Episode 148: Flamin’ Hot Chaos
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Transcript
Transcript
Through the steam of the sauna, a familiar voice greets me.
I rise and look at the man who just spoke to me.
On this episode, we talk montañas,
flaming hot Cheetos,
screaming hot garden veggie straws,
all of this, plus the top five hits of 1990 and today.
Leave the door open.
You're gonna want to see what's going on inside on
Time Crisis with Ezra Koenig.
Time Crisis back again.
Jake, how are you?
Doing well. Doing well.
Just wrapped up a long day of work.
Yeah.
In the same room.
Yeah, exactly.
I just moved over 10 feet and plugged in my computer.
How are you?
I'm not bad.
I got a cold glass of wine today.
Nice.
Orange wine?
I believe this is orange wine.
It was just whatever was in the fridge.
But I think, as I said on the last episode,
I was pretty sure I drank my last beer in the fridge.
And you haven't restocked?
Have not restocked.
It's been two weeks.
You know, it's like, with beer, I like it.
I'm not gonna buy.
If you're holding, I'll have some.
Get some leftover at the house, you know, after a party.
That's cool, but I've just never been in that buying zone.
Not a grocery item.
How often would you have zero beers in your fridge?
It happens.
I mean, it'll happen frequently.
And then, you know, a few days I'll go by and I'll be like,
"Oh, I should pick up some brew."
I'll be in the mood for one and I'll--
There's like a corner store like a block from my house.
Okay, right, so you're never far.
So if we have no brew in the fridge and I'm in the mood,
I'll walk down and get one.
It looks like you're sitting on a little something over there.
Pretty simple.
A little tequila.
You know, it's the evening.
We tape at 6 p.m.
It's at the end of the day.
Speaking of alcohol talk.
Yeah.
That's the alternate universe of time crisis is it's cars,
trees, and alcohol.
We hit it occasionally.
That's the yin-yang version of time crisis where that's most of it
and then occasionally corporate food and occasionally classic rock.
But I went with the family to a little get-together somewhere.
These were more like, you know, Rashida's friends, nice people,
but, you know, not people I knew super well,
but they were making margaritas and asked me if I wanted one.
And probably the first time I had a margarita in a minute.
I wasn't slamming too many during COVID.
Sure.
And as soon as it hit my lips--
And it was an excellent margarita.
The host worked really hard, clearly had a knack for it.
Only one thing could come to mind.
I really had to like stop myself.
I was having intrusive thoughts about the worst margarita of my life.
Like truly I was like sip it and I'd like start humming it a little bit.
And I was just like, I don't want to have to like explain that.
I don't want to give off bad energy.
This guy worked really hard to make a great margarita.
And here I am.
What's that song you're singing?
I've had a few moments like that in life where, you know,
something pops into your head.
The classic example, you might have versions of this.
Maybe everybody does like run into a musician.
You're near them and you look at them and you think,
"Oh, who's that person? What band are they in?"
And then just like you start thinking of one of their songs.
And like this would be some like, to me,
I picture being like catering at a festival in 2008.
And just like seeing somebody just like starting to like hum it to myself.
Oh my God, I don't even know this person.
I actually remember one notable time.
I think I was behind a member of the Ting Tings.
They did some huge songs at the time.
So they were like ubiquitous.
One of them was like, "That's not my name. That's not my..."
And I just remember like, I think I literally,
something like that happened where I was like, "Oh God, I hope I..."
Like I walked past somebody.
I'm always like humming to myself and stuff.
And I was like, "Oh man, what do they think I was like doing?"
Trying to do some kind of prank or something.
Hopefully they didn't hear.
But anyway, I was sipping a great margarita,
but my brain is now wired when I think about margaritas
to exclusively think about the worst margarita in my life.
And I was like, "What's that song you're singing?"
And you're like, "It's a song called 'The Best Margarita of My Life.'"
Right.
A friend of mine went to a Dodger game a few weeks ago
and sent me a photograph of them standing in front of the margarita stand
at Dodger Stadium.
And I was like, "Did the song teach you nothing?"
You know, I feel like we should probably get some Dodgers fans on one of these days.
Because I know at least once I was talking to some like old school LA person.
