August 7, 2026 • 22 mins
First, a follow-up to MichaelAngelo's wild parking lot run-in. Next, wanna know America--look at our stuff!
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
America. It's one more thing. I thought I would be annoyed,
but I was charmed. But first to follow up from
uh was it the other day? I can't remember the
one more thing where Michael Aangelo told his mystifying story
of maybe road rage thing attempt. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We
(00:29):
did not get many theories about what was going on
that held water at all. And if you didn't hear it,
I believe it is August fifths. One more thing, anyway,
is that right two days ago? Or was that yesterday?
It was yesterday? Yesterday? Okay, yeah, I guess it was wednesday.
(00:49):
We skipped Yeah, all right, so it was August sixth.
The only email worth mentioning is Rebecca from Sue Falls,
who says I work for a well known auto insurance company.
In the claims bar, listening to Michael Angelo described the incident, accident,
he was almost in raised insurance fraud red flags for me.
Common tactic scammers used to get insurance money, try to
stage or cause an accident and typically have oh, look
(01:13):
a third party you witnessed the event and will testify.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
You were here, right, Katie. I was a very short version.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Somebody pulls into the parking lot. Michael almost got hit
by a car. Then he pulls into the parking lot
and somebody pulls up and says, hey, you almost hit me.
Then somebody else shows up and says, I was a
witness he almost hit Uh yeah, that scream scammed to me.
Well yeah, but they didn't hit him, So what are
you going to claim?
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Well, and that's that's the funny thing. Here's Rebecca. The
fact that these people approached him after their attempt at
causing an accident failed.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
They miss.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
His mind boggled.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Right again, a lot of criminals are really stupid. The
one person he says, hey, if you miss, we got
a board, we gotta pull a plug and then try
an Oh, because she didn't actually with them, I can't
claim I saw a wreck if I didn't see a wreck.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
And then she said I highly recommend dash cameras.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
So ah, that's one thing I do like about the Tesla.
I got everything on film all the time.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
But the main topic of the podcast today. And I
expected to be annoyed by this because it was from
the New York Times, but I was not. I was
actually amused. The premise of this article is, do you
want to understand America. Look at our stuff. And this
this gal who wrote this, what's her name, Emily Keegan,
(02:33):
Welcome to my Museum of America. Twenty five things Objects
that explain America. And I thought, hey, it's freaking New
York Times. There was a number of sixteen nineteen projects
spout and sons of bitches. Number one, the four ninety
nine cost Co rotisserie chicken. They say we're a divided country.
(02:57):
They say we have nothing in common. Right, left, urban
rural men, women, Real America, Fake America. Spend a Saturday
afternoon wandering the isles of your nearest Costco. You'll find
quickly that we are no different at all. Americans want
the same thing a four dollars ninety nine cent rotisserie chicken,
a dollar fifty hot dog, and a cartful of enough
stuff to survive a nuclear winter. At Costco, we are
(03:18):
one nation under God with bulk groceries for all.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
I'm glad the math works on that, and I suppose
it does on me. I don't know if I've ever
gone in there and just gotten the chicken and walked out,
so uh, but man, that's a dang good chicken, especially
for that price.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
Please, and virtually every grocery store in America does it now.
And you know, I've got a rotisseri on my fancy
new grill that I need to use. But every time
I think, oh, you know, it's delicious, or rotisserie chicken,
and then I think, okay, I'll get a chicken. I'll
get this spice off its head. I'll well, I think
I'll get one pre decavitated. But you know, I'll go
(03:54):
ahead and spice her up. I'll fire up, I'll figure
out how the rotisseri works, I'll fire up the grill,
and I think I'm gonna go to the f and
grocery store and buy one because they're really good. Five dollars,
six dollars, seven, eight dollars, It doesn't matter, because they
are really good. But let's continue on her Museum of America.
Plastic lawn flamengos.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
We never had them. I always enjoyed people that did.
My family never had the plastic lawn flamingo. Yes, Katie,
you have a flamingo.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
Oh, in the town where I grew up, you could
actually flamingo somebody's house. And there was a company that
would take like fifty to the house and just cover
the whole front lawn.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
Loved doing that. And in Wisconsin as a kid, the
people who would dress them up for the season, you know,
winter goats.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Yeah, and what's funny. And I'm not going to read
this whole thing because it's too long. But and she
writes up every item in a very funny way. She's
a very clever writer. But this entire screed that she
writes is about lawns and not about lawn flamengos at all.
But she says, our lawns might be agriculturally worthless, economic sinkholes,
requiring hard labor and constant maintenance. But the American urge
(04:58):
to tame the wilderness by transforming it in our own
image is hard to deny. What we once called pioneering,
we now call mowing the grass. And I wonder if
she's onto something there, taming the wilderness, making it comfortable
for ourselves and attractive. And I realize this is mostly humor,
but I think she's kind of made a good point there, well,
(05:18):
as if I don't know that humor can make good points.
