DOD25: Spookdadular!

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:28 Tom: To Dear Old Dads, the podcast that absolutely took all the candy in that bowl you left outside. I'm Tom Curry, I'm joined as always by Thomas Smith and Eli Bosnick.

0:00:35 Eli: I offended you would say I would take all of the candy, Tom. I would ring the bell and kindly ask what their vegan options were, like a gentleman.

0:00:46 Thomas: Then leave the flaming bag of shit on the thing for them to stomp out and then they'll be like, ah, vegan shit, too. Fuck.

0:00:55 Eli: Edible?

0:00:49 Tom: Boo. Wait, isn't most candy, most candy is vegan, right?

0:00:58 Eli: No!

0:00:58 Tom: No?

0:00:59 Eli: No.

0:00:59 Tom: Well, how is it not vegan? Oh, because there's milk in it.

0:00:57 Thomas: Oh, there's probably like fucking horse juice in it.

0:01:03 Eli: There's Milk in all the chocolate, and there's gelatin in all of the candy which is horse feed

0:01:06 Thomas: Oh, that's true. Gelatin is the weirdest goddamn thing.

0:01:11 Tom: Holy shit, really?

0:01:13 Thomas: Yeah, is the weirdest thing that how do you feel about the products that are like Like, clearly they don't kill the animal for it, but they just, because the animal's probably dead for something else, they use it, you know? I'm kind of mixed on those.

0:01:12 Eli: The vegan like fish guts and beer

0:01:27 Thomas: Yeah, whatever it is, you now.

0:01:29 Eli: I mean, so, you know, I, I tend to go with the, like, Peter Singer thing, which is, uh, pedophilia.

0:01:37 Tom: Wait, what?

0:01:38 Thomas: No!

0:01:38 Eli: No, that is look, we gotta scare away the right people.

0:01:39 Tom: What just happened? We We were doing a wholesome Halloween episode.

0:01:44 Thomas: Yeah, Tom's connection went out for a minute and now he's...

0:01:46 Tom: What the fuck?

0:01:48 Thomas: Which

0:01:48 Eli: Peter Singer, he says that, like, when you're eating, morally, right, if you're making moral choices, one of the questions you have to ask yourself is, like, if everyone stopped consuming this product, would the animal stop having a bad time? Right. Would you be helping the... So in the case of fish guts, where that's already being used from marketed seafood products, no, you wouldn't be, uh, any fish lives by not buying a beer. Oh,

0:01:56 Thomas: Hmm. Yeah.

0:02:14 Thomas: This may be something you already know, but I cannot fucking believe this happened. I had my world rocked in Scotland in terms of my vegetarian diet because I or we went to a place, you know, Scotland had some decent vegetarian options. It was, you know, it was like, it wasn't like here where you can kind of get something anywhere, you kind of had to go to a specific thing. But like, there were there were plenty of specific things. You know, I felt like there are, are good, good options. And I go to one, and one, uh, vegetarian option is a risotto, you, and it's like all this stuff and a risetto and Parmesan. And I'm like, yeah, that's great. Give me that. And she says, well, are, do you want, do the full, the Parmesan? Cause that's not vegetarian. I was like, what? Parmesan's not vegetarian? Are you? And I don't know how much your average person knows about anything.

0:02:24 Eli: Yeah, yes of course sure yeah no

0:03:03 Thomas: I'm like is she just not know what this is or what? What? So I was really confused. I was like, is it really not? And she's like, yeah, someone told me it's not vegetarian. And so I'm like, okay, well, I, I've never heard of that. So yes, please give me the Parmesan. Like I'm fine with Parmesan and then I proceed to Google it. Do you know this Eli?

0:03:22 Thomas: Oh, I'm sorry. I may ruin your, no, you don't eat any cheese. Nevermind.

0:03:21 Eli: I don't know this. I'm a

0:03:25 Thomas: It doesn't matter. Yeah. I forgot.

0:03:25 Eli: Vegan I don' t, I'm

0:03:26 Thomas: Yeah. So, um, I won't ruin your life. Good. Uh, so I was ready for all all kinds of things, you know, cause I'm thinking, all right, if this is truly uses some animal product, it's Parmesan cheese. Like it's going to take a lot for me to not want Parmesan cheese. I fucking love Parmesan cheeses. So I'm ready. I'm going in there. I couldn't be more like cognitively biased toward trying to make this. Okay. I might get, it'll be fine. It's probably like you say, it was probably the horse fucking feet that they already killed anyway or something.

0:03:27 Eli: All good, right?

0:03:57 Thomas: Who knows? It couldn't be worse. I look it up, and I don't know if people know this, for real Parmesan cheese it definitionally has to involve like killing a baby cow and using the inside of the guts to what it's like basically veal, like, it's almost, I think it might be as bad as veal. I was not ready for that. So she comes with the Parmesan dish and I said, well, thank you for giving me my final Parmesan dishes. You are absolutely right, it is not vegetarian. Sorry for doubting you, server, you're correct, I'm going to eat this one, it's to hear, uh, but this will be my final Parmesan dish. The only bright side is it is kind of a European thing from the Parmesan region of fucking Parmesan, and there's a lot of American ones where I think they don't make it that

0:03:41 Eli: Right exactly yeah yeah

0:04:03 Tom: Yeah. Yep. Again, animal rennet is what it's called.

0:04:41 Thomas: Way, so I have to like find

0:04:42 Eli: I was, I was gonna say, Thomas, I've got some great news for you about the green bottle at the back of the grocery store. So

0:04:44 Thomas: There's not even cheese in that one.

0:04:50 Tom: So wait a minute. But what little baby cow was killed for the veal and only incidentally then used for the rennet?

0:04:54 Thomas: Oh, nah, that's like saying, what if, you know, the Nazis did the medical experiments, but they were, we're already going to kill.

0:04:59 Tom: Isn't that the same thing as the gelatin? But no, I mean, isn't that the same as the, how is that different than the, than the gelatin? It's just like, we kill the animal, then we use the entire animal. Well,

0:05:03 Eli: You're wanting me to waste the lamp,

0:05:12 Thomas: Know they specifically kill these ones for that. Like based on what I looked up, like they, They kill these one's for that, you if it's, if it is one where like, they may also be killing it for another incredibly unethical reason, I feel like that's not really a pass. Cause then wouldn't that apply to both of them? Then I could go to veal and be like, well, they're already killing it. For the cheese.

0:05:30 Tom: That's, that's what I mean, that's why I don't understand that argument, because it's like, that's why I think the gelatin argument works, it's, yeah, they're a, they're killing it and using the entire animal because there's market for each piece of the animal. Like the, the fact that there's a market for the gelatin isn't different than the market for hide, which is used for your shoes, which isn't than the rump roast. Like understand it.

0:05:49 Thomas: Well, one, it's because the they're raised. So if you're talking about a fucking horse feet, that horse could have been the, don't know, Gandalf's horse. It could have be the best horse that had a great life. It finally died and you used its feet. Veal has to be tortured in order to happen specifically and killed as a young thing. So there's a difference there in the quality of life. Like if it's a byproduct of an animal that was in no matter what the manner of its death, you could use the thing after it's dead. I think that's fundamentally different than we had to torture an animal specifically to give you this product. Seems we lose all our listeners, we should.

0:06:24 Eli: Was going to say, God, is there anything that's going to cause a worse incidence of, of listener feedback, right.

0:06:26 Tom: Though, I, Halloween let's talk about Halloween.

0:06:33 Eli: God, dear

0:06:33 Thomas: Hey, Tom, talk about chivalry.

0:06:34 Eli: God.

0:06:37 Tom: Yeah so when a woman's on a pedestal the thing the next thing to do see

0:06:40 Eli: Wait, wait, wait. How fat is this woman on the pedestal? I want to know how much I should respect her feelings.

0:06:45 Thomas: Was the pedestal made from animal product or

0:06:47 Tom: So here's how to open a door so this step okay

0:06:53 Eli: Here we go. Now we're just doing a podcast for my mom. So we can really narrow cast this particular episode. Episode.

0:06:59 Tom: No that would be how to close a cabinet door actually it turns out oh but so Eli you wanted to talk about halloween you've got this is and let's do it buddy

0:07:01 Thomas: Oh

0:07:04 Eli: Me and I want Halloween spooktacular. First of all, I love a spooktakular. I several ideas. The first, and honestly, I think this is all we're going to need because I know what Halloween is. Our listeners know what Hollywood is. I would love to hear whatever crazy, sad, non -Halloween you guys got as kids. I'm assuming that Tom's dad made him give out his candy door -to -door.

0:07:12 Thomas: Me too I

0:07:35 Eli: Thomas's dad took all their candy and would eat it in a cave. It threw the hole that Thomas has never gone through. He would dump all the candy into there.

