It's it could happen here. Look, I didn't I didn't think of an intro for this one. I really should have. I apologized to the readers. I was reading about Chinese also weeze instead. Uh. Yeah, this is a podcast that's I don't know, it's about things.
I'm here unlike all those other podcasts about.
Things, and ours is actually about things. And today it's about hot dogs. And in order to talk about hot dogs, were joined by Jamie Loftus, whose new book Raw Dog, The Naked Truth about hot Dogs boldly asked the question what if a book was good? Welcome to the show, JB.
Hello, Hello, So it's so good to be here to talk about things.
This is like the thingniest thing available, I think.
Yeah, so I I read this book in okay, I don't know how you're actually supposed to vide up, Like if you stand up to go to the bathroom in the middle of a sitting, is that still one sitting? But yeah, so I read this book in one sitting and it was great.
One sitting with a bathroom break.
I think there was two technically, but yeah, it was a good time. Yeah, And so okay, so this is this is a book that's about hot dogs and also about it's a tale of human, human and animal misery
and suffering. And so as I was reading the book, my playlist pops up Daniel Connan The Painted Birds song The Butchers Share, and so I'm like reading about this, and the song starts going, Let's take a walk around the Old Bizarre, where every little thing has traveled far, every pair of pants and grain of rice contains a horror story and its price.
It really really.
Yeah.
I was like, wow, Wow, Okay, I guess reality is just sort of telling me what the what the what the plot is right now?
Yeah. I mean that.
In another another case, I think it's really important that we're talking with us right now. Is that I believe your book was officially published on May twenty third, Yeah, which is which is the twenty third day in the fifth month, which is obviously of the year twenty twenty three, which is very important in the Discordian calendar, and your books about hot dogs, which is specifically it is the
one sacred food in the religion of Discordianism. So we for these reasons it's really important were talking with this because you you must be a very powerful wizard to have to have figured this out.
Yes, yes, I had to reserve this date years in advance. I saw it coming, and you know, and then by the time people caught on.
It was too late.
I had already I had already wizarded my way into the most potent release date. And now I mean, it's we all may be fucked because I didn't.
Someone's going to assassinate Jfkin and it's gonna be great.
And this time his head is going to explode. Like there's twice as much blood in it as the original. It's gonna be really shocked the original.
I love it.
It's like as the original series or movies.
It's gonna be a second There's gonna be a second Grassy Knoll stack on top of the book depository. It's gonna be amazing.
Has Reboot Culture gone too far? You know? It's it's a good question.
I was kind of I was trying to do a reboot Culture plug cycle back here thing, and I can't do it. I'm a hack and a fraud.
But I wanted to.
Yeah, So I wanted to talk to you a bit about one of the things you mentioned in the book is that you were trying to get into like like try trying to be able to get tours of these of these like packing plants, and just they just like didn't let you. So I wanted to ask a bit about like that process, because that seemed like it was incredibly chaotic.
Yeah, it was really frustrating and humiliating kind of every step of the way. Where I mean, as we were traveling, I had, you know, the map of places that I wanted to go, and then I also had a map of like meatpacking plants that we could possibly go to on the way, and so I reached out a little bit in advance and either got I mean, got a
ton of just no answers. And I would try to call, but generally the excuse I was given was was, well, we don't let people tour anymore since COVID, because there were a few places I know that the Vienna Beef factory in Chicago used to do tours of very specific areas of the factory, kind of the least gnarly parts, which is saying nothing, but you know, there were places that you used to let civilians tour, and now it's just unless things have changed in the last you know,
year or so, no one can and on top of that in certain states, and this is also shifting. But the AGGAG laws I think make it way less possible and appealing for any meat packing plant to allow other people in, which is true. I mean the AGAG law rabbit hole is so sinister of just like, instead of any meaningful improvement in meat packing plants, they're inventing new laws to combat UH technology, which is just like terrifying.
Yeah, I mean that was a what was that? Was that technically pregreen scare?
That's a good question.
I just like I think I.
Think it was.
I think that was mostly like a mid like a mid nineties thing.