And she goes with the juicy couture sweatsuit. Oh there
you go, a young Paris Hilton turned the leisure suit
into a power suit by wearing juicy couture volor sets
on the regular. It was a move that said, I'm
so wealthy, I don't even have to get dressed.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Well, and they look so thick and hot also, but
apparently they look comfortable and.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
They say juicy across the butt right, which every dad
just loves the idea of their daughter wearing juicy Or the.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
First time I saw that, I thought, am I seeing this?
Or is some sort of cartoon caption in my own head?
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Well, does she get credit for kind of launching the
I'm not even going to get dressed today a movement
that is caught on with so many people.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
She's certainly one of the founding mothers of no doubt.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
I live in a college town and it's walking across
in front of me at the stopwalk crosswalk all the time.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
Do you have any opinion about it? Because that is
my husband's g hot. He gets so angry at pajama
pants now not why.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
I don't know. I go back and forth between why
do we wear uncomfortable clothes?
Speaker 1 (06:23):
Ever?
Speaker 2 (06:25):
And it says something about society and respect and how
seriously do take things so I go back and forth
between those two things.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
Yeah, you know, it's funny. I'm back and forth on
that too, partly because you know, I play a lot
of golf, and I have some golf pants golf slacks
that are incredibly comfortable. They're light, they're stretchy.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
All the guys around here, that's what they wear all
the time. Yeah, like a T shirt and golf pants
and tennis shoes.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
Yeah, I get out of those what people are getting
out of the pjs. But I wouldn't wear pjs in public.
I like this one. This is a little more wisdom
and humor. The NASCAR Chevy Impalla. NASCAR Like America is
built on the promise of transformation. Cars that look like
the ones in our driveway are turned into elite machines
capable of doing the unthinkable. That Impala you rented at
(07:15):
the Deuce on Airport on the highway. It handled like
a mattress souped up for the racetrack. It goes two
hundred miles per hour and takes curves like a racehorse.
NASCAR asked us to rethink our lives. Is full of
possibility and gives us a reason to believe in the
most American fantasy. With the right pit crew, any of
us can be champions.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
Wow. I don't know if I agree with that, but
I like the writing.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
I do too. I do too. Then she goes with
the ring light. Because the country, the world has reached
peak opinion. Everybody has an opinion. Personal injury lawyer advertisements.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
Whoa, Oh, it's more now than it's ever been. Did
something happen with insurance companies? Is it easier to scam
money now than it used to be?
Speaker 1 (07:59):
Yes, it must be. Try lawyers associations have become more
and more powerful in more and more states.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
Because a friend of mine got hit with this recently,
got into a minor fender bender. Guy said he was fine,
asked several times, then got a letter like two weeks later.
Guy was from Mexico. This person hired a one of
those people off of billboard from LA and insurance company said,
we'll take care of it. Just don't if they get
(08:26):
a hold of you, don't answer any questions or anything
like that. We'll take care of it. But I wonder
do they always pay out? They must always pay out,
They must always pay out a little bit enough that
we got to fix that. As a system. Half the
billboards on the interstate shouldn't be saying did you get
in a wreck?
Speaker 1 (08:42):
Did you get in wrecked?
Speaker 2 (08:42):
Give me called you've gotten e wrecked because I'm gonna
screw somebody, and even though you're not hurt.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
It's by far the number one category on billboards in America.
It's not even close. And back to this gals clever
lighting writing. She writes, you know all of these commercials
and what you're just saying also be Oh the sheer
number probably implies we are a nation on the brink,
battered and out for blood. But it also might also
(09:07):
be proof of a successful republic. When John Adams wrote
of quote, an empire of laws and not of men,
was he not dreaming of calling one eight hundred got pain? Oh?
Speaker 2 (09:19):
Boy, guess a slightly different, more serious angle on that
that I thought of the other day. I was writing
with a guy in an uber for some reason, and
he was from India, and somehow the topic came up.
How I always ask people about it? He loves the
United States? And why do he loved the United States
and all that sort of stuff. I don't know if
an ambulance came by us our cup car anyway. But
(09:40):
he brought up the topic of He said, this is
the only country where an ambulance comes along and its
lights are on and everybody moves out of the way.
He said, in India, you're just screwed. Ambulances sit there
with their lights on. Everybody knows they're going to emergency
where somebody is having a heart attack or bleeding or whatever.
Nobody gets out of the way. They're not going to
inconvenience themselves. You just have to wait in traffic like
(10:02):
everyone else. Is an ambulance, he said, are in the
United says everybody gets out of the way, or don't
fly a helicopter there if they need to pick you up.
And you add some sort of wreck that doesn't happen
anywhere else. And I thought that's really interesting.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
Yeah, yeah, that's a great point. I'm not sure I
want to do this one. It's about the it's about
Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop company has put out a number of
interesting products.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
I thought she died in the third movie with Iron Man,
and then she turned out to be alive and has superpowers.
To god, dang it, spoiler alert, I was so happy
she died. It's a personal pleasurement device. This is some
funny writing.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
Is it?
