host of America's Most Wanted.
Yes,
you sent a YouTube, Henry, you sent a YouTube link, I believe, that was the whole special special.
Yeah.
Yeah,
the special is really interesting.
Oh, man, I watched it the night of because it aired at 7.30 right before the debut of part two, and it's going over all of
the potential uh suspects and they get john walsh to do it and they have a ton of different things it's entirely done if you look at the credits gracie films simps writer is not involved it is it is entirely the fox pr marketing campaign though they did get an occasional like wiggum does say new lines in there so they get must have gotten some of the actors for stuff but and they go to the mirage and they have one of the vegas odds makers there and up on their sports bet board they have put up all of the suspects and what the odds are but it's entirely fake it was just for that shot with the the Vegas odd maker at the mirage
wow wow and then this lives on and then you I mean
well you also perpetuated the myth to yeah I know that was part of the problem I know that's what's the what's the phrase what one of somebody will know this like the lie gets around the world faster than the time it takes whatever the truth to prove for the truth get out of bed right get out of bed yeah something like that yeah i never heard that in my life.
Yeah.
Well,
if our surprise guest, if he would have a promotional tie-in, it would be the movie Twisters, we said, for the way that he twisted into the restaurant and ate up all the food
and then seemed to want to leave basically afterwards.
At the end,
I gave a piece of, I had a piece of fried chicken left, and I was like, I took just a bite of it, and I was like, here, and I tried to give it to Wages, and then the mystery guest was grabbed it
and almost started to eat it.
And I was like, that was for Wages, mystery guest.
And I'm sure people still can't understand who this is.
They probably have no.
People figure out who this suspect or suspect is.
Maybe a little clue.
Hashtag Universal Mystery Guest.
Yeah.
This, this mystery guest sounds like Homer in breaking into Ned Flanders' window and interrupting the dinner and grabbing the chicken leg right then.
It was similar.
It was similar energy.
We were happy to have him.
We were happy to have him.
We were happy to have y'all.
So before we get into Krusty Burger specifically, Universal,
Henry, it particularly sounds like you're more of a Disney guy, but are you both like kind of Universal
fans to some degree?
Oh, I love Universal.
It was the first park I went to in Orlando as a kid, and I was wonderfully advertised to, effectively, by Nickelodeon growing up to say, like, you got to go to Nick Studios at Universal Studios, Florida.
Like every time I was like, yes, mom, didn't you hear?
They said it.
We got to go.
So I have a lot of affection for I'm merely okay with it.
So far, I've gone every six years for work, and I think that's a good schedule for me in terms of Universal visits.
Right.
I kind of agree with that.
For $30 more, we got the pass where we can go back through April,
which just, we were like, oh, maybe we'll go and do another thing there.
So it was worth getting.
But I, I had not been in a long time and I didn't really care to be in there, honestly.
I used to like it quite a bit, but it was so crowded yesterday.
It was, first of all, it was so hot.
It was super crowded.
We're going in the midst of summer.
I used to go to Universal
with some frequency.
I'm from Southern California, a lifelong SoCal surfer dude.
How many people used to do like the horror nights and stuff?
People used to, yeah, people used to do that.
But I mean, I'm just saying, like, even as a kid, I remember I was sharing some memories of like seeing like the incredible shrinking woman on the tour, the Universal tram tour.
And then also like, you know, they had a Conan the Barbarian or maybe I think it was, it was whatever.
It was like the Conan the Destroyer stunt show they had there back in the day.
That was like a thing I went to like as like a summer camp field trip, you know?
So I've been going over the years.
And certainly remember when Universal Simpsons Land, a.k.a.
Springfield opened in 2008.
This was the aftermath of The Simpsons movie in 2007.
I was working there.
You were working there.
What?
What?
At The Simpsons.
You worked at The Simpsons?
I worked at The Simpsons.
Wow, okay.
I was working there when the ride was happening.
That's right.
The ride happened.
We talked to Matt Selman about it.
And, you know, it replaced the Back to the Future ride and the neighboring sort of environment.
It has a human-scale recreation of Springfield.
Yeah, Doc Brown's fried chicken was replaced by Cletus' chicken shack, but it is like, you know, it has things like the Quickie Mart, the nuclear power plant, the Android Dungeon Comic Shop, as well as a bunch of dining options that are all themed to The Simpsons.
Some are pulled directly from the show.
Some, I believe, are invented.
Krusty Burger, Moe's Tavern, Cletus's Chicken Shack.
That'll be the bulk of our discussion today.
Those are the big three.
But also, Lard Lad Donuts, Luigi's Pizza, Phineas Q.
Butterfat's Ice Cream Parlor, which is in the show, Duff Brewery, Beer Garden, and then Bumblebee Man's Taco Truck, which Bumblebee Man is real, but I believe the Taco Truck is created for the park, correct?
And also Suds McDuff's Hot Dogs.
Wait, what did you say?
Bumblebee Man is real?
Yeah, he's real.
Yeah, well, but he doesn't, to my memory, unless they did it in a season 27 when I missed, I don't believe he has a taco truck
in the show.
And same, Suds McDuff is the alter ego of
Santa's Lil Helper when he gets hired by the Duff beer company, but he doesn't run a hot dog stand in the episode.
Right.
So those two at least are just like, you know,
they take elements of the show, but they kind of invent something.
Also, that side of the side where the restaurants are, I think they did just map Simpson stuff on.
I mean, they did with Cletus's chicken shack anyway.
Sure, yeah.
They moved the location, though.
Cletus's chicken shack, Doc Brown's fried chicken was the place that back in the day where people were like, Doc Brown's fried chicken is actually pretty good.
Yeah, that's the spot.
That's the spot.
That's where you would go.
And it was kind of in a weird location.
And it was like, ooh, this is pretty pretty good for theme park food um the the the the rest and then krusty burger was new and then the stuff across the way there was kind of like a shitty italian place where luigi's is i believe yeah it makes sense that they kind of just map stuff over it i mean that that's just the you know it's but i think it's really all effectively themed i mean i i think the the walking around springfield The ride, we'll talk about a little bit, but
the park itself, I feel like, is still just like really, really effectively themed.
They did a good job.
We didn't go on the ride yesterday.
You guys went on the ride, correct?
I'm too old for it now.
It hurts my back.
The last time we went on the ride, which was a couple of years ago, it did actually mess up my back quite a bit.
But I've been on it, I felt like enough where we're kind of like, you know, let's just do something else.
It seems dated now already, which is crazy that it's, I mean, it is 16 years old, I guess, at this point, which is wild.
The big choice is because it actually uses like 3D renderings of the characters and
the environments as opposed to kind of like the 2D as 3D or
a 2.5D, however you want to characterize it, where I like a lot of stuff, kind of more of a Futurama style of everything looks like 2D, but we're just moving through a 3D environment.
That was the approach, and that's what I think makes it feel pretty dated.
They just need to make it like a PlayStation 2 game.
Brighter or something, too.
It's like showing how dimly lit the screen is.
That's always my complaint about it.
Yeah, we were talking about Universal earlier and how much we like it.
My issue is I go to theme parks for rides.
I love rides.
Yeah.
And at Universal, they're all pretty bad.
And I think it's because my adult inner ear now cannot handle the look at a screen and get jostled around ride.
I got sick after Transformers.
I got sick after Simpsons, The Minions, and
one other screen ride that I can't remember.
I like the Mummy ride, but it lasts about 45 seconds.
It's a real ride where there's no screen in front of you, but that's kind of it in terms of traditional rides at Universal.
It's a very quick ride, the mummy ride.
And
you're right, 25 seconds is pretty long, though.
I think.
But yeah,
you're in and out of there quickly.
And then they're building a Fast and Furious ride in 2026, kind of like chaotically in the middle of the park, which also just doesn't help things right now.
But you're right.
As far as thrill rides, there's not a lot.
I mean, the Simpsons ride, I like it within the parameters of what it is because
they didn't build a new ride system.
Like they took the 1991 back to the future ride and then put the Simpsons on top of it.
They updated some of the machinery, but it still is functionally the same.
And I think it would have just been so much more expensive to do 2D than 3D.
I get why they worked with Blur Studios and just made a 3D thing.
But I mean, they also, I do love the line, not just because it's showing me clips all of the the time of my favorite scenes.
And I just, I look at people around me.
I'm like, why aren't you all watching this scene from Itchy and Scratchy land right now?
What the hell is wrong with you?
No, the line is great.
And you are correct that the clips, which is another thing that's in the restaurants as well, is just like a package of clips that that is all really, really well done and really well curated.
I mean, I...
I'm with you and I'm like, look at this history here on the screens.
These great video clips.
But Nick and I were pointing out that when we were in Krusty Burger, we heard the same clips over, like, I'd say, like, 17 times.
We were in there for a while.
And I think it's the kind of thing where if you worked there, I can't imagine how numb your mind must be to hearing the same clip package on a loop throughout an eight-hour shift.
Yes, yeah.
Yeah, the loop is crazy.
The loops aren't long enough.
They can't show things that are too gross to you from the show.
And also, there's no Harry Shearer voice characters present in the clips, so that also limits what they can pull from.
So
he put his foot down for that?
Is that what happened?
They said scheduling conflicts, I think, has been the official thing said by people, but he was too busy to approve existing Simpsons clips, I guess.
But if you look...
Outside of Scratchy, there is no real Harry Shearer character presence, and you don't hear him in line.
And of course, he's very protective about the work he's done, and he enjoys royalties and whatever is owed to him, and that's fine.
But we all know he's especially cranky about the Simpsons.
That's not any secret.
He is so dismissive about it when he talks about it during any interview.
When me and Bob went just last month, we were both on Shearer watch.
I was like, okay,
are there really no scenes on these clip packages where a Harry Shearer character talks?
And we really couldn't find one.
Not even, and then, like, okay, does a silent one appear?
Like, on the ride, it's Kang and Kodos.
It's not just Kodos, which is Dan Castellanetta's character.
So visually, you will see like it, but doesn't it feel weird to be at a Simpsons land where you don't hear like Kent Brockman or Seymour Skinner or Man Flanders?
No Skinner, no Burns, no Flanders.
So many important characters just aren't there.
And only when you're reminded of that, you think, oh, right, there's something missing here.
Yeah, it is odd.
That's crazy.
And then also, we were saying the other thing, too, is that they've kind of
the character, Apu is now they've kind of a, what is Sunset?
They've kind of...
There are some APU clips.
There's Apoo clips.
And there's still a quick department.