Yeah, but they've definitely kicked up.
I mean, I think the awareness of them in general has kicked up in the last couple of years because like in UH, sort of in step with how horrible conditions were for workers during lockdown after the executive order, I think there was like all of a sudden, a heightened interest in wanting to invest gain it, and they were just blocked at every single turn. And there are some I know that some have been overturned or in the in the process of being overturned, but.
I don't know. It seems pretty bleak to me.
Yeah, yeah, like you don't think I'd help with that, right, Like we found out like what like a look was it like a month ago, like pretty recently. Also that there were a bunch of companies, these meatpacking companies that were just like using child labor, that children were getting horribly named.
Yep.
That yeah, that was in didn't make the book, but I could have taken an educated guess, you know, like it's like often so comically bad, it feels wrong, but it's just like so over the top horrible, and it sounds like describing current meatpacking conditions in the US sounds like you're describing meatpacking conditions one hundred years ago, and
they were actually slightly better one hundred years ago. So it is it is very bleak in the unions that still exist, but they are somewhat weakened and making it possible for laws like this to sneak through at active child labor. And there's I know, I put this in the book because it's something I think about all the time.
Where you know, down the line, it was reported that not only was working at a meatpacking plant one of the least safe jobs in the country during lockdown but on top of that, a year later, it was revealed that the top brass at Tyson and Smithfield were directly colluding with the government and essentially drafted the drafted the executive order that was given in April twenty twenty to
keep the meatpacking plants open. There were you know, foreman and sort of middle managers at these companies that would take bets on how many of their employees would get sick.
It was just like it was cartoon evil.
It was I'm like constantly haunted by the taking bets thing like that's you think about that like once a week, and of like I think I think your line was I think your line was like a continued think of how okay with you are? You are you with bringing the guillotine back? And I was like, you know, like this.
And it's the worst when it's like middle managers, I'm like, what what is your endgame here? Like it's I mean, I know what the end game is, but it's so bleak to you know, be making you know, just getting by and still betting against your like like vulnerable people that.
Work for you, who you see every day. It's just like, I mean whatever, not surprising, but yeah. I was like, Wow, there's no there's no justice in hot dog Land.
There really is.
I'm so curious about how curated what they what information is allowed to be shared, Like, I'm curious if I don't know if they know how bad it is even or if they're just like conditioned not to not to think about it.
Yeah, from what I can tell, there are.
And I write about one at length in the book because it's one of my favorite YouTube clips of all time. This like Canadian TV show that's like a I think it's just called How It's Made.
But it's like this is a very popular Canadian television show.
It's I watched a kid.
Really Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I love I mean I love shows like that, and I love specifically when they show you how something gross is made because they're really trying to like keep the mood light in a way that is like so funny with hot dogs, where it's like just these big machines farting out goo and then there's like this bassline playing that's like.
Boom boom, boom boom. The next step in the hot dog's journey is going to the ship, and you're like what, it's so good.
But it's really I mean, those those clips are ridiculously curated and to the point where it's like I can't even re tell you what's missing, but I you know, you could tell weird pr when you see it, and and yeah, like they're sort of showing the easiest I don't know.
It reminds me. I don't know why.
I'm like in I'm like fharah nose pilled today, But like it reminds me of the anecdote about Elizabeth Holmes where she was like taking Joe Biden around faara and nose and then there were like people in each room setting up the next room to look like it was a functioning business as that like they were taking him
through the through the rooms and successfully deceived him. That's very much what hot Dog production clips feel like to me, which is wild because they're still disgusting, like you cannot make it look good.
But yeah, I don't know.
I mean, going back through years of reports, it's it's really difficult, understandably so to speak with people who work at meat piking plants as well, because there's like not a lot of that they stand to gain from.
Talking to reporters.
But there was a good Washington Post report about it in the early two thousands that detailed not just labor abuses within the workforce, but how you know when you're not paying your employees enough and not keeping the equipment updated and are you know factory farming focused on just production production production.
Uh.
