Disneyland’s New Turnstiles

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Warning, the following podcast may contain pleasant little welcome chimes, shoe sole material investigation, a long diversion about Vivian Vance's jewelry and clear door talk. All that. Plus we stroll through the new Disneyland. The Ride.

Welcome to Podcast The Ride, where we know something that never goes out of style is going in and out of turnstiles. I'm Scott Gardner, joined by Mike Carlson. I don't know why it's... that like the man Jason Mraz popped into my mind but it felt like a rhyme a Mraz rhyme or something you were reading some of his poetry I don't know why

I don't even begin to know why that's the case. I'm not familiar enough with the Mraz body of work. I'm not really either. I don't think to know that. I don't know why I said that. I'm not either. Listener, if you know, or if Jason Sheridan knows, or you, you know, him being a fellow Jason. Are you familiar enough with the body of work? I am not, but I will say Disneyland is a place you can see fireworks from the freeway.

Is that something from Jason Mraz? Isn't that a line? Isn't that a Mraz line? Again, I'm not the person to add. I think you are the Mraz expert here. Okay. He sings The Remedy. I know that it's about not worrying your life away. Besides that, I don't know. Well, yeah. The Remedy is the experience?

Is that what he says? It's a dangerous liaison. Look at this. This is the most music knowledge he's had so far on this whole podcast. Well, that was in the college zone. That was when your music aperture opened up, the 10 months of new music. That's right. Mraz is right in the zone there.

But the one song, I think. Yeah. The Remedy, yeah. Well, that's the, although he had a bigger one, obviously. Well, he had the hats, you know. We were all like, oh, whoa, what are those hats? He did have the hats. But, yes. Well, but, you know, not to distract too much because I do want to get into today's topic, which is the Disneyland... If you know this, maybe you don't know this if you're not on the West Coast, but the Disneyland has been...

redoing its entrance plaza. It's been redoing, is that even the right term? Entrance plaza? That might be like what's between the sets. The gate, the literal gate. And we have the second gate, but we don't do a lot of talking about the actual gates, which are really the first part of your theme park experience. And they're brand new at Disneyland. They opened earlier this year. They cost $4.8 million.

And it's 38 new entry gates. So it's a whole new experience as you enter them. I feel like we haven't done enough gate talk on the show in general. We've talked about Universal, which gives like... They do the like put your little finger on the dirty little circle or dirty little oval and rub your dirty germs all over. Everybody that's been there is like during the day's germs. Step one, yeah. Put your finger on. But we haven't really talked enough about.

You know, all the different things. Magic Bands, Entryway, and Disney World, which, like, that is kind of supposedly in Disneyland yet, but I haven't tried it. I haven't bought one. You can use a newer one there. You know, when we were down in... Universal Orlando in 2023, they had some of this facial recognition.

Oh, yes. And that's an aspect of this. And I don't know if that's up and running yet, but I think there will be a facial recognition component. I think currently they're having cast members.

on their phone, scan you in, and then automatic gates open. That's part of the new... It's not... the like metal poles whatever you want to call it that spin around it's now these plastic gates and I think currently cast members are helping with this but I think the idea is that eventually it'll just be a self-serve

thing and that they'll monitor that via scanning your face. So Universal's been doing that for a little while then. They were testing it at least i think it was so we don't know if they've instituted the facial recognition yeah i don't i don't know they were testing it it was live testing when we were there and i gotta say i

I wasn't really a fan of the fingerprints. I'm certainly not a fan of the facial recognition. I was wondering where you were going to go with it. It kind of gives me the creeps. How long do they hold that data? Forever. We're just giving all our data away to all these companies. They did have our face already because they would take the picture for many years. That's true. So you would see the picture.

in there and I think we discovered on some fine print recently that they have the picture I think for like seven years and then they have to up there was a time limit on when you have to refresh that picture and it's more frequent with Kids have to update their photos more often because of the rate that kids change and grow at, obviously. What is everyone's favorite way to get into a theme park? Mine is Magic Band. That's my favorite way. There's something classic. Hello? Whoa. What?

Griffin Newman? Griffin's here all of a sudden. Griffin, what's up? Wait, wait, what the hell? We didn't even know you were in town. What's going on? Are we doing a main feed episode? Yeah, this is a Disneyland turnstiles. Yeah, we're just doing a... Yeah, we're doing a... Turnstiles. New turnstiles is a main feed episode, huh?

How's that going? How are you feeling about this? How's this going? I introduced a question I felt pretty good about, but other than that, I think it's fine. I was kind of excited to answer that, because I kind of like just the good old-fashioned... What's your favorite way to enter a park? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. For a main feed episode. Yes. Yeah. Why not? What are we doing here? What the fuck's the problem with that? Why? Why not? It's our podcast. This topic is feces.

It's feces? It's got mold on it! What do you mean? That means it's old, I guess, but it's kind of a new topic because it just happened. This is barely a five-minute... Sidebar conversation and you're OVERPOURING IT! You don't do a main feed episode! I mean, you don't understand what this podcast is. We mine a lot out of a little. That's what we've always done. How is this any different than what we always do? You come in here, you tell us how to run our podcast. I'm shutting this down!

It's almost like you flew into a town. You didn't know anything about the operations going on here. You started demanding. Wait a minute. What did you just say? What did you yell just now? I'm shutting this down. You're shutting it down. Where do you get out? You're shutting down our pot. You don't have the right to do that. What gives you the right to do that? Excuse me. One year ago.

2024 year of our lord oh my god griffin newman does whatever he wants wins a club three poll We have a very productive three hour plus. Pitching session on Untitled Jason Sheridan. Yes. Animated project. We've been pitching around. We worked up a big deck. It's been an exhaustive amount of pitching that. Yes, you're right. There's a bidding war going on for it, too. That town's going crazy. Right. Yes.

But at the end of the episode, before my title, my power seeded, I slammed a bottle of John Taffer's brown butter bourbon onto the table and decreed that Taffer won. Must happen main feed before the end of 2024. Now, some things went awry. Sure. Life got in the way. A lot of life got in the way. We all had a crazy 2024. Scott, you had another child. My podcast co-host.

Had two more children. Two of those. My God. My condolences to him. Which basically amounts to me having one child. I think law of averages. There's enough spillage on that. The scale one is kind of yours. Engagements. Marriage. Are you upset about it? I'm thrown for Jason! I'm thrown for my good friend! But the point is it got away from us. Yeah. Oh, shit. I forgot. I forgot. We did give you the power. I'm telling you what gives you the right.

Of course you have the right. Everything in the world gives you the right. It's past the calendar year, but it's time to make it happen. Tap for one. This is Podcast Rescue. This year, 6,500 failing podcasts will close their doors for good. If things don't change soon, Podcast the Ride of Burbank, California will become just another statistic. In 2017, Mike Carlson, Jason Sheridan, and Scott...

But today, Podcast The Ride has become a fractured mess of tangents, dry microtopics, and barely anything. Podcast The Ride is over $300,000 in debt. With nowhere else to turn, the good boys have agreed to bust open the books, pull back the main feed, and do a topic the whole audience can agree on. Far Rescue. Podcasts are a science and no one understands podcast science.

Griffin Newman. I don't embrace excuses. I embrace solutions. Griffin is renowned to all the good boys for having a more successful Patreon than theirs. You've already served this story five times. It's got bacteria on it. This is Taffer 1. Wow. Oh my god. You seized your power. It's happening. Disneyland's new turnstiles are out the door. They are trash now. And we are now in the long disgust.

Bar Rescue, a.k.a. The Taffer Soad, a.k.a. Taffer One. My God, the main branding that you, Griffin, brought to the table. Wow. I mean... I'm freaked out. I'm pretty jostled. I came with page after page of notes about the turnstiles. We didn't even get to say that they're actually tap styles. We didn't even get that term out there.

But I guess now we're talking about different styles of taps in bars that John Taffer rescues. Taff styles is what we're talking about. Now this episode's become all about Taff styles. The bar styling. Now some listeners... And perhaps these people overlap with the folks who think I should never be on this podcast. I'm gonna say they exactly do, yes.

It seems like the type. Have long seemed to stand in opposition to the very idea of Taffer warranting an episode, let alone one that I am forcing through. People are coping with some people, certain. people are certain very vocal people are coping with a lot right now. Not only is it you, they also maybe were like, I was kind of excited about turnstiles. Right. And now you've barged in. Right. They were hoping Taffer Club 3 no guest 15 minute mini-sode.

instead you are getting main feed as you declare that to happen using the established club three power because And keep this in mind, if you are a Club 3 member and a Club 3 guest at the same time, you, much like Daniel Day-Lewis Lincoln, Clothed in immense power! I don't know if that's the exact quote. I always go for clothed in immense power. Yes, he's very...

No, no, no. No. We're on the world stage now. No, no, no, no. I'm Abraham Lincoln. Only he knows. Only he figured out the real voice. Now, I want to settle something because I understand this is a sensitive time. Yeah. A lot of talking about Taffer is talking about facing our own depression, right? I think John Taffer, more than anything, is a depression warrior. I think Bar Rescue is a show about depression.

Sure. And so I'm just going to give some hard truths right now to the audience. Oh, my God. People who are locked in and excited for turnstiles going, oh, finally, theme park content. Yeah. They're getting back into the theme park minutia. And now it's being interrupted by Taffer on main feed with my least favorite recurring guest. I got bad news for you.

You need to adjust to the marketplace. This is no longer a theme park podcast. It hasn't been a theme park podcast in a long time. Wow. You have to rebrand, much like Corporate Bar. Needed to let go of its pirate dreams. Look at their clientele. Look at the clientele of the show. They don't even want, they aren't even theme park people anymore. You have to adapt to the times. Look at the neighborhood surrounding Forever Dog Studios.

Right there. Universal Studios is closed, sure, but much only one. One theme park. measly theme park 20 bars universal bar and grill is right there this podcast needs to adapt to relate to bars each bar a dirtier or flipping concept than the last. Do you think if you drop John Taffer off the back of a plane with a parachute and landed him onto this. We did it actually physically if you hired someone like

Kidnap John Taffer, swat his home. I don't want any part of this. Wink, wink. I want enough deniability that I had anything. Trank darts. I bought the plane. Multiple trank darts. Elephant grade, right? Yeah. Yo, yes. Yes, sure. It takes a lot to bring him down. Get him in a cargo ship, drop him off with a parachute. He lands on this block. Do you think he ejaculates immediately?

seeing the amount of bar rescuing he could do within 15 steps. Here in the Lancashire, yeah. Right? No, yeah, there are some bars, and the bars do seem in dire need of rescuing, yes. I also, I think another observation he would make is... They do the show. They all live in Burbank. town yeah look how many colleges you've got accidental you've got glendale community

LA City College or something is right there. Woodbury University. And they aren't servicing Woodbury University whatsoever. Talking about theme parks kind of sometimes. Boys, I know the theme park. Podcast stream has been nice. But it's just that. It's a dream and it's time to wake up. This needs to be a podcast about underage drinking. Look at your surroundings. I just, you don't, it's easy for you to come in here and say that, but I promised my dead husband.

that I would start a theme park podcast and that I would keep it about, and I'd keep his belongings around here in memory of him. Let me ask you a question. You think your dead husband would be happy to see you being a big success? That is what he always said he wanted for me. And let me ask you another question.

Your husband ever go to college and have some beers when he shouldn't have? Sneak into bad bars? Yes, of course. That's how I met him. We were both in a bar at 15. I think he'd be smiling. I think he'd be looking down at us and smiling if he saw what this podcast could become. Okay, I'm going to work with you. I want to believe you. I'm going to work with you on this.

We're going to do an episode about John Tafford. God damn it. One week later, Scott reinstated Podcast the Ride as a theme park podcast. Podcast the Ride has since been canceled. Six weeks later, the podcast was canceled. John saddled it with an unusable premise. The full-length New Turnstiles episode becomes the only podcast to get negative listeners.

Kettle One pulled their sponsorship. I realized it was doing nothing for them. Kettle One's been keeping this pot afloat for years. People don't know that. John's major suggestion was to light the logo from underneath. It draws the eye! That's something they're doing now! Get with the times. It's the 2010s. This podcast needs a butt funnel.

you need to encourage listeners to touch each other there are so many odd like weird little elements like that all those phrases all is like draw the eye and stuff. that like come and go over the years i think like i went back and watched the very first one And there was so much talk about hidden cameras, I feel like, in 2000. In the episode of Bar Rescue you're talking about? Yeah, yeah. Was that the premise then is that we're putting hidden cameras around?

so that he can do the recon. But then at some point it clearly became they have the most produced reality show cameras in the world in the bar for decades. five hours where we are not hidden anymore. Yeah, no, I think that's all. Believe it or not, I think some of this might be constructed. I don't know that it's fully. I think some of this might be kayfabe. I mean, my favorite.

I'll say this. My favorite kayfabe moment is like in a more... recent episode for a bar called sack down in Sacramento sack town yes okay Maybe we should call this podcast. I hear that kind of thing is doing really well these days. All right. Well, I'm open to it. So this isn't like Old Town Sacramento. It's very touristy area.

How many colleges? A lot of colleges around. What's the median income? Women! Well, okay. Now, here's the thing, though. It's a touristy area, but it's a guy who's an ex-cop and funneled all his money. into making a massive sports bar. filled with signed jerseys and memorabilia and it is not doing well because he keeps insisting you don't know if this is a sports town

And Taffer's like, it's not. But the funniest moment is. Wait, does he mean all of Sacramento isn't? In terms of like versus like a Chicago with a million sports bar. that's strange though somebody people like sports he's gonna judge the entire city that no one likes sports in all of sacramento so this is a real touristy area and there's a lot they say there's a lot of of farm-to-table restaurants popping up. Come on. So this is all his thing, but I haven't even gotten to the recon.

is they go in with all the people and Taffer does it himself with his guest T-Pain. Oh, I have seen this episode. Taffer and T-Pain put on plain black baseball cap. walk in and walk right by the owner who goes like welcome to our very usually quiet bar and then later in the episode they're confronting him he's like I didn't even see him come in. And... Tavern T-Pain are...

Pretty recognizable. Tefer is a giant. He's a giant. He is a large. Yeah, even if you don't know who he is, you would notice when the giant. I'm going to go one step beyond this. He is the single most physically distinctive man alive. Part of this episode is going to be drilling down into why all four of us felt compelled to do this episode. Yeah. I think we're going to have to break down because this isn't a bar rescue episode. This is a John Taffer episode.

Why are we fascinated with this man? Part of it is no one in history has ever looked like him. Yeah. If Shredder created Tolka Rezar and put Jon Taffer next to the two of them, he would look right. They would be three scary guys that could beat up the Ninja Turtles. Can you imagine a NECA Ultimate Taffer? yes i could oh geez now that would get my b in the neck of game all of a sudden um all the different variations casual taffer chef wear d color scheme taffer uh yeah uh uh no the taffer

Taffer's Tavern website, John Taffer and his furry friend with just a casual dress shirt and one of his dogs. I'm a nice guy, too. I have furry friends. I don't scream at him. He'd run away. With his rescue pup, Bentley. That's nice. I'm just imagining John Taffer singing the Sarah McLachlan part in the SPCA commercial. In the arms!

I have an angel! They're dying! They're dying every day! You are right that it's one of the immediate things I think that locked me into the Taffer universe the first time I stumbled across Bar Rescue is like... Is this show actually pretending in the first five minutes of the episode that everyone is surprised when he walks through the door? Despite there being like fucking sitcom lights.

Like 20 cameras. Angles. Coverage. Movement. Camera movements. Yes. Not like zooms. Going into the back rooms. A camera went into the kitchen already. Tracks. A camera's in the accountant's office. Right. And as you said that he can walk in with a hat and be like, oh, I'll have chicken fingers, please. And you're just like, even if you don't know what John Taffer looks like. In a world where you're pretending these people haven't all signed NDAs and likeness waivers, they begged him to come.

Still, if that guy walks into a bar, every single person turns around and goes. How does someone look like that? A giant man walked in. A giant, unique man walked in. He even says a word. Yeah. Can I say my taffer resemblance? I might have said this on the show before. And by the way, I want to back up a little and talk about it.

our history with Taffer. I think that might be important to state in case people are really like... what's going on why is this yeah an episode started and now it's about the guy from barring and that's for the best no one's making you listen if you want to hang out and enjoy those customers didn't pay You didn't get him upgraded! You didn't get him behind the second gate! They're freeloaders! I've always thought that Jon Taffer looks like...

If you look up, not the cartoon character, but look up Governor Ratcliffe Disneyland. Oh, yes. The villain from Pocahontas. Specifically the walk around. Specifically the walk around. And if you imagine him without... pigtails and colonial garb without his big purple hat just put the walk around Ratcliffe in modern clothes in big billowy clothes I think that... And you've got to get rid of his, like... mustache proper but then you leave kind of the like unshaven nature

and he's got the big lips. He's got the big angry pouty lips too. Can you see it? He's a little bit like Denver. I'm going to throw another one out. I think he kind of looks Like the handsome ogre played, voiced by Jon Hamm in Shrek Forever After. If you guys want to Google Jon Hamm. Now, in the universe of Shrek, this is supposed to be the hunkiest ogre imaginable.

Yeah, okay. There's a little bit of a... Brogan? The name is Brogan. Brogan. Right? There's a little bit of a... Yeah, yeah. Just kind of the most face and head you've ever seen, but also like skull, neck, and shoulders all being one. Yeah. There's a, oh my God, there's a side character in the first Despicable Me that Aaron said that he looks like and this is going to drive me crazy.