Speaker 2 (10:45):
Is it the U?
Speaker 1 (10:47):
Is it the egg? Yeah? The egg?
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Do you put it on top of you or in't you?
Speaker 1 (10:53):
Do you just hold it?
Speaker 2 (10:53):
Do you hold it gently in your hand?
Speaker 3 (10:55):
Now?
Speaker 1 (10:55):
The second one.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
Said like a hen, Yes, exactly, Michael, we thought of
the same thing at the same time. You sit on
it like a chicken.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
Fuck. Well, you can make that noise if you like that,
the noise I make, I'm row I'm reminded. Oh, for
God's sake doing that. Hansen uses these for on air
segments when we're on vacation. And if I read the sentence,
it will be useless for that purpose.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
And if I say I crow like a rooster when
I orgasm, that will ruin it.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
Well, something's ruined. It's ruined. I'm going to cleanse it slightly.
She writes why this is such a great example of
them of America. When asked to shove an egg shaped
rock a power for JJ's for sixty six dollars, a
(11:56):
health neer nation might have said heck no instead of
how far. But in lieu of a functioning healthcare system,
will take what we can get.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Somebody says jump, don't ask how.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
Yeah, I also walk like this.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
I get out of bed and I walk around, looks he's.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
The rooster strutt and stop it. Never do that again.
H dirty soda. They mentioned in the Museum of What
Is America? The T shirt cannon.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
What's I gotta? I got it back just batically because
it keeps coming up in my life and I don't
know what it is. What's dirty soda? Every place I
go they got dirty soda. I don't know what it is.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
It's an ungodly concoction of soda, pop flavored syrup, fresh
fruit juice, and cream.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Okay, man, it's the hot thing.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
Man.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Oh, you don't drink dirty soda? A number of people
have said to me recently.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
She says it once was popular only in Utah. It's
become a nationwide sensation thanks to a cadre of teetotal
Mormon influencers who drink doctored up SODA's instead of coffee
and booze.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
I didn't know that's where it came from. But yeah,
it's super popular and they charge a.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
Lot for it. Yeah, yeah, back to the T shirt cannon.
The T shirt canon emerges three American obsessions guns, sports,
and freebe giveaways.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Yeah, that's pretty good.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
That is a very American thing. The T shirt, canon
crest white strips.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
Oh, there you go.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
We are not the happiest nation on earth, but we
are probably the smiliest. Continuing on the the pizza hut lamp.
In some countries, stained glasses reserved for the holiest of spaces,
grand cathedrals and stately palaces. In America, Tiffany style glass
is for everybody.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
Oh wow, that's right. Those kind of lamps. Is that
what they're called Tiffany lamps? Real ones are crazy expensive,
but yeah, Pizza decided to have them at pizza. That's
what we'll do.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
Yeah, you know, I meant to say this at the outset.
The whole tone of this reminds me of the folks
who came to the US for the World cop and
had a lot of their like negative illusions of the
country blown up and went away saying these are the
most friendly people on earth. This country is crazy fun.
The stores are nuts. My god, this is amazing. Welcome
(14:08):
to our land. I hope you had a great time.
Come back anytime you want anyway. Uh blinged up crocs. Yeah,
so American?
Speaker 2 (14:17):
Yeah, my son just got a pair of blinged up
slip on vans. He really likes.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
Wow. Okay, all right, blinging, blinging your shoes wherever, whatever
sort the tree shaped air freshener.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
Since it doesn't actually smell like a tree, you gotta
try to put that imagery in your mind, since it
smells like chemicals of some sort.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
It says pine, But no pine has ever grown on
God's Earth with that stank. So they shave it like
a pine tree exactly to convince you. I guess, I
don't know anyway. She says we can be our true
selves in our cars. That's true. The George Foreman grill
(15:01):
ah dude wipes x L back before the big sewerage
got together and told us we can't use wipes anymore.
Sad desk salad in the Museum of America. Oh that's
(15:23):
fuddy oh boy ring doorbell camera.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
So is the sad desk salad. Because in other countries
they don't probably eat lunch at their desk. I know,
my friends in Italy, the idea of sitting at your
desk and working, as opposed to going out to a
restaurant and doing the full two hour lunch would have
been crazy.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
Yeah, the very few times I've actually worked in Europe. Yeah,
lunch is lunch, and it includes a glass of wine
or two. Yeah, generally Yeah. Yeah, the ring doorbell camera
have we've always been so scared of strangers? She asks?
Moving along, the solo cup no quintessential expression of American
(16:04):
industrial design, A new take on an old standard, made plastic,
disposable and extra strong so it can withstand the pressures
of a mosh pit, parking lot or beer pong tournament.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Yep, they are. They are quite the product. They're so sturdy.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
That's fantastic, Yeah, quoth Toby Keith, You, sir, do not
have a pair of testicles if you prefer drinking from
the glass, the great sage Toby Keith. I don't know.