The animals are far worse off too, And there are some pretty horrifying descriptions of what would happen to animals when people didn't have the workforce or the or the tools to be able to, you know, slaughter an animal in not the most horrible way possible.
I like thought I had a like i'd like watch stuff before on factory farming, and like, I don't I would have a real fun time sleeping tonight thinking about the fucking I don't know, I mean the illusion probably content wording this because this is like the addible stuff and this is genuinely horrible, like this specific yeah thing.
It was like it was like them talking about like they're like stunning an animal to kill it, but then the animal comes back and they're like literally chopping the animal apart while it's alive. The animals like blinking out that like Jesus Christ.
It's like it's hot and then and on the workers end, it's like and don't stop or you're fired.
And like and you have no protection. It's just like it's a it's a nightmare in a lot of places.
And there it came around in an interesting way with at the Nathan Tatak eating contest last year, because they use I don't know if they use Smithfield plants for all of their food, but they did certainly some of them.
And there was a protester who came on stage while Joey Chestnut.
Was gobbling seventy five guizzies or something like that, and like the protester was like wearing a Darth Vader mask and he had this sign that said like take down the Smithfield Death Star.
And it was a good, like a pretty solid protest. It made it on TV.
But then Joey, who has not tackled him to the ground and then just stood up and kept eating hot dogs. It was like, I mean, the protester was so in the right, but also watching Joey really just take someone just in the middle of eating. He was like forty hot dogs deep tackled this guy to the ground and on like the low res feed, I was watching it looked like he killed him, and I was like, what did Joey just do on ESPN?
Did he just kill a man?
He didn't, but he injured someone and he also had a broken leg at the time. Joey not the protester, So it was just like then he went back, very very bizarre, and then he yeah, and then he finished the contest and he was like, well, I would have beat my own record, but unfortunately I had to pause for five seconds to kill someone. But anyways, Yeah, the especially Smithfield, I think is uniquely bad. But Smithfield enticson it's just like her, like horrendous with with labor practices.
Yeah, I mean I think that was like I had a thing I was gonna say, and then it simply evaporated from my mind. Uh you know what, fucking and break to cover up my failures.
I keep having this like false memory. I feel like it's like it's a ling Mendela effect thing where when everyone says whenever someone says Joey Chestnut, I keep I keep thinking it's a character from I think you should leave. But whenever I look at them, like no, every single time, I mean, it does.
Sound like that, and I think you should Leave has such god tear hot dog jokes that Joey should be on that show, but unfortunately he lacks charisma, and.
So he also sees a person.
He is.
He's definitely complicit in a number of things.
Very hard to know what Joey's politics are, which I know is intentional, but I'm like, what's going on with him? He's from San Diego but now he lives in Indiana. I just don't feel like it bodes well, but I can't say for sure.
Yeah, yeah, you know. That was another part of this that I was like, I was reading this and especially like given the shit that's been happening the last few weeks, reading about to Kyu Kobyashi, the former champion competitive eating eating guy, coming to the US, and then like having the very combination American experience of like coming to the US and then slowly realizing, holy shit, this place sucks ass, Like there's just a bunch of racist here and they
hate us, and my boss is going to like run a racist pr campaign against me for money, like.
Like mask off like every day all the time, And here's the guy I'm going to be replacing you with, and you will be only abused until this guy can beat you and then goodbye forever, and that's what happened.
It's so I mean, I don't know.
I think it's fascinating in a very sick way because it's like he is just hot Dog Vince McMahon, like absolutely who this guy is and clearly idolizes Vince McMahon, the guy George Shay like his wife wrote for the WWE and soap operas, and so he's just like very well versed in very racist, anti woman high drama. Like it's just like what he it's his favorite and I hate him and he's so uniquely in control of that world.
It feels very Vince mcmaonish, where you're.
Like, surely someone else could do this job, but it's just not not allowed.
If he's the Vince McMahon of the hot dog world, are what are you now in the hot talk world? The good question, the study of hot talks.