Who is it? I put in an accountant. I don't think it's someone with a mundane job. Is it a lawyer? Yes. Wait, I think so. What is this character's name? Oh, it's in the TV trope. Oh, God. Here, this guy. Does anyone know who this is? Oh, no. There's some half resemblance. Yeah, yeah. I'm sorry. I don't know Despicable Me well enough. Anyway, first things first.

Which animated character does Jon Taffer resemble the most? I'm glad we're getting past this. I think I texted this to you guys recently. But the realization that his birthplace is Great Neck, New York. When he is perhaps the owner of the world's greatest neck. If we're talking greatest as in most, does anyone have more neck? Great as in mass. That's the home of Andy Kaufman, is it not? I think that's where Andy... Two of her greatest performance artists.

Right. The ability to walk into a room and make people question reality. Yeah, yeah. Kind of a real life Tony Clifton who was stuck that way. That's another resemblance. Is he, is John Taffer an alter ego? of another more like a nice figure who we've never gotten to meet. And he's playing the long haul. There's a nice, meek little guy operating that suit. It's great, Nick.

That's New York City suburbs, like Long Island area? Nassau County, Long Island. Yes, North Shore. Yes. All right, that explains. yeah that kind of unlocks a lot of the screaming what about the voice you get it better now um

So let's talk a little bit about how we got here. I think it's a voice we've been doing a lot. I want to say... that Mike was the first but I think it was one of those that we it like spoke to it like caused us all to like oh that is a shared interest we didn't know we have I think we've all watched the show and enjoyed the show and enjoyed the explosive presence of this man who comes in and screams at bars until they change their name and then...

possibly change the name back three weeks later so I think this bit was happening for a long time there was plenty of shut it down I know one that really lingered was the thing you're obsessed with Mike where he yells about the guy's wife Yes, she tells Harold at the Scottsdale Comedy Club, this is why your first wife left you. This is why your first wife... He goes, I'm going to be... I re-watched it. He goes, I'm going to be rough with you.

This is why your first wife left you. I'm sure someone on the Reddit will be able to carbon date the first time it came up in conversation. I'd love to know. I feel like I heard you guys all in real time realize. that you shared the interest in Taffer. And I think pretty soon after that, I messaged and said, I too am obsessed with Taffer. It wasn't a, I need to do this episode with you as much as a, I endorse the idea that this should be a full-fledged episode.

Yes, you were supportive of that regardless of participating. I do think there's something here. And I think it falls into some of my favorite PTR bits. The ability to like drill down into the couple of conversational verbal go to's of a character and apply that to different subjects. Right. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. The sort of Kathy Bay. like oh boy late shift thing right which is where it helps me I think work out aggression in a way maybe that's true maybe like us all fairly meek men

Maybe, like, getting to live in a Kushnik or a Taffer for a little bit, like, helps, like, get some of the inner anger gunk out. Right. I don't know. This is maybe too inside. The Kathy Bates character from... late shift is that your favorite character to perform on podcast oh yeah I can I feel like I can get lost in that yeah sure have you have you dug down in her recently choice award-winning role of matlock

Now, Jason, I've heard you're exploring CBS's Malad. You've been negotiating to watch one episode. Let me tell you, I didn't know that was her. I only saw the billboards for Far Away. And the other night you said to yourself, you tap Jane, you go, who is this fresh face discovery? I only saw the ads. And then Jane last night was like, oh, Kathy Bates just won a big award. And I looked it up. I was like, oh, my God, she's Matlock. I was just saying.

Who is going to fill Andy Griffith? I sincerely would say who is going to fill Andy Griffith's shoes. Did you say that out loud to Jane and then did you say who's Andy Griffith? Please go back to bed. Your sleeping cat flies across the room like don't wake daddy.

You said that in like an alma mater speech at your high school. Yeah. I look at you at the student body. Which one of you is going to fill Andy Griffith's shoes? You've been waiting 20 long years. There's a lot of fishing and a lot of cricks to do. Which of you is going to do it? You see a Bouchement in theaters, you go, call me crazy. Call me crazy. But someday. I think she's got it. Look, I've clocked a lot of Matlock and diagnosed murder hours when I was a kid of my grandparents, okay?

Those were the shows they like. And then later on, they're short-lived martial law. I don't know if that was short-lived. I think that was maybe by those standards. I think martial law was a law. I think martial law only lasted eight seasons. By CBS standards, you're right, a failure. Diagnosis murders 30 years or whatever. Jason, do you know the hook of this new Kathy Bates Matlock? Well, I bet she doesn't take any guff.

Mike do you know where I'm going with this you nodded I believe I know now that I say that is she a computer simulation is she AI or something it's some clunky ass convoluted explanation of like she was I'm gonna say I'm gonna say this very quickly because I also haven't watched it but the day it premiered and the show seems to be doing very well yeah it seems like it she won a critics choice award she got up she said this isn't just big for me it's big for

Network broadcast television. So she and Tim Allen are saving network TV. Shifting gears is going wild. That's what I read. So Matlock, old folksy lawyer, right? Gentile folksy lawyer. Yeah. They announced Kathy Bates. Everyone goes, oh, the hook is just. gender swap matlock we've been here before then the first episode premieres and i see on deadline the shocking twist at end of matlock premiere

Oh, my God. And listeners, skip ahead if you don't want to hear. If you know Matt Locke's spoilers, Jason, cover your ears. So if people have watched any amount of this show, they know what the twist is at the end of the first episode.

Oh, OK. There is a there is a conceit twist from the get go. Whoa. That was not in the marketing. He told me this and I can't remember. I believe the conceit is. Oh, Kathy, I'm folks. I'm out. I'm just an old lady. I don't know what I'm doing. Then you find out that she had a close relative, maybe a son. who died due to an opioid addiction. And the law firm that she's working for represented the Sackler analogs in this universe.

And she's like fucking trying to get in from the inside and tear this whole fucking place down. Oh my God. It is opioid crisis revenge Matlock with Kathy Bates using this cover of being like, I'm on a CBS procedural. I'm taking all these fuckers down. Was she not a lawyer before? I don't know. She's just an angry mom. But I'm like, there's maybe a little bit of like much Nick.

In the matlock. Do you know what I'm saying? Kush, Kushnik. Kushnik, sorry. Close enough. Even I couldn't place it for a second. Kushnik. It's very funny you say that because in the... First or second episode of the new hit show that I have watched all of. Dr. Odyssey. Of course. Spoiler alert. Listeners. Dr. Odyssey is the show about Joshua Jackson. playing a doctor on a very high-end cruise ship.

He's the head of medicine. But is he really, or he's playing one on a cruise ship? The character is genuine. Okay, all right. Because he's a false doctor on a cruise ship. He's just saying the role of a robot. I see, I see. Don Johnson's the captain? Don Johnson's the captain. And there's love boat, like, guest star rules. So, like, Rachel Dratch is on one. Uh, uh, oh, God, the guy from A Serious Man.

Michael Starbarg? No, the other one. Richard Kind? No, keep going. All right. How many serious men can you name? Fred Malamud is on one. But the twist at the end of... an episode is Dr. Odyssey reveals He did all this amazing charity work all around the world. But then he was working at a hospital in Massachusetts where he was patient zero for the novel coronavirus. What? And he spent a lot of months.

In isolation, like until they could get it. The number one first person to get it? He was number one. It was Dr. Odyssey. And is Dr. Odyssey his real name? No, the name of the ship is the Odyssey. His real name is Dr. Wuhan. I might say he invented the virus himself. He was patient zero. So that's the...

These big twists. That's why. Are you still watching Dr. Odyssey? Well, it's not come back from its mid-season break-in. But you've seen all of it? I've seen all of it. Jason has been down in the dumps recently for that reason. That reason alone. Yeah. I want to amend an earlier statement Jason sure

Tim Allen, Kathy Bates, and Jason Sheridan are single-handedly keeping network broadcast television alive. Very good. Yeah. How many people are going to start? And I was recommended Dr. Odyssey by this podcast, and it has been. I finally understand COVID in a way I never did before. This is now a podcast about recommending network podcast television shows. Recommending things with approximately...

200 times our audience. It has not been a podcast about theme parks in years. Let's get some eyes on these shows. If we became a Shifting Gears recap podcast, that's when the money would roll. Yeah. And that is when all of America's most important political figures would start appearing on our show. They would have to be on our show. You'd get the entire cabinet.

supporting cat denning sean william scott like these are these aren't like spring chickens you know what these aren't fresh new fish they are not fresh new faces they're pros Was that also when you saw Kathy? Now, who's that on that billboard? Is that a spring chicken or more of an autumn chicken? Taver is, just for me, one of the great Podcast the Ride bit run structure guys.

And you'll never devote a full episode to him, but sometimes you'll go into a sidebar of like, imagine Taffer commenting on this subject. Or this situation. Yeah. And it always makes me happy. And part of what makes me happy with it is that, and I'm going to join you guys in this. The pressure's on now. The four of us at the table. None of us.

Do an even reasonably good Taffer impression. I think that's fair. You have fun doing a take on Taffer. Yeah. There's a game to how to do a Taffer. But like you had James Adomian on here. He does a great Taffer. It's an actual impression. Very much illustrated what a real one is. Yeah. All four of us, I think, are hobbyists In a hoarse voice? Making extreme statements. What the fuck are you talking about? It's very well observed!

I understand what great neck is as opposed to just general New York. This is very technical approximation. You want to have a perspective on the character! Dana Carvey George Bush! It was not necessarily accurate! Accuracy isn't as funny sometimes! You pick one or two things and you...

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For me, I have to give my knowledge of, at least at the start, I will give it to Mike. It is tastemaker roll. Like, excuse me. Elaborate, please. I like what he's saying, whatever it is. Griffin dropped the bottle at Mike the Tastemaker. This place has fallen apart! Bottle's on the floor! Secure my water bottle! He's trying to compliment me. I am. Sometimes when Mike, at least in the past, Mike would get really into something and like talk about it and show it to you.

So I remember being over at your apartment and you're like, have you seen this show? And it was... found it either on demand or at the time it was like 80 percent of spike tv's programming yeah and

You make Tastemaker for you. That's what you're saying. I don't know. I don't know. I'm just saying, I've looked at... I don't want not to go on this side, Trey, but I've looked at a lot of numbers involving a lot of puppets and polls lately, and I think Mike the Tastemaker might be... a questionable term.

Big old pin in that one. Yeah. Oh, no. That's the entire episode unravels, if that's where we go. Pin for later. You've got Madam Sins to answer for yourself. Pin for later. All right. I will break it down. I trust my friend's taste. We usually all pincy eye to eye. Hey, don't you look to defend this. I agreed with him.

Don't let him bully you. That's what I do on the fucking show. You're going to tell me to not do the thing that I do. What does that leave me with? People love my suggestions. I got to say, Scott's going full physical with his performance. Yeah, yeah. Apologies, I've been banging on the table. Face red, arms flailing. I'm trying to surf the levels on that Zoom. It's a nightmare. They know what they're getting into. It's a Tapper episode.

Everyone trying to lean back from the mic. We needed an engineer. We should have hired an engineer for this episode. This guy's doing Sonic the Hedgehog recordings in here. What did that? What the fuck did that mean? That reference was too obscure, even for a currently relevant piece of IP. I'll explain it later on with the invades. We'll put a pin in that too. Okay, second pin. He made a naughty joke he shouldn't have made. Oh, no.

I will say, though, I showed Jane a couple bar rescues last night because she had never seen the show. So I showed her. She wanted to see. I said, oh, there's some in the San Fernando Valley. There's a couple in Burbank. so we watched some of those and she Got it immediately. She was immediately on board.

Yeah, she understood the hypnotic. Did she say who was the tastemaker who showed you this show first? Somebody with incredible taste must have made his taste go in front of you. I'm just... Olivia Rodrigo concert, baby. I guess I'll just be the server waiter goes like, I'm not taking this. And then storms out. They're like, I don't need this. No, I like it. Yells back at Taver. I like the compliments. Do you? Do you?

Jason and Mike, or Scott and Mike, excuse me, remember your first exposure to Taffer, how you locked in. Because I'm genuinely struggling to think of... when he hit my radar. I was no big fan. All right, I will give some shine to Mike the Tastemaker, I guess, because I think it was the thing I just watched a bunch of on a plane once, and that was kind of all. I wasn't... really watching it regularly. And I guess it is only post Mike the Tastemaker bringing it up and it becoming a runner.

that now it became like, well... defaults at lunchtime maybe I throw on the all bar rescue channel on Pluto which is just great if you don't know about it Pluto TV has the right I love every Pluto TV channel doesn't matter what it is but they have such

I love blocks. It's like Nick at Night when I was a child. It's great for cheaters. That I can flip between all cheaters and all bar rescue. My God, what a world we live in. Two Star Trek channels. I discovered a Pluto channel the other night that is... Cheers plus Frasier. Wow.

And I was scanning what was coming up. I love Cheers. And I was like, oh, it's kind of later season episodes. I prefer the earlier ones. Let's see what's coming up for the next couple hours. Going totally chronologically. Presumably just does all 11 seasons of Cheers in order in a row. Which begs the question, are they alternating with Frasier days? Or is this channel 11 seasons of Cheers in a row?

And then like 11 seasons of Frasier and then back to the start. That's like a full shift of format essentially. Right. Like every week. Right. Yeah. Is it every other week between the two shows running in their entirety? I also know I've enjoyed Cheers when I've seen it, but I'm no expert. And that's why I'm just going to throw it out. If anybody else has any thoughts on what.

Taffer would say to the gang from Cheers. Does anything come to mind as what he might criticize? I took some notes. I was doing some digging in some different areas. I didn't quite make a research fort, but I tried my best. We decided this was not a Spacey-esque...

structured episode where we're each coming with one piece. Right. We're all just trying to dig around and see if we found some interesting stuff. I listened to a couple Taffer podcasts. I was trying to get some more backstory. His own podcast? Oh, yeah. I listened to one episode of each.

of his multiple podcasts he had two podcasts that have both ended he just signed a deal last week for two new podcasts that will launch later this year oh my god but he's in between podcasts uh-huh so I listened to an episode of both I also listened to Taffer on

Rob Lowe's Literally podcast. Wow. And Taffer on the Idiot podcast. The former Nerdist. I listened to some of that as well. And I think it was in the Rob Lowe episode. I actually had the best meat in it, but I just need to throw this out. Rob Lowe was asking how he got started, how he made the transition to TV rather. And he said, well, I was friends with a bunch of the people at Paramount because I used to work with Paramount.

And Rob Lowe said, what do you mean? And he said, you know, they had restaurants and stuff. So I would consult on like Bubba Gump. I was instrumental in Bubba Gump, which you guys knew, right? Yeah, I think we were there with James. But then him bringing it up as, I worked with Paramount for many years. Right. I was like, Taffer must have fucking consulted on Cheers at some point.

oh he didn't say it and Lowe kind of cut him off once he said Bubba Gump he was like Bubba Gump does Tom Hanks get a piece of that like then he just jumped onto that right sure as we might but yeah you're right you found a because you remember the corporate family paramount restaurant chains? 50-50 shot Taffer consulted on Cheers at some point. Did he have anything to do with the Cheers airport bars with the animatronics that got sued? I'm just like...

We need to follow the trail on this. I couldn't immediately find any results. But he didn't say, I worked on Bubba Gump. He said, I worked with Paramount for years. What other Paramount restaurants exist? The Quark's Bar in Las Vegas. Oh. Oh, my God. Here we go. But that seems like the kind of shit he would hate. You're dressed up like space people. You look ridiculous. I know he's not a Star Trek fan because I listened to his audio book about conflict.

By the way, I don't want to cut you off. We're all bringing so much to the table that I do want to remind you, for the runtime, I think it's important to remember that this is. Taffer one. This is Taffer one. Because I think we're all going to get through, you know, like a tenth of what we're bringing to the table. The power of conflict. I had no idea the power of conflict was on the table. Oh, my God. Skip your mind and get the results you want.

Scott, this is why I texted last night. I said, any guidelines for structure? You said free-for-all. Everything's on the table. We're not attempting to get through all of it, but everything was on the table. He uses The famous Star Trek episode, City on the Edge of Forever, to prove that conflict is good. Whoa. And he says, even though I'm not a Trekkie, he explains that he's not a Trekkie. He uses that episode, very popular, famous original series episode, to prove.

I think it's because a war happened. A war doesn't happen and then things go bad. So it proves that the conflict... is good. Military conflict is good. We should be in every war. We're not in enough wars. Wasn't Roddenberry's whole thing like

sci-fi show with as little conflict as possible? Yes, correct. That was sort of his life's mission? Yes, a peaceful future, yes. Yeah, the vibe is very polite. Yes, there's no money, there's no conflict. They found it hard to write Next Generation because he put rules on the people.

cannot have conflict and then he dies and then the show gets a little better yeah like the rules loosen a little bit for what the characters can do no one wants peace in the space federation he also explains that great music has come out of conflict Go on. Including the Rolling Stones, Fleetwood Mac, and even the Beach Boys. He addressed the Beach Boys in his book? Yes. He talks about how the Beach Boys had conflict and they created wonderful music.

Although, I think the music gets worse the more... Their commercial prospects go down as they're fighting more. I don't know if that's exactly... Yeah, I don't know. That's a mixed bag. But Fleetwood Mac, for sure. Can't argue that. We all know that he started as a drummer too, right? I have. I do know that. I do have. A photo in front of me of him in his band days. Here is a black and white photo of kind of a...