But we were saying that it's that thing of now he's no longer in the show, but he is in the theme park.
Right.
But yeah, no, it is.
I did not notice that with Harry, and I believe it because I worked there for a little while.
I believe that.
Oh, wow.
I was there when they were doing the contract negotiations.
Wags, I saw Harry,
I saw Harry.
give him hell, which in a way is a good thing.
There's an aspect of that, which is, yeah, stand up for yourself and get paid, But also, he does have a reputation as a grumpy man.
He's a grumpus.
Always.
I don't want to sound like somebody who thinks Harry Scheer shouldn't demand a big raise from Fox.
Like, yeah, he's, but
he doesn't seem like the happiest guy.
No, he's just, he's kind of sad that, or upset rather, that this is what he'll be remembered for and not LeShow or something other than that.
And you're like, well, come on.
The show was good.
Simpsons was very, very good.
Exactly.
And you made a great point about.
We've got to be remembered for Dough Boys.
That's not good.
I would much rather be remembered for The Simpsons.
God.
Host of Doughboys?
We were in The Simpsons.
Remember, you made fun of how it was animated at the beginning of the episode.
Yeah, it wasn't as good as Nina's art, but it was cool.
It was cool as hell.
Yeah, it was cool.
God damn it.
It is a funny thing with the theme park where we were pointing it out.
I was like, oh, it's like, they got to make fun of it for being like cheap and gross, but I guess they can't go too far.
But then also at the same time, it is kind of cheap and not great food.
You know what I mean?
It's that funny combination of things.
To get into the food, so let's start with Krusty Burger.
First off, I will say the
is this an official review of Krusty Burger?
I think this is the Krusty Burger episode, but I think we'll talk about the other Simpsons.
Which means it's good for us.
We can go back and say,
Doughboy's like Cletus' chicken chat.
We just need, we need more.
We We have plenty.
No, we can talk about all of it.
And we can factor it all into our fork scores.
It will certainly be the case with me, but I think we'll probably have this be like the crust, like the Krusty Burger episode.
It's the Krusty Burger episode.
I think so.
I think that makes the most sense in terms of titling it.
Sure.
Yeah.
But whatever.
We're talking about all of it.
I will say the show is very good.
The theming is very good.
I do think the Krusty Burger interior, exterior and interior, is a really good recreation.
I'm like happy to be standing in there.
Oh, I mean, I love that giant crusty head.
Like, that is not just at the entrance, but in Krusty Burger.
And to know when they opened The Simpsons ride, like, it wasn't in, that was 2008.
And it was five years later in 2013 where they open up Springfield and have all of the stuff.
And I think it was a slow rollout, even, but like, to think of it, just the ride and no Springfield, like the Simpsons ride gets boosted by being surrounded by Springfield.
Like,
I love walking through Springfield.
Yeah.
I love it there, too.
You know, that's with the Simpsons Premiere Party, which I've been to quite a few times.
Why would you be going there?
I worked there.
Wow.
How about that?
You piece of shit.
And you've been to the Simpsons Premiere as well.
That's right.
It was your guest.
How'd you get in?
I worked there.
Wow.
Which once they, once they had the ride,
they started to do, that's where they had the premieres.
And they like the Simpsons staff,
huge staff, Phil Roman, the people who, you know, who animated you that you didn't like.
All those people were there for the premiere party.
And
when I would go on those nights and you could go on the ride and you could do all this stuff free, and it was great.
It was great.
And I do, and I, I, I do think that the theming in the park is great.
I think they did a great job.
Matt Warburton wrote a lot of the uh, a lot of the uh, the scripts and dialogue, the stuff that you hear in the park.
He did a great job.
Uh, I think that the land is very well done.
I will say this: we did the Krusty Burger menu, we, we were like, some of this stuff is like the Krusty Burger is great.
And then the Clogger, is that the other one?
And that is from the show, right?
Or the, the, but, uh, uh, so, so the, I'll, I'll run down everything.
I have the menu up here.
There's the Krusty Burger, the Clogger Burger, the Mother Nature Burger, which is the vegan alternative, which is pulled, I know, is pulled from the show.
The Rib Witch is pulled from the show.
Uh, Sideshow Bob foot long.
I'm not sure if that's like a
that's that's just sideshow Bob is what's pulled from the show, but also sideshow bob trying to kill krusty why is he why does he have a dog damn but what were you gonna say well he's making the making the four sideshob has long
sorry
no no sideshow bob does have long feet he does have a long feet that's a great point you know what i will i retract it he he has long feet but krusty would name it the you know what i mean i mean but they but it's a plot point you're right you're correct it is a plot point that he has large feet which is how they're able to identify him as the perpetrator of the uh the the krusty frame frame job.
The footlong should be named after like the Maude Killer footlong because it's that like no footlongs is what Ned Flanders says to Maude.
That's his last words today.
It's a great pull, which is it is.
And then there's the thing we made fun of the most, which is the chicken.
Chicken Caesar salad, no effort on the theming.
And that's on a number of their different restaurants.
They have that, I think, at Luigi's.
They have it at Cletus's.
I don't know why they don't just make that like Lisa, like, I guess Lisa's a vegetarian, but like associate it with somebody.
Yeah.
Yeah, my issue with the food is that they're just taking existing items and kind of stapling characters' names to them.
And sometimes they don't even do that.
And then now that Nintendo World or Super Nintendo World exists, they're doing the Japanese theme park thing of there's so much intentionality to every food item.
Everything is shaped like something.
Everything is themed after a character.
And when that experience is present in the same park, it just makes what's happening in the Simpsons part of the park seem naturally inferior.
Yeah.
Yeah, no, that's totally fair.
The Krusty Burger.
So we got a Krusty Burger, which is a third-pound burger patty with secret sauce, American cheese, lettuce, tomato, and pickles, a sideshow Bob Foot Long, which is chili, cheese, and onions, along with a Nathan's famous.
They both come with fries, which are crinkle cut.
We also got a Buzz Cola, which is a zero calorie, cherry-flavored cola.
There was some.
Oh, we got a Buzz Cola Zero.
It's it's confusing because the copy says that the Buzz Cola is zero calories, but also that on the menu, they seem to be offering both a Buzz Cola and a Buzz Zero.
We asked for a Buzz Zero and they were like, it's a Buzz Cola.
Like every part of it, I think it's one thing.
It's one thing.
It was very confusing.
We also got, they have the squishy, which is a thing from Quickie Mart, but it makes sense for it to be a Krusty Burger.
They had, they were out of the blue raspberry flavor, so we got the green apple, which I think is the closest to looking like it's the one from the show, as well as a wild cherry.
That was our array of it of items.
What did you all get from Krusty Burger?
Well, I got the Mother Nature Burger because don't eat red meat.
And I always appreciate when there is a fake meat item at theme parks.
And it's been growing over the past decade.
So I definitely was happy that a Beyond Burger, I know what that tastes like.
I know what it's going to be.
And maybe somebody in the audience can let me know if I'm right or wrong about this.
But when I went in 2018, I do remember there were some differences in the Simpsons food.
This I remember being a garden burger or one of those patties that's a bunch of vegetables smashed together.
I don't remember it being a Beyond burger in 2018.
That may be an update.
As someone who doesn't eat a red meat, do you like the beyond and impossibles of the world?
Oh, yeah, I think I prefer impossible, but it's so close, it doesn't really matter.
And I don't even eat them that much to begin with.
But if I want a burger, it's nice to know that the vat-grown meat, whatever you want to call it, it is a perfectly fine replacement for red meat.
I don't miss it.
And I still get the burger experience.
And I was happy with what I had there, but it's something I could also easily make at home.
Sure, yeah.
And I was going to say, that patty maybe was better than the Krusty Burger beef patty, which we were saying tasted.
It's a really beef.
Yeah.
It tasted a lot like a school cafeteria burger, is what we thought.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Remember, these burgers are so bad, Krusty doesn't want to swallow any of the juice.
That's juicy.
You will spit in every 50th burger.
I think there were a lot of people getting the Mother Nature Burger because I know Henry had to wait about 25 minutes for his.
Yeah, so I got the Mother Nature burger because I wasn't going to have a Krusty.
And I ultimately, I really liked it too.
I don't have beyond burgers or
I have cut out burgers pretty much entirely in my diet, but I hadn't had a Beyond Burger in a long time.
It was great, but yes, I got to forlornly watch Bob get his like very quickly.
He was the last guy to get a Beyond burger for 20 minutes.
I was waiting along with like about a dozen other people.
And they said, like, it's going to be like 15 minutes.
Do you want a substitution?
And I was like, what?
Do you want?
I ordered the non-beef option.
Are you trying to sell me a crusty burger?
Like, there's a reason I picked the Mother Nature burger.
Yeah.
That's weird.
That's a bummer.
Our food came out decently quick.
I was, I was, you had, you, we swapped rolls because Cletus is, you got the food.
Here, I got the food.
Yeah.
Um, and, uh, and ours, our food came out pretty quickly.
There was that buzz cola mix-up, so I still don't understand.
Also, the buzz cola, what we're talking about was totally flat.
It was basically undrinkable.
I'm not sure.
Are you sure that it's not like Coke with the cherry syrup for Buzz Cola?
And then it's Coke Zero with Cherry Granada.
Obviously, I think they are using a Coke product and adding grenadine.
I think the Universal Night I went there with you to the Simpsons party.
I think I had asked, and that's what they said it was.
It was just Coke with grenadine.
Why was I at the Simpsons party, by the way?
Wow, meets me.
Do you have a job there or something?
Oh, yeah, I did.
I was going to be surprised by it.
My other thing with the Mother Nature Burger,
which was from like 2009's Coming to Home America, that's where it's from.
So it's a relatively recent.
Well, when I'm at Disney, or sorry, when I'm at Universal, I'm seeing these things.
I'm like, wow, that 2009 recent Simpsons.
And I have to remind myself, this is 15 years old.
Like, this ride footage is older than The Simpsons, like, than who shot Mr.
Burns was when the ride opened.
That's what we were like, they should call this the Lisa Burger.
And then we found out that the Mother of Nature Burger, which if it came out in 2009, they must have thought they must have been planning that because the ride came out in 2008.
So it's a thing that they were writing at the time.
And then it came out later.
But also the theming now that I think about it for Krusty Burger is like, it can't be Lisa's Mother Nature Burger because it's a Krusty restaurant.
Yeah, I guess so.
But then also, why is the sideshow bothering?
They're also overthinking it a little bit.
All that said, I'm curious because my big issue with the Krusty Burger, the bun was really dry.