This real tree print.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
Oh that's the that's like a form of camouflage.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
The realistic camo print. Not only for like camo, but
travel mugs, streetwear like Hull Street, for chairs.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
Yeah, everywhere. Yeah, why that is just a fashion I.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Guess, I don't know, she says. The further American get
from living in the forest, the more desperate we are
to touch grass. I don't know. Maybe that's true. I
don't know. Let's see what else do we have? The
bottomless basket of chips and salsa.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Hell yeah, or French fries if you're a red robin.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
Yeah, the live laugh love sign, boy first s ch
optimistic people. We sure do need constant reminders to cheer up.
Oh boy. Yeah. The dog stroller. Oh lord.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
I had a weird moment leaving a restaurant the other
day and I had my son in his regular stroller
and I was right next to a woman who had
a Yorkie in her stroller.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
Man, that was an odd moment. Had that conversation many
times with my h my kids, my son, my oldest,
partially because living at home when we had lots of
dogs all the time and they were a lot, and
so he's kind of anti dogs because of that experience.
And but he can't imagine, like when we're traveling, the
(18:02):
number of people that have their dogs with me. He
always says, that looks so miserable. You know, they're fighting
the dog in the lobby at the hotel and trying
to do this and everything. I get the furnish and
I agree, I don't want to take my dogs with
me when I go to hotels and stuff like that.
But so the other day we saw somebody. They crossed
in front of us, and he's got a double stroller
and he's walking two dogs. And I thought, oh my god,
(18:25):
so you're dealing with the two little kids and you're
walking the dogs at the same time. That's a lot.
Then when I pulled by them, I realized he had
two little dogs in the front of the stroller, well
walking two bigger dogs. He had four dogs, two in
the stroller, two he's walking.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
Wow, wow, all right, dude, all right. Final exhibits in
the music.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
Because the dogs can't walk or they don't want to walk.
Is it like the Will Ferrell from Saturday Night Live?
He doesn't walk, he hates it.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
Oh, in the case of that, dude, he has two
big dogs that can go for miles and two little dogs.
They had to have tiny little legs.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
All right, So they're stroller. So making see the neighborhood.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
That it's a good question to change a scene. I
don't know, does a dog, Thank my god, these four walls.
I'm going crazy. Final a few exhibits in the Museum
of America. The gas station bathroom key. She talks about
the ritual humiliation of asking the attendant for the bathroom key,
then galloping down the aisles holding a giant keychain. Traditionally
(19:28):
one is no smaller than a wooden spoon and no
larger than a ten pound turkey. Escaping with it is
nearly impossible. You know what it is. It's a great
practical American innovation. It's not escaping with it. It's forgetting
you had it. You can't possibly forget it or lose it,
which is something Bathroom's probably dealt with fifty thousand times.
(19:48):
Then some guy thought, I'm gonna put about a foot
and a half.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
Of a two by four and attach it to that
damn cake, the giant chunk of heavy metal.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
Right then I'll take a sharpie and write bathroom on it.
Final couple of exhibits Bowtox, The world's greatest melting pot
is increasingly made up of a bunch of faces that
look the same funny. We may look ridiculous, irl, but
on camera we are glowing audio s, laugh lines. The
(20:18):
future is deadpan. I had to get some plastic surgery
because of cancer removal on my nose, and the place
where I went, everybody was delightful and helpful, probably because
they make lots of money. But everybody was so botoxed.
It was like a weird Stepford Wives thing. I mean,
all the women there had had work done and they
(20:40):
were all botoxed. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
I ran into that the other day too. I don't
remember what kind of doctor's office it was, but everybody
had the Jeff Bezos's wife look that worked there.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
Yeah. And finally, and this is like probably the last
exhibit in the museum, the one that you say, wow,
this was a day well spent ladies and gentlemen. Perhaps
the most American thing of all, the inflatable tube Man.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
We got a big tent sale going on here.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
Man the guy wacky inflatable arm flailing tube Man.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
Yes, yes, thirty years after he was created for the
nineteen ninety six Atlanta Olympics. Really, yeah, you were one
of the first people on earth to witness inflatable too.
Was that that Olympics?
Speaker 2 (21:32):
I didn't know. As in the presence of budding.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
Greatness, yep. A thirty years after, tube Man has become
a fixture of the American strip mall. He who is
once a work of art, is now selling used cars
in downtown San Jose it's hard not to see ourselves
in this giant wigglely goofball. We too are happy idiots
flailing around outside the vape shop. We too were once
(21:55):
works of art, but now we've got to make a living.
Capitalism comes forevery.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
Oh that's funny. Those things must be incredibly cheap.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Oh what they are? Oh boy, I have never priced one.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
They get your attention, though. You can't help but look
over there.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
We'll look at that, and you can't help but watch
it for a minute.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
I do have my My doctor has a desk size one.
I want it so bad. You could I get one
like yard size from my house?
Speaker 1 (22:24):
Oh? Yeah, I bet you could.
Speaker 3 (22:26):
But man, she hits the little button, and you know
that's fantastic.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
Gotta have money, God bless America. Well, rotisserie chicken from
me tonight for dinner.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
Well, I guess that's it.