Little bit of a retro throwback greaser guy, young John Taffer. Like a Bauman, a John Bowser Bauman. He is very Bowser from Shanana-esque, I would say. and he in fact described this band that he was the drummer of as being a little bit like... The Stray Cats. He is after my heart now.

Now, he looks... Conflict of... Sorry. Podcast of the Ride thrives on conflict. That's why you have one who doesn't like the stray cats. And the others, I don't know how they feel, but it's fun to fight them at the stray cats. You've got to get on board. You've got to rock this town. Tonight! Not tomorrow. Not in five years. I don't embrace excuses about rocking this town. I embrace solutions. I embrace the rocking of the town.

that photo he is looking pretty fit and thin it is alarming how much his neck is still twice as wide as his head it's an unbelievable it's very long in this this this shows you that the neck is quite long right yes yes it is it is pro wrestler neck Yes. It's wild. But I'm like in that photo, it's like he looks kind of being Polish. Right. You're like the neck is not muscle. It is not fat. That is just his basic construction. He's sort of built like a popsicle stick man with arms and legs.

It's what made me good at observing what happens at bars because my neck allows me to get up above where other people could see. I could see everything that's going wrong. I could see all the roaches. I could see the bugs in the bottles. Once the bottle's lit from underneath. But I can't... stole him i'm too tall somebody's balls gotta go down and do it uh in the early uh credits opening credits of bar rescue what

You see the show change a lot over the years. The narrator in the opening credits is so reserved. and doesn't really find the full this voice yes yeah but they say something there's a moment in the credits where it's like The bar signs from the height of the stools to where your eyes first go on the menu. And I'm like, I do not remember menu eyelines. I see it. I don't remember it. On a menu, they'll have like a little thing in a rectangle and they want your eye to go to that.

to order that because that's where they usually make the most money. And I don't remember if I learned that from John Taffer or from one of my other restaurant guys. yeah such ass you're never happy with just one type of guy yeah Robert Earl I don't know I mean I shouldn't say my guys but yeah they dropped that that was like a subtlety in the early opening that just kind of

Just showing people having full meltdowns in the beginning for a while. They use that. Slamming windows and. Yeah. Yeah. They use that voiceover guy for the John Taffer podcast. Yes. Which I love. So he still has an intro that's very Bar Rescue-ish. Is it called Noah? excuses. That was the first one. And then I think the second one was just called the John Taffer podcast. Yes.

And he has like interviews with people like Guy Fieri or Guy Fieri and Kristen Chenoweth. The one I listened to was is entertainment is live entertainment coming back with Kara Top. Yes, Carrot Top's on that. It's a lot of COVID era stuff. It's a real fucking time capsule in a way that's a little upsetting. I listened to, there's an episode of that show that's the first episode of 2020.

2020 is going to be your year. Do not embrace excuses. He was talking to the virus. He's talking to everyone. And it's just Taffer going like, I'm telling you this year, anything you want to do, you can accomplish it. On that show in particular, he does a little bit of NPR voice, which is very unnerving. Yes, he does. Yeah, he's like another guy on the podcast. He's trying to prove that, like, I have another mode. I'm actually smart.

Very together and very calm, you see. 2020, I got great feelings about this. The economy's in a great place. I think divisiveness is down. He's got a sidekick on the show. Yes. Jamie, who he goes like, Chase, you know what I'm talking about here? Is it Chase? Is that his name? It's not. Or is it Corey? It might be Corey. I think it's Corey. And he goes, Corey, do you know what I'm talking about here?

It feels like people have calmed down. The era of peak divisiveness is gone. We're all starting to get a lot. January 2020. He goes, people just had Thanksgiving. I think families aren't fighting as much. I watched the Golden Globe. Not too much politics. But in this very quiet voice, he's like, I'm telling you, I think everyone's going to calm down in 2020. My good pal, my good friend, the doctor, got a great job on a cruise ship called the...

It's going to work out fantastic for him. He just caught a little bug and then he's getting on that trip. Once he works out this cough, it's a billion dollars for this guy. I listened to something in the start of 2023, one of those. And he is in the same way you're discussing where he's like everything's going to be good in this year. He starts talking about the great success.

success of Taffer's Tavern and how many locations they have and how Las Vegas is coming. He's talking about it in January 2020. It's unbelievable. Las Vegas is coming soon. We're rejecting franchise. applications we can't we can't handle all these requests I also I looked at there is an episode that is October 28th I believe of 2020 that is like the state of businesses with President Donald J. Trump. Oh, yes. I was like, fuck this.

This feels like maybe the most fruitful thing to dig into. And I actually don't think I can listen to 45 minutes of this without having a nervous breakdown. Oh, yeah. Trump one week before the 2020 election with Taffer explaining how America is coming back. And it's a lot of like, and I need you to promise. the president because we need you we need you we need minimum wage kept low so these lazy people

Don't get too comfortable. Well, he addresses his political beliefs. Yes. While he does it on the podcast, but he addresses political beliefs in the power of conflict. He explains that he is a fiscal conservative, but he's very socially liberal.

he supports all the different people I grew up in the rock and roll scene you can't be a conservative in like rock and roll music not only that I mean like the big like sort of formation of the of the John Taffer kind of like legacy is him becoming the manager of the true

running the troubadour for years, right? Yes. And he always likes to underline that was the black flag, dead Kennedys, Adam Antface. They are past the, yeah, the troubadour famous nightclub in LA, been around since the 70s, or really like peaked culturally in the 70s. With, like, gentle singer-songwriters. Right. Like, the...

birthplace of James Taylor. He talked about doing an anniversary event where they convinced Ron Statt and Jackson Brown to come back. But Taffer, failed rock drummer, was overseeing all these early punk guys. which just feels like the most incompatible vibe. even more so than the singer-songwriters. Yeah, he came in not in the early days of Chibura, but in the punk era.

Dead Kennedys and Fear. And was the guy to put the foot down and be like, as he put it, you gotta pay for that steak! And he said all the audiences would fight. The Fear fans wanted to... crush the ants. They wanted to crush the ants. Oh, that referring to Adam Ant, because new wave people hated punk people. So they'd all, yeah, yeah, they'd be fighting night after night. I'd have her talking to Lee Ving.

who was the lead singer of fear is insane to me i can't even know right but it doesn't make sense i could hear Tev are definitely kicking off a fear style. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, he could have been in a punk band too. I wonder if he thought about it then. The socially liberal thing feels like it

starts there where it's like, look, as long as you're bringing them in, I don't care. If it's good for business, I don't care. You have to imagine he's seeing these bands every night and being like, I don't fucking get this shit. But if they respect me and they sell tickets, I don't care. If they aren't being overboard too.

They also, he's name-checking a lot of these. He's done a couple interviews of this nature and like, wow, just incredible groundbreaking punk bands and you were around. And he's like, yes, but you know who was really great? You know who I really loved? The Neck. When those guys, when they kicked into Maestrona, let me tell you that, the whole building shook. that bass line there was magic in that bass line so my Sharona was his favorite

The Knack's good, but that's just a funny... Just a funny... Of all the ones to shout out, like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's all well and good, but the Knack now. My Sharona. My Sharona. Do-do-do-do-do. Do-do-do-do. Do-do-do-do. What were you going to say, Jason? I was going to say, was the Troubadour before or after another LA landmark Barney's Beanery? Well, he...

Started at, I think, I don't know what open when, but his first job was bartender at Barney's Beanery, which is also in West Hollywood. There's a Burbank location, but the original's in West Hollywood. This is notable as these... bar used to be like this was kind of the end of Route 66. Yes. Where this bar was. And then eventually they...

either open up other locations or franchise, and now they're kind of everywhere. But the first location was in Radiator Springs. Is that right? Barney's Oilery. But I'm glad we're touching on this history because, yeah, so bartender at Barney's Beaner, and he must have kicked him off. He must have done something right because it's still there. Then, like, You saw the troubadour through a big wave of success, then moved to a...

You ever heard of this, Jason? Philadelphia nightclub. This is Delaware County. A nightclub called Pulsations. Anybody know about Pulsations? Yeah, I do. Delaware County is where I grew up. Oh, okay. Gotcha. Delco, they say. Delco, yeah, mayor of Easttown. set there um is

a little friend in there maybe? It does. Do you know about the little friend? It's kind of a big friend. Do you know about the robot friend? I actually don't. This is, this is, pretty wild that his history and I'm sure you know not that we have to justify any connection

to theme parks are the things that we're theoretically supposed to be talking about. We do have a pretty good one here. Taffer maybe ties back to Cheers Airport Bar and Taffer. He might, he might. Certainly ties back to a classic friend of PTR. Yes, yeah. So this nightclub is called Pulsations. It was a sci-fi... nightclub. There was a giant spaceship in it, 27 feet in diameter.

70 lighting systems in it. It would fly over the crowd at an I-beam track. People would cry. I listened to three different podcasts where he described it and said, people, tears in their eyes. They'd try to get on it like Close Encounters. I want to live here forever, they'd say. They want to abandon their families. They didn't know it didn't actually leave. It was so realistic. They leave Terrigar in the dust.

But the main thing is the door would open, dry ice fog, bright lights would blast, and out would come a robot. A robot would come out of the spaceship every night. The name of the robot is Pulsar. And I will let his quote say it. It got so popular that they had a clone built for Rocky IV. This robot that we've talked about, that one robot. Seeko. Seeko. Seeko.

claims Zico was made. I think he's wrong. I don't know what's going on. Taffer does seem to be fabulous in listening to a bunch of different stories. I've noticed every time the telling changes 25%. I heard three podcasts where he said

and then they rented the robot from us and that's the robot in Rocky IV. But then if you look it up, it says the story is that Sylvester Stallone's autistic son encountered a seco and it was like something, it was like... helpful for communication and that's why it's a thing like i here's my take on the story as he's presenting

Found a Seco. Right. And purchased one. Right. Or commissioned one. But like Seco was a thing that was being made for multiple applications. International robotic. Robo. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. International Robotronics. a shop in new york much cooler my guess is that he bought a seco he didn't create it at a nightclub no and then he couldn't have built it and then when stallone put

But Seiko in Rocky 4, he's like, must have taken it from me. But sometimes he's saying they cloned our robot. Sometimes he's saying we rented them the robot. Yeah. Oh, so sometimes he claims that the robot in Rocky...

Four is. I heard two separate podcasts where he said that. That's weird. This one says it was so popular. That's a Philadelphia connection, right? That does make sense. That adds up. Maybe I saw it. Now, refresh my memory. I know we talked about this on the show. I think it was in the episode about Smart One. Seiko had an Epcot connection am I making that or did we why did we end up talking about Seiko in relationship to in the special with Danny

Thomas? Danny K. or Danny Thomas? Danny K. Which Danny? Don't know. I don't remember how we got there. We ended up with Monami Seiko, the single that Seiko had. That's right. YouTube recommended to me last night. Okay, okay. I mean, but I, anyway, it's sometimes his name is Zico, cut out of Rocky IV, but Taffer claims- Well, now cut out of Rocky IV. Out of some, yes, yeah, yeah. As the final cut or whatever. Yeah, yeah. But says Taffer- Do you have the toy?

I have the toy. Oh, I have the Super 7 one. Right, yeah. Do you remember Jax had a prototype, but it never got released? Oh, right, right, right. They were supposed to do a Seiko and a James Brown. In their second series of Rocky IV specific figures. Oh yeah, because this robot also introduced James Brown in concert. That's a video I watched last night. So there's an unproduced Rocky IV James Brown action figure that was solicited.

That's good. And never actually hit the factory line, unfortunately. Oh, my God. Anyway, so Seiko, according to Tever, and there's video of this. You can watch this on YouTube. Seiko's name in this version was Pulsar, and he came out of a big spaceship. And so says John Tever, Pulsations, it was the greatest nightclub in the world, and I am honored to be part of that history.

The greatest nightclub in the world ever is where you grew up. That's right. Seiko by the, yeah, just confirm it is Danny. K and also Drew Barry. That's why. Met Seiko at the Epcot opening day special. So they needed a little extra robot help, even though that's a robot that would not. stay it up so so really if we want again we don't have to but the justification for talking about him on a theme park podcast is that he you know he's an older man at this point he is probably influenced

chain crap, robot type, touristy garbage stuff that we love. Yeah, I think so. Well, and there's another... a gigantic reason to talk about him, and it is this. I bet you didn't even know that this guy is an imagineer. Let me prove it. Here we go. incredible Christmas basket and also for making me an honorary Imagineer. Thank you, Disney. Done. Did you know that?

I think he's more on topic than a lot of things that we talk about. He is an honorary Imagineer. This is him at his office, and he's got a big basket. It looks like it has an Imagineering shirt in it and mouse ears in it. And, yeah, look, this guy, who has the title at Disney to make that call? for an honorary Imagineer. Just Walt. Only Walt. So the robot, maybe the Walt robot now has that power. Look at this freezer! Feces! Walt's head! It's disgusting! You're not taking care of it!

It's not going to attach it back to his body. You got Walt next to meat. Nothing. You're storing old chicken in there and the bacteria's getting into Walt's nostrils. You let his soul escape to hell. Faces. Nothing about this restaurant says Tomorrowland. It's barely a terrace. It's horrible. Let's keep going with the massive Disney connection. As if we had to prove any further than that this guy's an honorary Imagineer. This guy... Let's quote him the man himself.

I'm a Walt Disney World nutcase. The new Tron ride knocks it out of the bar. Here's him riding the Tron light cycles. He's a nutcase. We haven't even called ourselves that. No. Here's him in... in the Millennium Falcon. Look at that. He goes there all the time. He was at the opening. You know, the opening with Harrison and Hamill. Oh, yeah, yeah, George. Where they got the cue wrong. And, yeah, he's...

Harrison banged on the thing all weird that he was at that. He has photos of that. So I think there's a lot of credentials he has here. He also credits. In general, Walt Disney and all of their operations was being one of his primary areas of inspiration. Walt Disney had an apartment above Disneyland where he would watch the entrance gate.

The turnstiles, you might. The old style turnstiles. They weren't tap styles yet. Anyway, he could see the facial expressions of people entering and exiting the park. Disney was the pioneer of reaction management. He created the human transaction experience. What a way. And then he made transactions twice the price. He invented transactions, Walt Disney. That's what gets him really excited. The mouse and the big whale and the roly coasters. Who cares? It's the transactions.

I had never heard. I've heard a million times about the Disneyland apartment above the firehouse. I'd never heard it referred to as like... Rear windows style. He would watch them and wonder what they were doing. And note the beautiful, beautiful ladies. And hoped that their hubbies were treating them right. Binoculars in one hand, a can of cold Denison's chili in the other, and he's just scooping. I hope that Taffer buys...

the apartment above every single bar he's ever rescued. So I can watch those smiling faces! The reaction management thing. He was getting into it in the Hardwick episode where he was saying, I believe, that he grew up with a very emotionally erratic... To say the least, mother? And then he said, from a young age, I learned reaction management because I had to keep her happy. It wasn't something I even knew I was doing. Then later I realized I have a skill for it.

And then he said to Rob Lowe, we're both in the reaction business. And he goes, what do you mean? He goes, the product we're making, we're not in the business of bars or making movies or TV shows. We're in the business of making reactions. The product isn't the thing we make. It's the reaction that people have to the thing. It's not about making a movie. It's about making a reaction. And then he asked Rob Lowe 20 questions.

about the scene in Tommy Boy where his shirt gets sucked up the pneumatic tube. He goes, that's the funniest thing I've ever seen in a movie. How did you do that? And to sit there in the theater, oh, the reaction you must have gotten. Now, I heard you were on the Doughboys podcast recently. What was the reaction to that like? Yeah, you made quite a reaction there. Here's another thing I like about Taffer.

I always have struggled to find the language to describe what it is I find so fascinating about him. We talk about physical appearance. We've been trying to emulate his voice. But the body language, the movement of the man, right? is so unique. He moves unlike anyone else. The way he floats through a space, just like chest way out. Unless he's floating. Especially for how large he is, right? Like he's just like physically imposing man.

And then he has this sort of very odd, yes, kind of floatiness to him. I think I finally cracked it last night. And I will explain what I mean by this. The way that like a puppet can't make micro expressions, right? Because by design, unless you're putting like significant sort of like mechanics or animatronics or like rigs in there or whatever.

You're basically like a hand puppet where your hand operates the mouth and you can scrunch it a little and try to make it look angry or whatever. Yeah. Like the Muppets, there's a lot of head and neck acting. Because they need to sell the emotions with the full body. And also because like a puppeteer only has two hands. The main one's the head and the mouth. And then like they're usually puppeteering one of the other.

if a character has to use two arms at the same time you have another person just supplying that but very often you have a puppet who has like one of their arms kind of glued to their chest and the other arm is moving really wildly John Taffer's right arm never moves very often sometimes he'll do the full Kermit like arm flap right which requires the second puppeteer but very often one arm is like straight by his side or across his chest or pocket. And he's like doing this.

Where you're just like, man, they're overselling the arm in the head because they have to make this thing look like it's alive. And the way he's talking to anyone, any reaction shot of him listening to someone's troubles is like. Yeah, that's right, isn't it? Like he tilts his head all the way down. The camera can't see my feet. I ain't got to do none of those. Yes. Unlike a puppet, he is flexing every single muscle in his-

face at all times. Like he's always pulling the most extreme expression. It looks like his body is exerting the most effort possible. Like it's worrisome to some degree how much energy he must be expelling. Just when he's talking to somebody about like the scale that weighs the bottles, the drink bottles. And even his like quiet moments where he's trying to show compassion for people. Yeah. And he's like, so you gave up.