And who could this have been?
I don't know.
I know at least once I had a conversation about Dodger Stadium and I said,
"Oh, have you heard this Mountain Brews song? It's a great song."
And at least once somebody said to me,
"Okay, but that doesn't make any sense.
The margaritas are excellent at Dodger Stadium."
Wow.
Well, maybe that person is like VIP and they're in that weird like--
That was exactly my thought.
That was exactly-- Yeah.
Because there is, for listeners, there is like--
I went once, someone I knew had tickets that were like these close in box seats basically.
And included with the ticket is access to a sort of like--
The players club.
Yeah, like a buffet basically of like really nice food.
Probably everything you could think of, sushi, crab legs.
Yeah, enchiladas, whatever.
And I bet they got a good Marg down there.
Oh, I bet.
But just like mezzanine level, like dude, come on.
It's literally flat Mountain Brew.
Mixed with tequila for a noxious brew.
No, maybe this is something.
There actually could be a sequel called The Best Margarita of My Life.
And it's about, you know, like a prominent Angeleno businessman invites you to the game.
How about this? He's an art collector.
He's a billionaire art collector.
And he's just like-- This is how I roll.
"I love your work and it'd be my honor to take you to the game."
And then you go to the game and he's like,
"Let's go get some margaritas."
And you're like, record scratch.
And you're just like, "Not a fan."
He's like, "Oh, you're talking about that dog s*** there? No, no.
We're going to the players club."
You guys roll in.
You take a sip.
And you're like, "This is the best margarita of my life."
But then maybe like verse three is like, "You really have to sit with that."
Man, what a country.
I've had the best margarita of my life and the worst margarita of my life
in the same baseball stadium.
What does that say about us?
It's all about, you know, access and who you know, man.
That's right.
It's really a perfect metaphor for America, dude, right?
That's right.
Which is, you know, not to jump the gun, is a great segue towards
some pretty earth-shadowing, earth-shattering news within the TC world.
Now, I got a little heads up that somebody told me,
somebody who had some connection to the journalist or something,
told me the day before there's going to be some piece dropping tomorrow
that's going to be very interesting to the TC community.
And I was like, "I wonder what that could be."
And it was a piece that probably a lot of people have at least heard about
if you're remotely a TC head that basically makes the explosive claim
that Richard Montanez, who we've been talking about for years here,
as the inventor of Flaming Hot Cheetos,
pretty amazing rags to riches story.
A Frito-Lay employee who started as a janitor,
worked his way up to an executive.
A Mexican-American man, didn't finish high school,
believed in himself, worked hard.
He still kind of is a motivational speaker.
He posts motivational quotes and videos on Instagram.
Kind of a beloved dude.
And this article says that he didn't actually invent Flaming Hot Cheetos.
And there's been a lot of back and forth in the past week.
I mean, first of all, so Nick,
you were starting to say to us before the show
that you received six telephone calls about this?
Yeah. I mean, I'm surprised that you guys didn't.
Calls or texts? I got texts.
Texts, calls. No, I got a couple of phone calls.
Just, you know, I think people wanting to check it.
Maybe it was from closer friends.
But people, you know, just the idea that at some point
the show has become so associated with, I think, this story.
But also just the food, corporate food stuff,
that I feel like people really, when they read this,
their first thought was, "I want to tell you about it
because I think you need to cover it."
And that, you know, yeah, some people called and were like,
"Whoa, it's pretty heavy."
You know, it just is strange to me
that that is how they think of us.
I like it.
And I just feel like, you know, there's certain stories
where you start getting lots of texts or calls
and you're like, "Dude, you're like the 10th person
to tell me about this."
But it's only been this story.
And one of those people, and I'll throw back to you,
was friend of the show, Jonah Weiner,
who immediately was like, "You got to see this
because my friend wrote this article."
He is the one who's debunked.
Yeah, and so he's the one who introduced us.
And we were talking about having the journalist on the show.
He's clearly a very talented journalist.
I just had this feeling where I was like,
"You know what? We got so much to talk about.
We got to wait until we can get Montaigne's on
to have equal time."
Although, I will say, we've been trying to get him
on the show for a while and he's refused.