There was a really low-quality bun.
And
that foot-long dog, the bun was even worse.
The bun was even worse than the foot-long dog.
I think the actual, the guts of both of them were not bad.
No, not too bad.
The burger tasted like a school cafeteria.
It did.
It was like, this is not like great food.
The fries was fine.
The fries were good.
The dog.
I enjoyed the fries.
The dog, I think, was what...
made it enjoyable because it was despite the bun it was still uh it was still pretty good still a nathan's hot dog yeah so yeah I thought that was, I was pretty happy with everything there.
We liked our Slurpees.
I like the squishies.
Yes.
And you pointed out, and I agreed with you, the green apple is actually, I was like skeptical about it, but I think it's actually the better flavor.
Wild cherry more just kind of just tastes like a cherry icy, which I also like.
You went with the wild cherry, though, afterwards.
Oh, you just like, you just were enjoying it.
See, I liked it.
Okay.
I liked it.
It was a fun cold drink.
I had the wild cherry one as well.
I thought it was pretty all right.
The Buzz Cola was fine to me, but also I really, I do not drink any soda.
I only did it to be like, like well it's a simps brand of cola i should drink it so my my ability to rate this soda is is uh poor um ours was was
rancid i guess it was really bad it was it was it was bad bob what'd you do drink wise I did
I can comment on the bun on my Mother Nature Burger, though, because there were no issues, although on the website, the bun has sesame seeds, and there were no sesame seeds on mine.
I noticed that, yeah.
It was unremarkable, but I think there was an arms race going on in terms of buns with the pretzel buns and the brioche buns.
The buns are just getting far too big.
I like a sensible bun, and
so you can actually bite into the entire thing.
So it was not remarkable in any way, but no issues there.
But I did get the duff beer, and I remember that when I went in 2018, it was duff in quotes with a wink, but you were just getting Sam Adams.
At this point, and I'm not sure when it was introduced, they started having proprietary duff made by Carib Brewery, I believe they're a Florida Brewery.
And it it is a pretty good amber lager.
I use the untapped beer rating app, and I gave it a 3.25 out of 5.
Just serviceable.
I don't know if I would get it outside of the park.
I'm not a big fan of Amber Lagers, but I like that they actually have proprietary duff.
They're not just serving you Bud Light with a wink or Sam Adams with a wink, although I think they still have
those very middle-of-the-road beers available in the park.
So, Bob, you're a bit of a beer bear on yourself.
What are some of your favorite brew dogs?
Oh, there's many great breweries in
Vancouver that I can't even nail down one particular beer.
And now I'm drawing a blank, but places like Storm Brewing, Strange Fellows, Strathcona, Bomber, there's just so many, there's a really great beer scene happening in Vancouver, and I'm trying so many beers that I really can't single one out as a favorite.
Do you have a style you gravitate towards, like in terms of, you know, like an approach to brewing?
Yeah, I mean, I used to be a big IPA freak, and then I realized that they were getting me drunk way too quick, and also
they're very filling.
So now it's more like, what is the season?
What am I eating?
If it's Italian food, I'll get a good Pilsner.
When it's the fall and the winter, I'm more in the mood for a darker beer.
I really like dark lagers, sometimes dark IPAs, something with a like, I guess a smokier taste to it, but it varies based on the weather, what I'm eating, how I'm feeling, if I want something lighter, if I want something heavier.
Yeah, I really got into lagers and pilsners in recent years.
I just like, I realized, like, oh, I don't need to get the hoppiest thing possible, which is what my tastes used to be.
So, yeah, there's a
lot of crazy on IPAs, but
I'll say this.
We also had a duff.
We shared a duff beer, which we got from Moe's Tavern.
So, Moe's also, I think, a really cool recreation in there.
They have like a TV that looks like the TV from The Simpsons that's playing clips.
You know, the bar looks like Moe's bar.
The barkeeps are wearing a Moe-like uniform.
Yeah, and
they have a love tester in the corner.
They have a big Barney.
And we ordered a Flaming Mo, and we also ordered a Duff, and we shared both of them.
The Duff, I agree with you,
the Duff tastes pretty good.
It's a nice, like, full-bodied beer.
It tasted, it was good.
Taking a sip of it, I was like, on a hot theme park day, this hits the spot.
I enjoyed it.
The Flaming Mo with its
mystery guest rather did have some of the beer, too.
Yeah, yeah, yeah,
yeah.
He grabbed it without asking and drank some.
And also tried to drink some of the Flaming Moe, which was empty.
Yeah.
But he still was trying to drink from it.
The Flaming Moe, which has dry ice in the bottom of it, kind of an orange soda and it's bubbles.
And it's notably non-alcoholic.
So for people who don't know The Simpsons,
if any of our listeners don't know the Flaming Moe reference,
it is like an alcoholic drink in the show.
It's a sensation that boosts Moe's, the bar, Mo's tavern's profitability.
He stole from Homer, correct?
That he stole from Homer.
It was the Flaming Homer.
But like their version is just like orange soda with dry ice underneath to make it bubble and smoke.
There's maybe a couple more components to it, but we were saying, why don't they offer an alcohol, like the alcohol version of it?
I don't know.
If we can set aside 30 minutes now, me and Bob can go into all our feelings on this Flaming Moe.
Because I hate that it's an orange, non-alcoholic drink.
I hate it.
We talked about this so much.
My ideal Moe environment, it should be like the Star Wars cantina at Disneyland, where it's a reservation only.
You go in, there are alcoholic drinks that are featured on the show, like the actual Flaming Mo.
And yeah, there's so much wrong with the Flaming Mo.
This is the first time I had one because I was so offended by it when I saw it initially in 2018.
But it's the wrong color.
There's no flame.
It's non-alcoholic.
And I will say to all the listeners out there, if you want your wife or partner to take a picture of you sipping it, make sure she takes it quickly because the carbon dioxide will asphyxiate you.
There's so much coming off off of that off of that glass from the little Alka-Selter tablets, you will start to pass out.
I just, what I hate is, and I wish I had an answer for this, why can't it just be purple?
Fine, it's not alcoholic.
You don't want to sell a mixed drink.
Grape soda instead of orange soda is a very easy swap.
It makes me feel like Universal Test Kitchen said grape things don't sell as good as orange things, so we got to make it orange.
Well, orange is cheaper, maybe the color.
Yeah, sure.
Yeah, that's it.
No, that it really doesn't work as a drink.
It does not work as a representation of what you know from the show.
And the other issue is: like, is it safe to consume dry ice?
I mean, it feels weird to be like, I don't, I,
to be drinking it, anything that's that's near it.
We had, we had a mound of whatever the dry ice stuff is at the bottom of it.
I don't know exactly what that is at the bottom, but the cup also is just wasteful.
If you, if you don't keep the cup, if you just toss the cup, which we threw away, it's like, this feels like such a big, wasteful thing.
But
can it come in in a proper mug or a glass, you know, like that would be
in the cup, or was it like in a separate part?
It's a separate part at the bottom, but it's like is it dry ice, I guess is the question.
I don't know.
I don't know if you're drinking because this is saying that you absolutely cannot drink dry ice.
But it's not dry ice.
Well, the guy said it was dry ice.
So maybe it was
misinformed, yeah.
Well, it is
action lawsuit.
It looked more like little tablets, sort of like little Elka-Seltzers.
I think that was what is causing the bubbling.
But yeah, you're right.
The cup is useless.
It's two compartments, and you have to try very hard to unscrew that bottom compartment because they don't want you swallowing those tablets.
But you really can't use that cup unless you want to drink in a very inefficient way after you visit the park.
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Now, I did like drinking it under the Mount Lushmore drawings of the characters.
Oh, that is awesome.
Again, the theming is.
Including the late Larry, the barfly.
Yeah.
All right,
well,
but also still in the weird way of like, those aren't up at Mo, but it's Moe's, but you got to do it.
No, they are.
Mount Lushmore is up there.
Oh, it is up there.
Homer gets his caricature taken down from Mount Lushmore when he gets booted from the bar after drinking Moe.
I apologize.
I'm sorry.
That's what Barney likes to do.
Yeah, and he throws out it's Flaming Men.
Not no more, it ain't.
Yeah.
Also, I liked the jukebox, had like Simpson songs on it.
It's out of order.
It doesn't play anything, but
there's so many great little details in there that, again, I'm like, oh, they did such a great job with all these details.
Why can't the Flaming Mo be purple?
At least at the Universal One, though, in Orlando, they do have a separate Flaming Mo stand with even the Flaming Mo neon sign that looks like the one from the episode.
Oh, that's cool.
But they have better things there that you should get, at least from the listing of it.
They have at Orlando, they sell other mock tales, one called Mount Schwartzwelder Apple Drink, and then Groovy Grove Juice, which that's the stuff from Doein in the Wind that gets everybody high.
And then Mr.
Teeny, which is a lemonade and pineapple juice drink.
That's fun.
Yeah.
I like that.
What's interesting about the Flaming Moe being non-alcoholic could be one thing is just like, oh, well, they don't have a liquor license, but they do sell other mixed drinks you can get there.
Like they have like a full menu of, you know, like a blueberry margarita.
And it's, and it's like, I don't know, just, it's just confusing and
again, just like not a good representation of what's in the show.
So we go from Moe's.
Oh, also, I, I got Casanova and the love tester.
It's got video of it.
I got love.
We did the love tester.
I got Lovelorn and Weiger got Casanova.
It fucking sucks.
I believe I got Cold Fish, I think.
So, right up the middle of the group.
Wow.
Wow.
Yeah, no, it was
medically accurate.
It was embarrassing.
And then also, we noticed on the way out that
this is the weirdest
to tie into the the cone remember the conan oh yeah phineas q butterfats has ice cream conan is that a conan o'brian reference so strange oh it has to be very strange
i i had the mr teeny's banana delight from that establishment i i guess i don't get sundaes very often i'm i'm usually like a single flavor kind of guy but i thought it was very good and eight bucks for a sundae seems cheap for a theme park i don't know what the price of sundaes is but i was really delighted by that wow we should have done it we we walked away we we didn't like the conan theming and we walked we like conan but we were just like this is weird and we walked away it feels a little fourth wally
i i also got the uh the choco
uh chaco vanilla sundae with butterfinger topping i was like oh i should eat a butterfinger related thing while while in simpson's land that's fitting yeah
and though also there my favorite name of a thing they have there that i didn't order which was it was called uh it's it's the choco strawberry sundaes at eight get it it's called the sundays at Eight.