You know, and his whole body is just like, it's a rocket about to take off. And his eyebrows are all the way up here and like compassion. That's not how a successful marriage works. You're a good man. I respect you. There's a thing he does. We pegged it early on. When he's talking and he's explaining something, he goes like this. He takes his hand and he goes like this.

and he almost like cups an invisible ball like a basketball he always does this and I don't know why but he's been doing it since the start he goes because it's a good place to pin the puppet arm it's what It seems kind of natural. It's a little natural. He looks human. Right, and then you can put the arm somewhere else to move a different part of the body. He's just, I think what is so engaging about him is just you've never seen a more fully formed specific character like this. Even like...

Joe Pesci in all the Martin Scorsese movies wishes he was this weird and scary when he's talking to somebody. It would be almost too much with him in a movie. Well, here's another thing. You're making me realize it. are dirty, dirty sketch comedy monsters, right? We come from the sketch comedy filth.

Sure. And this is just like an immediately... Bacteria, feces! Right, this is an immediately... fully realized sketch comedy character it's unbelievable you can drop him into any scenario he's got a look he's got a voice he's got five games it's not just one right yes and they all work and they have sub games right where you're like it's that feeling of watching Matt Foley for the first time where you're like holy shit

Wow. He is Chris Farley. Not Chris Farley like vibe whatsoever, but amount of physicality and presence. I think of Matt Foley as kind of being like the pinnacle of like. sketch comedy characterization, right? He lost in the online poll to Stefan. On the NBC, SNL, Twitter. They did a whole brackets. They had all these different voting, and he lost. It was a final two with Stefan and Matt Foley. Let's say this. That's recently pious.

The original Matt Foley sketch, which is the one they did at Second City for years and years and years that Odenkirk wrote that was so honed at that point that it was just like a perfect diamond cut thing, right, is for my money the best thing SNL ever put on.

Might be number one best sketch. I think it's just like the tightest, most perfectly executed, especially with the live element where you're like, the one they got was by all accounts the best it was ever performed. It's lightning in a bottle. And every time I rewatch it, I'm like... Huh, were the other ones not as good? And you watch them and they're all good.

Right. Like there's no like, oh, fuck, they tried it again and it fell. No, they never did. But I know what you mean. That's true. And because they all are kind of the same. Right. Like like like one is a plus plus and then the rest are all like.

b-plus they're all like yeah totally yeah and they'll do other moves and they're funny ones in there but i always think of like oh flipping it to him what do you want to do when you grow up i want to live in a van down by the river i don't remember if he says it or the apple you're like that's the kind of joke you think you get to the fifth time you do the character and they got there in the first one right taffer enters at a first matt foley sketch level

Oh, true. With catchphrases. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You watch the first episode. Anytime I've shown Taffer to someone, they immediately go like, holy shit, he's like this all the time. And then you go. but clearly you must be showing me the best episode. He can't be this good all the time. And Taffer is like, what if every Matt Foley sketch was the first Matt Foley sketch? Wow. Yeah, it is a pretty fully formed.

That first episode. Yeah. It's like all the pieces. How is it different? Is it less aggressive in general? It's a little less of aggressive. The narrator's less aggressive. They are explaining the concept of the show a lot. But only a little. Only a little. And then new stuff comes along later on. I feel like it gets much slicker. And I feel like there's more sponsorships. It's not as good anymore. I hate to bring that in. The newer ones are just, there's something missing. So I...

Bar Rescue is one of the things that I use as a very depressive person. to sort of gauge how my mental health is doing. Where if I find I've been in a three-day hole of watching Bar Rescue on Paramount+, I'm like, oh, I'm going through something. Hmm. But if you're doing a three hour podcast episode about it, you're having the time of your life. And if I'm watching, it's productive. It's for research. But I'm like, there's something I find very comforted.

in watching Bar Rescue. This goes back to my reading of being a show about depression where basically the through line of every episode is that like the people running the bar are really depressed.

And have sort of like stopped giving a shit to some degree or another. Yeah. Or like can't find the will to like do the hard work anymore. Although sometimes they're like, I'm pulling my tits out and they love it. They love to pull their tits out. This is true. They hate when that's robbed from them. I would argue though.

There is perhaps a core sadness. Maybe some depression in there somewhere. I think there's usually some level of sadness. Depression and also no education or no training about how a restaurant works or how a... How to 10 bars. That's a good delineation. It's the sort of like, be fun to own a restaurant or bar. Like almost every bar rescue starts with that energy. Yeah. The backstory for the place is, I thought it'd be fun.

I thought it'd be easy. I got in a business with two people. You know, I didn't know them that well. We were friendly enough at the time. Or I knew them too well. There's always, you always like, not always maybe on every episode, but like the one eye, the Scottsdale. that's the, that's in my mind, the gold standard, but it's everything. Like so many of these episodes have these just sad tragedies just immediately. And it's like,

Harold, this guy, he's a stand-up comic, and he's just so sad. And this guy... sunk a hundred and this other guy sunk $180,000. into this comedy club and was like harold's the face of it and then this guy's just kind of a meek guy and john's yelling at him about like you're emboldening him you're not helping and he's like yeah no i guess so and then like Harold's sister is there and she's crying like...

There's immediately these epic family dramas unfold on these episodes. This is, by the way, why, of course, Paramount was like, we should have him do Marriage Rescue, a show that makes perfect sense on paper because you're like, that is the core of the thing. Of him yelling at depressed people and being like, stop lying. Right. But it is not as fun to see him in Puerto Rico. No. With like one couple. And the other problem with that show, which I'd never watched before.

is like he basically does one check in every 10 minutes and then he's like, I'm sending you out on a challenge. And then they go boogie boarding and he's not with them. And he needs to be over the guy's shoulder with them. Kiss your wife! Give her compliments! You don't stand up on boogie boards! You're laid down on them! And you don't stand up in conversation either! Point out the sunset! Okay, this is a thing I think that comes into the show.

kind of later still pretty early but where it's like there's family dynamics or there's there's husband and wife dynamics yeah and they bring in a counselor or a therapist And for show purposes, that gets wrapped up in five minutes. When that sort of counseling takes. ages and ages. Not when it's me. Not when it's me. Three days. I know a marriage expert and if not I do it myself. That's the thing about marriage expert that it seems to be the selling point seems to be like

Like, I'm a bar expert, but I'm also a marriage expert. You know why? Because I'm in a marriage. Yes. Plenty. Marriage rescue, he does not outsource. to anyone and greater authority than him. He is the guy. He's not around a lot. All the hard conversations funnel through him. The one I watched was the last episode they ever did.

Because it did one season in 2019. A short season. It was only like six episodes. So quickly this wasn't working. Any chance of it coming back was probably killed immediately by the pandemic of like. Yeah. Right. This whole thing is like luxury getaway, whatever. But the one I watched was.

always fertile territory for taffer to take down a yuckster but the other one you're hiding in your bits is a guy who's become addicted to dms on social media and the whole thing is has he crossed the line into the physical though And they keep asking him, have you? And then he with like the biggest Cheshire Cat grin is like, I have never since I met you. Stuck my dick in another woman. And he's like grinning ear to ear. And Taffer's like, you're lying. You're lying in my face. I got a test.

I have a challenge that's going to settle this once and for all. And you're like, holy shit, what does Taffer have up his sleeve? A lie detector test. He just bins in a polygraph test, right? Three questions. Are you in Puerto Rico right now? Yes. Do you DM women on social media? He says no. A thing he has previously already admitted to in the one episode. And then question three is. has crossed into a physical realm with any of those women? Or maybe have you cheated on your wife ever?

And he says no. And the woman holds the printout and she goes, you lied about the cheating question. And he goes, I didn't. I didn't. And he's smiling. And Taffer goes, you're lying. You're lying. He refuses to admit it. The segment just ends. Then they go to another challenge where they're like fucking like on RVs or whatever, like ATV vehicles, like painting rocks or whatever. It's entirely, it's marriages being solved through amenities that are just at the resort. Correct.

You're having a lot of trouble. You aren't communicating. You know what you got to do? You got to make your own pizza. Yes. But then he's not there for the pizza. No, he doesn't do that. He'll say that in voiceover and then you'll just. see someone else be like, hello, I'm a pizza expert. I got a nice lunch scheduled. I'm going to the way better resort that didn't give us a deal up the coast.

Pieces of popular food introduced in Italy and perfected in America. The end of the episode. Using a very hot oven. I guess I have this segment. That is like they have to renew their vows and decide whether or not the marriage is rescued or whether they're giving up on it. And the woman like gives like reads this tearful written speech about like I am willing to. and forgive you for the mistakes and for cheating on me.

And then he just goes like, thank you for for your tolerance or something like that. He the whole episode never admits that he has cheated on her, even though he clearly has. He denies it the entire time. And then when she says, I forgive you, he goes, I accept.

And I'm like, and the show ends like marriage rescue. Cool. Like, look, as long as it happens within the three days, it's close enough for me. Right. But like, yes. So what I was going to say here is I'll go down these like three day rabbit holes of. depression watching the show where i think i'm like i feel something in taffer being like snap out of it

You gotta get to work. You end up with an angel and devil on your shoulder. Devil is loud taffer. Angel is slightly quieter podcast taffer. It eventually gets me out of my funk. There's something cathartic to it, right? I continue to do these. I fall into these taffer holes a couple of times a year. I have not. I don't think I had watched a single episode post pandemic. Because a lot of TV shows... Produced post-pandemic, you mean. Correct.

I'll go on Paramount Plus. I'll scale the mountain. I'll watch any of my favorite episodes from the first, like, six seasons. Stephen Colbert's up here, too, and the South Park kids. Come on! And Dora the Explorer! I want to interject. This is a little confusing on Paramount+.

First season is like 10 episodes. Yes. Ninth season is like 40 episodes. Yeah, they ran way up. Way up. Because I was like, there's got to be 13 seasons at this point. I was like... paramount only has nine and i'm like oh the later ones are crazy i saw an announcement that like they just announced it was renewed for season 10 this week yeah it's airing that the announcement was like after that it's it's

They may already be out by this, but this month, whenever we're putting this episode out, season 10 is about to launch. Yeah, yeah. So get ready for three days of depression. The Taffer seasons do tend to average 40 episodes, which means their favorites like.

go back to over and over again but i also constantly like oh i don't think i've seen this one like digging through the old ones most reality shows or i'll just even say shows that reflect reality in any way during the pandemic i was like i don't want to watch pandemic episodes of anything I don't want to watch television with people wearing masks and talking about working through this.

And I was like, I could see this being fertile for Bar Rescue and being like, the bars need me more than ever. But I didn't want to watch them. And so I've just never wanted to venture into the post-pandemic episodes. Last night, I was like, I should watch a nine. If we're going to talk Taffer 1, I should watch at least one 9. Just to sample the current batch and see how it is. This is one. You've got to do a nine. Watch a nine. For one? Watch one nine.

For Taffer 9, I'll watch all of one. I'm excited for Taffer 9. Taffer 9 is going to be good. By the way, are you asserting that you are always on them? Maybe. Do you ever do episodes about theme parks ever again? Am I going to be the Evan Susser of Taffer? Oh, yeah, yeah. It's the yearly Taffer shake-in. Well, so we've lost...

If you no longer talk about theme park attractions, Weiger does not seem interested in doing so. We're losing a lot of the big ones. I'll say this. Eva doesn't really do theme park attractions. Look, every time I come on here, I say there is a... pure theme park topic. We're like three years of kicking this down the curve. That's going to happen. That means a lot to multiple members of this crew. A childhood favorite of mine and a big one.

So I watched this episode in a night. The thing I knew, and I feel like we've been texting about this without seemingly any of us watching it seriously. is that 9 is the season where he starts not being in every episode. Oh, shit. It's like a Hot Ones thing, too, where they do Hot Ones now where it's not the guy. Right, which I'm like...

If Taffer's gone from this, the format's whatever, right? Right. Like the format is sturdy, but like what I'm here for is Taffer and a lot of his regular rotation of experts are just now going in without him. And you have to look on Paramount+. Obviously, if he's in the thumbnail, he's in it. But the description will either say John Sends. Or John visits. Right. That's a trick.

that's like putting that's like putting a pretty lady in the thumbnail and then I watch it because I want to see a pretty lady but then it was a lie and there was no at least they tend to be honest you're saying like okay okay yeah I watched the last one of season nine

the most recent episode at the time of our recording and he now seemingly is only in a third of the episode so his workload is lessened and I saw him and I hadn't watched a couple years and I don't think it's advanced age but I was just like He's still doing the thing. Yeah. And it doesn't feel like, oh, no, he's slowed down. Yeah. In a way that makes me sad for like the passage of time. Yeah. It just felt like he's phoning it in a little bit.

That's pretty depressing. I'm like, if you're telling me that he doesn't want to do the full season anymore, I want it to be because he's like, look, I only have so much anger left. I want to give each episode all I can. Well, that's like in our season nine. I'll be like, you guys. I don't want to talk about Frank Marshall. You can just tell I don't have it in me. I just don't. You're defeated. You're dead inside. Sick of I Love Lucy, guys.

Gary Morton, Lucy's second husband? Why do you have so many thoughts about Lucy's feelings on her second marriage? Mike the Tastemaker, that's ridiculous. This actually sounds good. Because I'll still have my juice. Gary Morton talk coming up. Oh, you can steamroll all over me. Okay, I can't believe what happened to tap for epitome. Season 9, you'll only be 22 at that point. Yeah, well, you know, 23. I don't want to talk about it. Did you know that one in four men suffer from low testosterone?

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He says, I believe it's in his book. I'm getting some of my taffer information confused. Maybe the podcast, maybe the book. I believe it's the conflict book. But he explains that he had a screaming match with an executive early on in the bar rescue process. where they wanted to fake something, and he said, you can go fuck yourself!

And he said that that was a good thing. He did that because he put down that he was only going to make these shows authentic. Yes. They couldn't be fake. So I agree with you. I even think around, I don't even know if it was like five, six, whatever, whatever episodes I watched. I feel like he became too self-aware perhaps. Yeah. Those first few seasons, he's just going on instinct. He doesn't know what he's doing even. And then he knows.

All the press comes in and people tell him what they like about him. It's a similar thing we've talked about, Leslie Nielsen, then people telling him he's funny. Right. And then he goes on with the fart machine. I mean, I did the fucking my annual rewatch of the Naked Gun trilogy, a thing I do without fail every year. sure that's a smart move it is stunning And it always is this thing of like...

Should I dig into the rest of the Leslie Nielsen comedy catalog? And none of it works out. I know. I'm like, is one of them accidentally a little bit? Is there just even one sequence that's a little bit funny? I'll find pieces. I'll find slivers. But you're just like, there was something there. Spy hard with villain Andy Griffith.

Is that good at all? Is Andy Griffith as a villain in a movie any good? I've seen that, but many years ago. I've never made it through that movie to the end. It always felt unpleasant. Something about it was unpleasant. Jason wants to see that Mr. Magoo. Have you made it to that one yet? I haven't, no. Jason, do you know the craziest thing about that movie? What? I keep wanting to text you every time you bring up.

I think it's only been once, right? Has it come up more than once? I don't know. I feel like I remember it once. Maybe it's 22 on Magoo. I believe that film is directed by Stanley Tong, who was one of Jackie Chan's go-to directors. Okay. It is a movie that on paper, you're just like, this actually is the right formulation. Leslie Nielsen is now a surprising comedy star.

He's good at playing oblivious to what's going on around him. What's a cartoon character? Mr. Magoo. That's all physical comedy. hire someone from the fucking Jackie Chan school smart whoa yeah and the movie's like a disaster it is like so immediately inert I remember seeing it as a child and like being raring to go and it's got that thing I feel like you guys might relate to this

where a movie would have an animated opening credit sequence, the old Pink Panther trick. You're really locked in, and then the second it cuts to live action, you're like... Immediately not as fun. Yeah. Yeah. You know? Oh, so they do a little animated Magoo. They do a Magoo voiced by Nielsen and he's walking on fucking eye beams and shit and it's funny and then it cuts to live action and it's immediately dead.

So that's Stanley Tong's only English language film. He did like Drunken Master, right? I feel like he did several of the biggest Jackie Chan. There's not even like one sequence that's impressive. I have not. rewatched. Okay. I, much like Jason, have been a little curious. Huh. Huh. Yeah. Okay. Put it on the list, Jason. Now that Dr. Odyssey is on hiatus, you really should be digging into all this. Jumping into Magoo. Right. Jumping into Magoo. Magooing it. Yes.

You should be walking off the edge of a building without realizing it. Getting accidentally rescued by a construction beam that goes by. A beautiful day outside. Beautiful, windy day. His big breakthrough was. is he did Police Story 3 Supercop. Wow. I didn't realize this. So he joins Jackie a little later. Jackie's main 90s collaborator, but he does Rumble in the Bronx.

He does Jackie Chan's First Strike, which was Police Story 4. like he was he was the guy and uh hold on hold on let me check this he did in fact work on the tv show martial law Whoa. It's all tying together. How many seasons we got on Martial Law? That's something. That's outstanding. 31. I'm going to say three. Marshall. You know what? I think Jason was right in his original assessment. Really? It only lasted for two seasons, a combined 44 episodes.