But no hard feelings.
But maybe now, maybe that'll be some of our
banked episodes for the summer.
It's just a five-part Flamin' Hot series.
I already said that for the documentary
we're going to make about it,
it's going to be called Flamin' Hot Mess.
We're going to give equal time to all sides.
♪ Sometimes I feel like I just want to go back to my old ways ♪
♪ You're telling me I'm silly, it's no fun in the old days ♪
♪ I'm such a romantic, I never remember ♪
♪ But things really happen ♪
♪ I guess you're attractive or something ♪
♪ Live in the moment, that's what they tell me ♪
♪ But whatever happened to when you would hold me ♪
♪ And hold me and hold me ♪
♪ Girlfriend or girl that's a friend ♪
♪ It's easy just to pretend that we don't have something real ♪
♪ It's just how we feel ♪
♪ We feel ♪
♪ Oh, it's just how we feel ♪
♪ How we feel ♪
Also, just to clarify, it's interesting to work backwards
because I'm pretty sure that, Jake, you're the first person
who mentioned this story to me.
Maybe on the show.
I was trying to remember.
I feel like it might have just come up spontaneously on the show.
But you knew it.
Did I know it?
I was wondering if it was like the kind of classic TC
where we're kind of Googling on air.
And we're like, "Oh, dude, look at this."
My memory is that we're talking about Flamin' Hot Cheetos or something
and you're like, "You know what's tight?
Actually, a janitor invented that."
You knew that somehow.
Okay, yeah, I didn't remember.
We got to find out how you knew that
because this might actually be the key to cracking the case
because I was reading the article.
There's a lot of talk about, "Well, hold on.
Montaigne's didn't do this until '93.
It was already in development by '89."
Maybe, Jake, you have some deep memory where you're like,
"You know what, dude? '88, that's when I found out."
I've been a Montaigne's head for 30 years.
I was 11 years old on a family trip to SoCal.
I'm on the TCU Wiki and episode 28, October 9, 2016.
Early.
Yeah, it looks like a listener sends Jake an email
about Hot Cheetos' history and controversial presence.
I think it was a listener email that might have alerted us.
Really? I feel like Jake just knew the janitor thing.
Well, anyway, just so people know,
it's like since that era, Flamin' Hot Cheetos,
probably because of Richard Montaigne's really being out there
telling his story, becoming an interesting mix
of a motivational speaker, corporate food marketer,
somebody who had a story to tell about life in America.
I think because of him, Flamin' Hot Cheetos just only grew bigger.
Maybe he was already on that path. I don't know.
But I think it already felt like a big deal in 2016.
By 2021, it feels like--
Obviously, I'm a little biased because we talk about it on TC so much,
but it felt like Flamin' Hot Cheetos is the most talked-about
snack food in America.
Well, and I feel like his profile has definitely risen
in the last five years.
Oh, absolutely.
I feel like when we first covered the story back in 2016,
it was a bit of an obscure find.
And I guess a listener maybe clued us in.
And it was sort of like, "Wow, what a fun, cool little nugget of history."
But now I feel like when that story broke,
a lot of people were like, "Oh, yeah, I know that story.
Of course, Richard Montaigne."
Right, Richard Montaigne.
They're making a movie about him.
Yes.
He's a fraud? What is this?
In the past couple years, there was--
I think he already self-published one book.
He's about to release--
Multiple books.
He's about to release another book about his story.
And yes, Eva Longoria is set to direct a movie about his story
that takes place-- or that's going to film this summer.
So, yeah, all those things, I think, really raised his profile.
So, you know, maybe it was a matter of time
that somebody wanted to look under the hood and see what's up.
So, basically, the story says--
Well, and here's the facts.
It's like Richard Montaigne was a low-level worker at Frito-Lay.
He was like-- worked at one of the machines.
In Rancho Cucamonga.
And he definitely did go from being a low-level employee
to being a pretty high-up marketing executive
who specifically helped create brands targeted at the Latino community.
According to the article, a few years before Richard Montaigne's story
that he pitched this idea to--
'cause also just to remind people,
the story, I think, as we knew it,
was kind of that he was a janitor,
they were throwing out some Cheetos,
and he said, "You know what? I got an idea.