0:07:32 Thomas: Don't think you're properly understanding my dad's apathy to things he just didn't give a fuck about what he did was absolutely nothing while my mom took us out and did all the pain of can you imagine taking four kids to a thing and having your piece of shit husband just not help at all well

0:08:00 Eli: I bet he was a lights -off house, too. Right?

0:08:03 Thomas: Okay what who do you who do you think who do you think is trick-or-treating up my quarter mile drive picture my house is the castle from Beauty and the Beast like one guy got lost there who has, you know, is going to an invention contest or whatever. My, yeah, that's my house. There's no, nobody came to my house. It's not a place you could. Oh yeah she would drive us to the occasionally to the really, uh, you know, quote-unquote ritzy neighborhoods of the

0:08:03 Tom: What's the lights off oh we turn the lights on, lights off

0:08:08 Eli: Oh, right! Sorry! Yeah, yeah, no. So

0:08:13 Tom: Okay

0:08:25 Eli: Where did you trick -or -cheat? Did she, like, drive you into town?

0:08:35 Tom: We

0:08:35 Thomas: Nice suburbs of, you know, fucking Angels Camp, California

0:08:38 Tom: Got to talk about the legend that is go trick-or-treating in the rich neighborhood because at least my experience has been everybody, every kid, my kids now are convinced that this urban legend is true too, that if they go to the, like, the the most wealthy neighborhood that they'll show up and they'll get like full -size candy bars at every house and like a a six pack of beer and like, you know, whatever.

0:08:56 Thomas: Yeah there was always that story of oh that house had the full size every single Halloween and somehow it was never a house that I ever saw. There's just some kid who's like, that house gave out a box of full-size Snickers bars every kid

0:09:02 Tom: Right. Right, right. Story is bullshit and lies. When, when I was like 13 or 14, my buddy and I, we, our, we had my buddy's mom drive us to this neighborhood called Prestwick, and Prestwick was definitely wealthy. It was a, it's a golf course community. I mean, like huge huge houses, they're all, this is in the 90s, the early 90s, these are million plus houses in the early 90s, so who knows what they are now, you know, in Illinois for God's sake. So these are big beautiful houses. We're like, we are gonna hit the goddamn mother load.

We were so fucking excited, we, we worked so hard to convince Dave's mom to drive us to this fucking neighborhood so we could walk around and trick -or -treat By far the lowest, worst trick -ortreating hall I ever had in my entire life, and it wasn't even close. The houses are all 93 miles apart, so, you and every house every street, the streets don't fucking connect, every street is a fucking one-way cul-de-sac. So you're like, you, you go less houses, and none of those people were any more generous than anybody in the regular, close together suburban tract house neighborhoods. So you'd show up and you get like a 100 Grand bar and you're like, lady, I walked a

0:09:44 Thomas: Oh yeah that's fair yeah

0:09:56 Eli: For sure I want

0:10:28 Tom: Quarter fucking mile for this, are you kidding me

0:10:30 Eli: A real hundred grand from you that's what I was hoping

0:10:31 Thomas: And a bar

0:10:32 Tom: Right yeah you can afford 100 grand worth of candy, that's

0:10:33 Thomas: Yeah though think I know what's going on here, um, shit town didn't actually have a real wealthy area, so I think what was happening was I was going to the the sweet spot, which is you want like upper middle class, you know, like houses that are still stacked together, but they are, they have, you Know, plenty of resources. They probably also have kids or, you Now, or at least are like people who are preparing for Halloween. That's the sweet spot. I don't think my town had a, there's probably like one fucking coal Baron in my town somewhere that I didn't know about who, you you know, the rattlesnake blood heiress, that, yeah he made his back in the in the early uh rattlesnake rush

0:10:46 Eli: Any money he

0:10:47 Tom: Right that's the that's the butter zone, right

0:11:04 Eli: Would set the dogs on you though if you got on the property the

0:11:18 Tom: No

0:11:18 Thomas: Of uh 19 whatever he just like

0:11:18 Eli: Fang baron of California. Now let me, let me ask, because we're, we now all have houses, are you guys full-size candy bar houses or you are Hitler, you're Hitler we are

0:11:28 Thomas: Yeah

0:11:31 Tom: Fuck that noise, are you a full-size can dude how many, I would, cost me, it would cost my 401k to give out all

0:11:39 Eli: It's so fucking expensive. I'm not gonna lie to you guys, it's still crazy expensive every year, but when we moved, when we bought a house, I told, and I was like, we will be a full-sized candy bar house no exceptions, we don't have any gods odds

0:11:55 Tom: Right no

0:11:45 Thomas: Oh I love it damn it okay I'm doing it you've inspired me, I'm doing it previous Eli 10

0:11:56 Tom: New patreon goal, I need a new patreon goal, are you kidding me, I don't know where you guys live my our door our doorbell will ring 100, 150 times with like five kids each time, it would cost a thousand dollars to give all those kids I'm not even exaggerating. Oh my we're in a very population dense area, like it's for the three hour zone, which we got to talk about that fucking weirdness, but like the four to seven, like trick-or-treating hours that are out here. I don't know if you guys have trick-or-treating hours. It's a fucking non-stop cavalcade

0:11:59 Eli: Yeah

0:12:01 Thomas: 000 patron level Tom will buy a candy bar uh

0:12:08 Eli: Yeah it sure does yeah Tomifer

0:12:14 Thomas: So I've never ever lived in a place where we got that many trick-or-treaters, so maybe that's why my oh wow

0:12:35 Tom: It is I mean it's you have to sit, you can't, you have to sit at the door

0:12:36 Thomas: No I don't have that

0:12:38 Eli: Is yep it's non-stop. We are also part of the reason why we're a full-size candy bar house is that there are several very steep stairs to lead up to my house. Thomas, you've been to the home, so you you you actually have right you've had had to climb the mountain that is to my house, so we have to get kids up there, I'm, I rarely talk about money, I'm yeah

0:12:55 Tom: Gonna guess none of them are even

0:12:51 Thomas: Yeah I had to carry Lydia's bags to it, yeah oh my god the stairs are a nightmare, plus there's a dude drywalled behind the walls and the stairs too

0:13:05 Tom: It's just full of crickets, it's I

0:13:07 Thomas: I was really worried I was gonna get drywald in the way. He started drywalling me, and I was like, like, Eli, no, I'm still here. Oh

0:13:10 Tom: Mean

0:13:09 Eli: I you said you wanted to nap, I don't understand, it's a forever nap. So I, I rarely talked about money on the air, Tomifer Bethesda Curifer, do you know how much money I spent on chocolate last year? Take a guess seven

0:13:29 Tom: It had to be seven or eight hundred dollars, that's it, you're a crazy person, wait

0:13:32 Eli: Hundred dollars worth of chocolate would you like to guess how many candy bars I had left from the seven hundred dollar purchase, it

0:13:41 Thomas: 698 oh

0:13:44 Tom: Wait a minute, wait a minute, that's a trick question, does that count you eating the candy as you're giving it away. Oh

0:13:49 Eli: Because I, it's not vegan god forbid I give people

0:13:50 Thomas: Wow

0:13:50 Tom: God, that's right you can't do anything fun, yeah all right, so you had, you had, you had seven candy bars left whoa I almost crushed it dude you're a crazy person

0:13:51 Eli: Right yeah so close, I had four candy bars left at the end of the night I am a crazy person

0:14:03 Tom: Oh

0:14:03 Thomas: Wow I would love Lydia would love that. One time we, we went, I think Lydia did kind of this, not the full size, but like got, already the first time we lived in a house that it seemed like there'd be trick-or-treaters, and we got like three, it was the most. There's nothing more depressing than when you like your poor wife has gone to all this trouble, she's excited to see some kids before we had kids, you know, and she's like, oh, I've set up for the trick-or-treaters three fucking times and and each, each one, well, probably not the first one, because we didn't know how many there would be. Toward the end we just gave them like a thousand candy it's just like Each of them got a truck worth worth of candy. Oh.

0:14:04 Eli: Oh yeah

0:14:17 Tom: That That was my first house. Yeah. My. Yeah.

0:14:35 Tom: Yeah.

0:14:35 Eli: Just handfuls yeah that Was the first year, the first year for us, because the previous people, previous people who own this house, they were lights-out people.

0:14:44 Thomas: The kids had profiled, they know. The

0:14:44 Eli: Right. So, they had profile, and my wife I

0:14:47 Thomas: Kids are better

0:14:47 Tom: You had a reputation.

0:14:48 Eli: Yeah.

0:14:48 Thomas: Than the Chicago PD at profiling, like, as a kid, you know, fucking. Fucking witch house is what?

0:14:53 Tom: Oh,

0:14:53 Eli: Exactly. The houses. Yeah, so, my wife, I will never forget, my wife was dressed as a fairy and she was sitting on our front porch and sort of like being like, we have full-size kids. I thought I was going to kidnap a child.