44 episodes, that's less than one season of Bar Rescue now. Geez, I think I just assumed that if it was CBS in that era, well, let me take that back. But Stanley Tongue, executive producer. And I guess by that logic, Mike is a tastemaker. Yeah. Reassessing things from an hour ago or more. Well, Jason, remember when I first introduced the idea of Lucy's second husband, Gary Morton, to him. He remembers that.

Because I'm a tastemaker. I've still got the anger. Don't push your luck on Morton. I've still got it. It's season nine. Yeah. It was during commercials of Bar Rescue. Oh, good. I got 30 seconds to talk about Gary Morton. Talk about Gary Morton. Can I throw out just a very quick tidbit that I'd be remiss if I don't get in here somewhere and there's never going to be a clean transition to it? Okay, go ahead.

The Jon Taffer podcast or Jon Taffer show episode I listened to is the one with Kara Top about his live entertainment coming back. And in doing the rundown of his credits. clearly pre-recorded with cory right yeah carotop not in the room

He's like, this guy, his credits are unbelievable. He's doing the NPR voice. I mean, his credits are unbelievable. He's got 20 credits here. He lists off the credits. Here are three direct quotes, and I'm going to verbatim try to, even if I can't do the impression, say these credits the way he says them. Real time with Bill Mahara. The Jim Gala fan show, which I imagine has to be the Jim Gaffigan show. Did he have a show called that? Yep. Okay. And then he referred to Tasha.

in one rundown of credits real time with bill mahar The Jim Galifancho and Tosho. There's a typo in Tosho. They put a period in it. It's not supposed to be. All right. He fucked up three of them. What is... Okay. Tosho! Tosho! Wait, just picture it in your head. But also imagine... Is it Tosh.0? Yes, you got it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But just imagine him in Sirius NPR voice, right? It's like him trying to do his best like Terry Gross.

and trying to imbue these credits with the energy of, and what big credits these are. Of course I know what all these shows are. He's been on Tasha. He's selling it as if he's not cold reading these names incorrectly. Seeing a Carrot Top show is like seeing a great motion picture. Like M3 Gan. Now there's an M3 Gan 20. Or M3 Gan 20. M3 Galifan. Galifan, I had to stop and rewind and go, what is he trying to say here? And then I went, it must be Gaff again. Galifan. He's been on Jay Lanou.

This is huge. Does he not watch TV? That is such a... Bill Maher especially for him. That feels like he would know who that is. He talked a lot about the Baz Luhrmann Elvis movie and the Rob Lowe podcast where he was talking about it has to be authentic, has to be real. They told me not to scream. They said you're tall. You're too ugly. I said, I gotta be me. And he was saying, it's like in the Elvis movie. They want him to wear that snowman sweater and sing the Christmas song. He's Elvis.

I'm like, oh, yes, the famously authentic Baz Luhrmann Elvis movie. Which he might have been drawn to because he, I believe, lives in Vegas. He's a big Vegas guy. And he... he talked a lot about in 2021 and 2022, like, The city's coming back. The city's opening up because Vegas was obviously hit hard in 2020. But the amount of advertising I feel like I saw from them... online and then when I was there over the years of just like

Live entertainment is back. Come breathe others air. I mean, he just kept in this podcast saying, and I'm calling it now April 1st, 2020. That's the day everything's coming back. Wow. I'm sorry. It was 2021. Because Trump in 2020 said by Easter, everything's going to be real. Oh, right. This was a podcast from the end of 2020 or the very beginning of 2021. And he's saying, I'm calling it April 1st. Everything's going to look normal again. Live entertainment, road trip.

People are ready. He needed to make it happen. He's let us all down by not doing a Vegas review. A Bar Rescue Live. I mean. I'm going to tell some jokes. I'm going to sing some songs. I'm going to talk to some bar owners about what they're doing wrong. It's a giant. He and one of these podcasts offhandedly referred. It must have been the Carrot Top episode. Offhandedly referenced. You know, I did stand up for a little while.

No, shit. Oh, man. Which, of course he did. Like, I'm sure that means that he went to four open mics. Right. Maybe did one bringer show. Look at this couple here in the front. Look at these guys. She doesn't love you anymore! Why aren't you laughing? That was funny! What do you do for a living? Nothing! Your father would be very disappointed in you, don't you think? You're a good guy. I can see that in you. You're a good guy. Why aren't you all saying aww and clapping for this?

You should be reacting. You're talking about it feeling a little less authentic at a certain point. Sorry, what were you going to say? I was going to say that in the Sacramento, X-Cop opens a sports bar, which is really kind of like... to display all this memorabilia he has. And it's also probably failing because it's massive. Yeah. But at one point in terms of like funny, it ain't real quick because.

You used to be a policeman. You're a hero. But now this bar is failing. He so quickly got through. You're a hero. You know? We all have so much respect, the whole crew, everybody who's here. We're tearing up with respect for what you do. But you're a failure and a cook. But he's calling the guy a hero, and the guy's just like, I just want to do my stuff. I have so many jerseys. He's just so mopey, and he's losing.

Just so much money. I mean, some of these, the Pirates one always stands really tall for me. I believe it is $950,000 in debt. Yeah. Jesus. Whoa. Wow. Yeah, let's do it. I mean, I think we got to do just kind of a round robin of episodes and bar risky classics. And Pirates absolutely is what this is. I think it's his magnum opus.

is the name of the bar. Pirates. What city is Pirates in? Is it Baltimore or something? I think so. Let me double check that. It's something like that, but it is, yeah, it's like, it's a pirate-themed bar. There's a bunch of dorks there who want to dress up like pirates. like I and it feels like Silver Spring Maryland Silver Spring Maryland but yes this is his assessment you know it's these it's these dorks and making them dressing up like pirates makes them happy

No one goes in there, but they like what they have here. They aren't running a good version of what that could be whatsoever. But $950,000 in debt. They have seemingly 15 employees. who are just people who want to live like a pirate all day long she cites it like she's like Well, of course, Pirate Bar makes sense. It's the ultimate fantasy. We all wish we could be a pirate.

What she says is being a pirate is the ultimate Peter Pan syndrome. Words that must have warmed your heart. Well, yeah. First, once I picked myself off the floor from having flung myself off the couch. I thought, no, it's the opposite. Peter Pan doesn't get along with the pirates. It's the opposite of the ultimate Peter Pan syndrome. Being a lost boy. Yes. The enemy of the pirates. You've got it.

fully wrong yeah so that might indicate what's wrong with your pirate bar but then he oh by the way and we should say this episode is there's even even though like he takes great pains to be like thoughtful and like because you're dealing with a lot aren't you and your kids and that's that's very hard and then he'll still name the episode something so insulting like in this case

that the episode is called Yo-Ho-Ho and a Bottle of Dumb. Yes. The episode about Champs Bar in Burbank, which seems to be very popular and doing very well. Still, that episode is on Paramount Plus' chumps. Jeez. Jeez. I mean, the thing about the Pirates episode is it's one of the... strongest themes in relation to the level of failure the business has been going through for the amount of years it's been failing at that level. And he's basically like, you got to take all the theming.

I want you to fix this and make this more normal, but my dream is to own a pirate bar. And he keeps on being like, you've got to meet me halfway. This woman is close to a million dollars in debt. I forget what she says, but she used to have like... what seemingly was a fairly successful job in like a corporate...

sphere she has a much younger husband named Juciano who she installed as the chef with no cooking experience oh yeah he's one of the worst chefs I've ever Juciano terrible and just curses whenever anyone says anything to him he goes what this shit fuck you

Why do you think it's dog shit? I think you're dog shit. She's got a 16-year-old daughter. She's now moved into her parents' basement with the daughter and Juiciano and sold her home to keep the Pirates bar afloat. And the whole time he's like, you got to trust me.

I can tell you're going through a lot. All these things where he really wants to be Mr. Compassionate. And then it's just the greatest bar rescue moment for me is the redesign of the bar, which so often is like he turns it into the blandest airport bar possible. That's usually. His taste is so, so lame. And then he'll point to one thing and be like, and look.

I still kept your love of football in there. There's a helmet on the wall. Like a point to one thing where he's like, I know your dad was important. So I scribbled your dad's initials under the table. If you go in this. The second stall of the women's res. But the bar is always like renamed the drinking place or something. The beer pub. I'm trying to think of a more like here's a more tepid example is one is called the poor house.

Right. And it's poor, like, P-O-U-R. Yeah. Which makes plenty, like, yeah, I got that. Makes all the sense in the world for a bar to be called the poor house sentence at the play on words. And he's so, like, That sounds sad. That's miserable. People put a gun in their mouth when they hear a poor house. We need people smiling when they see this song. Bundle it. Like Disneyland. And that one he changes to The Study.

right fine whatever but they're usually that like so it's like whatever they aren't as offensive as pirates bar is the only one that feels like it is actually spiteful yeah yeah saying you're in a in a corporate area There's so many corporate offices around. He drills that corporate people don't want to have lunch at a pirate bar. Which people famously love.

being trapped in offices of course yeah they do go do it as their job and then they want to leave and do it again immediately yeah for lunch and being outside of the safe comforting walls of a cubicle They want to walk out in their coat and tie and see a logo with a coat and tie in it. His logic is, Very few people live in this town. This is a town that people commute into for work. After five o'clock people are gone. You need to be a happy hour and lunch bar. In that case, I'm like, OK, this.

expert in bar science that he understands the basic the basic tense of what he's saying makes sense to me and the pirate bar does seem like dog shit it seems like a terrible it seems awful it seems less committed than when like a cruise ship does pirate Yes, yeah, yeah. An elementary school. Like, wear pirate costumes today. It is worse than that. He's weirdly trying to be that themed. Like, it's not like a bar that has some pirate shit on the wall. It's a bar where your servers are like, aye!

It is immersive. They're trying to make it immersive. There are a bunch of creeps. And it's basically all people who are like, I can't exist in the real world have these like emotional breakdowns to taffer where they're like, I've tried to exist in the real world. This is the only place I feel safe. I'd fall apart if I'm not a pirate. And his rebranding is corporate. The bar is called corporate. The logo is a man wearing a shirt and tie. And the theme of the bar is the office.

It's just like, this is designed to fail. Corporate base! You do corporate bar! If there's a town with a lot of construction in it! The people want to end up going to the wrecking ball. It's as simple as that. But she's just pacing around and she's like, I hate it. I'm miserable. And he's like, you're going to ride this out.

I hear her body is rejecting it. There's never one that's ever gone. No, so where you could tell they might not make it through the night without her taking it. Yeah, there's one where he doesn't he like I forget which one that it was. There's one where he just leave. yeah that's maybe the worst one but this is yeah there's not a one where there's the there's the female staff member who they were physically abusive to

And they won't take responsibility. Do you know what I'm talking about? It's like they have one staff member. who gets really drunk and is starting a fight with a nicer woman. Yeah. And he keeps on saying, like, you have to fire the woman who hit her. Yes, yeah, yeah. And the owners go, she was asking for it. Right. And they have... but he leaves where he's like i cannot abide by this and then i think the owners went to jail

Oh, I don't know that. Oh, that's it. Maybe that's the same episode. I'm trying to remember. There's something that people won't do something and then he leaves. There's the Chicago sports bar one, the dugout. Yeah. Where the guy has his special as the hot pussy shot. And he has an all-female staff. And Taffer's like, this is revolting! How dare you make them say this! Well, that's in Dimples.

in the Dimples episode. That's the other Burbank. This is the Burbank. Yeah, this is a former Burbank karaoke bar. Oh, yes, yes. It was known as the first karaoke bar in America, just a couple blocks from Warner Brothers Studios. Now it's a Whole Foods and apartments. When it was your birthday, you would go and they were like, hey, it's Christmas.

Christian's birthday. There is a million-year-old man running it. He has no charisma. Yes. He's really sleazy. He's really creepy. And he's like, got to get the blowjob shot. You got to do the blowjob shot. And that's where he puts a shot with whipped cream on it between a woman's legs and he tells a man to get down on his knees and he goes...

Hey, that's not the first time you're going to hear that tonight. And everyone's like, I don't really do this. I don't really want to do this. And he goes like, I don't care. He goes like, what do you got to do anyway? And the bar seems very unsafe. There's tchotchkes and mementos and movie memorabilia everywhere. The sound system is awful. And he moves everything into the parking lot, all the memorabilia, puts a little back, gets them a new sign, and the guy's like, wow.

And eventually, like in the post-show, Chris, they're like, he did put a lot. Look, maybe it makes a good television. You're not changing this guy. Yeah. Right? Like, this bar has existed this long this way. And this one, I have a connection. I never went to this bar. But this bar is in walking distance to the Oakwood apartment. which is now called... That's a long walk. Yeah, it is a long walk. But when you have college students who just turned 21 and want to get...

Hammered. Wow, that's an old classic. See, this episode does have to do with the podcast. I'm arguing with theme parks. I'm arguing with other things. Other things. That was the Ithaca or Emerson. bar that people would go to. So you partied with this old creep? No, I never partied. I never, it seemed so nasty. I would look up pictures and I was like, I don't want to go there. That seems awful.

and get their video of karaoke, the other regular of this bar, Mr. Belding, from Save by the Bell. Oh, I remember that fact. He's in that episode. Is he not? Am I misremembering? I didn't see him. I rewatched it. Okay. But I would... think he would be lurking around I'm making a false memory of just hearing for years people be like there's this funny dive bar we go to where Mr. Belding is there every night if you want to meet Mr. Belding yeah and he he was kind of a lush and uh

But that is the one where the cook gets so overwhelmed by the stress test they have to call an ambulance. yeah and he's okay but you can tell it is like Everyone's really weirded out after that. Even more than the creepy owner. It is another element. It is cathartic to see. people get yelled at if you feel personally that they deserve it yeah yeah that's one thing about this is that well you know Sometimes Taffer's tactics can be upsetting and it's fun to make fun of him.

The other side of it is often pretty wrong, too. There's that zombie bar. It's like two sides of disagree with everyone in this. all at the same time do you remember like the I think it's a Vegas episode where there's the bar he re-themes into a very immersive zombie bar oh yeah that's I haven't seen that one in a while. And I feel like it used to be like a fucking heavy metal bar or something before that, but the bartender is like incredible.

incredibly gross with all women yeah yeah and it's like the whole episode is him being like you're scaring women away you're disrespecting women my wife he would scream that a lot because that's that's that's lindsey's go-to and she's quoting taffer she goes you're Respecting women! Because that's a big... It's my favorite thing is when he sends his wife in to do the recon. You go do it!

And worst of all, that's my wife! You said that to my wife! There's an episode of Marriage Rescue where somebody... In the couple, there's one of them.

uh is really obsessed with social media and her social media brand and her partner is doesn't really into it and doesn't want to be part of it and his solution is you should be in her videos which by the way it's a former Harlem Globetrotter who does like basketball spinning like you should be in a basketball Instagrams because you know what you know I've been married for a long time and when I got a TV show you know what I did

I put my wife in it. I put her in it. And that's what you have to do with each other. You got to spin a basketball with her. That's the solution. It's so great. I feel like this might have restarted a wave of the Taffer conversation a year or two ago, but I went to my friend's wedding in Chicago. And I walked out of my hotel and I was waiting for an Uber and I recognized the signage and I texted you guys and I said, do you know what this is? And it's another one of my top.

absolute top-tier Bar Rescue episodes, and I realized I was staying outside the husk of it. which was the Wonder Bar. Do you remember this one?

Yeah. Where it's this woman, the Underground Wonder Bar. Oh, yeah, yeah. The woman's name. Like performance arts. Yes. She's like an old hippie woman. And they're like crayons on the tables. And she basically performs a. a four-hour set of her music every night and the bar is clearly like she got it for a song like she paid five dollars for an 80-year lease in like 1965

And they can't kick her out, but it makes no money. And she's just like, this place, it's about love and it's an attitude. And he's like, but it's not a successful business. And she's got an adult son who she's now like tasked with managing the bar. But he can't break his mom's habits of what she wants it to be. And he's just like she's out of touch with the times. Our customer base is literally dying off. We have this whole downstairs area we don't use. and he re-themes it as the ice bar.

He's like, you're gonna have the best ice in all of Chicago. And he always has his weird product. sponsorships, a POS system from one of these. He's always got these companies. His good friend's at Blade. Partender. Partender is the one. But he's got this ice company. That he's like, you're going to be on a bar in Chicago with square ice and the ice comes in Ziploc bags and the bar is made of ice.

The whole thing is ice. He watched Batman and Robin the night before, maybe. And you're just like, this woman just doesn't give a shit. She just wants to get on her piano and sing Age of Aquarius or whatever. This is going to disappear immediately. First batch of ice. It's all done after. One of my favorite corners of Taffa. Taffinalia, Taffabilia, Taffiana, whatever we want to call it.

Do you guys watch any of the, what are they called, Back to the Bar episodes? Yes, I have. There's a Scottsdale episode. Oh, they do go back there, yeah. Where he narrates it, which is great.

These knuckleheads didn't do what I said first time. Let's see if that changes when we go check in on them again. His teleprompter reading is a nightmare. They're also the ones where he's hosting it from a giant... set surrounded by a live audience that's like a circular bar and he's like today we're gonna revisit some of our past bars and it's him trying to do like

Genial MC shit. That's like a Vegas show. Yeah. And he does. And he's DJ on camera in a booth with like headphones and turntables will be the announcer. Yes, yes. This is another thing that's great about him. Taffer has lasted so long, like a cockroach, that he is like the one vestige of the Spike Network. That still has that energy. And even though they've rebranded that channel like full.