That's fine.
Yeah.
I like it.
That's what I sell.
Before we leave Krusty Burger, I wanted to say the other thing I did get was the Rib Witch, which as a barbecue pork rib coleslaw sandwich, I did like it.
I thought it was pretty good.
But if it is parodying the Rib Witch from the show, it is a parody of the McRib.
So to recreate it, it should be a McRib, but instead it's like loose pulled pork in barbecue.
And so yeah.
Isn't there also a joke on it, the show, that it's like now, now without lettuce, right?
It's like just like a,
yeah.
There's a joke on the show where they're trying to guess what animal it's made out of, and Krusty says, think smaller, think more legs.
It's made out of bugs.
And I like they have the clogger there from the Simpsons movie.
That's the thing that Krusty is selling when he's about to kill Harry Plopper in it.
Yeah, Yeah, that's fun.
So
we go over to Cletus' Chicken Shack.
Also, I got a hair in my burger.
You did?
Yeah, and I went up to the counter.
I was like, this hair, and they're like, it's probably your hair.
And I was like, it's blue.
Oh, boy.
And I look back there.
Marge is working in the kitchen.
Yeah, that's in one of her many jobs.
Yeah.
And I'm like, you think this hair came from me?
It's blue.
They're like, sorry, we're filming the Marge Gets a Krusty Burger episode.
So
we're just kind of doing it during your normal business hours.
It's going to be out next season.
They film The Simpsons out here, too, by by the way they do yeah yeah wow
uh anyway so so
so cletus's chicken shack cletus the the the slack jod yokel from the show the this is just a here's what we got three menu items here we got cletus's peep fried chicken platter this is matt selman's recommendation and this is what i've gotten before you know consistently from um this uh this this eatery uh three pieces of fried chicken fried chicken my favorite food corn of the cob biscuit mashed potatoes and gravy There's also chicken thumbs, which are just tendies, fried chicken tenders, corn of the cob, fries, and choice of barbecue sauce or honey mustard or ranch.
I got all three bad sauces, and also none of them are there are like what and the ranch in particular you pointed out is a disaster.
The ranch is in a, in a, in, in, in the, whatever, the packet.
It's in a packet instead of a dunking cup.
How is that functional?
It's been open for so long.
What was the other thing that we complained about that was similar to the I forget there was something else like like the ranch packet.
Yeah, there was another form factor issue.
Which we were like, how do you not have this figured out after the park being this park being open for 16 years or whatever?
There's also a chicken and waffle sandwich.
So those are the three big things.
Chicken and waffle sandwich is a fried chicken breast and waffles with lettuce, tomato, maple, mayo sauce, and fries.
No butter for the corn.
Give it a little thing of butter for the corn.
And give ranch in a little dumping.
A little cup.
It's in like a salad package.
But it's also, it's anarchic because they've got like, you had bullseye barbecue sauce.
They've got like Ken's Steakhouse Ranch.
It's just like they're sourcing whatever the cheapest, you know, widely available Cisco dips and dressings are instead of having like something unique to the park.
And then, and also, the food is expensive.
I was like, yes, I was like, how much was that for all that he got?
We got the waffle, we got two fried chickens, the waffle sandwich, and the chicken thumbs, which actually for theme parks, this isn't bad, but I was like, I bet you that was $70.
It was.
$70.
$70.
You add on a tip, 14%.
Yeah.
And
you're in your, you know, it's a lot of, it's a lot.
Let me just say this.
The actual fried chicken on the peep fried chicken platter is legit good.
And
if there was a cletasis near me and it was $12 instead of $19, I would get that regularly.
It is really, I think it's quality fried chicken.
I think the mashed potatoes and gravy are also legit good.
And the biscuit is not bad.
The corn is whatever.
So that, to me, is a home run.
For theme park food, I think that chicken platter is awesome.
The chicken thubs are fine.
They are like okay tenders.
They are nothing special.
I'd much rather have the fried chicken than the tendys.
If you're someone who's just completely averse to bones or you're trying to feed this to a kid who maybe is just like only eats tendys, it makes sense to get that one.
I think it's
not as well seasoned.
They're not as well fried.
Our mystery guests loved all of them.
Our mystery guests did love those.
The chicken waffle sandwich is a debacle.
I thought it was flat out horrible.
The actual fried chicken breast, I took a photo of it, was so low quality.
And it was a sort of thing of like, how do you do three different executions of fried chicken and one of them is is great one of them is okay and one of them is awful like I did not quite understand how that was even possible it just it just doesn't the waffles aren't good the chicken patty isn't good and then there's lettuce and tomato and it's just like enough of it works together compositionally it makes zero sense to have a maple sauce along with lettuce and tomato that is just like it's they are flavors that don't work together it's a really inelegant construction and I thought it was also poorly made on top of that that I thought just thought was straight up gross
And it's so strange that that just coexists with the peep-fried chicken platter that is legit very good.
What did y'all think of your Cletus' experience?
Well, you know, Cletus is a slack John Yokel, and he would have disgusting food.
So that fits.
But I, you know, we didn't eat it that.
We did walk through it, and the theme is great.
I will say, if we weren't doing Krusty Burger,
that is my normal like meal in Springfield is the Cletus chicken platter.
I love that platter, though.
When I had it in Orlando, and this this is like nine years ago, so I don't know if this is true anymore.
They had their biscuit was like a blueberry biscuit, which was an even
liked that more than the other biscuit.
I don't know if they still do it, but when I bought it here for the first time, I was like, it's an all right biscuit, but it should be the blueberry one.
But
yeah, I didn't do the chicken check either.
I did Luigi's.
I was very disappointed in the lack of theming.
I think the only thing that attempts a joke on the menu is it's Fat Tony's Witness Protected Pasta, but that's kind of it.
And what I had was called Nice Slice O Cheese Pizza.
And I looked at it.
It looks like traditional New York style heat lamp pizza.
And when I try a new pizza place, I usually get the cheese slice because that's the base level you want to see where you can go from there.
And it was really bad.
I was surprised how bad cheese pizza could be.
It feels like it's something I bought and put in the fridge and then poorly microwaved maybe three or four days later.
It was dry.
The edges were plasticky and rubbery.
It was just a bad slice of cheese pizza.
So I cannot, in good conscience, recognize, or sorry, recommend Luigi's.
What a bummer.
It was nice that we were eating it, though, in front of the joke of the three
tubes of duff dispensing from one bigger tube.
That made the pizza taste slightly better looking at that joke recreated in real life.
It is great that that is a great touch.
I like that that joke is there.
I also like that that was a joke that was cropped out of existence when it was only available and Sims was only streaming 16 by 9 and now back that it's back 4x3.
You can appreciate that and others again.
But
the other thing, like, yeah, they represent kind of duff gardens, which I think is fun.
And that's a theme park-y thing.
So I'm glad that that has some sort of, you know, presence in the park.
Yeah, Luigi's,
don't you kind of wish, and again, they would not do this and it's a theme park, but there's sit-down establishments at theme parks.
Don't you kind of wish that was a sit-down Italian restaurant and that was part of the fun of it?
Again, it was like
your pitch from earlier.
This was a place you had to get reservations for and and it was kind of a to-do, and it kind of like represented what it is in the show, which is like a nice night out.
Which instead just kind of sucks.
Yeah.
It could be like Fat Tony's, you know, Fat Tony's reserved table and everything.
Yeah, sure.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You could tell, though, with, I mean, Simpsons has a lot of fun with stereotypes, and you can tell that maybe they could be a little uneasy about pushing the Italian stereotypes a little too hard, at least as far as the show goes, because there are some things where you will think, oh, well, I understand why this is not at a family theme park.
But then some of the clips you see are surprising.
The clip about Hitler's head coming by in the Duff beer factory is part of the clip package.
And I thought, I'm not going to see a Hitler joke at Disneyland.
Yeah, no, it's true.
Disneyland will not acknowledge the existence of Adolf Hitler, but Universal does.
Doughboys also proudly mocks the Italian.
So we don't, we're, we're, we're on a different page from Universal.
Oh, yeah, that I back up, Bob, on that pizza sucking.
When it was done or not being so great, I, and it was $10.
And I wish I had just gotten the garlic bread because that looked a little fresher and I could have just dipped it in marinara sauce and would have essentially been the same as having that cheese pizza.
Ah, that sucks.
Let's just say our mystery guest brought his daughter there and
they had plain pasta.
Yes.
And his daughter was like, this is nasty.
And he was like, oh, my daughter's being fussy.
And then he ate it and he was like, this is disgusting.
Yeah.
How do they ruin
plain pasta?
So it seems like Luigi's is hurting over there.
It also seems like our mystery guest has at least one child.
So that's another clue for you.
Hashtag Universal Mystery Guest.
I wonder if anyone will get it.
Yeah, whoever the suspect, as you said, is.
I know that it's going to be hard for people to get this.
I was curious about the pasta, but it was also 90 degrees out, and I didn't want a hot plate of mediocre pasta.
Sure.
Yeah.
And then to eat that in the sun.
Yes.
Yeah.
Though special sauce at Krusty Burger is mayonnaise left out in the sun.
So that would be accurate.
But, you know, a general note I had about all the establishments there was that this crime has been done by the Universal Corporation, which is they have these Coke freestyle machines.
I love Coke freestyle machines.
I want to use them all the time.
You can't use them unless you buy a single Coca-Cola freestyle souvenir cup for $19, which has an RFID thing in it because it will not dispense drinks unless you put that under there.
It has to be that specific cup and it will charge you $2 every time you do a refill on it unless you pay for the exclusive pass of unlimited refills that day.
That's so crazy.
And also it's something that I think that they added, right?
I don't think it was always that way, but it's insane.
Yeah, I swear the last time I was there, Coke Freestyle was unlimited refills for whatever you ordered.
No, it is, that's just, it's just everything, every experience gets worse.
You're spending more money and then you're facing more upcharges.
It's just such a bummer.
I will say the one nice thing about the freestyle machine, I brought a Yeti water bottle, which I'm really glad I did because we also were experiencing a very hot day.
And
you can refill your water bottles at those without any sort of, you know,
expensive novelty glass.
Yeah,
that element's a bummer.
Is there any other food that we haven't touched on that anyone got?
I mean, yes, Mitch is going to grab our lard lad donuts, which we got to go.
I think that the lard lad donuts, I'm going to say this, this is my hot take, are the best food in the Simpsons world.
They are good.
They're surprisingly good, too, because the first time you look at it, you're like, oh, this isn't going to be good.