0:15:02 Thomas: Oh, no. Oh.

0:15:04 Eli: Genuinely thought I was going to kidnap a child and be like, you have to go up the fucking stairs and let that woman give you a candy bar. It was okay. We had a lot left over. So we were like, hey, we're not going to get that many trick -or -treaters. But the scuttlebutt got around. The scutdlebutt got around. And thus we had the tragedy of two years ago. And when I say, look, my wife has an anxiety disorder. When I say the things that haunt my wife, that she talks to me about on a regular basis, two years ago, on Halloween, because the scuttlebot had gotten around, we ran out of candy at like 6 45 We had, we were two kids who came to the door, we had to turn the light out shamefully.

0:15:41 Tom: No. Eli wrote him checks.

0:15:47 Eli: Hide.

0:15:41 Thomas: And Oh, yeah.

0:15:48 Eli: I should have, I absolutely, what we should have because

0:15:50 Thomas: He's like, congratulations, your college is paid for. Both of you.

0:15:51 Eli: Yeah. Uh,

0:15:53 Tom: Did you guys take money orders? I've got.

0:15:54 Eli: Yeah. Scott's Tots, I should have done something because the kids were at the porch, we were hiding, we were creak, we're under, we're hiding from them, obviously, with shame, as you should, and one of the kids said to the other one, we came all this way and we got nothing, and my wife thinks about that child saying it to that other child four times a day, every day.

0:15:57 Thomas: Scott's thoughts.

0:16:12 Thomas: Haunts her memory. Picture, there's a lot of reverb on the voice, like in her mind's eye, you know, just forever. I picture you guys also looking through your, obviously completely opened, fucking cabinets that are never closed, you're like, I do that, do they like, fucking salt. I don't, uh, barbecue sauce.

0:16:20 Eli: Mm -hmm, yes. Yeah. Absolutely. So

0:16:26 Tom: No. What do you got?

0:16:33 Eli: Anything. Soup. Soup. Do you like soup? Yeah.

0:16:36 Tom: We have an unopened bag of brown sugar. Just give him, just give him a handfuls of brown sugar.

0:16:38 Eli: Yeah.

0:16:39 Thomas: There's some there's probably stuff that's on the margin where you're like, marshmallows, can we give them a bag of marsh, is that

0:16:43 Eli: Marshmallow. That's kind of a, the brownie mix, you just take this home, kids, and your brain, so, so last year, because here's the thing, like they're of toothbrush.

0:16:51 Tom: We got these toothbrushes from the dentist last.

0:16:53 Thomas: Oh. No. No, you can't do the fucking toothbrush house, you can be the toothbrush, that's the opposite of the full -size candy bar house, yeah.

0:16:57 Eli: House. There's We

0:16:53 Tom: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. You're allowed by law.

0:17:00 Eli: Need to talk about toothbrush house.

0:17:02 Tom: You're allow to burn that house to the ground and nail the door shut.

0:17:02 Eli: Absolute. You can, yes. You can murder them.

0:17:04 Thomas: That's A Montague Capulet situation. Like those two entities, it's dark, it's a battle of dark good and evil, like, it's just, you know, Sauron and fucking Gandalf of whatever.

0:17:09 Eli: Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. And One house's fam, kid dies of cavities, the other one dies of diabetes, it's very apropos. No, but so last year when it, when it came time to shop, and, and look, my wife is not a spender, right? My wife is not one of those, like, I wanna... When it came time to shop, my wife called up Sam's Club, and she was like, unload all the pallets into the truck, and no one gets hurt. So, cause she will, I will tell you this, I Will Tell You, yup, she will never be caught uncandied again. Not once. Not one...

0:17:17 Thomas: No. That's the same kid. Actually, it puts the candy bars yeah.

0:17:42 Tom: Then the basket. Uncandied.

0:17:48 Eli: Until the day my bride dies, there will be full-size candy bars, she, they're still here, they're still, they're here, the four candy bars are just sitting in our pantry, they've been here for a year in case those kids, like, come out through the basement one night and they're like, we're back for revenge. She's gonna be like, nice, funny games. Here we go. But yeah, so we're a full-size candy bar house.

0:18:07 Tom: Do guys have trick-or-treating hours that are established by municipality, by you guys? So, They didn't have this when I was, okay, that's so fun, when I was in the city proper and I was in Chicago, the rules around trick -o -treating were if it was Halloween, you could just fucking trick -a -tweet and you had this, probably stop sometime a little after dark, there was, it was a fucking, it was the purge of trick -er -tweeting there were no rules, you could go anywhere, do, do anything, like, there was just, adults all had to stay inside, nobody walked their kids around, like I like, I I was born in '78, so we trick-or-treated in the city of Chicago proper, and from like first grade to fourth grade, and my dad never walked with us, no adult walked with any kid ever, not once, the streets were teeming with children, young and old, fucking with each other, stealing each other's can, it was, it was fucking just absolute

0:18:16 Eli: No.

0:18:38 Thomas: Wow. Wow. Yeah.

0:19:08 Eli: Yeah.

0:19:08 Tom: Anarchy.

0:19:08 Eli: It was a purge, it was the purge with candy.

0:19:09 Tom: And chaos. It was it was the sweetest purge. And

0:19:10 Thomas: There's Mad Max, there's the one kid with the electric guitar playing on the fucking

0:19:16 Eli: Yeah, he's bouncing

0:19:16 Tom: Just shooting fire out of the back of his fucking toy mobile thing. Like, you move out to the suburb, suburbs have this shit on lock, they like, okay, trick-or-treating hours are from four o'clock to seven o' clock, uh, not it is it's like everybody will walk single file, uh, voices will be kept to a 27 decibel, it's, the rules are like fucking for real out here. So we've actually established, my stepdaughter and I, we've established, though, for anyone else living in the three hour zone, here's what we figured out, because my stepdaughter cannot walk for three hours, she simply can't do it, she'll die if she, her legs get tired, I end up carrying her around, she's coming on 12 years old, there's literally no way, here's, she'll, the, here's what we do, you take the first hour, that's a good hour, everyone's still excited.

0:19:17 Thomas: Yeah.

0:19:17 Eli: On the front, yeah. Absolutely. Yeah.

0:19:28 Thomas: Over the loudspeaker of the neighborhood.

0:19:30 Eli: Yeah. Yeah.

0:20:06 Eli: Best

0:20:06 Tom: Everyone's still giving out candy, right, then you take, then you go home, you empty out your candy, you take a one hour break, then you circle back, the last hour everyone sick of this shit and they're just emptying the bowl into of the bag so they can flip off their fucking lights.

0:20:06 Eli: Hour. Yeah. Full candy buckets. Of course. Smart. Yeah, just take it. Yep.

0:20:13 Thomas: Yeah, that

0:20:22 Tom: It. If you're gonna do it for two hours, it's hour one and hour three. And hour 3 is more productive than hour one by a good, I'd say, I didn't do the math, but maybe 20, 25. Well,

0:20:27 Eli: Smart smart. Very, very smart.

0:20:36 Thomas: Don't think I ever trick or treated without my mom driving us around. That's weird. Maybe it's just a geography thing because I

0:20:41 Tom: I've never had an adult right.

0:20:43 Eli: Because it was nine miles between each house you'd get carried

0:20:44 Thomas: Yeah, that I think that's kind of what it was.

0:20:47 Eli: Away by a coyote.

0:20:48 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. The wolves also trick or treat, but with kids, they just had like bags of kids, you know?

0:20:52 Eli: Now, I can't believe that I'm gonna, I'm going to say that I went through danger and wasn't like, oh, my dad would always like slide me from house to house on a a special sled covered in chocolate. But Tom, when you were saying that thing about like after dark, my thing after dark, at least in my neighborhood growing up, was if you stayed out after dark, big kids would come and take your candy, it was candy purge you were playing this weird risk-reward because it would start, the sun would start to set, and you'd be like, okay, I think we're okay, we're like, four, how long does it take us to walk a block, the bag snatchers

0:21:08 Tom: Take your shit, yeah, yes, that's the thing is like, it was dangerous yes because the bag snatchers would come out, man it was like a real thing the bag snatchers see

0:21:36 Eli: Oh

0:21:38 Thomas: Here's another thing I don't get. Cause you guys both, I think live in areas that would are more North and would probably be getting darker sooner. All My memories of trick or treating are in the dark. I don'T remember trick or treated in the light. What the fuck? What's going on here?

0:21:51 Tom: In the burbs that, that's why

0:21:52 Thomas: I don't know.

0:21:52 Tom: They shut it down, yeah, no, like, right now, they, the hours, well in advance, and it's a hard 7 p.m. stop. Every light in the whole neighborhood, all of them. And it's just like, municipality by municipality. They all just power down at the same time. So you're really only trick -or -treating in the dark about half an hour. And now it's totally different, Eli. Now it's fucking parents all over. Parents will have the radio flyer sleds full of a cooler of beer and hot apple cider.