I'm one of the people who Vince McMahon covers up the murder of I think probably that's eventually me, I'll be involved in a very small, suspicious incident in this man's life. I don't know, I mean, yeah, unfortunately, I feel like that's the best shot I have. It was interesting though, when I released an excerpt of my book that was about Joey Chessnutt, and they did not run this by me, but they just named the excerpt I'm in Love with Joey chestnut I was like, Okay, I
guess I do say that, but I wouldn't lead with it. Anyways, the Major League Eating PR team reached out to me, and I thought it was going to be I was just going to get like reamed, but they it was just a light fact correct. It was very weird, a little menacing, But I guess that they're fine with me calling them evil. They're like, hey, when you said we were evil, your number was a little bit off, just so you know. And thanks, Guss is good for us. Ye,
knowledge is power, And I changed my mind. I think they're great now due to this small fact correction.
Ringing ringing endorsements.
We're attempting to confirm live there is not, in fact a gun behind Jamie's head right now.
Look, I can't say, I can't say I think the two things.
Yeah, with the book being out now, it feels nice in most ways and then two ways where I'm like stressed out about it where I'm like, I'm afraid that George sha is going to come for me, and I'm also afraid the entire city of Chicago is going to come.
Oh okay, I want to talk about this because okay, all right, So I'm gonna have to go into witness protection after this. But I agree with you that the Chicago hot dogs not that good. Yeah, like I think on hot dog is really good, but yeah, there's like it doesn't it just it's it gets to soggy pretty quickly. It's like the flavors don't necessarily go together, like it's only okay.
It's it's it's wet and there's too much going on and it's just like, yeah, it's a catastrophe.
I I well, okay, I.
Was promising myself I would dial back on Chicago hot dogs slender, but it's like not, it's not it's not very good and the and I think the main thing it wouldn't bother me as much if they, uh I'm like those people in Chicago. But if the Chicago hot dog loving community was just like, hey, we have this
gross hot dog and we love it, that's fine. Unbridled enthusiasm for something gross love it, but then they top that up by being like, and if you like Ketchup, you should walk into traffic and get hit by a car. Like so aggressively hate Ketchup in a way that I don't know. I don't love something disgusting, but hating something innocuous is such a weird thing to do.
It's very bizarre.
I also got like just absolute whiplash reading this because one of the places you go to is the incomprehensibly named Fatso's Last Stand, and I was literally there last week by accident, because I know, yeah, so I was like an absolute fool. I was trying to travel at seven am on two hours of sleep because I was writing an episode, and I took a bust the wrong way and I ended up there, and I was like,
what the fuck have I just walked into? And I opened this book and I was like, oh my god, what is happening to me?
Empty Fatso's Last Dance sounds like a very scary Liomitala.
It was so a cursive like I was like getting off the bus and the bus driver was like, are you sure you want to get off here? And I was like yeah, like a like a.
I don't know episode.
It was a whole thing.
And then you find out that Patso's last dand burned down twenty years ago.
Did you get anything they weren't open?
Oh, pretty good, it was. It was pretty good there.
And then I've since gone back to Chicago because I didn't have time to go everywhere I wanted to, and I've since gone back, and I do genuinely like the Chicago style hot dog at.
Red Hot Ranch. I'm a big Red Hot Ranch head. I've converted.
But a lot of it is, Yeah, it's just bizarre, and the hating the ketchup thing is confusing. And then I went to Pittsburgh recently and their Ketchup City USA, and so I was having some interesting conversation and yeah, this is what my life is like now, I think.
Okay, So there's there's two more various like hot dog questions you need to ask. One is do you have portillo takes?
Ooh not really?
I like I like Portillo's and I've been in Illinois and I've been in California too.
It's a classic.
It's good it didn't it didn't make it into the book because there was like so many hot dogs that didn't make it into the book because they're like, all right, that's just you saying like there were so many paragraphs in a row, like and then I had this one and I.
Liked it, and then I had this one and I liked it. So my editor was like, all right, we.
Can, we can cut, but yeah, we can. I had to cut whole chapters. It's so wild how long this book could have been. Where I not rained in but there was well this is Chicago relevant too. I took a two day course called hot Dog University through Vienna Beef from this guy.