It's a giant novelty, oversized donut.
It costs $10.
And we got a chocolate varietal.
And then we also got the, I think it's called the Big Pink.
Is that what it's called?
Yeah, the Big Pink is there, the one that's kind of like the Homer donut, the canonical Homer donut.
No, me and Bob got the Big pink as well when we were there.
I also love the lard, love the lard lad donuts taken from the trios of horror, where and Homer wants the big pink in it, and it is a normal-sized donut.
This is more of the one Homer imagined, though not as big as the one in the sign, like it's Homer requests in that episode.
Yeah, it has some advantages in that it's hard to screw up, and also, as far as I know, they are baked on site every day, so there's a degree of freshness that you're not getting with a lot of the other food that feels like it's just been defrosted and served to you much later.
Yeah, Yeah, that's that's why I like getting into at the because you can get it in the gift stores too, but we got it right at the window there.
This is damn good.
This is damn good.
I'm about to do it.
It's a day old chocolate one right now.
It is a day old and it is good as hell.
I'm holding, I'll hold this up with the camera so people can see exactly its size.
It's about
the size of my face.
We had the big pink the next day and it held up very well.
In the past, I've had the maple bacon and I love that.
If I was to order one to split with my husband, normally we go with the maple bacon.
Though the cookies and cream, or I think it's called, that uh, is a favorite of mine, too.
So, I'm curious because I've kind of gotten uh, and you know, I also don't eat pork anymore, so I've kind of gotten exhausted by as you know, that that's an on-starter anyway, but like I got a little bit burned out on the whole bacon dessert thing.
Are you but I love maple, and so, like, when I see when I encounter like a maple bacon thing, I'm always like, I wish it was just like a maple bar, but like, do you still, do you like the bacon dessert?
Do you like that element of it, or, or is like, is it the bait, the maple doing the heavy lifting there?
Can I steal your napkin?
Yeah, of of course.
No, I'm a big fan of candied bacon.
I like it on most things.
There's the Choco Bacon Bar they sell in the Quickie Mart as well, which is half of a joke.
It's they didn't get it exactly right.
But no, I like candy bacon on things.
I like going to
the voodoo donuts that's at City Walks.
I think at least once I've gotten the maple bacon there on it at the fancier donut places.
And also that I think the price point
by
theme park standards of $10 for the big pink is not ridiculous.
Like, I think it's reasonable.
Well, it's like what Bob was saying about the Sunday.
You hear like an $8 Sunday at a theme park.
He's like, oh, that doesn't sound too bad.
And yeah, for this thing, I'll hold up the big pink for our camera here for our video listeners.
It's as big as his head.
Again,
it's like the size of my face, but it's like,
you would expect this to cost like $20 at a theme park.
You'd expect to be outright gouged by it.
You wouldn't be shocked was $30.
And this, here it is, $10.
It's not bad.
It's a decent value.
Also, kids love this.
Oh, and mystery, yes.
Yes, right, right.
I think we saw a family with two kids just carrying the donut and just ripping chunks off of it and walking.
Yeah.
Walking down the big escalators.
If you buy four at once, they give you for free that lard lad bag, the little tote bag for carrying it.
Wait, really?
That's awesome.
We got three.
Yeah.
Why don't we just get four?
I'm going to take some of it.
I love this so much.
The pink one, it's like the kind of thing it was like, I kind of expect to like the chocolate one more, but the pink one is so good.
Just like this glaze is really working for me.
No, yeah, it's the king of the Simpsons land.
Like, I'm glad they,
you know, not unlike how they kept going the Doc Brown's fried chicken and the fried chicken tradition.
If the Simpsons land were to ever leave Universal, I would hope they just have like the large donut.
Like, they're like, hey, Simpsons does it.
They can sell a donut without calling it the Simpsons donut.
Yeah, and there was the joke about the big pink in that Trios of Horror, but I think it didn't officially become the donut of the Simpsons until the movie because it was in all the marketing.
So I think that's when we just thought of it as The Simpsons donut because I think before Homer preferred the purple stuff donuts.
That's a good point.
Yeah, they used it so much in the signage.
The one thing I will say, and I don't remember when exactly came out, but I remember my memory of having the
virtual Springfield CD-ROM is that disc looked like a pink donut.
I could be wrong about that.
No, it is, though it is filled with purple stuff too, because you'll see it in the yeah, five.
So it's kind of both.
Yeah, kind of both, yeah.
Wow, how about that?
Yeah, that makes sense that it's that the Simpsons movie was kind of the genesis of it.
But yeah, I like seeing the Lard Lad.
They have the big Lard Lad mascot on top.
They have a physical build.
That's great, too.
Yeah, though he's not as big.
If they were going to go one-to-one accuracy, he's not as big as he should be.
He should be as big as the neon King Kong at City Walk.
Man, how awesome would that be if there was like a
building-sized lard lad?
I would love that.
Did you know, too, in Orlando, they have the Jebediah statue?
They don't have it in Hollywood.
That's the one thing I wish they had.
That's a bummer.
That's an omission.
We bought our mystery guest one of these donuts, too, by the way.
We did, yeah.
Yeah.
To give them clues as to who it is.
Well, one other joke I want to credit is being good.
Well, I love the Marge hair cotton candy they sell as like a tie-in product.
Like, that's very clever.
But also at the Suds McDuff Hot Dog Stand, they sell Ralph Wiggins Choo Choo Churro, which
they have the twisted pretzel of Marge Simpson, which is the name or is a reference to the name of the episode where she has the pretzel wagon.
With guest voice Jack Lemon, R.I.P.
Yeah, we, we, uh, that was, it's, we should have tried the Suds McDuffs because we were looking for a Marge pretzel somewhere.
And we were kind of like, oh, they should have done that.
But yeah, it's nice that it's somewhere in the park.
And the Quickie Mart sells a Krusty Clump bar, which is what Homer gets the candy convention tickets out of, is a crusty clump bar.
So you can get a real crusty clump bar, which is milk, chocolate, marshmallow, pretzels, and potato chips all clumped together.
They also have, and I like that they, it's unfortunately doesn't have beer in it, but it has, they have like a duff can you can get that has like an orange drink inside of it.
So it's nice, at least that if you want to have the can as a souvenir, you can pick that up.
And we ate in the crusty private room.
That's my favorite part of the whole, we stayed there for like like an hour just soaking it in, didn't we, Bob?
Yes.
Although I think private is a misnomer.
It has many entrances and is just upstairs from where you get all of your food.
But I think people might overlook it if they're just looking for any place to sit down.
It's the room with all of the original illustrations on the walls from many of the people who've worked on the show that a lot of casual Simpsons fans probably won't know, but they'll appreciate the art from people like David Silverman and other directors like that.
And they get to sign their names on it, which they normally don't get to do.
And they also get to draw in their personal style, not the on-model style.
Like the Silvermans are some of my favorite there.
Like he, his drawing of Krusty smoking is one of my, my favorite drawings of
the whole thing.
And it's also full of like, there's like a live Gabbo doll there.
There's like a Krusty's 27th anniversary special poster, just like from the episode.
There's a wall of all the sideshows, including sideshow Raheem.
It's like, it is referenced town, like the work they went into it.
Hearing Selman, Matt Selman on your podcast talk about all the work they put into it
and suggestions they made.
Like I, you see the care really on display in that private crusty room.
I'm glad you shouted that out because that's an absolutely,
I think that's a little tucked away that people should absolutely explore.
It's really cool to take it all in.
Also, Bort keychains in the Quickie Mart.
They sell Bort keychains, which is fun.
Anyways, that was so damn good.
Yeah, honestly, both those donuts.
Emma, Casey, if you want any big donut, it's a little messy, but happy to have some.
I don't have to touch a bunch of keys.
Oh, man, imagine Anya getting hidden here yelling about a bunch of pink frosting.
Yeah, I wonder which podcast is responsible for pink frosting being all over the keyboards.
Okay, well, we should get to our final thoughts on Krusty Burger, and we can talk about, we can also, as I was saying, rank Simpsons land generally from a food standpoint.
So, Henry, Bob,
the way this works, we'll all go around.
I may not know y'all don't know the pod, but I'll just explain it.
We'll go around.
I will give a closing argument, if you will, and then we will give this a score from zero to five forks.
Henry, let's start with you.
Your thoughts, your fork score for Krusty Burger at all?
I love the theming of the Hollywood Krusty Burger and walking through it.
I love the clips that are carefully curated of all these food clips.
And I love, love, love the private crusty room.
That eating area is like, that is five forks to me.
I love it so much.
It's, I spend too long there every time I go to Universal Hollywood.
The food itself, I mean, for a $15, no, $16.50 for the Rib Witch, like the price is like, it is theme park prices, so I can't be that bothered by it.
But like, it was like the Mother Nature burger to me was an all-right burger.
Yeah.
The Rib Witch, pretty good, though there's a better barbecue pork sandwich at the park, which my husband reminded me of that I loved before, which was it's a grilled cheese thing at the minions cafe that comes with barbecue banana sauce.
You can dip it in, which is
really good.
That sounds good.
It's good.
And the Buzz Colon and Cherry Squishy, they were all right for me too.
Also, I wish they had curly fries like I've seen in Orlando.
The crinkle cut,
I'd rather have curly.
So
my fork score for the overall meal, I would say if I'm grading on the curve of theme park food, expensive stuff, I still did have a fine time eating it as far as like, I wouldn't have preferred eating it too many other places there.
I'd give it three forks.
Three forks, good score.
Bob, your thoughts, your fork score.
Yeah, I have to echo a lot of what Henry says, and not just because we think the same way and talked about The Simpsons for the past 10 years, but the restaurant has, anything going on in the restaurant outweighs the actual quality of the food.
Like I said, I appreciate whenever there's an available Beyond Burger and Possible Burger because theme parks are very meat-heavy, and I like how that's being introduced and apparently so popular that Henry had to wait half an hour to get his.
And it was fine.
The bun was serviced.
The bun was manageable.
The fries were cafeteria grade and the beer was okay.
So overpriced, middle-of-the-road food.
But like Henry was saying, the experience of being in Krusty Burger, being in that special room dedicated to the artist, that is definitely makes me bump up what I would have given it without that theming experience.
So I will give it a three forks out of five.
Three forks.
All right, Spoonman, what do you think?
Well,
the food isn't great.
If I had a judge, just the food is like two and a half forks, 2.75 forks.
The theming is fantastic.
And when you're in there, you're having fun.