America. It's one more thing. I thought I would be annoyed,
but I was charmed. But first to follow up from
uh was it the other day? I can't remember the
one more thing where Michael Aangelo told his mystifying story
of maybe road rage thing attempt. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We
(00:29):
did not get many theories about what was going on
that held water at all. And if you didn't hear it,
I believe it is August fifths. One more thing, anyway,
is that right two days ago? Or was that yesterday?
It was yesterday? Yesterday? Okay, yeah, I guess it was wednesday.
(00:49):
We skipped Yeah, all right, so it was August sixth.
The only email worth mentioning is Rebecca from Sue Falls,
who says I work for a well known auto insurance company.
In the claims bar, listening to Michael Angelo described the incident, accident,
he was almost in raised insurance fraud red flags for me.
Common tactic scammers used to get insurance money, try to
stage or cause an accident and typically have oh, look
(01:13):
a third party you witnessed the event and will testify.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
You were here, right, Katie. I was a very short version.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Somebody pulls into the parking lot. Michael almost got hit
by a car. Then he pulls into the parking lot
and somebody pulls up and says, hey, you almost hit me.
Then somebody else shows up and says, I was a
witness he almost hit Uh yeah, that scream scammed to me.
Well yeah, but they didn't hit him, So what are
you going to claim?
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Well, and that's that's the funny thing. Here's Rebecca. The
fact that these people approached him after their attempt at
causing an accident failed.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
They miss.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
His mind boggled.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Right again, a lot of criminals are really stupid. The
one person he says, hey, if you miss, we got
a board, we gotta pull a plug and then try
an Oh, because she didn't actually with them, I can't
claim I saw a wreck if I didn't see a wreck.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
And then she said I highly recommend dash cameras.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
So ah, that's one thing I do like about the Tesla.
I got everything on film all the time.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
But the main topic of the podcast today. And I
expected to be annoyed by this because it was from
the New York Times, but I was not. I was
actually amused. The premise of this article is, do you
want to understand America. Look at our stuff. And this
this gal who wrote this, what's her name, Emily Keegan,
(02:33):
Welcome to my Museum of America. Twenty five things Objects
that explain America. And I thought, hey, it's freaking New
York Times. There was a number of sixteen nineteen projects
spout and sons of bitches. Number one, the four ninety
nine cost Co rotisserie chicken. They say we're a divided country.
(02:57):
They say we have nothing in common. Right, left, urban
rural men, women, Real America, Fake America. Spend a Saturday
afternoon wandering the isles of your nearest Costco. You'll find
quickly that we are no different at all. Americans want
the same thing a four dollars ninety nine cent rotisserie chicken,
a dollar fifty hot dog, and a cartful of enough
stuff to survive a nuclear winter. At Costco, we are
(03:18):
one nation under God with bulk groceries for all.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
I'm glad the math works on that, and I suppose
it does on me. I don't know if I've ever
gone in there and just gotten the chicken and walked out,
so uh, but man, that's a dang good chicken, especially
for that price.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
Please, and virtually every grocery store in America does it now.
And you know, I've got a rotisseri on my fancy
new grill that I need to use. But every time
I think, oh, you know, it's delicious, or rotisserie chicken,
and then I think, okay, I'll get a chicken. I'll
get this spice off its head. I'll well, I think
I'll get one pre decavitated. But you know, I'll go
(03:54):
ahead and spice her up. I'll fire up, I'll figure
out how the rotisseri works, I'll fire up the grill,
and I think I'm gonna go to the f and
grocery store and buy one because they're really good. Five dollars,
six dollars, seven, eight dollars, It doesn't matter, because they
are really good. But let's continue on her Museum of America.
Plastic lawn flamengos.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
We never had them. I always enjoyed people that did.
My family never had the plastic lawn flamingo. Yes, Katie,
you have a flamingo.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
Oh, in the town where I grew up, you could
actually flamingo somebody's house. And there was a company that
would take like fifty to the house and just cover
the whole front lawn.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
Loved doing that. And in Wisconsin as a kid, the
people who would dress them up for the season, you know,
winter goats.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Yeah, and what's funny. And I'm not going to read
this whole thing because it's too long. But and she
writes up every item in a very funny way. She's
a very clever writer. But this entire screed that she
writes is about lawns and not about lawn flamengos at all.
But she says, our lawns might be agriculturally worthless, economic sinkholes,
requiring hard labor and constant maintenance. But the American urge
(04:58):
to tame the wilderness by transforming it in our own
image is hard to deny. What we once called pioneering,
we now call mowing the grass. And I wonder if
she's onto something there, taming the wilderness, making it comfortable
for ourselves and attractive. And I realize this is mostly humor,
but I think she's kind of made a good point there, well,
(05:18):
as if I don't know that humor can make good points.