I crushed Mansers. Right. Mansers is dead. He's still got the Mansers vibes. Yeah, yeah. And so they got that guy being like, John Taffer, coming live from Las Vegas. see him he looks like one of us it's very disorienting wow because you're just like he just looks like a comedy dude you know um but he'll have You know, he'll play like a clip package of the worst moments from that episode and be like, and we're going to catch up with them now and he'll have them live in studio.

and he'll just kind of castigate them, but he'll do it in a, like, wow, we're old friends kind of way. Yeah, it's a real, like, jump to go, like, you're friends of the pirates, people? You've only been so vicious to them. Do you know what it reminds me of? Like we just lived through months and months and months. of the Democratic Party being like Fascism is knocking at the door. This man's an immediate threat to our country. And I'm like.

I agree. We should figure out some way to stop him from getting elected. Seems like you don't want a new Hitler in there. And then he gets elected and they're just like, well, of course, we have to find a way to meet him in the middle. And I'm like, no, stand by this. You pointed out that Biden's Biden goes, hey, welcome home. Right. I'm like you don't need to be fucking friendly to this guy your assessment was correct and I'm like for as much as Taffer can be an asshole

like he'll have the Wonder Bar woman on and he's just like, oh, you never change your ways. And we love her for it, don't we? And I'm like, her business is like collapsing. Yeah, I hate, I don't like those episodes. And she drives It's crazy. It's weird. The audience response is weird. It's weird how insincere he is where he's trying to play a nice guy. We're going to do a fashion show in the worst uniforms than ever we ever saw in a bar. That shit.

We're going to make some women wear some really embarrassing scanty stuff. The insincerity, I think, is why there was only one season of Hungry Investors. We got a whole other show. His other show. Wow. Where him and two of his experts. choose between two restaurants to invest in it's a very boring like shark tank whoever put the shows together whatever person people that put the shows together I they made him look

So impressive. Even though we know we're smart guys, savvy to the biz, I still kind of came away from the first so many episodes being like, man, he really gets to the... literally from the business well yeah nobody understands bar science like john so it makes sense that people are like we he must be So talented, he can work in any genre, any type of show, and he can solve any kind of problem. We're talking reality.

In every genre. Stand up. This is not just a perfectly constructed piece of reality television that makes him look like a superhero. This man is a superhero. This isn't just a Svengali. This isn't like... No. Some kind of... The Wizard of Oz. This is the Wizard of Oz, but he's a real wizard. Oh, he's a real wizard. There's no man by the curtain. He's a wizard. I'm the size of a big head. I got the magic. I'm the size of the balloon. The magic is real.

Mike, I feel like you have many times over the years said to me in your way. You know, I hear from a lot of people that he's not very smart. You'll repeat this thing of like, I know people who have worked on some of the shows or met him in situations. We have to talk about...

to someone who has been a part of this franchise. We should say that that comment has not been made by this person. Oh, that's true. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I actually don't know the reaction. Let me, and this might require a little bit of tea because... Coincidentally, I knew that we know somebody who's been on a bar rescue. But then still, I was trying to find unusual episodes.

And I started watching this one not even realizing, oh, that's the one. Because the episode in and of itself is extremely notable. Because it's the one where reality genres all clash. And we have not just a failing bar, but a haunted bar, a bar that has a ghost in it. and where the owner will not lock it up by himself because of the ghost. And I don't have the exact quotes, but I know that it builds to things like, you have to choose! Is it the...

Who wins? Is it the bar or the ghost? Hearing him yell about the ghost. is so awesome. And I ain't afraid of no ghosts! But they makes me feel good! I never liked the girls! SLEEPING IN YOUR BED! THAT'S WORST THAN BACTERIA!

Keep riding those levels, Mike. I'm sorry. He would be a good ghost in a Ghostbusters movie. It would translucent whatever the effect on it. He's just like a scary ghost. Slimer, they imagine what a ghost of me would be like. And that's what I thought of Slimer. He should have been Muncher. Oh.

Oh my god, yes. The dream casting. If Muncher had the voice of John Taffer. Munch, munch, munch. I'm Muncher. I'm munching. Even if it wasn't words, it was just him going, RAAAGH! And they don't even tell him he's doing it. They just wake him up in the middle. of the night. See what sounds he naturally makes. But then it has him yelling about the ghost, but then it also has the tender side. They fix the bar stuff and then like... Now it's time we get rid of this ghost.

You are going to close this building alone. And he's also working the angle of, like, haunted attractions are big in this country imagine you're in a haunted bar it's gonna be huge but here's what's funny is that there's a premise laid on top of it which is that

You know, he sends people in to do the recon. And sometimes those people are connected to local industry or whatever. Sometimes they're experts. Sometimes they're past bar rescue. Oh, that's right. People who have survived. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But in this case. I met two podcasters. If they recommend this place on the show, on their podcast, it could change everything. But one negative word would send them plummeting into the toilet.

I hired, and then it's, the other one is Matt Myra. It's Matt Myra. Don't talk about it in The Idiot Nerdist. Is that why the Nerdist appearance happened? Correct. oh okay wow he's like Myra was really into Bar Rescue this is Hardwick saying like Myra's been trying to get me to watch Bar Rescue forever then he was on the episode then I finally watched it and I was like Matt we have to get Taffer on the show

Hmm. And it happened because of that. And then because they have a relationship, he keeps, like, zinging him. Right. Because, like... Because you're in a nightclub now, you're feeling confident. You want to be talking to the girls, everybody except for you, man. I'm just kidding. I love you. He's zinging him so hard. Yeah, yeah. You know, normal guy. So, Matt, you stay out of this. But the other one...

Jordan Morris from Jordan Jesse Gold. Yes. And I saw this at some point just on the Pluto feed without knowing, and I just bugged out. What do you mean you were on it? And I know I've talked to him about this a bunch. over the years, but then remembering, oh my God, and it's the ghost one. And I thought a Bar Rescue episode would not be complete without some...

Chip in from somebody who was actually on an episode who had the opportunity to make or break a bar yeah, you know like Did he say negative words about it just because there's a ghost in there was Jordan so cruel? I'm not sure. And he sent us a voice memo. I don't know what. In it, I haven't listened to it, but since we experienced this together, we can maybe get some actual feedback of the kayfabe and the character and is he smart or whatever it is.

Yeah. Hey, Podcast the Ride. Occasional guest Jordan Morris here with a remembrance of my time on Bar Rescue. In 2015, I was working with writer and podcaster Matt Myra. He knew I was a fan of Bar Rescue, and he knew a few of the field producers. He asked me if I wanted to be one of the recon guys in an episode with him. It was shooting in El Cajon. And I, of course, jumped at the chance. The recon segment of the show, of course.

It happens early in the episode before John Taffer rescues the bar. He sends in his friends to order drinks and report back on what's wrong with the bar. This particular bar was Meyers Poor, P-O-U-R House, a very down-the-middle SoCal strip mall bar. They apparently had two problems, bartenders that overpoured and a ghost that scared away the owner. We got told all of this ahead of time, and we were also asked if we would be okay ordering Kettle One Spirit.

who were sponsoring the episode. I was just kind of excited to be there, so I gladly ordered Kettle One, which I never... had and never have since. So we we were set up not as just John's friends, but as podcasters whose recommendation or pan could make or break the bar. If you've heard my podcast, Jordan, Jesse, go.

You know, of course, that we spend most of our time reviewing bars near San Diego. We had a little like meet and greet with John before we went in. He was very nice. And I got to see his famous one sport coat that he owns. We went in, ordered our Kettle One cocktails, and tried to get the bartenders to talk about the goat. I remember it was really awkward for a bunch of reasons. First is that it's really strange being in a bar with harsh TV lighting. It was just so bright in there.

Second, the bar was filled with all these locals who were just really excited to be on camera. and were just shouting insane shit all night long. I was next to this one woman who had clearly just learned the phrase, Bye, Felicia, and she would just yell, Bye, Felicia, at anyone who walked by. So we drank a little bit. The bartender was doing strong pours. And since we kind of knew this was an issue going into it, Matt and I really played up how strong the drinks were because.

We wanted Daddy to be proud. Speaking of Daddy, it was a real thrill to see John come in and do the shut it down speech. He did it in one take, and that's basically the take you see in the episode. Also, I was really impressed that he was really watching a feed of the bar outside in the SUV, something I had assumed was faked, but is totally actually happening.

So I walked away from the experience really impressed with the authenticity of the timeline they present in the show for that particular segment anyway. I still have not been to the rescued bar. It was changed to the vaguely academic themed The Study. And according to Google, it's still there. I was paid nothing for my appearance and do not receive any residuals.

winning its rerun seven times a month. Okay, I hope that was enlightening. If you'll permit me a plug that might be of interest to the PTR audience, I wrote a story for the upcoming comics anthology Godzilla vs. L.A. It is three comic stories about Godzilla visiting L.A., and all the money goes to wildfire relief. My story is from the POV of the Universal Studios tram driver. There's a bunch of theme park in jokes that I think y'all will enjoy.

and the art is by the amazing Nicole Goh. It drops on April 30th, and you can pre-order it at your local comic book store. That's Godzilla vs. L.A. coming on April 30th. That's very good. You're always selling. Everything you do is an opportunity to sell. And that's why, Jordan, I'm gifting you this POS system so you can track how many people on podcasts are getting the comic work that you do. From Daddy. Mike, I need you to correct me on this.

My memory is we have a connection to one of these bars very briefly, you and I. Which bar? Pat's Cocktails in Valley Village, California. And my memory is we filmed something in there. That you wrote a web series you co-wrote that never came out. And then I think after we did this, Pat's Cocktail Bar sticks out in my mind as one of the fixes they make a cocktail.

I don't know what to call it other than just a gun that shoots smoke in your like whiskey cocktail. So we're going to get you this gun and you're going to use this every night. And that's how you're going to fix it. What was happening in the scene? I don't remember. We were just in this bar. Who were we with? And have they been canceled? No, Marissa was there. I don't know if the person... Oh, that scene. That scene. Yes, yes, yes. No, this was something... We made this for Justin Linz.

YouTube channel. When there was just money flying around the YouTube channels. YouTube handed millions of dollars out to a ton of different people. And Justin Lin, the famous director of Manifest and Furious. Yeah. dumped a bunch of money into a project that never showed up. Wait a second. Emerging new internet media... Invested a bunch of money into people who are already proven in the most legitimate sectors of the entertainment industry to then underpay struggling creative.

And then the thing was never released. That doesn't sound like our industry. I know. It seems weird. A lot of people are not paid at all. The ultimate underpayment. The ultimate underpayment. Zero. What I remember about the Pat's Cocktails episode. there was barbecue place next door and they cut a hole in the wall. It's like, now people can order the barbecue. And then you just, everyone makes more money. We're going to ruin their business too.

But what I read about Pat's cocktail bar after that. Uh, where I think people I knew visit it and are like, Hey, do you sell that smoke gun? And they're like, Oh, That stopped working weeks after that was taken. That's long gone. I feel like whenever Taffer and Bar Rescue comes up, this is always one of the main things you hone in on, Mike. Is that like every episode starts with they're overpouring. They're sloppy. They're taking too long to make drinks. And it's like a gin and time.

Yeah, they don't know how to do it. Who doesn't know how to do a gin and tonic. Right. And like everything's going wrong. And then they bring in the world's greatest mixologist. Whoever it is, they happen to be the world's greatest mixologist. The world's greatest. Every time. The winner of the most prestigious award. She's very cool. She has a big pompadour curl on her head.

That's something that we're doing now, like the band that was bad on SNL, Carmen. We have a Carmen and she's going to fix your bar. It's just the leap from they can't make. two ingredient cocktails where the name is the two ingredients and it's taking too long they're doing it poorly and they're losing money and they come in and they're like The drink is inside a skull. It's on fire. You need to shake it with some flair. Make it a show. It's complicated to make it cause

$40. Like proprietary equipment and ingredients. There's cinnamon hair strands at the top. And you singe. Don't burn them all the way. You lightly singe the cinnamon hair. This season nine episode I watched. was he's like the bar needs a gimmick you gotta have a gimmick and a challenge to get people in through the door so they had a drink called the bucking bronco where there's a pepper And you have to eat the pepper first.

And then the drink has like 10 different types of like chili and hot sauce in it. But then like a tahini rim and then like a straw that's coated in some other spicy substance. I'm like, there are 27 steps to this thing. And the woman at the beginning of it was making more. Martinis with orange juice. Same way with the kitchen. There's a guy who cannot figure out how to make mozzarella sticks in a microwave. And he's like, I want you to cook a full thing.

Thanksgiving dinner for every person on that bar. You better plate the capris successfully because we eat with our eyes before we eat with our mouths. You need to slaughter the bison yourself. Do it at the table. Form the table. Let the littlest. This kid, take the knife and do it. In one of the recons, before everything's fixed, at one of the Burbank bars, The expert orders a scotch and soda, gets it, takes a sip and goes, like... He just drank toilet water. Yeah.

Just hearing Jordan talk about, like, playing up the reactions. I was like, how badly could you fuck up a scotch and soda? This is interesting. What he's thrown into question, he... he himself perhaps was not authentic thinking that this was what the show asked for but then found the man himself John

to be a beacon of authenticity. Right. That he nailed it in one take. I am very surprised that the recon in the van is happening. I am too, yeah. That seems like the fakest. I'm going in there. I assume that he just knocked out all the van scenes. Like in a sound stage months and months later. That was always my guess. And then I was digging in and it seems to be that the timeline of the show as represented is pretty honest and accurate. But my head always watching the show was like.

He must go to one bar, do those couple of days, leave. The renovation takes a week or two. Then he goes to another bar. He circles back to the first bar when that renovation is done. Then he circles back to the second bar when that renovation is done. but it's like no it does sound like each episode happens within one five-day week basically and he's actually in the van

Right. I'm sure they time it so it's like 20, 15 minutes tops him in the van looking at the footage. Yeah. But the fact that these things are actually happening like. Yeah. It makes you feel good. It does. Do you think that one thing Jordan didn't say is whether or not he made good on The Promise? Is there an episode of... Jordan, Jesse, go. Real quick, I don't want to sidebar too much, but I found myself in El Cajon, where I often am, and I was mortified at my experience.

at a little place called The Port, and then just like a 15-minute absolute tear-down of... And forgive me, Jesse, I will let you... I know this isn't the usual format. Well, I was confused at first because I always knew the show is Jordan Jesse Go brought to you by Kettle One.

yeah there's a later season like the sponsorship too I'm sorry I'm all over the place I feel like there's more of that and there's more synergy later don't worry I got a whole I have a whole PDF take behind about his philosophy from just for us to read Well, for us to apply to our lives. Oh, wow. Well, that's what I think it's about when we get together. Griffin gifted us a television premise, which is now the subject of a massive bidding war. And you're going to help us.

I think we'll learn that making that show, that conflict will be crucial to making the animated show. And you listened to the one audiobook, but you didn't even listen to the older book. Raise the bar, an action-based method for maximum customer reaction. No, I understand. I didn't. Bit of a double meaning in that title, if I'm not mistaken.

I think there might be. I just want to at least say the name of this. It's called Taffer's Toolkit Takeaways. So that's where you learn about conflict and how to use conflict, too. help in your daily life. Wow. But we don't have time to get to that. We don't have time. I know. We do have to start. I think maybe one thing to talk about a little bit, and we've referred to this.

a bit but I this is also something to you know, that's a promise and something we can make good on a little better in Taffer 2, is his own restaurant. So the ultimate barb scientist has applied this science to a restaurant. And wouldn't you know it, of the three locations that have opened, two of them have quickly closed. It does not seem to be going very well. Every time it opens in a new city, the food reviewer for that city's paper.

I mean, what a great opportunity to do so. You can't blame them. The one that remains open is in Alpharetta, Georgia. It's 40 minutes north of Atlanta. That one is maintained. But D.C. closed. Watertown, Massachusetts. in trying to assess what a problem might be. Well, the very thing that we're referring to, the drinks in the skulls and such, I was curious what is on the bar menu at Taffer's Tavern.

And one that jumped out at me is a drink called Lost at Sea, a glistening deep sea experience with vodka, tropical orange and ginger flavors. Garnished with a mermaid. What do you mean by that? I have no further information on what the mermaid garnish is. But this does seem in keeping... With, like, he could, like, I'm gonna check in on these knuckleheads and see if they kept my system in place. Excuse me, where are the mermaids? I don't see mer- I don't see clamshell bras anywhere!

I hand shucked those clams. I took the clams out themselves. We were importing the clams from Sicily. Why aren't you keeping... they could talk i bred them in a lab they were real live mermaids i'm trying to find this article i found yesterday that was him breaking down i can't remember if it was right before the pandemic or sort of like right at the beginning of vaccination

when he was ramping up and he was just like, this is ready to overtake everything. Oh, I got some Tafford vaccination things, but go ahead. Yeah, there's a lot. I forgot. But he was basically saying like, I've just been studying the restaurant industry and it just angers me. how broken it is, and I'm ready to fix it all. And I've recently gone down a similar rabbit hole. Steve Ells, the creator of Chipotle, has been like...

I've seen my thing go through its whole, like, rise and fall arc Chipotle to wherever it's landed, right? And I'm ready to revolutionize the industry again. And he's like robots. People don't want to interact with people. It's plant-based robots. No seating takeout only.