Krusty Burger is actually my least, not my least favorite, but compared to, I like Cletus's more than I like Krusty Burger, but Krusty Burger, you want to go to Krusty Burger the most.
I wish it was a little bit more spacious and the booths and stuff like that.
I wish there was, I think it is just a thing where there's just not a lot of real estate and it was the size it had to be.
Cletus's, I like a lot.
Is it as good as Doc Brown's fried chicken used to be?
I don't know.
That used to be like the star of the show.
Cletus is still up there because it's just decent fried chicken.
I don't remember Doc Brown's fried chicken specifically enough to know if there was like an actual difference other than just remembering liking it more because I was a kid.
I loved it.
And also, I do think that they had the blueberry biscuits, I believe.
I'm not sure, but
I don't know.
I love Doc Brown's.
I like Cletus's.
Krusty Burgers is mid, as the kids would say.
But
the theming is so good that i would put it in the golden plate club wow that's how good i mean it's just this fun being in there so i'd say like four forks overall the food is two and a half forks two and a two and three quarter forks 2.75 forks somewhere in there i'll say two and a half forks just to give it a number but the theming is so fun i really enjoy and i gotta say this too we left the restaurant
There was like a SoCal surfer dude who was a Doughboys listener and he went in for the hug.
He gave me like a fist.
He gave me like a fist bump with the hug.
He gave me the bro hug.
He gave me the bro.
He gave me the bro hug, and then I was like, Weiger's here, too.
And then you were like 100 yards away, and you're like, Hi, buddy.
Like just waving him.
Hey, buddy.
Yeah.
But then after that, so we met, we met every listener.
We went down the stairs.
We went on the tram tour.
We did go on the tram tour, yeah.
So we went on the tram tour.
We went down the stairs, and then this, there's this universal employee.
He says, The tram, the tram tour, and then he's like, the water world stunt show is still available last showing at 8 p.m.
as featured on
Netflix's love.
He said this.
He was being sly.
Yeah, he was being sly.
He saw me and he said it.
And then,
I mean,
Mystery Guest
was like, he's on love.
He started yelling it out loud.
He's on love.
And I was like, I was like, yeah, you fool.
This guy, he knew.
And the guy was like nodding and laughing at Susser.
He gave me a thumbs up, which was pretty great.
And then later, to talk about when Mystery Guest
loves like trying to get us to go against each other with COVID.
Yeah, even more so than receiving free food, something happened that tickled Mystery Guest, as pink as the big pink itself, which was you got recognized as we were walking towards our vehicles,
but it was someone who thought you were John Gemberling from Broad City.
Someone thought I was Gemberling and fucking loved it.
That the big guys got confused.
No, he lit up like a Christmas tree.
Mystery guest the mystery guest yes yes mystery guest
and and and uh he was smiling ear to ear and then the the the two they were very nice he was like you were great like the costco thing which i think is a reference to to broad city he was like what you did with the costco thing and then his wife was like was like i told you you i told him you weren't in that show you're from love and i was like yeah i'm from love and then they left and then They walked away and it was like, see, is
like, we got to break this down over here.
And we went over and he just talked about how he loved that i got mistaken for this guy but we went on the tram tour which was very fun the nope section sucks yeah look i say this with with uh a lot of affection for the work of jordan peele and i really love nope is my favorite movie of his nope is an awesome movie you want that section to be great and it's just like nothing happens it's unfortunately very underwhelming we did have so we did have something insane happen to us on the tram tour i don't know if we want to talk about yeah no we should we got, so we got they also, by the way, mention every peacock show except for twisted metal on the show.
They mentioned they mentioned another show as their number one streaming show, which is not true.
Twisted Metal is more is like already
Yeah, it's like that's our most streamed show on Peacock.
I was like, oh no, it's not true.
Yeah.
You were anyway, you were Stewan.
And
Mystery Guest, again, delighted.
It was Mr.
Guest delighted.
Anytime they brought up a Peacock show, Mystery Guest was like,
like loving it.
Yeah, when do we hang out with Mystery Guest?
I don't know.
Why did we bring it?
He also didn't even seem happy to be there.
But what happened on the tour that you wanted to say?
Well, so we got to, we're on the tram.
We get to a certain point.
They're like, hey, we're going to go to a tunnel.
We go inside the tunnel.
Everything stops.
We get attacked by dinosaurs.
That's true.
This is true.
It was crazy.
When dinosaurs start attacking, it was like T-Rex is on both sides of us.
They grab like the rear of the tram.
It's like shaking like crazy.
They pull off like the back car.
It feels so bad for these people and it gets flung down the valley.
I think they're dead.
I think they're dead.
I think they're dead.
And we're like, I was trying to play it cool, but honestly, I was scared shitless.
No, I was so scared.
I thought we were going to die.
And I was like, why aren't we going?
Why are we stuck here?
Thankfully, King Kong shows up.
King Kong showed up.
King Kong shows up.
He starts wrecking house.
God bless that guy.
She's wrecking house, takes the dinos out of there.
Suplexes one of them, punches another one out.
We got out of there safely, thankfully, but it was crazy.
Yeah, no, because Henry and I met The Rock on our tour.
Oh, wow.
Oh, that's awesome.
Oh, man.
She was just surrounded by bottles filled with piss.
It was not a good experience.
You're going four forks.
Yeah, no, and I just wanted to see the filming at a classic, you know, San Francisco train station, and then it just didn't go as well as it was supposed to.
Which I got to give a shout out to the stuff that the Jaws, the earthquake, the Jaws, and the the flooding the flood the stuff that's been there forever the stuff that's been there forever still rules still is awesome all the stuff that they added the nope thing is truly just and we were saying in the day suspect was saying in the daytime that the like it's light out so the lights flashing means nothing and then like at night the lights just flash and and that's it um i want to give a shout out to wages who um we were drove by real film sets and i was nervous that we'd see people we knew and we drove by real film sets and there was a grip taking stuff out and Wages was just waving to the grip.
And I thought that he was going to pull you out of the tram and beat you to death.
Somebody waved back at me.
But you were waving to other people that you were enjoying yourself quite a bit.
That was fun.
Were you waving it?
Did you wave at Ted, who was wishing the tour a 60th anniversary?
He waved at everyone.
And Sus said thank you to King Kong when King Kong saved him.
He did, yes.
I could tell you were nervous when Kong when the dinosaurs were.
I could not I could smell it if you catch me.
I asked their tram driver afterwards.
I was like, why don't they,
why do they like take us through there?
Yeah.
Dinosaurs might attack.
And she was like, look, I can't say this officially, but follow the money.
I was like, wow.
She's right.
She's right.
You know what the scariest part of the tram tour to me was?
What's that?
Everyone coughing around us.
Theme parks are a crowded theme park.
They were like, we like smelled shit, like people just fucking ripping.
It's hot.
It smells fucking horrible.
People are sick.
It's, it's awesome.
It was, yesterday was everything so expensive.
You're just spending so much money to have like a mostly like bad experience.
For the experience yesterday, a thing that we weren't really happy to do, we probably spent like $600.
Yeah, it was crazy.
Anyways.
All that said.
I do really enjoy Simpsons Land.
I'm going to miss it when it's gone.
I think it's great.
I think I have fun every time I'm there.
I'm looking around.
What's the timeline you would give it until it's gone?
What do you think?
I think it'll be, I mean, I've heard speculation.
Maybe y'all have some insight over
on the Talking Simpsons pod, but like I've heard speculation as early as 2028, it might be gone.
Yeah,
I believe the deal is up in 2028.
Yeah.
Is that right, Henry?
The stories go that when they signed the deal in 2008, it was a 20-year deal, not an indefinite deal.
That's why like Spider-Man will be at Universal until they close a Spider-Man ride.
But Fox didn't sign an indefinite deal.
They signed a 20-year deal.
And while technically it could be extended in 2028, I don't see Disney doing that.
Most people wouldn't expect it.
And there are the rumors that they are planning other Nintendo-themed lands
for the Japan park first that will then be recreated in other spots.
And in Hollywood, they might get rid of The Simpsons land.
That's what would be marked for it.
So I'm just saying, enjoy the Simpsons land.
You might just be having the last few years of it.
2028 is probably the last year, the latest it'll go.
They could close it.
If they make the deal earlier, like in 2026, they'll be like, that's the end of it, the last year.
Like no more Simpsons.
Yeah, that'll be a bit of a dark day, but I've been glad that people have been able to enjoy it while it exists.
And it's, I will say, crusty burger, I feel like is worth eating at once.
It's cool to see inside.
Every time I'm there, I want to walk inside of it.
But if it wasn't for the purpose of this podcast, it's never a thing I would choose to eat.
Cletus' chicken shack, I think, is legit good.
I think that the bone-in fried chicken there is very, very yummy.
And that's like, you know, again, my kind of my, just my go-to place to eat there.
I think the food overall there is, yes, it's kind of mid, Mitch.
And I do think the theming elevates it, obviously, a little bit.
But like, if the food was at least good, to me, this is a four or five forker.
The food being like
middling to, you know, some of it borderline andedible, I think that that anchors it more towards, you know, where, where everyone else is at.
So I will land at three forks for Krusty Burger.
But I, but, you know, I had a lot of fun visiting it with you and our mystery guests.
And a shout out to our
tour guide, the tram tour guide.
Yeah.
She was, she did a great job.
Yeah, she was great.
And there was a, there was a moment where at the Bates Motel, you can get out and take pictures, and me, and Weiger just stayed on the tram.
You're like, can we just sit?
Can we just sit?
We just sit there.
yeah sure i guess so and we just sat until uh which was great you passed up pictures with you packed up pictures with jaws and the the giant kong hand and dominic toreto's muscle car you yeah
we were too tired uh but it would have been cool
um overall a a fun day a fun outing i'm glad i'm glad we were able to do it i wish we were able to to do it in person uh with everyone but i'm i'm glad we glad we could we finally got this episode done uh hey that was our review of crusty burger It's time for a segment, Emma.
If everybody had a portion across the USA,
then everybody'd be serving
like California
burritos.
You'd see them snacking from baggies
and eating sandals too.
A bushel, bushel tomatoes,
serving USA.
Serving USA
Deep fried pan fried USA
Deep fried pan fried USA
Deep fried pan fried USA
Deep fried pan fried USA
Deep fried pan fried USA
Deep fried pan fried Everybody's gone serving
Serving USA
Okay, so I will name a snack and Mitch and our guest must be serving USA is that there was no parody to serve in serving USA.
We're guessing serving sizes.
I've done this one twice before.