And she goes with the juicy couture sweatsuit. Oh there
you go, a young Paris Hilton turned the leisure suit
into a power suit by wearing juicy couture volor sets
on the regular. It was a move that said, I'm
so wealthy, I don't even have to get dressed.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Well, and they look so thick and hot also, but
apparently they look comfortable and.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
They say juicy across the butt right, which every dad
just loves the idea of their daughter wearing juicy Or the.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
First time I saw that, I thought, am I seeing this?
Or is some sort of cartoon caption in my own head?
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Well, does she get credit for kind of launching the
I'm not even going to get dressed today a movement
that is caught on with so many people.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
She's certainly one of the founding mothers of no doubt.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
I live in a college town and it's walking across
in front of me at the stopwalk crosswalk all the time.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
Do you have any opinion about it? Because that is
my husband's g hot. He gets so angry at pajama
pants now not why.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
I don't know. I go back and forth between why
do we wear uncomfortable clothes?
Speaker 1 (06:23):
Ever?
Speaker 2 (06:25):
And it says something about society and respect and how
seriously do take things so I go back and forth
between those two things.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
Yeah, you know, it's funny. I'm back and forth on
that too, partly because you know, I play a lot
of golf, and I have some golf pants golf slacks
that are incredibly comfortable. They're light, they're stretchy.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
All the guys around here, that's what they wear all
the time. Yeah, like a T shirt and golf pants
and tennis shoes.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
Yeah, I get out of those what people are getting
out of the pjs. But I wouldn't wear pjs in public.
I like this one. This is a little more wisdom
and humor. The NASCAR Chevy Impalla. NASCAR Like America is
built on the promise of transformation. Cars that look like
the ones in our driveway are turned into elite machines
capable of doing the unthinkable. That Impala you rented at
(07:15):
the Deuce on Airport on the highway. It handled like
a mattress souped up for the racetrack. It goes two
hundred miles per hour and takes curves like a racehorse.
NASCAR asked us to rethink our lives. Is full of
possibility and gives us a reason to believe in the
most American fantasy. With the right pit crew, any of
us can be champions.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
Wow. I don't know if I agree with that, but
I like the writing.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
I do too. I do too. Then she goes with
the ring light. Because the country, the world has reached
peak opinion. Everybody has an opinion. Personal injury lawyer advertisements.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
Whoa, Oh, it's more now than it's ever been. Did
something happen with insurance companies? Is it easier to scam
money now than it used to be?
Speaker 1 (07:59):
Yes, it must be. Try lawyers associations have become more
and more powerful in more and more states.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
Because a friend of mine got hit with this recently,
got into a minor fender bender. Guy said he was fine,
asked several times, then got a letter like two weeks later.
Guy was from Mexico. This person hired a one of
those people off of billboard from LA and insurance company said,
we'll take care of it. Just don't if they get
(08:26):
a hold of you, don't answer any questions or anything
like that. We'll take care of it. But I wonder
do they always pay out? They must always pay out,
They must always pay out a little bit enough that
we got to fix that. As a system. Half the
billboards on the interstate shouldn't be saying did you get
in a wreck?
Speaker 1 (08:42):
Did you get in wrecked?
Speaker 2 (08:42):
Give me called you've gotten e wrecked because I'm gonna
screw somebody, and even though you're not hurt.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
It's by far the number one category on billboards in America.
It's not even close. And back to this gals clever
lighting writing. She writes, you know all of these commercials
and what you're just saying also be Oh the sheer
number probably implies we are a nation on the brink,
battered and out for blood. But it also might also
(09:07):
be proof of a successful republic. When John Adams wrote
of quote, an empire of laws and not of men,
was he not dreaming of calling one eight hundred got pain? Oh?
Speaker 2 (09:19):
Boy, guess a slightly different, more serious angle on that
that I thought of the other day. I was writing
with a guy in an uber for some reason, and
he was from India, and somehow the topic came up.
How I always ask people about it? He loves the
United States? And why do he loved the United States
and all that sort of stuff. I don't know if
an ambulance came by us our cup car anyway. But
(09:40):
he brought up the topic of He said, this is
the only country where an ambulance comes along and its
lights are on and everybody moves out of the way.
He said, in India, you're just screwed. Ambulances sit there
with their lights on. Everybody knows they're going to emergency
where somebody is having a heart attack or bleeding or whatever.
Nobody gets out of the way. They're not going to
inconvenience themselves. You just have to wait in traffic like
(10:02):
everyone else. Is an ambulance, he said, are in the
United says everybody gets out of the way, or don't
fly a helicopter there if they need to pick you up.
And you add some sort of wreck that doesn't happen
anywhere else. And I thought that's really interesting.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
Yeah, yeah, that's a great point. I'm not sure I
want to do this one. It's about the it's about
Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop company has put out a number of
interesting products.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
I thought she died in the third movie with Iron Man,
and then she turned out to be alive and has superpowers.
To god, dang it, spoiler alert, I was so happy
she died. It's a personal pleasurement device. This is some
funny writing.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
Is it?
Speaker 2 (10:45):
Is it the U?
Speaker 1 (10:47):
Is it the egg? Yeah? The egg?