And he started these restaurants called Colonel that opened in New York that very quickly closed because people found them unappealing. And now they keep rebranding and be like, we've heard you. We're going to make it more warm. Warm. You will see a person's face.

There will be a chair. I don't understand. The greatest nightclub in the world had a robot in it. Seaco. If it was Seaco, though, I bet it would have worked. Yeah, yeah. Tafer's Tavern. I was finding this article I sent to you guys, and they're quotes I'm looking forward to pull up here. The model was based on... Labor costs have become too...

high. Taffer's a real big fighter against minimum wage being raised. Small business psycho. Yeah, small business tyrant. Right. Labor costs versus material costs. It's like the health of the business is the only thing that matters and the numbers have been out of whack. Places like Applebee's are doing like four entrees for $5 or whatever. And he's like, something has to change. Higher quality food, but less people work it.

So the Taffer Tavern model, I didn't realize, was at least at the beginning very much conceived of. This is a largely robotic kitchen. Really? Yes. Oh, I miss this. And the food is sous vide. Yeah, that is a big thing. High quality food that is prepared and seasoned by experts.

sous vide en masse and they were like so do you need to have some off-site location that's making food for all of the franchise locations if your thing expands he's like no we use the company that makes the sandwiches for starbucks and now they make steaks for us And so they make steaks, they vacuum seal them in bags, they ship them to Taffer's Tavern, and then a robot cooks it.

which is dumps it in water sous vide uh as i know it it is vacuum sealed in a bag yes placed in boiling water yes then opened and put on the plate right and he was like incredible It's easier. It's cheaper. It tastes better. We don't have a 15 year old seasoning on a line. Now it doesn't take like.

a day to teach someone to cook it takes them like a minute because they don't actually have to do the cooking they just oversee the robot and he's saying like and you won't believe how good this steak tastes you won't believe review from washington post Steak frites in which the flat iron cut had been waterboarded to the consistency of guacamole. That's one of the most evocative descriptions I have ever read in a restaurant review.

How do you possibly end up doing this after episode 300 episodes of screaming at people? You just put it in water? Chicken and waffles in which the pre-cooked bird was fried in-house to a nice crackle, but... The base was so gooey and underdone that the pearl sugar concealed inside the waffle.

Cracked against my teeth like grit from a poorly cleaned oyster. The waffle's the problem? Oh my god. He'll give Taffer that the chicken was good, but the waffle! The cost of making waffles is what's bringing this country down. And Mr. Trump, I need you to assure me that you'll get the waffle braces there. Let my robot... a bagged waffle in a tub of water. Is there a detail left in that review that you could read as if it was Taffer yelling at the person who, like,

It's Taffer yelling at the cook. Scott, let me see if I can scan this review for even one more negative statement. That must be all of them, right? I'll read that part of me is dazzled by the technology that holds Taffer's Tavern together. And what do I mean for the future of hospitality? Kitchens that require fewer and less skilled workers read between the lines there. Now this we can all agree on. Yes. This is a very good thing. Yes. Yes, we all agree on that. More POS systems than humans.

Well, business owners are better. The only way I agree is if it's like a kitchen of seagulls. Yes. Yeah. And they are wearing big old. Wait, here's a point of discussion. Giant chefs had. or regular human-sized chef's hats that are very small on Seiko's big head. Regular. Okay, glad we talked about this. They have a lot of these in Vegas now where, like, a robot will make your cocktail, but it looks like... A robot arm from Minnesota.

assembly line and it's just grabbing different bottles from the seat so it's not made to look friendly at all and then it's not like a robot it looks like it could torture you if you get like tangled up in its robot arms it's like here is your jack and coke That's what I want. If it says that, I'm happy. All I need, just talk to me. Talk to me, and it's not in a human-y AI voice. I hope you are satisfied. Enjoy getting hammered. The only robot you want is the greeter.

yeah going table to table being like how is your dinner where you're like that's fun novelty entertainment have you been here before at a pulsation type restaurant right i mean this This Washington Post review goes into multiple paragraphs of being like, I think I've identified the problem with robot restaurants. Like this person is like, in theory, I get it. But here's what's terrifying about going to a restaurant without humans in it. I will read this paragraph in my best worth.

Taffer here, the section about the drinks, which should be Taffer's specialty. Of course. The cocktail list, which would seem to play to Tafford's strengths, borrows ideas from the wider world of mixology without apparently understanding how to best apply them. The tiny pile of wood chips.

that sits next to the trademark campfire cocktail basically a fat-washed old-fashioned is ignited purely for show not flavor and I'm still not sure what my server served charred a jalapeno table side which I was then told to switch around the spice rum-based resurrection, a drink that looks like it was mixed with water from Splash Mountain. So if anyone thinks this podcast doesn't have to do with theme parks. It really does.

Yeah. You got a problem with the way I make my campfire drinks? Do you have a better way to make campfire drinks? When have you gotten a little set? to your beverage huh this other article when they were about to open where he was just like and we're turning away applications too many franchisees want to open one he's like it's simple we've simplified the cook robots and sous vide. And they're like, what about the drinks? He's like,

the most obnoxious drinks of all time. Every drink has five glow sticks. There are backstories to every drink. You have to have read a graphic novel prequel to understand the beverage you're drinking. And the interviewer straight up asked him, like, doesn't that... seem counter to the philosophy that you just outlined for the food? And he's like, no, it's going to work the same way. And they're like, how is that possible? And he's like, well, obviously there'll be a big component of pre-mixing.

And I'm like, yeah, but you're also advertising that the drinks have 10 novelty toys inside of them. The drinks are like magic drinks when a magician has to escape from a straitjacket. You only have one minute to find the key to rescue. Rescue your drink from a straitjacket, which is going to fall into a little mini tub of fire. It's simple. It creates excitement tonight, and we're in the reaction industry, of course. You're going to react to that. The reaction industry.

Can I bring it to theme parks a little bit? I have a little challenge that I think, just to tie some things together. There are, of course, some bars in the world of theme parks that do kind of have... stories, backstories to them. And where there is like a canon to it. And I just thought I'd propose and anybody jump in there. how Taffer might go about rescuing certain theme parks. Oh, sure, yeah. Let me start with an obvious one, perhaps Oga's Cantina.

You're over serving. You're over pouring. You're making people get two drinks at once. This alien's laying eggs in this tank and the tank is dirty! The eggs are poisonous! There's a frog in there. There is a frog in the jar and the pipes go straight to the consumers. They're dripping mucus. into the drinks. And where are the aliens serving? These are dirty human beings working. Not enough droids! Automate! You've got one droid here.

But his programming don't work. He still thinks he's a pilot. He needs mental health counseling. You have him playing music. He should be doing sous vide. He's got so many arms. He could be making free meals. Play the music on a tape. You don't need a DJ. It's the same shit every hour.

Have you heard this thing he says? He did seemingly create the NFL season pass or whatever that fucking business model is that sells the NFL games to bars, which he's part of the permanent he's part of the NFL Hall of Fame was part of the board of directors at some point or something. But basically as a bar guy was like, we should have some unified program. I don't know. Everyone gives him credit for that.

He also keeps saying in interviews I found that he's the only man in America with a patent on a music organizational system. for public spaces or something like that. It's a weirdly convoluted thing and only in the Nerdist episode did he kind of get into it where he's like, I spent seven years

studying the science of how emotions make people feel with music and get them to do different things at bars. And I have a system where you can't play the same song the same day, but you need to know how to adjust the crowd. And the one stat he threw out was... I with music can do anything I want to a crowd.

I can get gang members out of a bar in three weeks. I heard this. He said, I've musically eradicated a bar from gang members in three weeks time. And Rick's like, what do you mean? And he goes. Two out of every three songs are a female artist. What? That's his only follow-up explanation. But he has a lot to say to Rex. Do the gang members have to go through the butt funnel? Presumably. That's a very small entry exit way to the dance floor.

So everyone has to lean in to get to know each other a little more with their crossing bands. I've eradicated a bar of stormtroopers. It is this fascinating thing, though, where, like, Taffer is like... the butt funnel is one of my big inventions. You need a space that's too hard to walk through so people are forced to interact because people go to bars to meet people.

And you're like, oh, so you basically like have created like a tunnel of sexual harassment. That is fire hazard. Yeah, that's why he calls it a butt funnel. It's like a it's like a fucking corridor that. forces people to get uncomfortably close to each other while very drunk. This drink with the word pussy in it is disgusting! This system I've implemented nationwide with butt in it is perfection!

He's only comfortable with his sexuality, he says. That's what you said, too. You want to control it. Oga, Oga, come here. I want you to stand at the entrance. Do you see where you're at right now? That's the closest bathroom. That's one block away. Why are there no bathrooms in your establishment? Why are there no bathrooms here? And then people have to take dirty bathroom return cards? That card's been in the bathroom. The median income on Batuu is over 25,000 credits.

Why do you call it Oga's Cantina? It's an ego stroke. Your name's not even... You don't even appear in this place. Look around this area. 70% of the surrounding businesses are frontier themed. You need to appeal to that clientele. All right, here we go. Rebranding. Three, two, one. The Spur.

There you go. That is genuinely what Taffer would do. He'd go to Oga and go, you have to appeal to the Frontierland crowd. And then it's the one Frontierland bar in a Star Wars area. Take a look at this on the map. Right around the corner. You have railroad workers coming in here. They want to think about drilling rails.

You could call it the sidecar, the caboose. We're going to serve the caboose, and this girl with the big hair is going to teach you how to make it. It's got 25 ingredients. Look, this part of town's been through some rough town. This used to be critter country. That industry failed. People don't know where to go. Entire critter bands have been evicted and replaced by cheaper ones. With less characters in them. I'm bringing in my expert chef, Dexter Jetster. He's going to overhaul the whole menu.

Olga, what happened? You used half a fire in you. I read about you. you were going to put a dinner theater right behind this bar. That never happened. Instead, you're addicted to Dexter's death sticks. If he had gotten into the Star Cruiser, it would have never closed. He could have fixed that whole thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, he would have identified right away. There's pillars in the way. People can't see the show. I've got an idea for a rebranding. Here we go. Three, two, one.

The Imagineering Office. I've sent Jenny Nicholson in. She's one of the biggest influences in this space. Just one four-hour video could make or break this establishment. You know what's a really depressing one? There's like a season five episode where he sends... fucking David Portnoy, Dave Portnoy in. Barstool Sports, yeah. In that way where he's like, you're Barstool's piece.

This is Dave Portnoy. He's the most important man in pizza. One word from him could make or break your business. I'm like, oh, this is like classic. fucking taffer like blow up yeah and now you read these articles of like pizzerias that are clinging on for dear life Like Portnoy started a flame war with them.

And now people, like, jam their phone number all day saying, like, Baba Booey. And you're like, this guy actually is, like, a force who is able to, like, pizza influence it. Oh, in a dark way. Oh, no. But also now everyone has to curry favor with him because they're like, if he likes... and the business goes through the roof. It didn't save Did Portnoy ever do pizza rizzo? Yeah, I've gotten the Portnoy pizza rizzo. This year, over one rat.

That themed pizza restaurant will close its doors forever. If he's not careful, local pizza maker Rizzo. I can't believe it took us this many years to get to. Portnoy One Bite Pizza Rizzo and Taffer Galactic Star Cruiser Rescue. I know. Take a look at these guys. These old men. These two old men. They're influencers in the theater community.

If they criticize a live production, it might close its doors forever. If they make a punny joke about you. If they do a single heckle of your restaurant, you're done for. If Sattler and Waldorf get on Yelp. If it happened, and that could be a stand-up bit worthy of Carrot Top or John Taffer himself. This is true.

Well, are we sort of getting to the, has this been ample time? One thing I think is funny is that a lot of people woke up or whatever that people encountered this episode and went, sorry. two and a half hours on the turnstiles.

although I think they would I don't think they would have been I think they would have gone let's go I think that's I get it I get it done it yeah I get that the only note I wrote down that I wanted to hit as a bullet point that I didn't get to to get today and forgive me if this has been covered in a past episode Do we know? Did we know previously? that he was involved for years with the Rainforest Cafe.

No, no. He threw this out, I think, in the Rob Lowe because Rob Lowe was talking about like the rise and falls of these things where he's like. I remember when hard rock was actually cool. And then now they became this like mainstream thing. And he's like, what about planet Hollywood? And Taffer was breaking down the differences in business models where he was like hard rock when it started.

advertised having the best burger in the world. They actually did have a great burger. And then Jimi Hendrix came and he left his guitar because he liked it. And that was the first piece of memorabilia they had. That's why it happened? That's what he said. Wow, I've never heard that. Whoa. Also, Rocky IV is based on Jon Taffer's personal life. Not just the robot, but the toughness of a great Italian man. Yeah, Rocky is me. Yeah. I met this guy.

This failing actor Stallone, I said, you know what you should do? You should tell us your story about boxing. Yeah. Or with a heart of gold. I texted this to you guys last night that one website says that Taffer, the origin of the name is Tavern. Oh, right, right. That it's a last name base. in the tradition of the tavern keeper. It's like, I'm going to plant something on Google that maybe people will repeat. Maybe, yeah.

But he was saying that was the origin of hard rock. And then he was like, and then Robert O came in and Planet Hollywood was done the opposite way where it was memorabilia first. And then he was like, and then like Rainforest Cafe. And he was like, well, I worked with Rainforest Cafe for many years. And, you know, it was a silly mob. And then he explained it. This is the other thing I'll say about these podcasts I listen to.

Talking about is Taffer dumb? Does his suggest are his suggestions like stupid? Do they not work or whatever? I listen to four random podcast episodes and each one of them, there was at least one. five minute run he went on where I was like, this is the first time you've actually sounded like you know what you're talking about.

where he's speaking calmly and getting into like hard data and saying concepts I have never heard in over a decade of bar rescue. Wow. Where I'm like, there is something here. Yeah. Yeah. He was breaking down like the analytics of like, here's what I've learned over 40 years of doing this and this and that. And was talking about like the margins on drinks in a way where I'm like, I've never heard this monologue in an episode. And this feels like basic stuff.

Huh. Well, and there may be something, there may be some disconnect to the like. Like the science of how a Bubba Gumpster Rainforest Cafe works to... Some bar where a guy just wanted to have his five sad friends around. Yes. That's what I think where I think it all falls apart is like we're going to do the stress test. We have people at every table.

They don't want people at every table. They don't want to be failing, but it's their worst nightmare to have a... full crowd of people come in 500 people into a clown car if it can't handle this you should be in business but this is my big discovery from like this

this bit of a dive is that like it sounds like a lot of his resume between the troubadour and pulsations and like bar rescue was like him having success launching bars or clubs and then becoming this high-level consultant for like these very corporate enterprises.

that were like, how do we make this work? We know we should have Cheers in an airport or Bubba Gump in a strip mall, you know, or like, how do we scale Rainforest Cafe up or whatever? And he used like 10 terms I'd never heard before that were kind of interesting where he was like, I don't, he called like an atmosphere packet or whatever it was where he was talking about like,

well Rainforest had a different model it was about this and it was about that and that's how they scaled it up and I was like all of this is kind of interesting but it also means he's particularly ill suited to like a small dive bar because the only thing he knows how to turn it into is like could be franchised that is kind of like bland and automated enough and kind of like refillable.

I think the study has legs. I think there could be 500 the studies across the country. He's a very numbers guy. Yeah. So like, I'm assuming he has like some sort of, I don't even want to call it an expert. Maybe it is an expertise in numbers or something. He's an aspect, but I would love to hear.

I've never like he doesn't seem like he overlaps with the Tillman for Titas of the world. No, but yet when he's talking about like turnover at tables and trying to like maximize profits and whatever and like this corner of the bar. should be worth $1 million a year. Right. I'm like, what he's saying makes sense for like Applebee's and Times Square. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like perfect sense where I'm like, if I run that.

I call him and go fix my business because it's Applebee's and Times Square. You just want this thing to fucking run like a machine. It's bad. It's also just it's bad for the world to think of everything like that. Yes. Yeah, because things are supposed to have character and be odd. Pirates wasn't good, but if you applied the logic that wipes pirates of its theme, if pirates work,

There would be something actually special about it. If pirates were 10% good, it would be our favorite place in America, right? Like the four of us are the target audience. Oh, yeah. Even not caring about pirates. specifically? When are the boys gonna go to Pirates? Why haven't they done it? Boys, if you ever make it to Silver Spring, you gotta do the Pirates episode. Jane said when we were watching, she's like,

With Dimple, she's like, it had more character before they changed it. There's the whole thing. They certainly had to gut it. to repair some of the safety issues. A sound system seemed like it was still from the 1980s, they said. But it's like you could have put a little more bric-a-brac in for the charm. It didn't all just have to be black vinyl boots. He doesn't like it. The whole thing with pirates, he just didn't like it. If anything about that tickled him.

Then he would have been like, because that's an easy theme to kind of do. Just there's like a skull and crossbones. Yeah, Long John Silver's has been a pirate theme. Tell me one example of a successful pirate chain. Oh, wait. Pirate. I'm sure he would love Pirate's Dinner Adventure. He would. The food that they serve and the efficiency with which...

which they, I just know it's the sous vide. They cook it under a light bulb. This is the thing though. It's like we're fascinated by Taffer, but a big part of it is that he is so repellent. and kind of stands as an enemy to the exact type of thing we like. Well, he's a representative of everything in culture that, like, scares us, that I feel like the four of us are always talking about. He's a contradiction, though, in some ways, because obviously he appreciates...