Mitch and Bob and Henry must guess the amount of servings per container.
The closest guest
wins a point for that round.
Assume every product's container is its standard size unless stated otherwise.
I'm sorry, it's just you sing it in the tone of a kid talking to his older sister's friend who he thinks is cute.
It's top of my vocal range.
When I was supposed to take it down and octave, I stopped sounding like the Beach Boys.
Deep fried pan fried.
That's pretty good.
Deep fried pan fried USA.
Everybody's going serving.
Everybody.
I guess I could take it falsetto.
Everybody's going serving.
I can't do that anymore.
You can't falsetto anymore?
Everybody?
Is that it?
Everybody.
Everybody's going serving.
Everybody's going serving.
Is that it?
Yeah, that is.
Hey, folks.
Verging on Michael Jackson impressions.
Yeah, but these new helium balloons, folks?
Okay, so first up.
New helium balloons.
That's the thing you just found out about.
Okay, so I will name a snack, and then everyone will guess how many servings per container.
First up, Barnum's Animal Crackers.
This is a 2.13-ounce box.
I'll go first.
I say it is three servings per container.
Henry says three.
Can we do decimals on this?
Yes.
Okay, I'll say 2.5.
Mitch, what do you think?
I'm going with one serving, Wags.
Bob comes closest.
It is two servings per container.
Bob gets a point.
Well, without going over?
Well, I don't think I have this.
This is in prices, right?
Yeah, we don't have price's right rules for this one.
Should I say we have price's right rules for the game it shouldn't be on?
Well, that's just because you would, that was because
you just want to win, is the issue.
If it had gone the other way, you would say we shouldn't have price's right rules.
That's not true.
It absolutely is true.
Bob gets a point.
Next up, Mott's applesauce.
This is a 48-ounce jar.
So this is a big boy jar, not a 48-year-old.
Yeah, it's a big jar, like a jar of applesauce.
Damn.
I'm saying eight.
I say eight.
I think one.
Oh, no, wait.
No, no, 12.
I'm saying 12.
That's what I'm saying.
Henry says 12.
I'll do 14.
Henry, aka Mr.
Guest first.
Sorry.
Well, the rules were not properly established.
Who goes first?
I guess we can.
I do want to be Mr.
Guest second, if that's okay.
That's fair.
I guess I'm Mr.
Guest third.
Yeah.
I think you're in the best position, though.
Yeah.
What are your guys' guesses again?
12 and 14.
14 for me.
I'm going to go 10.
10 even.
We have 112.
We have
110.
Yeah, I said 10, yes.
I think you both get a point because it's 12.
Oh, sorry, it's 11 servings.
Oh, it's 11.
11 servings.
It's exactly 11.
So, yeah, everyone gets a point now.
This is where price is right rules what it costs me.
So I'm glad I fought against that.
Next up:
Taki's Fuego Fiesta sized bag.
This is a one-pound, eight-ounce bag.
Oh, my God.
It's a big boy bag.
Oh, my God.
This is going to be a.
Well,
oh, I guess I.
Okay, all right.
15.
That's mine.
15 for Mr.
Guess first.
I'll say 20.
20.
That's where I was thinking.
I was thinking 20.
But I'm going to go, I'll go 25 then.
You know what?
I'll go big.
Mitch, if there was a rule where you got an extra point for being exact, you would get it here because it is exactly 25 servings per container.
However, that rule does not exist for this particular game.
So unfortunately, you do not benefit.
You do get a point, though, and you are in the lead.
You fucker.
You can't let me lose.
Canada dry ginger ale, a one liter of Canada dry.
How many servings per container?
I have the answer.
I know it.
Gotcha.
Oh, well, okay.
As guess firster, I will say
I'm going to say eight.
That's exactly what I was going to say.
I'll go with four.
Eight, four.
I'm going to go with the dumbest guess I can, seven, right below eight.
Bob is going to take it.
It has only three servings per container.
Isn't that wild?
Wow.
Yeah, usually these servings are so compelling.
I was so sure that it was eight servings.
Right.
No, you usually
keep them low so they can keep the sugar low.
It's a two liter is six servings.
Oh, is it really?
Right?
Well, I mean, if a literal
liter was, oh, was it one liter?
So one liter, yeah.
One liter.
One liter, yeah.
Well, I think it's fitting.
Our friend from Vancouver got the Canada Dry one right.
That's true.
And the metric system one.
Wait, how many was it?
Was it four servings?
Three servings.
Three servings, okay.
Next up, veggie straws, a 24-ounce bag bag of veggie straws.
What are veggie straws?
Oh, I know what they are.
Yeah.
I'm saying
I'm going to go with five.
Five.
Five.
I'll go with four.
Four.
And I'll go with three.
We got a five, a four, and a three.
That's right.
By the way, I love the host, one of the hosts of Doughboys asking, what are veggie straws?
I'm going to eat that shit.
Henry, you come closest because you had the highest.
It actually has 24 servings per container, if you can believe that.
Well, they're not healthy veggie straws.
Isn't that wild?
Okay, next up, a giant rice krispies treat.
So, like a rice krispies treat, basically the size of a lard lad donut.
Like the kind that Bart took a bite out of at the Quimby family party?
That's right.
But okay,
what is the distinct name of the size, just to be clear?
This is a two-pound sheet sheet of giant rice krispies treat.
All right.
I'm going to say
64.
I'm going 64.
64.
I like that guess.
I'll go half of that, 32.
And I'm going to go right in the middle somewhere, 48.
It is
a multiple of 12, but it is 24 servings per container.
So Bob is going to get this one.
Okay, Mitch has two, Bob has three, Henry has two.
Next up, Kettle Brand jalapeno chips, a five-ounce bag.
Five-ounce bag.
Five-ounce bag.
What is it?
Okay, is it a five-ounce bag like a normal?
It's kind of a smaller bag, right?
Five-ounce bags, yeah.
By the way, I will just say this.
This is sourced by Amelia.
This one has to be wrong.
So if you just want to, I'll go by what she says.
I'm certain it's wrong.
So
I guess try to guess wrong.
Well, I'm going to stick with my original guess that I was going to say, which is just one.
It's one serving.
One serving, okay.
Four.
Four.
It has to be wrong.
It's 100% wrong.
If this is wrong.
I'm guessing either 69 servings or 100 servings.
I'll say 69 servings.
I'll give it to Bob because it is 13 servings.
Oh.
There's no way there's 13 servings of jalapeno chips in a small snack-sized bag, right?
Yeah, I thought it would be something freaky.
No, I think she just had the wrong information here.
I'll text her about it.
Finally.
I mean, she did have the wrong information.
A five-ounce bag doesn't have anything.
There's no way it has 13 servings of chips.
That's insane.
Serving sizes, 13 chips on a five-ounce bag.
I just looked it up.
So, what is how many servings per container does that have?
Five servings per container.
She transposed it wrong.
I think Bob still gets it.
Bob's still, yeah, Bob still gets it.
So, it's 13 chips is one serving.
There we go.
So, what is how many servings?
It's five servings per container.
Bob is
in the greater metagame of Doughboys, then, how many demerits does this get Amelia for forgetting that?
Do I get a point because 69 is a really funny guess?
Yeah, I'll give you a bonus point for a funny guess.
If anyone wants to throw out a funny number, like 69 has been used, but like a 420 or whatever, that's a free point.
So just so you know.
Finally, Haribo Gummy Bears, a five-ounce bag.
This is the same size bag as a Halifax.
This one, I think the information is correct.
I'm going to guess first.
Is that okay?
Yeah, go for it.
420 servings.
You didn't even say it in a funny way.
420 servings, man.
Casey, two hours and 10 minutes of the episode just fed up with your shit.
I'm going to say five servings, man.
Oh, shit.
That's pretty good.
Oh, God.
Okay.
I'm going to say six servings, man.
Henry comes closest, which means Bob wins.
Congrats to Bob.
Wait, what?
Yeah, Henry comes closest.
Bob wins the game.
Henry gets the point.
Bob wins the game over.
But I also got a point too, right?
Yeah, okay.
So do you want to tie with Bob because of your favorite guests?
All right, Bob wins.
Bob's going to be the guy.
Tie goes the guest.
So, yeah.
Occasionally, tie goes to the guest as well, right?
Yeah.
That's a good point.
Hey, that was serving USA.
Just like a restaurant, we value your feedback.
Let's open to the feedback.
And today's email is from Edmund88.
They write, if you were plopped in an anime slash cartoon, what would your first meal be?
I would devour anything
P.S.
Mitch killed it on Twisted Metal.
Motherfucker had the same, if not more.
They wrote motherfucker like that.
So that's why I read it.
Motherfucker had the same, if not more, than Thomas Hayden Church.
Props, bro.
How about that?
I think they were saying that you were in the show as much as a big celebrity.
Oh, thank you.
I think it's probably about true in terms of screen time.
Sure.
Yeah.
You're paid the same, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Exact same.
I'm curious.
I do want to get to this question, but more generally, like animation
is y'all's bread and butter.
You know so much about it.
Do you have any particular favorites beyond The Simpsons?
You know, like series, genres,
you know,
like movies, anything come to mind.
Well, we do cover other shows on our network, like Futurama, King of the Hill.
We're a big fan of that era of late-night Fox programming.
But then we have covered anime and a lot of other shows.
Like
there's actually too much to list, Henry.
Yeah, sure.
Yeah, yeah.
We need a single out.
Plus movies, too.
But like Batman is a big one for us, too, and a lot of the superhero stuff.
So yeah, we've come to, we
knew a ton about Simpsons when we started talking Simpsons from all of the commentaries.
And then we dug deeper than the commentaries and interviewed a lot of people who worked on the show, like Bill Oakley.
We loved your Bill Oakley one.
Going all the way back, I loved listening to Doughboys to learn what Simpsons' writers ate when they were writers there.
But yeah, I think we've just come to really love the world of animation.
But yeah,
more than we did when we started it.
But yeah, we even even to this day, like, well, actually, this isn't new anymore.
It just turned 10 10 years old.
But like, I'm a huge Steven Universe fan as well and the related shows too, like OKKO and Craig of the Creek, shows like that.
We've talked to the creators of those shows, too.
Where do you stand?
You mentioned Batman the Animated series.
Where do you stand on Mask of the Phantasm?
That's what it's coming back.
Isn't the Batman the Animated series coming back?
Yes,
it'll be already out by the time this goes live.
But when we started covering movies on our podcast series, What a Cartoon Movie, Batman Mask of the Phantasm was the first, wasn't it, Henry?