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Do you put it on top of you or in't you?
Speaker 1 (10:53):
Do you just hold it?
Speaker 2 (10:53):
Do you hold it gently in your hand?
Speaker 3 (10:55):
Now?
Speaker 1 (10:55):
The second one.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
Said like a hen, Yes, exactly, Michael, we thought of
the same thing at the same time. You sit on
it like a chicken.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
Fuck. Well, you can make that noise if you like that,
the noise I make, I'm row I'm reminded. Oh, for
God's sake doing that. Hansen uses these for on air
segments when we're on vacation. And if I read the sentence,
it will be useless for that purpose.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
And if I say I crow like a rooster when
I orgasm, that will ruin it.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
Well, something's ruined. It's ruined. I'm going to cleanse it slightly.
She writes why this is such a great example of
them of America. When asked to shove an egg shaped
rock a power for JJ's for sixty six dollars, a
(11:56):
health neer nation might have said heck no instead of
how far. But in lieu of a functioning healthcare system,
will take what we can get.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Somebody says jump, don't ask how.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
Yeah, I also walk like this.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
I get out of bed and I walk around, looks he's.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
The rooster strutt and stop it. Never do that again.
H dirty soda. They mentioned in the Museum of What
Is America? The T shirt cannon.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
What's I gotta? I got it back just batically because
it keeps coming up in my life and I don't
know what it is. What's dirty soda? Every place I
go they got dirty soda. I don't know what it is.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
It's an ungodly concoction of soda, pop flavored syrup, fresh
fruit juice, and cream.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Okay, man, it's the hot thing.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
Man.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Oh, you don't drink dirty soda? A number of people
have said to me recently.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
She says it once was popular only in Utah. It's
become a nationwide sensation thanks to a cadre of teetotal
Mormon influencers who drink doctored up SODA's instead of coffee
and booze.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
I didn't know that's where it came from. But yeah,
it's super popular and they charge a.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
Lot for it. Yeah, yeah, back to the T shirt cannon.
The T shirt canon emerges three American obsessions guns, sports,
and freebe giveaways.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Yeah, that's pretty good.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
That is a very American thing. The T shirt, canon
crest white strips.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
Oh, there you go.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
We are not the happiest nation on earth, but we
are probably the smiliest. Continuing on the the pizza hut lamp.
In some countries, stained glasses reserved for the holiest of spaces,
grand cathedrals and stately palaces. In America, Tiffany style glass
is for everybody.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
Oh wow, that's right. Those kind of lamps. Is that
what they're called Tiffany lamps? Real ones are crazy expensive,
but yeah, Pizza decided to have them at pizza. That's
what we'll do.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
Yeah, you know, I meant to say this at the outset.
The whole tone of this reminds me of the folks
who came to the US for the World cop and
had a lot of their like negative illusions of the
country blown up and went away saying these are the
most friendly people on earth. This country is crazy fun.
The stores are nuts. My god, this is amazing. Welcome
(14:08):
to our land. I hope you had a great time.
Come back anytime you want anyway. Uh blinged up crocs. Yeah,
so American?
Speaker 2 (14:17):
Yeah, my son just got a pair of blinged up
slip on vans. He really likes.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
Wow. Okay, all right, blinging, blinging your shoes wherever, whatever
sort the tree shaped air freshener.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
Since it doesn't actually smell like a tree, you gotta
try to put that imagery in your mind, since it
smells like chemicals of some sort.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
It says pine, But no pine has ever grown on
God's Earth with that stank. So they shave it like
a pine tree exactly to convince you. I guess, I
don't know anyway. She says we can be our true
selves in our cars. That's true. The George Foreman grill
(15:01):
ah dude wipes x L back before the big sewerage
got together and told us we can't use wipes anymore.
Sad desk salad in the Museum of America. Oh that's
(15:23):
fuddy oh boy ring doorbell camera.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
So is the sad desk salad. Because in other countries
they don't probably eat lunch at their desk. I know,
my friends in Italy, the idea of sitting at your
desk and working, as opposed to going out to a
restaurant and doing the full two hour lunch would have
been crazy.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
Yeah, the very few times I've actually worked in Europe. Yeah,
lunch is lunch, and it includes a glass of wine
or two. Yeah, generally Yeah. Yeah, the ring doorbell camera
have we've always been so scared of strangers? She asks?
Moving along, the solo cup no quintessential expression of American
(16:04):
industrial design, A new take on an old standard, made plastic,
disposable and extra strong so it can withstand the pressures
of a mosh pit, parking lot or beer pong tournament.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Yep, they are. They are quite the product. They're so sturdy.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
That's fantastic, Yeah, quoth Toby Keith, You, sir, do not
have a pair of testicles if you prefer drinking from
the glass, the great sage Toby Keith. I don't know.