The thing I'm gonna you beat that for me.
Sorry, oh yeah, I'm a graduate of hot Dog University. It's a course where you It was on zoom. Unfortunately it used to be in person. This is this guy Mark PhD, Professor hot Dogs, and you take the course and he teaches you how to open your own hot dog stand and over the course of two days, and it was actually I learned a lot.
How many people were on the zoom.
There are three people.
It was me and two guys from Chicago, and I was trying to like be I didn't want to say why I was there, so I was trying to like, Oh, my name's Jamie and I'm interested in opening a California hot dog stand.
And Mark was really interested in an idea.
And it was a couple months of me kind of like daudging some emails of like, I'm not going to do it.
I never told them, but I'm not going to do it.
Okay, So all right, I need to I got. I'm now conflicted because I have a great hot dog stand pivot. But also I want to ask you the second hot dog question, which is have you had Japa dogs?
No, I haven't had Jappa dogs yet. I wanted to go because I know that there's like a bunch of there's some Vancouver. Is that right, Like I know, yeah, yeah, Canada coated.
My friend in Vancouver keeps insisting I eat it, and I refuse.
I wanted to go to Vancouver and try it because like Northwestern hot dogs, there's like there's a lot going on there in a good way, like Portland, Seattle, big fan of their hot dogs. Yeah, I didn't get to jap a dog. There are a few places. There was a place in Maine I really wanted to go to, but it was so on the side of the highway and open two hours a day. That it was like it would be so logistically hard to be there, but working on it. Yeah, I want to go to Jappa Dogs someday.
I went to.
I got hot dog poutine in Montreal recently, which I guess is a common poutine make.
It was great.
So now that you've dedicated I'm guessing multiple years of your life two years?
Yeah, yeah, not getting those back.
I guess it's studying about hot dogs and like the cultural conditions that are created around them. Do you feel like a better person.
Ooh?
Or have you learned something extremely useful about American culture that will improve your life going forward?
Thank you for to alternatives to the question.
I would say that knowing more about hot dogs didn't make me a better person. I think, I hope, And I also I think that like I don't know, it's like it feels better to or I don't know, I enjoy my stuff that it's like you can get to a really dark and serious place, but they seem so innocuous. It's like whatever, and getting Hansel and Gretel to.
Come into you or Candy House and then being like, actually it's sucking murder City.
Everyone's fucked in here, like you're gonna have fun for a little while the food is delicious, but then you're gonna die. Like I just I like I like subjects like that and getting to I don't know, I've met genuinely when we had the book release show the other night. I've met so many nice people through the hot dog community, my.
My dog community.
It's true.
I had this guy I met in a parking lot in Culver City. He was a wienermobile driver at the time, and he like brought us yance and we talked on stage and he was reflecting on his Wienermobile heyday and he told me this, Oh I'm excited because at the time he was still working for Oscar Meyer.
And I was like, do people have sex in here?
And he was like, I don't know, probably, but now he doesn't work for Oscar Myers.
I was like, do people have sex in there?
You have no loyalty at this point, and he was like, okay, well I never did.
But there is like there's like six.
Seats in the waitermobile, and I guess on the back left it's called the.
Meat seat, and that's where the fuck the meat seats.
I know it was really it was really shocking, and he's so sweet that it was really scary to hear it coming out of his mouth.
So there is the meat seat. Anyways, I've made a.
Lot of nice I've met a lot of nice people through hot dogs, and I've learned the stuff I did not know.
So it's fun.
Well, you too can become a better person by purchasing the book Rock Talk wherever books are sold. What actual serious question? Have you ever watched the movie Food Fight?
No?
Wait?
When?
When?
Is it?
From the twenty twelve computer animated movie starring starring supermarket food mascots that they and they unite to fight the generic brand food products in their grocery store. And there's a lot of really weird not see imagery, really uncomfortable like over sexualization and some of the most some of the mostish animation you've ever seen. It's a pretty wild movie.
It was.
It was a development for like it was like almost like a decade and a half.