0:22:07 Eli: That

0:22:23 Tom: It's They do, they they tailgate trick-or-treat. You'll go to like houses, like the grown -ups will be outside.

0:22:17 Thomas: Yeah. Oh, tailgating Halloween. Oh. I feel like millennials have figured out how to tailgate anything. Like just any, any parenting thing, millennial generation has added beer to it, which I like.

0:22:29 Tom: Yeah, fucking Right. Man. Did

0:22:32 Eli: Yep. Yep. Because Uh, we're all alcoholics, and you know what, who could blame us?

0:22:40 Thomas: It's true. Cause no one could afford a house and our wages fucking suck. Yeah. So at least we could.

0:22:42 Eli: Yeah. Exactly. You know that I can't afford a 24 pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon. Whoo, happy prom, everybody. Junior prom, the sweetest of proms. Daddy's gonna throw up on your dress on the drive home, and for that I apologize. No,

0:23:02 Tom: Your folks let you keep your candy, or do they, did they like parse it out, or

0:23:06 Thomas: Oh, we yeah, we were on a strict and this is actually fine. This is for me. And again, parents, it was just my mom. My dad didn't bother with any of this, didn't do any of the emotional labor of having to care about any of this. So my mom would, you know, the night of Halloween, we're pretty good to eat a shitload of candy. Like she was good with that. Like you need a shitload of candy that night on such. Then she would put them up high. Oh, I love that as a kid. Did you guys have as a, as a child, as a kid, there's up high, I forgot about this. It's great. It was like a fucking void that you can't, you're just like, ah, forbidden zone up high I can't get there. I'm a kid there's no way to do it.

0:23:14 Tom: Oh yeah, oh,

0:23:40 Thomas: She would put it on top of the cabinets. And, and then like each night, and maybe, maybe once during the day, she would let us pick like, you know, a couple of pieces of candy to have, and it, that's, I think that's good because then it lasted for a while, and we loved it, it was fun for

0:23:31 Eli: God. Yes. Yeah. Did your parents take a candy tax for

0:23:56 Tom: My dad did, my dad, a hundred percent would, would take, but he was pretty judicious, like he would just take a handful of what his favorite candy were, like two or three, but then he absolutely, like he went through, because he was, this is the 80s, so he went through all the candy and like checked every wrapper to make sure it hadn't hadn't

0:24:12 Eli: The razor blades of course

0:24:13 Tom: Yeah yeah

0:24:13 Thomas: The nothing yeah, for he checked for every single urban legend that never fucking happened yes. The

0:24:15 Tom: Yeah. A hundred

0:24:18 Eli: Yup for chupacabras and financially Financially fiscal, but socially liberals.

0:24:22 Thomas: Drug war yeah.

0:24:19 Tom: Percent. Yeah. Yeah, we weren't. Yeah so my, he was super, super strict. He wouldn't, he told us, like, you better not eat any of that candy while you're trick-or-treating till you get to bring it home and check it.

0:24:24 Thomas: I don't checking

0:24:24 Eli: Yeah, exactly.

0:24:31 Thomas: There better not be the female orgasm in this

0:24:35 Tom: The clitoris it's under an almond joy.

0:24:35 Eli: Okay. So that actually is a perfect intro to my next thing, which is obviously razor blades and the apples, right? A fucking classic poison, right, which was a big one. Free, free drugs from drug dealers.

0:24:48 Thomas: Free drugs free drugs that

0:24:50 Tom: Also in an apple.

0:24:53 Eli: It does seem newer because now the zeitgeist is aware of edibles. So they're like, oh, no, they're

0:24:58 Tom: Wait a minute free drugs. I didn't even know you know that one.

0:25:00 Thomas: Would no this goes back way

0:25:02 Tom: How

0:25:02 Thomas: Back they always thought that oh drug people dealers are putting drugs in your kids candy Andy.

0:25:07 Eli: Putting drug. Get you you hooked

0:25:08 Tom: Would would that even work in practice like I don't remember like I'd go to a house and now like let's say let's see I got fucking heroin or whatever and then I'm like I'm hooked on heroin but I can't remember which house I got it on so I gotta go like did you guys give me heroin because I'd like some more no okay I'll go to the next house heroin how the fuck would that even work

0:25:08 Eli: Oh no they were in the candy yeah

0:25:15 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, door to door.

0:25:24 Eli: I'd like he he has to go the neighborhood next day and be like hey anyone's kid jonesing I'm the heroin neighbor I I gave away 85,000 worth of heroin last night I am all

0:25:32 Tom: Oh

0:25:35 Thomas: Yeah you have to go house to house and if you open one door and it's Tony Montana or whatever the fuck then you're like oh okay found it.

0:25:44 Eli: Right I found my house I would like to say hello to your little friend, by which I mean your child, child who I hooked up, yeah so there's the giving away the drugs free model um you have the um who went insane and killed their family in the neighborhood

0:25:55 Tom: That's great what

0:25:56 Thomas: So funny. Oh of course yeah uh, no, not really. That's just the urban legend of it. Right.

0:26:03 Tom: No we didn't have a Thomas

0:26:02 Eli: Yeah yeah there's urban legend it was just like we were yeah

0:26:06 Thomas: Yeah. We don't mean literally Tom.

0:26:10 Tom: Your dad was not an urban legend no it's not I don't

0:26:11 Eli: We the big one for us right, my dad didn't check the candy because I think he was aware, but the big one was, and god this is probably, there's no way this is, I'm thinking it as it's about to come out of my mouth and I'm like there's no fucking way this is true because I would be able to Google it and there's no fucking I'll Google it right now as I'm talking. We had heard that there was a kid who went to the local high school who got like super high on mushrooms and killed his family on Halloween and was in a local mental hospital and might like break out and kill people. And of course it's not real. I Googled it and it's like three links that are like urban legend or like short, scary movie. None of that's real. But yeah. Did you guys have those?

0:26:25 Thomas: I love this. That'S my favorite thing. Oh, sure. Ah, yeah. Oh Man.

0:26:58 Tom: Remember any stories like that floating around I wish they had because it would would have added so much delicious color oh

0:27:05 Thomas: I told You about the Kid Who Burned Down the School. I already told you that one. That probably, probably, but that was real. So that, yeah, it wasn't really an urban legend. Hmm. I don't know.

0:27:07 Eli: Yes, of course. Sure. Now, when did you guys stop trick or treating? Cause I, I trick or treated.

0:27:15 Thomas: Oh, that's another one. I was going to say that when Tom said his daughter's 12 or whatever, I was like, that sounds like the last year that I would do it. You don't trick or treat in high school.

0:27:23 Tom: No, I I trick-or -treated into high school. Yeah.

0:27:24 Eli: Oh, I took treated literally my senior year in high school. I took.

0:27:27 Thomas: What the fuck? That's

0:27:28 Tom: We Trick -or-treated into hi school. I don't think I did it my senior year, but I do remember trick - or -treating at least, I don't know, the first year or two probably of high school. I don't remember, I remember who I was friends with and I did trick - or - treat Yeah, the costumes got stupider and like less work put in them and eventually just like, I'm just, well, I'm just hungry, it's like candy.

0:27:29 Thomas: Wow.

0:27:48 Eli: Oh, See, that opposite for me is because then I was dating people, so I could do themed couple costumes with my high school girlfriends. Oh, that was a blast, we had a an awful lot of fun with those. Also, at that point when I was in high school I was already a drama kid, so I had all the skills and combined resources of the drama department, so we could really go whole hog with our costumes. Also, the thing was like, as much as people frown on being a 18 year old walking around getting candy, if you're not a bag snatcher, you are actually making it safer for the really little kids out there, so people would actually like that we were present there because we're very clearly a big band of drama nerds, and they'd be like, "Ah, look at those drama nerds singing Les Mis" as they walk from house to house. Yeah.

0:27:48 Tom: Yeah. Oh,

0:28:04 Thomas: Holy shit.

0:28:23 Thomas: Oh, good point.

0:28:33 Tom: My god Oh, so this is like, this doesn't paint me in a good light, but nothing in my high school career should, but I do remember, and I don't remember how old I was, but at some point in my high school career realizing that I was probably too old to be doing this trick-or-treating shit, and so my buddy and I just went around be like, "Oh, we're actually getting it for his sister, she's sick," and they'd be, "You're like, oh, that's so nice." Then they give you a candy, but then they give you extra candy. My buddy's sister wasn't fucking sick. We just wanted to go trick -or -treating.

0:29:02 Thomas: Eh, who cares?

0:29:00 Eli: Honestly Tom, I was so afraid you were about to tell me you were a bag snatching kid. That thank you.

0:29:06 Thomas: Oh, I was certain. I was

0:29:08 Eli: Yeah, and

0:29:08 Thomas: 100% certain Tom was going to say he killed a kid and took his candy.