It was.
So clearly we hate it because you made it the first one we did.
No, no, we love it.
I have to tell you, Nick, when I listened to the newcomers you did about that, I was just nodding my head in agreement with you the entire time.
I'm like, there's somebody here speaking the truth about Mask of the Phantasm.
God bless you.
I was so like, I felt like I did a really bad job stating the case for that movie on that show.
But it did a very, very fun show to do, of course,
to the funniest people.
But yeah, you were new to Mask of the Phantasm.
Yes, I loved it.
It was great.
You didn't love it?
It was okay.
Ret Connant in front of the Talking Simpsons guys.
It was just impressive.
At the time, no, you were like, you thought it was fine.
Yeah, it's fine.
Yeah, at the time, I love it.
We covered it in 2018, and I think we said it was the best Batman movie.
I'm still inclined to agree, even though I've kind of fallen back in love with Batman Returns.
Yeah.
It does so much right, and it's such a compact little movie that I love every time I go back to it.
I also think Mask of the Phantasm is like the best Batman movie.
I liked it pretty good.
You loved it.
I mean, you loved it.
Yeah, I liked it.
I think that I wasn't as enthusiastic as you, but I think I still think it's good.
Okay.
It's got Batman's Origin in it.
Batman gets laid in it.
It's like it's got a great central mystery to it.
The Joker is in there, and
the Joker gets his teeth knocked out.
It's great.
Yeah.
That's blood.
It's really well done.
Okay.
We don't like people getting laid here and there.
We don't like that.
Not even Hero the New Year.
No, you want, no, you want Batman to be Val Volcell.
That's a better version of the character.
Okay, so the question is, if you were plopped in an anime/slash cartoon, what would your first meal be?
I mean, my mind naturally goes to Miyazaki, just such toothsome food depicted
in
that, you know, we'd be eating that food that turns us into pigs.
Oh, we turned to pigs immediately.
I mean, like, I would happen, like, wouldn't you do that, though?
Yeah, 100%.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Just to be like chowing away and then turn into a pig.
They clearly are loving that food.
Yeah.
I mean, that food is so good that they're just like, they don't even notice their physical forms changing.
I think that that would be, yeah, that would be up there.
I think that would be one of the things I'd want to do.
Yeah.
Ghibli food always looks great.
The lead animator on some of those is one of the best artists who's ever worked at Ghibli.
Osuko Tanaka, I believe is her name.
She's great.
I love the food in those things.
I actually, when I went to Tokyo a while ago, when I went to the Ghibli Museum, they were having
a special dedicated exhibition of just all the food they've drawn in it.
And uh, and I have a magnet of the giant toast with the half egg on it that they eat in uh in Lapita, Castle in the Sky.
Oh, wow,
it's very good.
I'll say that if I'm an anime character in that world, ethics go out the window.
Uh, anime animals do not feel pain, you're allowed to eat them, so I would get one of those big pieces of meat on the bone that they eat and chose like one piece, the stretchy meat.
Oh, yeah, with little sometimes, little hairs are growing out of it.
Who knows what's going on there?
But it looks like nothing of this earth.
And actually, if you go to, I think if you go to like the Monster Hunter Cafe in Japan, or maybe the One Piece Cafe, they will sell you the stretchy meat, but it's made out of cheese.
That's awesome.
The thing that's a great pick.
The thing that I always think of is just
from food specifically is how much I wanted the pizza from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Like, like, and I've had like the 90s cartoon, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, that version of it.
We know it.
Mitch.
Heroes and the half-shit.
There is a younger generation that has a different Ninja Turtles theme, I assure you.
Like, I have talked to these people.
I've talked to people I know who are adults who are, like, don't know that song.
They know a different song.
Teenage Mutant, Ninja Turtle.
That could be the new song.
It could be,
what's his name from a family guy?
Seth McFarland.
Seth McFarland is singing a little jazzy tune.
He's crooning.
We don't know.
We don't know.
A different television billionaire than chuck lorry who wrote it it'd be the seth mcfarlin
oh well hey okay quick tmnt question then from those lyrics ended what do they say about raphael because i've heard some people hear this lyric differently than others so when they say raphael is
what are they what do they say uh crude but rude
i i remember
so for years i thought it was cool but crude later i figured out that i think it's cool but rude which i think that makes more sense
I believe rude is the correct one.
Yes.
Got it.
What did you hear?
I thought I always heard it that way too, but maybe I'm Berenstein burying myself here.
But
I think I always said cool but rude.
And then when I met somebody who said it was crude and was singing along, I was like, what?
You know, one thing, while we're talking about animated food,
the good morning burger is one thing that I realized just kind of came to pass.
Like there became such an eggs on burger trend that that that was a thing that that's in The Simpsons, where it's like, talking about like, oh my God, I can't believe how gluttonous Homer is that he's coveting this burger.
And now you're just like, you can just get a breakfast burger a lot of places.
I would love to try that burger that he wipes on the wall or whatever it is that he wipes on the wall that's so greasy.
It's a fish sandwich, the crusty fish.
Well, when we cover the early episodes, we see how reality has outlapped The Simpsons, where one of the early jokes is that Homer wants triple chocolate ice cream.
And in my head, I think, oh, that's something you can buy now.
This is not a joke, but they could not imagine a world in which there could be three kinds of chocolate in one little container in 1990.
As our wonderful artist
coined on one of our t-shirts we sell, it's that
Simpsons predicted nothing, satire is dead.
By the way, Neil Campbell went to that Miazaki, the Studio Jubilee Museum.
Oh, wow.
And he saw Miyazaki there.
That's wild.
Wow.
I know.
He took a picture of a standard picture.
I know.
I know.
That's amazing.
I've been been there four times and never never seen him man that's that's amazing pretty cool
it's not like he lives there so that's crazy
they used to when i should live i went back i went back for the first time in uh since the lockdown this year when i went to uh tokyo in 20 in in january and they stopped selling beer they used to have nausica valley of the wind themed beer and they stopped selling alcohol there and i was i was very sad to learn that when i got there that's going to make a theme park right or like their version of a theme park soon there's a Ghibli park, yeah,
in the
Kansai region, I think, in the middle of Japan.
It's peaceful just walking around, right?
Yeah, it's integrated with a forest, I believe.
When people see Miyazaki, I assume he's using a price gun or sweeping up, working the register.
He can't just exist without doing work.
I have a go for it, please.
I'd either eat corn like a typewriter if I was in a car.
That's fine.
Or I'd have a spaghetti that was this one big noodle.
That's like the slurp, the single spaghetti slurp is pretty great.
I thought you were going to say
you'd eat a watermelon with seeds in it and then shoot out the seeds like machine gun bullets.
That's pretty fun, too.
Or maybe I'd float to some pie.
Yeah, floating to pie would be a great way to get around.
Yeah.
Man.
Man, imagine that we could get around all around town.
Easy.
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 at 830-goto.
That's 830-463-6844.
And to get the Doughboys double, our weekly bonus episode, plus our entire pre-2018 back catalog, subscribe at patreon.com/slash Doughboys.
Our producers, Emma Erdbrick, our associate producers, Amelia Marino, our engineer is Casey Donahue.
Our video editor is Mike Dorfman.
Our guests, Bob Mackey, Henry Gilbert, Talking Simpsons is the podcast.
Tell it that thank you.
First off, thank you so much for giving us so much of your time.
Thank you so much for making the trip to Universal to do this podcast and for accommodating our COVID diagnoses diagnoses and shifting schedules.
We're really, really glad that you guys
moved so many things around to make this happen.
But please tell us about the podcast and anything else you would like to promote.
Oh, sure.
It's Talking Simpsons.
We've been doing it for 10 years now.
We're in our 10th year, which means we're 20% of the way there.
And yes, we cover The Simpsons every week.
We do an old season and a new season right now.
We should be in season five and season 15 doing those at the same time.
And we have a lot of other shows at our Patreon at patreon.com slash talking Simpsons covering Futurama and King of the Hill and Batman the Animated series.
We've done all the episodes of The Critic, all the episodes of Mission Hill, and there's a lot more happening there too.
Wow.
Yeah, we're supported at patreon.com slash talking Simpsons, but you can find the regular episodes of Talking Simpsons wherever you find podcasts.
And we've had, we get really in-depth.
We explain every joke.
We want every answer.
We have purchased old scripts sometimes to read them on the air like we did when Mitch did Camp Krusty.
We've interviewed many people who've worked on the show and
we've had on a lot of Doughboys family members on the show, not just Nick and Mitch for their great episodes, but also people like Eva Anderson and Neil Campbell and all of the sloppy boys.
We've had so many great guests on Talking Simpsons, and we are so happy to finally finally get to do it.
And next time we can be in person, we'd love it.
We'll figure that out.
We'll figure that out sooner rather than later.
But yeah, great to have y'all on.
And people should absolutely check out Talking Simpson.
100%.
We love doing it.
You guys are great.
You guys are great to know.
Thank you.
Oh, thank you.
Thank you so much.
You guys are the best.
We love Doughboys.
God bless you.
We love doing it.
I have two shout-outs.
I'm going to give it.
Oh, please.
One, I saw Doris at
our old friend from,
oh, God, Spitz.
Oh,
when we reviewed Spitz with John Holly.
Yeah, I just saw her recently.
said, and I said, I'd give her a shout on the show because
I was there with
a mystery guest
and I bought him lunch.
There's a real theme here.
And she was like, I heard a lot of people bothered me after the episode came up.
Oh, man.
She didn't say bothered.
Sorry, go.
And then also,
when I used to go to Sonny McClane's, this guy, Mike Bungie,
he used to manage there, and he has cancer.
And there's a a GoFundMe for me if people who ever enjoyed Son McClane is a guy who used to run Sony McClane.
So if you want to, we'll post that GoFundMe
if you want to toss some donations bungees away.
But a good guy who's dealing with some stuff.
So there you go.
For sure.
Hey, that'll do it for this episode of Dough Boys.
Until next time, for the Spoon Man, Mike Mitchell, I'm Nick Weiger.
Happy eating.
See ya.
Hey, buddy, the Doughboys year-end finale will be live and live streamed.
Wow, Saturday, December 14th at 7:30 p.m.
Pacific at Dynasty Typewriter in LA.
You will be able to watch a live stream as well.
Join me and Mitch and special guests for a holiday wrap-up of 2024.
Wow.
Live stream tickets available at birdfuck.com.
Sources for the intro are in the episode description.
That was a hit gum podcast.