This real tree print.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
Oh that's the that's like a form of camouflage.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
The realistic camo print. Not only for like camo, but
travel mugs, streetwear like Hull Street, for chairs.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
Yeah, everywhere. Yeah, why that is just a fashion I.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Guess, I don't know, she says. The further American get
from living in the forest, the more desperate we are
to touch grass. I don't know. Maybe that's true. I
don't know. Let's see what else do we have? The
bottomless basket of chips and salsa.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Hell yeah, or French fries if you're a red robin.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
Yeah, the live laugh love sign, boy first s ch
optimistic people. We sure do need constant reminders to cheer up.
Oh boy. Yeah. The dog stroller. Oh lord.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
I had a weird moment leaving a restaurant the other
day and I had my son in his regular stroller
and I was right next to a woman who had
a Yorkie in her stroller.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
Man, that was an odd moment. Had that conversation many
times with my h my kids, my son, my oldest,
partially because living at home when we had lots of
dogs all the time and they were a lot, and
so he's kind of anti dogs because of that experience.
And but he can't imagine, like when we're traveling, the
(18:02):
number of people that have their dogs with me. He
always says, that looks so miserable. You know, they're fighting
the dog in the lobby at the hotel and trying
to do this and everything. I get the furnish and
I agree, I don't want to take my dogs with
me when I go to hotels and stuff like that.
But so the other day we saw somebody. They crossed
in front of us, and he's got a double stroller
and he's walking two dogs. And I thought, oh my god,
(18:25):
so you're dealing with the two little kids and you're
walking the dogs at the same time. That's a lot.
Then when I pulled by them, I realized he had
two little dogs in the front of the stroller, well
walking two bigger dogs. He had four dogs, two in
the stroller, two he's walking.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
Wow, wow, all right, dude, all right. Final exhibits in
the music.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
Because the dogs can't walk or they don't want to walk.
Is it like the Will Ferrell from Saturday Night Live?
He doesn't walk, he hates it.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
Oh, in the case of that, dude, he has two
big dogs that can go for miles and two little dogs.
They had to have tiny little legs.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
All right, So they're stroller. So making see the neighborhood.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
That it's a good question to change a scene. I
don't know, does a dog, Thank my god, these four walls.
I'm going crazy. Final a few exhibits in the Museum
of America. The gas station bathroom key. She talks about
the ritual humiliation of asking the attendant for the bathroom key,
then galloping down the aisles holding a giant keychain. Traditionally
(19:28):
one is no smaller than a wooden spoon and no
larger than a ten pound turkey. Escaping with it is
nearly impossible. You know what it is. It's a great
practical American innovation. It's not escaping with it. It's forgetting
you had it. You can't possibly forget it or lose it,
which is something Bathroom's probably dealt with fifty thousand times.
(19:48):
Then some guy thought, I'm gonna put about a foot
and a half.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
Of a two by four and attach it to that
damn cake, the giant chunk of heavy metal.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
Right then I'll take a sharpie and write bathroom on it.
Final couple of exhibits Bowtox, The world's greatest melting pot
is increasingly made up of a bunch of faces that
look the same funny. We may look ridiculous, irl, but
on camera we are glowing audio s, laugh lines. The
(20:18):
future is deadpan. I had to get some plastic surgery
because of cancer removal on my nose, and the place
where I went, everybody was delightful and helpful, probably because
they make lots of money. But everybody was so botoxed.
It was like a weird Stepford Wives thing. I mean,
all the women there had had work done and they
(20:40):
were all botoxed. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
I ran into that the other day too. I don't
remember what kind of doctor's office it was, but everybody
had the Jeff Bezos's wife look that worked there.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
Yeah. And finally, and this is like probably the last
exhibit in the museum, the one that you say, wow,
this was a day well spent ladies and gentlemen. Perhaps
the most American thing of all, the inflatable tube Man.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
We got a big tent sale going on here.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
Man the guy wacky inflatable arm flailing tube Man.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
Yes, yes, thirty years after he was created for the
nineteen ninety six Atlanta Olympics. Really, yeah, you were one
of the first people on earth to witness inflatable too.
Was that that Olympics?
Speaker 2 (21:32):
I didn't know. As in the presence of budding.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
Greatness, yep. A thirty years after, tube Man has become
a fixture of the American strip mall. He who is
once a work of art, is now selling used cars
in downtown San Jose it's hard not to see ourselves
in this giant wigglely goofball. We too are happy idiots
flailing around outside the vape shop. We too were once
(21:55):
works of art, but now we've got to make a living.
Capitalism comes forevery.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
Oh that's funny. Those things must be incredibly cheap.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Oh what they are? Oh boy, I have never priced one.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
They get your attention, though. You can't help but look
over there.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
We'll look at that, and you can't help but watch
it for a minute.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
I do have my My doctor has a desk size one.
I want it so bad. You could I get one
like yard size from my house?
Speaker 1 (22:24):
Oh? Yeah, I bet you could.
Speaker 3 (22:26):
But man, she hits the little button, and you know
that's fantastic.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
Gotta have money, God bless America. Well, rotisserie chicken from
me tonight for dinner.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
Well, I guess that's it.
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Joe Getty
Jack Armstrong
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