0:29:09 Tom: No, no, no.

0:29:11 Eli: Ate him covered him in chocolate and ate him. Piece by piece, but he used the whole kid and that's

0:29:16 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:29:17 Tom: I did. If you use the whole kid, it's fine. Actually, you can do that ethically as long as that's not the reason you killed the kid.

0:29:20 Thomas: That's the important part.

0:29:19 Eli: Really? Yeah, the kid was dying of leukemia, it was his make-a-wish to go trick-or-treating. So, Tom, if you think about it, Tom is fine. Tough. At least at least with Peter Singer, he's fine. Okay, other Halloween questions. Uh, houses, did you guys have a, uh, uh, you have a weird adult who ran a haunted house in their house or a local haunted house?

0:29:26 Tom: Right, yeah. It's fine!

0:29:44 Thomas: All right. Now, not, okay, not, that was something I was going to bring up, not specifically a haunted house, but in my adult life now, the things that you perceive as an adult, and you're like, "Oh, what the fuck," because as a kid you're like, "Oh, this is that house with the guy who does the thing," and then as an old, you're like, "Oh, is that house of the guy, does the what" is he, he doesn't even have kids, he just does a whole weird setup and you like, and maybe, maybe he's just a delightful man who likes Halloween, or maybe he is a fucking pedophile and he's looking for a hundred percent of pedophile, right, I, because it's like, like, we had a famous house where it was, it was actually, we loved it as kids.

There was a house, I don't even know whose it was. My mom could still tell you whose it wasn't, funny because, you know, she was an adult and she knew the person, but to kids it was like, you know, this was just some house, spooky house, where the guy would set out the candy on a table in the little bowls, but he'd also do the thing of like his head.

0:30:03 Tom: Yeah, right!

0:30:04 Eli: Yeah. Mm-hmm. He's a 100 % a pedophile. One million percent.

0:30:44 Eli: Yeah,

0:30:45 Thomas: His dick was in a box.

0:30:45 Eli: The severed head illusion, sure.

0:30:46 Thomas: No, I'm just kidding. His dick was in a box of popcorn. No, his head. Yes, the severed head thing. And he did, by my kid memory, it was like an incredibly good job where it was, like, it freaked me the fuck out every time because he'd wait for you to get the candy and then his head would come alive. And it was terrifying, but we also loved it. But what was that guy's deal? Like, why was that his thing?

0:30:47 Eli: Yeah.

0:30:48 Tom: Yeah.

0:31:00 Eli: Of course. Mm -hm.

0:31:11 Eli: Yeah, at best, at BEST that guy's a pedophile, right? In the best possible scenario, he's not a murdering pedophile. He's just a normal, like, he was hoping to start up a conversation with you using the separate, oh, pretty funny. You want to see how this is made? I got a garage with a bunch of Coke.

0:31:21 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:31:31 Tom: But- Like that whole, like, local man turns regular house into haunted house for strangers on Halloween, that was definitely not a thing when I was a kid. It is totally a thing now, and I fucking think it's weird. Like, I would never let my kids- back? Oh, yeah, uh, it's okay to go in strangers' houses if they've decorated them better. Like- That's fine. Yeah, The Decoration makes it okay for you to go into fucking random stranger's house at one, two, three- I forgot the address- street. Are You Fucking kidding me? There's absolutely no way. The don't-go-in-weirdos'-houses rule still applies even if they've made that house spooky. I don't understand that at all.

0:31:50 Eli: Nope. Mm -mm.

0:32:11 Tom: Why are you luring kids into your house with chocolate?

0:31:59 Eli: Mm -hmm. Yeah, it yeah.

0:32:12 Thomas: That's weird reverse psychology. No, no, it's safe to come into my house because it's terrifying.

0:32:19 Tom: Yes,

0:32:20 Eli: No, it's really scary in here. Like, you will be afraid for your life. I promise.

0:32:23 Thomas: Yeah, don't worry.

0:32:21 Tom: Right. Know what, they've got candy, it's fine if they've got candy That makes it safe What?

0:32:27 Eli: He's got candy. Candy. Right, sure.

0:32:30 Tom: The Fuck, I

0:32:29 Thomas: Well, I'm 100 % going to just walk with my kids. It's interesting because I think I occupy a little bit more of a wanting my kids to be independent and do stuff than Eli probably does, like I'm cool with them walking to certain things but

0:32:41 Eli: By default You can assume that Thomas that's

0:32:43 Thomas: Like at least especially yeah Especially when they're pretty, still pretty little, like it's fun to just go with them, you know, and like yeah, I'm not sure what the age on that is, but if we keep pumping out scumberts then we always have an excuse to be with

0:32:44 Tom: Walk with my little kids, yeah. I yeah

0:32:57 Eli: True, and and based on our vasectomy exposure therapy, you will keep bumping out scum birds

0:33:04 Thomas: What's a vasectomy? That sounds like a made-up procedure that actually doesn't exist, exist. I've erased it from my mind. It's not a real thing that I could do.

0:33:12 Eli: Tom, I'm interested if you have this experience because I took my sister trick-or-treating, of course, when she was a little kid, there's this great thing where you go to a house where the the adult is scary or dressed scary. And they're like, and the kid's like a little too little for that. So you have to be like, "Hey, fucking stop.

0:33:27 Eli: Stop. Just put the candy in the bag. Thank you.

0:33:30 Thomas: Yeah, yep, yep.

0:33:27 Tom: Yeah Man, I Yep, I, when, when the kids were little, little, like all my kids, for the most part, are at an age where I think it's fine for them. But if the kids are trepidatious because, I don't know, it's dark and everyone's wearing fucking scary costumes and shit, and they're dressed as a happy pumpkin or whatever, because they're not... I would walk over to the house and see, like, oh, we're not doing this one.

0:33:43 Thomas: Yeah. Aw. Yeah."

0:33:53 Eli: Right?

0:33:53 Tom: I'm not going over to, like the weird people that want to traumatize little kids instead of just, like enjoy the evening. Fuck that shit.

0:33:54 Thomas: So, you not have scaredy cat kids? Because, like, that's every house. My kids are like, I'm too fucking scared for that. I think they're better now.

0:34:05 Tom: It depends on my kids. Yeah.

0:34:07 Thomas: Yeah? I think it's a certain age because Phoebe, again, I think she's pretty anxious. She always took a lot of encouragement for even like a totally nice non-pedophile person's house, uh, then she ultimately loved it every time, and we get, I love that pattern of like right after the experience of trick-or-treating she's super happy, she's like, "Oh, that was so fun." You get to the next house, "Nah, I'm too scared, I can't do it." You literally just did this like we just did it.

0:34:28 Eli: No, you have to. Yeah. Me.

0:34:28 Tom: Yeah. My kids are all lazy, like, like deeply like, and I mean like Like bone lazy, like the lazy, like it's like, like penetratingly lazy, just it's just in their marrow and like so they'll get like excited about Halloween and the build -up and the costume and all that, and then we go outside, and if it's not 70 degrees they're like, "Oh, it's fucking fucking cold," or like, then they just, they walk like six houses and like, "I want to be done." Last year I took like, I said, I took my stepdaughter and I was like, "Come on, let's just keep going, let's keep going." Okay, so we're like walking and like, much to my fucking chagrin, we walked maybe a mile from our house and then she was just like, "I, I can't do, I can't walk anymore, I can't take one," she like looks at me, she's like, "I canN'T take one more step," and

0:34:37 Thomas: Wow.

0:34:43 Eli: Fair.

0:35:20 Tom: I was like, "What do you mean?" So I had to like throw her on my shoulders and like walk with this, 11, like an 11 year old kid is not nothing, like that's like a hundred pound person, like I had a walk with her back, I'm like, "All right, well, we'll just, here, hand me your fucking 33 pound bag of candy, you're fucking ignore," and then get on my shoulder, and we got any boulders that we can carry too, just we'll roll them uphill while we get back to the house. Yeah.

0:35:21 Thomas: Like Why Why exactly? Yeah.

0:35:21 Eli: Tom.

0:35:31 Thomas: Oh no.

0:35:45 Thomas: Yeah.

0:35:41 Eli: Turns and his CrossFit coach is just shaking her head because he's doing all of it wrong, so

0:35:48 Thomas: The form is terrible. I

0:35:50 Tom: Right, your form is terrible, you're gonna, gonna blow out your back was

0:35:52 Thomas: And he hit some of those full -size boulder houses instead of the fun size ones.