Imagineering appreciates Disney and themed shit. but he is not able to apply, like to change his thinking when it comes to different scenarios. He has one single focus. That's what I'm saying. He's numbers brained, which is the danger of everything fun in this world is a number brained. business moron who will destroy all fun in the world. Yeah, shit that shouldn't survive. He seems to have actual knowledge.

And the show is entertaining on, like, a trashy reality TV level. And the Corbett, I do think, is him, like, digging into the psychology of these people. Yeah, yeah. But then he also does those, like...

speaker conventions at a hotel by the airport where it's like Condoleezza Rice, General Mathis, John Taffer for a small business. But I think that's one of the things that I... remember i of other podcast like i think matt chrisman and someone else took mushrooms and then went to like a CPAC thing in Pasadena yes until they were kicked out and they saw like we're sitting in a conference room

Like a convention center watching John Taffer talk while we are high as balls. Hell yeah. That sounds better than anything you can see at Coachella, right? Oh, yeah. Festival audience. And I was fifth row for it. for Taffer. Now I'm just imagining Taffer on the Coachella poster. Headliner Taffer. Playing drums? Saturday afternoon. No, just him. He comes out and he just yells at everyone on stage. What are you wearing?

Feathers? That's weird! I got you a new hat. It doesn't have any feathers in it. And it's better for blocking the sun. My talk today is called You Do You! everyone write that down like that lady who just wanted to play her songs and own the building he should have all he should have been like all right here's the deal

Let's figure out a way where this doesn't sink you financially and you can play your dumb songs till you die. Because part of the thing we joke about of every bar gets reverted back to what it was within three weeks and then is out of business within four months.

Right. Is that he goes from one extreme to another where they're like, this is why I started the bar. This is my emotional story. This is why I love it. And he's like, throw all of that in the fucking garbage. You need to be worried about making money. Did you know that one in four men suffer from low testosterone, but 90% of men in the UK suffering from low testosterone remain undiagnosed?

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Appealing to the blandest, broadest, like group of people possible. And then they revolt against that. And you're like, right. How do you like. split the atom and find a way to make both people happy. I feel like there are a couple episodes I've seen. amidst the like 800 right but there's like the one that's like a bar in a trailer and the guy is like they're like safety code violations he does like hillbilly They call him like a hillbilly plumber or some shit.

where they're like everything's held together with duct tape and they're like this is the charm of the place alcohol violations mold and at the end he like redoes it and is like i'll make like the disney world version of the character you had before I don't know if that works because I think the people who go there don't want to go.

see the like in quote self parody version of what the bar was before but that was a rare example of him at least trying to keep the thing that he liked yeah you know what they like identified as this is the heart of the place this is why our 10 loyal customers come here and every other place he's like the dream has to die you have to shoot it in the head yeah some of that wouldn't work in Philadelphia because one of the things

about certain bars in certain neighborhoods. It'll just be a few blocks of row houses, townhouses, and the corner house. The bottom floor, the ground floor, is a bar. Yeah. But that is like basically a recruit. Right. But do you don't want to try to run that bar like the Rainforest Cafe? Right. You want the same 20 bar flight moves. You basically like.

He should not try to fix modes. They're not the most entertaining episodes, but the most effective episodes are the ones where he just stumbles onto a poorly run bar. Yes. He doesn't try to change the character. Right. Where it's like, this bar already has no identity. Right. And it's just not operating well. And he's just sort of like, how do I tighten this up?

It's like because you can't change the core character of things like this. Like, let's say there was a podcast and maybe the branding of it was kind of confusing because it bills itself as a podcast about. theme parks but then the character the heart of it is that all of this other bullshit is talked about at extreme length

And maybe some corporate person would come in and say, you need to like you should crank this out like an assembly line. Right. And, you know, to hear talk about a ride and keep the episode to an hour, 90 minutes or so. The last time you were on there was a gift that didn't come. During the episode, I don't know if I said it on the show, that the gifts ended up coming.

It was not what I suspected, which was a bunch more Kingo toys. No, I would never do that. Which you sent for my first son. For my second, you sent a bunch of Sprites. Yes. You sent the exact variety. Five of Funkos, five of action figures, and five keychains of Sprite. Now, Sprite is another character from the Eternals. Yes. Now, I thought Sprite would drive you particularly crazy because Sprite is the Peter Pan of the Eternals. The ultimate Peter.

sprite syndrome she's a little girl who can never grow up this is the creepiest shit and there's like somebody who wants to be with sprite no sprite wants to be with richard madden okay And she has a complex about the fact that Richard Madden will never be with her because he doesn't want to look like a pedophile. What a wonderful. for a great superhero epic. And what if he's got this weird kink where he's sexually attracted to women who look like adults.

And thus Sprite is always heartbroken. This is how this narrative plays out. She sees him kissing Gemma Chan and gets angry and almost becomes bad. So what if there was this kind of creepy element to the story, and on top of it, it was the boringest movie ever made. So anyway, but I did want to thank you for that gift from my second son, and I also...

We've been recording a while. It's getting a little hot in here. Okay, here we go. And I wanted to, oh, look at that. Oh, I happen to be wearing something from Griffin's second round of gifts. The website box launch.

Oh, of course. Boxlaunch.com connected to the chain of mall, mostly mall-based stores. Oh, right. Yes. I was having a sale on some other items I wanted, and I was trying to hit some free shipping minimums. Yeah, of course. And I was like, what else do they have that I maybe want? I was just doing.

you know yeah i do that keyword searches for brands i like my favorite ip yeah and i was like do they have any deep discount eternals merch and what i found is specifically that they sell two different kinds of Sprite? Yes, we should say that's the shirt. It is Sprite. Can you stand up? I can't really stand up. It is only the two characters that I have infected Scott's children with. The character, yes.

You have decided that my oldest is a Kingo kid and my youngest is a Sprite kid and that's how it will be. But you were also kind enough to make this a pair. You got a pretty matching coordination shirt so that I could have one and so that my son could have one. A different design. A photo from earlier today. But a different Sprite and Kingo shirt. Yes, a totally different shirt.

But still, with Sprite and with Kingo on the same sides, there is one for my oldest son, and I am wearing one as well. And then there's an entire other one that's like the magical patterns of goo and dust. It is a costume shirt. They are shirts. that represent the uniform. They replicate the chest. Famous Eternals fucking space garbage that's on their uniforms. So there's a you can be sprite.

And Kingo. Wow. I don't think that my oldest even knows that there is more, that there are more Kingo shirts available. But yeah, we'll get to go out and be the envy of all the dads and kids in town. I forgot if I ruined it, but when you said, I didn't know about it, but when you said there's a new package coming, I pulled up. All the eternal action figures.

And I was like, in my head, I may have texted him, but I was like, I will bet $100 that he picked Sprite. You got it right. Yeah, yeah. Which is the only way I was possibly previously familiar with Sprite. But now I am. Mike and I did some back and forth because I was like, is Fastos the second funniest? But Fastos doesn't come in the pocket pop.

keychain form factor. That was a big, yeah. It has to be a character that fits into these pre-established patterns with the Kingo. And then I was like, I could do Crow.

The evil deviant. But Mike agreed that it might be too scary for your children. Yeah, you don't want that. No, no, no. I want a story that everybody can get behind like a... eternal girl who wants to have sex with a man something great for my baby to start the world thinking about and I also I believe To make this a mega episode, I don't think that's the final.

Oh, yeah, well, I mean, here's the thing. Griffin, I have your Galactic Star Cruiser toy right here. Amazing. You mean your, well, not Galactic Star Cruiser. Yeah, yeah. You got the names wrong! Star Speeder is right here. It is so much bigger than I thought it would be. It's giant!

three feet tall. How are you going to transport that? I brought extra empty luggage solely trying to get this back home and I'm still going to have to do some adjusting. You listener, this is so huge and it's also, I think now what's happened is that it's

Mike, you put it perfectly in a place where I can't see Jason anymore. Right, it's massive. More than blocks Jason. And there's a whole discussion that's going to have to happen off the air because I have pulled the carded Rex out of the box because it was...

We were going to try to just put it on eBay and recoup some of the costs. Because there's two Rexes, a carded and a loose. There's a loose Rex in there, which is the same one. But this is a carded Rex. And we have to have a whole debate off the air of what we're going to do about this. Maybe nothing. But I also want to say that I have gotten everyone a gift. What? The same gift.

And maybe Griffin has this already and it's sort of redundant, but I just wanted to make sure that there was a character that you could put in to the star speeder immediately. Okay. Where are we going? Sitting on this. For about a year, maybe a year. This actually just... lined up perfectly. I have a guess of what this is too. I am going to give everyone a Miles Quarage action figure from Avatar. Everyone got them. They were on a nice

discount on bestbuy.com many months ago. I got to scan that. I bought a Jar Jar there before. And of course, you see he comes with his trademark cup of coffee. Right. And he fits. He's already in my... This perfect scale. He's already in my Star Speeder because the problem is... is that you need something in a specific scale because there are the exact amount of seats in this toy that there are on the actual Star Tours ride. But you need toys at this scale with...

With knees that bend. Yeah. It's very important because some of the different toys I have that are this size don't have bendable knees. You can't use reactions. You've got to go. Unless it's power to force two. Look at these knees. Look at these. They can't even bend. What kind of figure is that? Well, I'll say, so Mike and I were very invested in trying to get the Star Speeder when they went up very quickly on the Disney Store site. This is the fancy one with the...

The script where it plays the ride. That was very limited and went like super fast. We were waiting online for like a fucking hour. And then I found a hack that I thought would maybe help me get one. And it didn't work for me, but it worked for Mike. But Mike had also bid on one on eBay. So then this is the extra one he had, which he'd been holding for me for a while now.

I similarly, at New York Comic Con, at your request, got you an action figure of Kevin Eastman, co-creator of Ninja Turtles, dressed as a garbage man from a deleted scene of the first live action movie. But included in here also from New York Comic Con are a pack of blues, the mascot of Thrill Joy. Oh, wow. We haven't even talked about that. I met Brian Mariotti.

The former CEO of Funko. We got Mariotti stuff. Mike likes Blue. Mike thinks Blue is cute. I think this new mascot character Blue is cute. Here's an extra bonus. I bought some other bullshit on eBay recently, and because I bought enough of his stuff, The eBay seller threw in a mass amount of Batman Forever PVCs. So I think I have two Kilmers and two Chris O'Donnells in here. Oh, wow. This is a little gift bag for Mike.

Well, I mean, if they're the same as Batman, I can spread the thrill joy around. No. Jason, I've been hinting for a long time I have a thing I've been trying to get to you. Logistically, it's been a little difficult to make happen. And it's not from the Dollhouse Museum that you said you were stopping at. It's not, which I did stop at.

Okay. I woke up this morning in Santa Barbara, made a quick stop at the dollhouse, the teddy bear and doll museum that's pretty excellent. Wow. A big discovery I found there, Mike, that I think I need to put on your radar if I can take the pin out of puppets from earlier. Oh, right. Oh, my God. You know, we are at almost three hours as you take that pin out. Yeah, we're approaching three hours, yeah. Sherry Lewis Doll.

The doll of the woman, Sherry Lewis. Correct. Mass-produced. Was on a shelf with Buffalo Bob from Howdy Doody, who I know was not strictly the puppeteer of Howdy Doody, but I am now like, is there... an entire sub-universe of merchandise of the people behind the puppets. Of the ventriloquists. Because it was above a ventriloquist shelf, which had...

It did not have an Uncle Ed Smith, sadly, but it did have a Charlie McCarthy. Okay. It had a Mortimer Snurd. Why would they not make a Jerry Mahoney? That's a reference people are making all the time. They did have a Jerry Mahoney. I was like, where's the Edgar Bergen doll? Where's the Edgar Burger doll? But I now know there's a Buffalo Bob and a Sherry Lewis. Interesting. What does it look like? The Sherry Lewis is a plush doll that says Little Sherry.

Is she like a baby? I don't know. It's just like a little Sherry of the same size as Lenshopper. Really? Yeah. You've got to find Little Sherry. Little Sherry. Club three topic next month, Little Sherry. Little Sherry. Enjoy your 5%, Little Sherry. No madam. Fine. No madam. I actually packed a peanut butter and jelly knowing this would happen today, and I am looking forward to eating it because I am running out of steam.

Let's do it. So Jason, let's wrap it up. Wait, Griffin's a guest. What do you got? Final reveal. Okay, so I think it was a year or two ago. It was after I'd done the first Kingo drop of the Massamatsa Kingo, where Mike bought you a creepy stylized Japanese toy of director, raconteur, Kevin Smith.

A cuposket, I believe it was called. Yep. Yeah. And on my key invoked me to say, now Griffin has a tendency, our friend Griffin, to sometimes buy multiples of an item. Oh, no. Perhaps this will encourage him to buy multiples. And I originally, that was my plan. Going to buy several of these at discount. Okay. And just bombard you with Kevin Smith coupons. And then I was like, is there a more meaningful thing I can do here?

And it took a little while logistically to make happen. But especially you've had a year or two of high highs and low lows. Yeah. I owe you multiple. I've been feeling like it's been building of like, I need to give you something meaningful. both in commiseration and celebration and everything. So this is a cuposket signed by Kevin Smith. Oh, my God. Now, here is the funny part of this. I kept trying to get...

in-person interactions with him. He was supposed to do the podcast in studio a couple times. Then one time I was out here and I saw him, but I forgot to pack it. It kept not lining up at the last second. And then we did George Lucas talk show at his theater in New Jersey.

And as I was changing out of the Watto costume and I knew he was going to run off quickly, I was like, I forgot to get him to sign this. Patrick, can you go give this to him and get him to sign it? And he went, sure. And he brought it back. And so it is signed, I hurt you. Kevin Smith I love it which I didn't say it's for me I didn't say it's for you but I think the message translates we all heart you

Kevin Smith, most of all. Right. Wow. That's really beautiful. Yeah. Well, Jason, let Kevin Smith's love of you, his heart of you resonate. and power you through stuff. That's beautiful. My God. Now I just need to get him to sign 10 more of them. Oh, no. Where are those? Wow. Geez. A massive. There's never been more on the table. I mean, this is a gigantic box. Yeah. What are you going to do with this? I don't know. I really want you guys to see it, but we can't do that on the air.

I want you to see what looks, because you guys have not come over and seen the toy on the display in my room. We haven't been invited for a Star Speeder party. That's true. Yeah, no, the scale's massive. We'll post photos of it. Griffin, the greatest gift that you gave us was coming in here, veering us off topic in an original Star Tours kind of way and sending us on a much more entertaining adventure full of twists and turns. through the world of Taffer 1. An adventure that's just beginning.

I mean, we've already referred to nine, which is the amount of the original Star Wars. So we'll at least get to nine, you know, and then we'll end up with our Rogue Ones and our solos. Yeah, tap for side stories. Yeah, yeah. I'm looking forward to all of it, but I guess for now, my God. Griffin Newman, you survived podcast, the ride. What a time exit to the gift shop. Any energy left in which to plug anything? Blank check.

My podcast, Griffin and David. We're doing a series on Steven Spielberg right now. Followed up by a miniseries on the work of John Taffer. You're also doing it. You're going through episode by episode. Yes. I'm treating him as an auteur of bars. We're shifting our format a little bit. We have an episode in the planning stages, in theory, that would be a PTR BC.

crossover that hopefully will happen soon. We've got to figure out some of the logistics of it. Also, years ago on this podcast, I mentioned that there was a movie I got cast in largely because the director was a listener of this show. Yeah, indeed. The great Michael Taberski, who then I went to, it premiered at a film festival in Europe in last fall.

So then we went to Disneyland Paris together and had this very nice like full circle. Oh, wow. We're getting to go to a theme park together moment. Anyway, this movie got released on VOD very suddenly without much advanced warning. Oh, sure. That sounds like how things go, yes. Very much the state of the industry, but we're trying to do catch up, promoting it now. So it's called Turn Me On.

It's Belle Powley and Nick Robinson are the leads, but a bunch of comedy people like Darcy Carden and Patty Harrison are also in it. Julie Shiplett, who's a great stand-up. And it's like a dystopian sci-fi relationship. satire thing oh it's rentable in most places and half the length of this episode it's yeah Okay. I think it's pretty close to 90. It'll go down smooth. Less challenging work. I don't like things if they're not three hours. Three hours and a threatened part one of nine.

It's really, I mean, it's less our Star Wars and more our Avatar with the run times. Now it's just on us to release them. you know, with a better pace than, you know, to not have the amount of time between Fire and Ash. Fire and Ash. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, God, we really got to put a pin in Paylan.

Pay lack the wind trader. Oh my God. We don't have time. We got to get out the door because as for us, for three bonus episodes every month, check out podcasts or at the second gate or get one more bonus episode on our VIP tier club three where this entire taffer mess. began you will find all of that at patreon.com slash podcast the right I found the guy who suggested it Jordan Kegel there you go Jordan two years later are you happy now you better be

Dog. This has been a Forever Dog production. Executive produced by Mike Carlson, Jason Sheridan, Scott Gardner. Brett Bohm, Joe Cilio, and Alex Ramsey. For more original podcasts, please visit foreverdogpodcasts.com. And subscribe to our shows on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Keep up with the latest Forever Dog news by following us on Twitter and Instagram. at Forever Dog Team, and liking our page on Facebook.