Early Evil Longoria, Hillary Duff, Oh.
Yeah, Christer Lloyd Plays Plays plays one of the villains.
It is.
It is one of the worst like acid trips of a movie, just because of like it is just really bad. But I have zero records predominantly features dogs, so.
I mean hot dogs are certainly prominent on this post there. I was just like shocked at them billing the starkest tuna above the twinkie.
It doesn't make sense to me.
Also, there is there is there is a dog character who's just like Indiana Jones, but a dog that is also like but also in a romantic relationship with a human woman.
I don't want to know where the Nazi stuff comes in, but I am.
This is so wild because it's like I thought that sausage Party was the worst thing to happen to this very scary genre, and it.
Just like this is like the dark side of sausage party.
No, oh my god. Oh and there's a maybe there's a sequel food fight. It's about time.
I've not heard of this.
Oh maybe this is fake. No, maybe this is fake. I hope it's fake. This is so ugly holy.
No, it is.
It is one of the the worst movies ever ever made. It's it's it's it's garish, it's upsetting, it is weirdly fascistic, and it's also like primarily based around like brand promotion. Also a lot of these big food companies like signed these contracts in the late nineties, and of course the film didn't come out until twenty twelve.
Oh my god.
There's a whole bunch of really weird, like food fight merchandise that was made with all of these brand mascots, and it's all extremely questionable.
That does explain the cast, yeah, because it was like, it's a late nineties cast to have Wayne Brady playing Daredevil band Christopher Lloyd playing mister Clipboard Chris Catan.
Isn't it.
Yeah, this movie has been in development for a long time.
Wow, holy shit.
Anyway, I was just wondering since it is it is supermarket food hot dog adjacent, and it does does often draw draw parallels to Sage Party, which is also obviously one of the most famous hot dog.
Films, one of the most famous films I have.
I've been wearing them at the shows I have.
They did make Halloween costumes for Sausage Party, and they have the bun that looks so visceral like the like it has like vagina mouse, and then they gave the bun huge boobs and a huge butt. Anyways, she's voiced by Kristin Wig and I have the costume and I've been wearing it.
You have the actual costume.
Yeah, I have, and it's it's.
You're wearing it for your book stuff.
Yeah.
I love. I love a costume change, especially when it is also a jump scare.
Yeah.
Yeah, wow.
Yeah, well that's incredibly upsetting. That's about all the time we have today, though, Jamie.
Where can people find the hot Dog Book?
Oh? You can find it all over the place, but I would recommend getting it from bookshop dot org if.
You're ordering online.
It's a really cool website that will automatically purchase from your nearest independent.
Bookstore and send it to you.
So yeah, it's a pro labor book, So don't buy it from somewhere shitty, use your head, but yeah, get it.
And there's also I also narrate the audience book.
If you like many people have been telling me for the past couple of days, or like a book kind of a long podcast in a way, and it's.
Like, oh, sure, it feels great.
It feels great to hear.
And where can people find you on the internet? And the stuff that you also do that's not the Hotdog Book.
Bravely still on Twitter at Jamie loftus help and instagram at Jamie christ Superstar and then you can listen to me on the Bechdel Cast every week on this very network.
Well, I sure hope you cover food Fight in an upcoming episode.
We just covered Sausage Party, and I think we both have PTSD, So you have.
Like a de talks period first.
And then come back with food Fight and by the end be like, you know, Sausage Party.
This is the one you do when the paperback comes out.
Honestly nice, not the worst idea. I do want to watch this movie now, but I like looking at the poster. I'm like, I don't know if I can watch it alone, but I will watch it.
We can, we can surely plan something.
Let's do it, all right.
Thank you, Thank you for coming on and talking about hot dogs and labor and all of all of your hard work. You can find us on cool Zone me on most of the Instagrams and twitters and other places. And happen here pod. Keep on Dog Dog Doggin Yep, okay.
As they say, as they say, yes, it could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website Cool zonemedia dot com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts, you can find sources for It could happen here, Updated monthly at cool zonemedia dot com slash sources.
Thanks for listening.