0:35:56 Eli: Here's the thing, me and Anna, it's very important to us not to be a scary house, but Anna loves to decorate, so we have like, again, I imagine some people must care about Christmas the way we care about Halloween decorating. We go all out, we send a Halloween card instead of a Christmas card because our families are different religions, and also we can theme our Halloween cards in a way that we deeply enjoy. As you guys both know, because you got Halloween cards from us. Like, we take it super serious, but we want our house to be the least scary. The problem is, I don't know if you noticed this, I, pretty fucking scary looking, just defaults, right? Pajama pants, t-shirt, little bit scary. So I figured it out last year. I have the ultimate hack. Are you ready for the ultimate heck? Big, scary, beardy, fat guy. Uh-oh, unless, what's that, a Santa hat? Now we love him. What,

0:36:47 Tom: Gonna say, a shower the night before, yeah.

0:36:49 Thomas: Oh, I Was going to joke that your, version of a costume is just dressing like like a, like a dude, like an office worker, you know, like, like a commuter.

0:36:49 Eli: Be realistic Tom,

0:36:55 Tom: Eli's wearing Dockers and shoes that lace, and they just I'm an I.T. professional, professional.

0:36:59 Eli: No,

0:36:57 Thomas: Yeah. Spooky. I have a job that's regular hours.

0:37:08 Eli: That would be scary for me I don't know, I don' think we can Okay, stop guys, we're trying to have a good time, okay? We're just trying to have a good time.

0:37:09 Thomas: I filed my taxes properly. My employer

0:37:16 Tom: Eli's going to start crying.

0:37:19 Eli: Up, the call, you do the podcast, rest of the podcast without me, but yeah, so I have red, like, jacket, smoking jacket, uh, white fur, and I wear a Santa hat and I look like, me and kids fucking love me, they're like Santa, and I'm like, "Fuck yeah." I mean, "Not fuck," I, oh, that's the other issue is I can't say fuck, and it's, you're like, like, it's a two-second interaction. How often do you say, fuck, every single interaction?

0:37:35 Thomas: Yep. We've talked about that. The cursing. Hey, you fuck ass kids. Get it. Take some fucking candy.

0:37:47 Eli: Oh, the... Yeah. You're so fucking cute. What a fucking great costume. That's fucking adorable. It's real...

0:37:52 Thomas: Oh, look at your cute little ass. You fucking yeah. You so-and-so Eli

0:37:54 Eli: Yeah.

0:37:57 Tom: Kids are rolling up with their parents. He's like, I want to fuck your mom. Like, wait a minute. Okay. That's a lot. That'S a lot, Santa.

0:37:58 Eli: Oh. That one, that one's on me.

0:38:04 Thomas: That's too far.

0:38:05 Eli: Yeah. Is she a ho -ho -ho? Huh?

0:38:05 Tom: Wow. Wow, yeah.

0:38:05 Thomas: Yeah. This one's only slightly related and maybe it won't apply to Tom's kids, but I'm curious, Eli, I have never been able to get a fucking handle on what will actually scare my kids and what won't. Like, because again, my kids just stream every single possible show and movie on Disney of all time. And there are things where I'm like, "Oh boy, I better hide this from them." But like Nightmare Before Christmas, they checked that out like years ago. And I was like, "You're not going to want to watch that." And they're like, "Oh no, we love that one. That one's great." I'm like, what the fuck? Isn't that the scariest thing ever? How are you not scared of Night Before Christmas? It's terrifying. Oh, wow.

0:38:49 Tom: Yeah.

0:38:44 Eli: You. Very easy metric for my son, the answer of content that scares him is fucking nothing, fucking my son sits there giggling at everything scary. In every movie, whenever there's a thing that's supposed to be scary, my son is like, he thinks it's a hoot.

0:38:58 Thomas: Well, I do think there could be an age he needs to get to to be scared by certain things, you know?

0:39:00 Eli: Sure. Possible.

0:39:04 Tom: That's True, yeah. Because he can't contextualize, like, that, that story. My kids were never, they always had a good amount of disconnect for the most part, with rare exceptions that I can't even remember specifically, between content that they saw. But like, definitely the real world would scare. I mean, like just the other day, two, three days ago, there was a wasp in our house, you, it's getting cooler outside. So like occasionally you'll get like a wasp that comes in, like finds the warmth in your house. So we had a wasps in the house.

0:39:05 Eli: Yeah.

0:39:07 Thomas: Yeah.

0:39:31 Thomas: A white English, I always think of

0:39:34 Eli: I'm picturing Heath just flitting from one place to another in your house, yeah.

0:39:37 Tom: There's just some

0:39:38 Thomas: Those typical wasps.

0:39:38 Tom: Lady with a fucking sweater

0:39:40 Thomas: You know

0:39:40 Tom: Tied around her shoulders, like huddling near the vent. But our front room, the ceiling goes up higher than, you know, you can reach. So it's a, it's a tall ceiling. Like it's like the entrance way, right. And so the wasp is up all the way toward the ceiling and it's just being there and Aislinn comes to get me, she's like, "There's a wasp in the house," and you're like, "I'm busy doing work," and I'm like, "Okay, I'll get it." "You've got to get it, like right now, this is like a fucking DEFCON 4 emergency," that there's a wasp in the house. I go and I look and I am like, there is nothing I can do, like that wasp is, it's 20 feet in the air.

0:39:40 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:39:40 Eli: Yes.

0:40:13 Thomas: He's in the neutral zone, he's

0:40:14 Tom: Can touch that wasps yeah, right.

0:40:14 Thomas: In the fucking demilitarized zone. Yeah. Between

0:40:17 Tom: Like I can't I and the panic that that wasp produced was fucking for real.

0:40:17 Thomas: North and South Korea. Okay. Your daughter is correct, though, because, I, this won't surprise you, um, I lived in a place where you could just have a thousand billion wasps at all times because it was the the great outdoors, and there might be 80 billion wasps' nests in a given time. And my parents were never going to pay. I didn't know you could do such a thing as like call a terminator or whatever and like actually have anything done ever.

0:40:25 Eli: Yeah.

0:40:46 Eli: You mean exterminator, but I love the idea that

0:40:50 Thomas: Did I say terminate? Yeah. Exterminate. Look, I'm pretty tired right now. I thought you could call the terminator and he comes over and like literally shoots, shoots all

0:40:59 Tom: That's it that's how it works.

0:41:02 Eli: I'll be back for That aunt's nest.

0:41:03 Tom: Yeah.

0:41:03 Thomas: The, I think I went, isn't one of them Terminix or whatever?

0:41:07 Eli: Terminix.

0:41:07 Thomas: I think, I, I Think I, yeah, I combined that and exterminate. Anyway, um, I didn't know, and there are a lot of things like that where I had no fucking idea. You could just call a guy to do a thing. 'Cause we, again, my dad pathologically cheap, and so as a kid, you're not like, "Oh, maybe a fucking contractor that I can pay money to exist." You just think like, "Oh, that doesn't exist," you know, there's no way you would know about it, and so, oh, Yeah, absolutely, and uh, furthermore wasps were not a thing my dad was going to give a shit about because all they would do is sting us, and that's what, does that matter?

That's not, um, but I gotta say, I still remember to this day, I was a bit older, I might have, I think I was in high school, and I was out in our shitty pool that we had, our shitty above ground cheapest possible pool that we probably had, and I'm, I'm in high, high school, I'm feeling like I'm, you know, I'm pretty tough guy, I don't care. And there's a shitload of wasps around, and I was like, you now, what they want with me? Are these things going to sting me? I reasoned thusly, I was, like, what are they

0:41:08 Tom: There is Terminix. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:41:08 Eli: Yeah.

0:41:29 Tom: Every problem is yours to solve, right? Oh,

0:42:05 Thomas: Want me? They're probably not going to sting me. And if they do, eh, I am a tough guy, I don't care. I got stung by a wasp twice and it was fucking hell. It is so much more painful than I was thinking.

0:42:06 Tom: They're not bees, man.

0:42:18 Tom: Yeah.

0:42:19 Thomas: Like, I was surprised. Surprise. I was like, okay, I've reverted. I'm actually afraid of wasps. Now I'm not afraid of like anything as a person. I just not really was fucking. Is that meme? That thing scares me.

0:42:31 Tom: Oh. I buddies and I went camping, Cecil among them, by, by the way, went camping, I don't know, seven or eight years ago. And this was one of the first couple of times I had set up my hammock situation. And so the other guys, they all had tents. So they had, we were going to go, you know, we're up in Michigan, in the upper reaches of Michigan. And I set up in these trees, my hammack, and the fucking, fucking a -frame tarp over it, and everything, and put all my shit in my hammock, and they're kind of ribbing me the whole time, they're like, "You're gonna sleep in a fucking hammock all night?" Like, like, there's bears out here, so there's a fair amount of bears in the woods that we were in, and they'll, like, they're just gonna peel you open, like, you know, it's like, I'm like, "Oh, whatever," like but also, like, a tent is no more secure than a hammock from bears, actually. So I was like, whatever, yeah.

0:43:06 Thomas: You don't fuck with bears. That's fair. Yeah. Actually hammocks probably more secure in a way.

0:43:13 Tom: I I was totally unconcerned, and so I was like, "Yeah, all right, enjoy sleeping on the the ground like suckers," you know, and so they set up their, their tents. Well, where we were camping, and we've been there many, many years, the yellow jackets had a tendency to make their hives underground, and they just had like a hole in the ground, and we had arrived, uh, in the dusk, and so we set up camp really quickly, and the yellow jackets had all kind of like gone in their net, we wake up the next morning and I'm 200 yards off, and I wake up, it's beautiful night's sleep, nestled in my hammock, and

0:43:13 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. Oh, why are you 200 yards away from the rest? Sorry, I shouldn't, just, just, oh,

0:43:49 Tom: That's where the trees were versus the clearing so I'd have like big enough trees to support my fat ass in a hammock.

0:43:49 Thomas: Okay. It's like a weirdly antisocial thing.

0:43:54 Tom: Yeah. I just

0:43:54 Thomas: All right, we're all camping. I'm just gonna fucking walk for as long as I can to get away from you people.

0:43:57 Eli: I'll be over here.

0:43:58 Tom: I'm going where the bears are, so I, you know, so I get up and I, you know, I, I go look, and these guys, their fucking tents are crawling with the yellow jackets, just, just absolutely crawling, so we had they were

0:44:09 Thomas: God. And they're still there, to this day, they never came out of the tents. They were fossilized yeah, fucking

0:44:14 Tom: All inside, and they're stuck, you know, like so we all end up getting stung by yellow jackets while we had to move the the tents. I've been stung a bunch of times, you're absolutely right, it's miserable, like wasps suck, and I, that's when I found out I was slightly allergic to them too, so that's good times.

0:44:26 Thomas: Wafts. Dude. Oh. No.

0:44:29 Eli: They also don't pollinate or anything, they're just, they just suck, they're the Republicans of animals, they're just, there's no, they serve no purpose, they're the fucking word. Now see, here's the thing, I bet you guys don't have this, do you have Raid Insta Kill spray, Tom?

0:44:30 Tom: But yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:44:32 Thomas: They're just fucking terrorists, they're They're just, oh, now I do. Yeah, not at the time.

0:44:51 Tom: No, I don't. Yeah.

0:44:55 Thomas: Yeah, it's good.

0:44:53 Eli: Life changing, life changing, a shotgun blast of pure deadly poison, will it give me cancer in three years? Absolutely. But that wasp, that, oh, I have nothing to do with that wasps, yes you fucking do, because this fire hose can is going to unload I

0:45:05 Thomas: Yes, 100%. You don't, but inside, you don't spray it inside.

0:45:16 Tom: I'm not going to spray it on my wall. I Eli's

0:45:16 Eli: Sure the fuck do. I spray it inside, I'll spray it into my son's mouth if it's close to a fucking, I'm not fucking around with a wasp in any way, shape or form, any, any, buck, by the way, if I see an ant in my house, I unload a full can of Ray, I set up those bug bombs you're supposed to leave the house for, I just set one off and sit there next to it, breathing it in. Yeah.

0:45:21 Thomas: Oh, my God, no.

0:45:32 Thomas: Eli

0:45:38 Tom: Spraying wasps, like a cops at a BLM protest, just indiscriminately.

0:45:41 Eli: Absolutely, I tear gas everyone.

0:45:43 Thomas: Sees it. Delightful butterfly lands gingerly on Max's finger. And Eli's like, fucking duck. Just sprays the fucking.

0:45:44 Eli: Yep. I Just, yeah.

0:45:48 Tom: Hummingbirds Drop out of the sky around him.

0:45:53 Eli: Yeah, 100 I'm all about it now.

0:45:55 Tom: Yeah,

0:45:57 Thomas: I'm amazed you're brave enough to do that, because we did that at our old house for the wasp nests. That's how you kill, I wouldn't bother with one wasp with that spray. Like, what the fuck, that's weird. Are you But it is a terrifying procedure, I'm surprised to hear that you could even manage it. Eli, is really fucking terrifying. It's like you're really doing a bank robbery, you're like, all right, wasps, I've got this weapon, and if it at all misfires, if your aim is a little off, because, because sometimes they're like 10 feet in the air and you're getting, they design these sprays so that they, they really do give you like a, a long fucking, you know, trail of spray. But if you miss and they start coming out and you haven't hit them enough and they're mad about it, and their foreign policy is now that you're a belligerent actor, uh, it's terrifying.

0:46:16 Tom: Yeah, my

0:46:18 Eli: We go bum, bum, and they know where you are, they come for you. Yeah. Mm -hmm. Yep.

0:46:42 Tom: Solution was, and I was actually pretty proud of this, I couldn't up the stairs, and then I brought the vacuum with me, and then I taped a long, like, dowel rod to the end of the vacuum, and then reached the vacuum over the thing and sucked him up. It was the, and I could, it was like at the very extended arm, of the uber extended arm, and I got that fucking wasp. So I got to be the hero, which was great, but not after, you know, there was, after much crying and wailing and gnashing of teeth, because a wasp was, you know, 20 feet in the air in a different room somewhere in the house.

0:46:42 Eli: Nice. Sure.

0:46:54 Thomas: That's great.

0:47:13 Eli: Now no,

0:47:14 Tom: Excuse

0:47:14 Thomas: I, I have vacuumed civilizations of bugs. It just is, you now, like that's where they live now. Oh,

0:47:17 Eli: Yeah, 100, that's that's the, that's the way to get them for sure. Now, here, Tom, you brought up a subject, and this is actually very controversial. Are you aware that, like, a staggering amount of men think that they could fight a bear? Okay, I'm gonna look it up.

0:47:32 Thomas: My God. Talk about

0:47:33 Tom: Me? What, wait, a minute, wait a minute, wait, hold on, I need you to back up, are you being serious right now, is this some more, Eli, lie, hyperbole.

0:47:35 Thomas: Masculinity. I mean, they they could

0:47:39 Eli: I'm good, I'm going to find it, Okay.

0:47:42 Thomas: Fight a bear in the same way that I could fight Mike Tyson in a way.

0:47:45 Tom: I mean, a

0:47:46 Eli: I found it, I found it.

0:47:48 Tom: Bear Isley.

0:47:49 Eli: So this is a Daily Caller article, according to a survey, seven percent of men think they can beat a grizzly bear in a fight.

0:47:51 Thomas: Yeah, I've seen this. Oh, my God.

0:47:58 Eli: Twenty

0:47:58 Tom: Bear my

0:47:59 Thomas: Zero percent of any human being can beat a grizzly bear in a fight.

0:47:59 Eli: Yep.

0:48:02 Tom: Most, most mid-size sedans would lose against every mid-size, actually, I'll take that back, like the, the only vehicle against a grizzly bear that I would be like the vehicle's got is maybe the presidential motorcade. That's it. Like have you seen the videos of grizzlies just ripping doors off cars like, without even flexing, they peel that, that shit like a sardine can. Like,

0:48:08 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Let's say a jet, a helicopter. Oh, Oh, yeah.

0:48:23 Eli: Nine Nine percent of men believe they could beat up an elephant in a fight.

0:48:33 Thomas: More people think they could. Are they relying on the elephant like being a pacifist? Maybe like elephants in general seem kind of cool.

0:48:36 Tom: They could fight an elephant. Okay.

0:48:35 Eli: Nine percent Yep. Ten percent of men, one out of 10 men you will meet in your life believe they could beat up a crocodile in a fight, it, and it just gets crazier. Are you ready for this?

0:48:50 Thomas: Oh, My God.

0:48:54 Tom: No, Wait a minute, wait a minute, hold on, hold on, slow down, because I think as soon as you put the boxing gloves on that crocodile, I've got the advantage, a

0:49:01 Thomas: Yeah.

0:49:04 Eli: Percentage of men, do you guys think, think they could fight a wolf, a wolf. Yes. 16

0:49:11 Tom: Wolf. Oh,

0:49:10 Thomas: Oh ,My God. I mean, it seems like you're going in ascending order, so this is gonna be like 20 or something.

0:49:17 Eli: % of men believe they could beat a wolf in a fight. Yeah.

0:49:18 Tom: My god, it's gonna be okay. I'm, I'm like, I don't know what I'm most distressed at, but I think I am definitely distressed that there's not a wider disparity from elephant to a wolf, you know, or like grizzly bear to wolf.

0:49:32 Thomas: That's yeah, I'll tell you this, I'll tell you, if I were forced to fight one of the animals you have mentioned, I would choose the elephant, because I Yes, I think people don't fucking realize how impossible claws are, I think these men don't understand that anything with claws will instantly rip you to shreds, and you can't fucking block, lock a claw, I can't parry a claw. Like, there's no, with an elephant, I don't know, I feel like I could, like, maybe I could get on his back or something.

0:49:36 Tom: Okay.

0:49:43 Eli: You would choose the elephant.

0:50:02 Tom: Like juke it.

0:50:03 Thomas: Yeah. Like I could, maybe if I get a really good jump, like I could just like get up to, and

0:50:06 Tom: Okay,

0:50:02 Eli: Okay, yeah, yeah, I'm sorry, you're gonna get on its back, and then what, Thomas, take a shit, you can't choke it out, you take a shit up there.

0:50:10 Thomas: Then just hope it doesn't, hope it doesn't know I'm there. I didn't say

0:50:16 Tom: Okay.

0:50:16 Eli: I see, yeah,

0:50:17 Thomas: I could beat an elephant. I said, if you were forced to pick one of them, I would take the elephant.

0:50:21 Tom: I, I will play the same game. I will give the same answer for a different reason. I think the elephant would kill me the fastest. They're all going to kill me. I Think, I Think the death by elephant would would be the swiftest death of the, of the death's name.

0:50:28 Eli: That is an advantage and

0:50:21 Thomas: Okay. Yeah, yeah, Tom, just does the like puts his head on the block, and like puts the elephant's like

0:50:38 Eli: Yeah, puts

0:50:38 Tom: Yeah. Just put, just squish me like a fucking grape. That's it. Good.

0:50:40 Thomas: Yep, okay.

0:50:41 Eli: The watermelon. Okay. So now it's my turn to be radically vulnerable, and look, we've gone some radically vulnerable places in this podcast, um, and we've said some controversial things, gotten some audience pushback, uh, but I've got to be honest, I have said in the past, and continue to argue with my wife, that I could beat a grizzly bear in a fight, and let me tell let me explain let me explain why I could beat a bear in a fight.

0:50:49 Tom: Wait, what? You couldn't beat a

0:51:03 Thomas: You can't beat a grizzly. Yeah,

0:51:07 Eli: Let

0:51:07 Tom: Picture of a grizzly bear in a fight, Eli.

0:51:08 Thomas: Yeah,

0:51:09 Eli: Me explain why I can beat a baron a fight, if you get inside its guard, which is

0:51:15 Thomas: Yeah,

0:51:17 Tom: So you gotta, you gotta pass the hips and that's when you know.

0:51:19 Eli: Which I am confident I would be able to do, you could be not,

0:51:22 Thomas: It would claw the living fuck out of you. People do not, no,

0:51:26 Tom: Yeah, Yeah, Eli's

0:51:26 Eli: If I'm in its guard, you're not picturing me in its card, you

0:51:27 Tom: Trying to ground and pound on a fucking

0:51:28 Thomas: There's there's you're not getting in its, its guard is claws, there, that's the, you're not passing the claws.

0:51:33 Eli: Gotta get it, but

0:51:29 Tom: Grizzly bear. If you're within the guard, you're still in the face full of teeth zone.

0:51:37 Thomas: Now you're in biting range. Yeah.

0:51:40 Tom: Like there's no zone where you, are

0:51:42 Eli: I'm no

0:51:41 Thomas: There's no safe zone of a bear. There just isn't.

0:51:44 Tom: You like going to like rear naked choke a grizzled bear?

0:51:46 Thomas: In the UFC, the dude whose guard you're in is not allowed to chomp your fucking face off. If technique would change. You wouldn't want to be inside someone's guard if they could chomp your face off, okay?

0:51:48 Eli: No.

0:51:57 Eli: Guys, I have watched literally threes of videos on Muay Thai. I really feel, I really in my heart feel like I could win a fight against a bear.

0:52:05 Thomas: Here's what fucking kills me, and this is is a real thing that like, no,

0:52:08 Tom: 600 pound animal.

0:52:09 Eli: An elephant, you already told us.

0:52:11 Thomas: No. No, here's a real think. This is a really real topic because it may one day met like this small percentage, but it may 1 day matter if you come across a bear, here is what I fucking hate and I sometimes I'll think about this and stress out about it, but not do anything about it because if you ever get the advice, the park ranger advice on bears, it all depends on the fucking species and it's all contradictory. So it's like, oh, if you see a black bear, you need to fucking fold into a pretzel and suck your own dick. That's the only way that's the Only way it will leave you alone.

And then if you See this other kind of bear, like a grizzly, you have to like, get on a trench coat on Tom's back and then pretend you're three guys. Guys, there's seriously, there're ones you're supposed to intimidate and ones you are not and that's contradictory and you have to know the species you're dealing, or maybe it's the gender of the bear, there is something where you're suppose to pretend to be big versus go all fucking submissive on them. And I'll think about this from time to time and be like, I should just look that up. I should look it up and I'll make a flashcard. Why?

0:52:42 Eli: Yes!

0:52:53 Tom: I think you have it backwards too.

0:53:17 Eli: Make a

0:53:17 Thomas: Because I'm an anxious Idiot. There's no reason I need to know this.

0:53:18 Eli: Bear flashcard.

0:53:19 Tom: Discard. Yeah.

0:53:21 Thomas: But like someday you know, yeah.

0:53:22 Tom: It's the quicksand problem, it's It's It's right now. What you have is the quicksan quandary, right, which is you're like, okay, I've got to learn how to get out of quicksan, even though the likelihood of you running into quicksan is exactly less than zero. Like, there is a, there's no, but you're like, okay, but what if I did.

0:53:24 Thomas: Exactly. Yeah. Live.

0:53:26 Eli: Gotta

0:53:39 Thomas: In California. I might, I have actually, on a, on a hike, run into a bear. That's actually happened.

0:53:39 Tom: Right. But you But, but, but, like, you only need to learn how to deal with one. You're not going to run into a grizzly bear unless you're in Alaska or Canada. Like, they're just not even native.

0:53:52 Thomas: Oh, is that true? There's definitely two different, at least two different kinds that I could run into. I don't remember what they are. See, this is why I gotta make the flash card. I

0:53:53 Tom: Yeah. Yeah, but, but grizz yeah, grizzly

0:54:01 Eli: Make the flashcard, all

0:54:01 Tom: Bears and Kodiak bears are just not going to be native. Like, they're, and where they're native to, they're just, yeah.

0:54:05 Thomas: You know, and also I think the difference was if it's a mom, you're fucked. Like, if it's a mom, you just run away or cower, because they will just kill, their Eli and me, when it comes to their kids. Like, they'll just murder you. But if it's like a, I don't know, my dad version of a bear, you can, you can like charge it some money and it'll be like, nah, I'm not going to fucking pay money. And then there's something, there's some different techniques you could do.

0:54:27 Eli: Think that's pretty spooktacular. I think we've covered, uh, and you know what, just to throw that in, I think this is also an episode about the friend zone, because as as our other attempts Have: been so this is our spooktacular

0:54:36 Thomas: It's as much about that as several other of our episodes.

0:54:39 Tom: Yeah, I'd like to hear from our patrons as to which big animals they think they could fight I I

0:54:45 Eli: If you think I would like Tim, please start a poll in the Patreon, in the Facebook group, or wherever you want, about whether they think I could win a fight with a bear. Or you can look this up and people can vote in, because it starts with rat, and I like to think that some people out there think I can fight a rat, and it goes all the way up to grizzly bear. I would like to know where

0:55:03 Tom: Don't think you could fight a mustachioed gay man is why I'm not even that bear, like there's no, no bear.

0:55:08 Eli: Oh, okay, I thought you were I thought I thought you were putting a mustachioed gay man below a rat in terms of intimidation, and I was like weirdly problematic comparison.

0:55:10 Thomas: Oh, don't, don'T fuck with actual bears. Yeah. I couldn't fight a bear.

0:55:14 Tom: Oh, I was making a bear joke. God damn it.

0:55:22 Eli: There, yeah, if

0:55:22 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. You wait until episode whatever this is to really fucking show your stripes there

0:55:26 Tom: That's it. Now I'm canceled. I got canceled because I made a bear joke.

0:55:27 Thomas: Yeah

0:55:27 Eli: You're a gay man and you'd like to fight Tom naked. I want to watch that, alright?

0:55:33 Thomas: For us to watch I'm

0:55:41 Eli: Before we go, important question: what room does a ghost not need in his house? A living room. All

0:55:51 Thomas: Not sure I always

0:55:54 Tom: All

0:55:58 Clip: Want to meet sexy DILFs in your area? Email the dads at DearOldDads.com or, better yet, send us a message on Patreon. You can follow us on all social media by checking the links in the show notes. And if you need more podcasts in your life, you can find Tom on Cognitive Dissonance, Thomas on Serious Inquiries Only, and Eli on Godawful Movies and all the Puzzle in the Thunderstorm shows. Dear Old Dads is edited and produced by my favorite DILF, Tom Smith, who also wrote and recorded the intro music, which is used with his permission. This podcast is a production of Daddy Issues LLC. Copyright 2022. All rights reserved.