Let me take this s--t home, get him a little spicy,
put a little lime on him."
Then he brought it back in a big bag
and started giving them out and said to an executive,
"I think this could really go."
And maybe even made up the name.
That's the story as we knew it.
According to the article,
there was a team of marketing executives
already working in the Midwest.
And food scientists.
And the way--
Chemists.
There are a lot of cool little nuggets in the story.
You know, whatever the truth is,
I learned some interesting things.
One is, you know who supplies the flavoring for Frito-Lay?
McCormick.
I don't. I mean--
Oh, right.
McCormick, which is kind of like
the supermarket brand of herbs and spices.
And they make the Flamin' Hot dust.
That'd be pretty tight.
You know how like--
It's like some classic thing that
somebody has a little spice cabinet
and they have just all the McCormick products, nutmeg.
And you know, it's kind of classy,
or at least homey.
They should just be selling McCormick Presents Flamin' Hot
right next to the nutmeg and the sage.
Oh, yeah.
Do you throw that on some mac and cheese?
Oh, yeah.
I can't believe they don't do that.
I can't--
Even saying it's dust as a spice.
Right.
I mean, where are these marketing people?
That is such a good idea.
Yeah, wait.
You can't buy official McCormick X Frito-Lay
Flamin' Hot dust anywhere?
I can already picture the television ad.
They'd license Gold Dust Woman.
And did she make you cry?
Make you break down?
Pick up the pieces of your illusion?
Yeah, because that song already has some kind of cowboy energy.
And it's like some weird Bae style dudes
who get off on spice.
Oh, yeah.
Just like [bleep] their mac and cheese
or their pizza crust or whatever
with just coating it in Gold Dust Woman.
And as the ad is just like,
"Did she make you cry?
Make you break down?"
And dudes are just like, "Oh, my God, dude!"
So hot.
Yeah, how is that not--
So stupid.
That should be right there next to the cinnamon.
That should be like a top five spice to have it on.
How about like kind of like Coca-Cola style?
You just randomly decide it's a Christmas product
just to get that end of the year boost.
And you're just like--
You just start--
Every year after Halloween, you just start doing Flamin' Hot ads.
It's like, "It's that--"
It's like Jingle Bells.
Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.
And it's just like, "It's that time of year again.
Get ready for a red Christmas."
And it's like a snow globe, but the snow is like red.
And just for whatever reason, we're just kind of like--
It wouldn't be Christmas time without Coca-Cola
or Flamin' Hot dust from McCormick.
You put it on your popcorn.
People are putting it on their sweet potatoes and stuff.
Why not?
Christmas yams.
♪ Rack on, Gold Dust Woman ♪
♪ Take your silver spoon ♪
♪ Take your friend ♪
♪ Heartless challenge ♪
♪ Pick your friend and outbreak ♪
♪ Wake up in the morning ♪
♪ See your sun rise ♪
♪ Let love go down ♪
Anyway, that's pretty cool.
I didn't know that McCormick and Frida Lay had that alliance.
I love that.
It's great to know.
So, you know, the true story, honestly, it's so dry.
Or the supposedly true story--
Oh, my God.
It's really dry.
My first thought when I heard someone say
that they're poking holes in Montaigne's story,
he lied, he didn't--
Like, look, people lie, it's true.
But also this feeling of like, we don't have a lot of heroes.
And it seems like so far a lot of people,
including the screenwriter of the movie and the publisher,
and even Frida Lay,
they don't seem that interested in destroying his story.
Because you know what's not a feel-good story?
What's not a feel-good story is a bunch of well-paid
marketing execs in the Midwest came up with the flaming hot,
you know, in a corporate--
I mean, although that's a good story for me.
I mean, I'd watch that movie.
I don't think that's the feel-good story that people care about.
Yeah, it sounds like the real story is--
The way they describe it is also just like so corporate
that a bunch of marketing executives would go drive around the Midwest
and go pick up like snack foods they'd never heard of
at little mini-marts,
then bring them back and look at them,
and just be like, "Are we getting beat by any of this bulls**t?"
It seems like the consensus was like,
"Yeah, we need some spicy red b**t because people are buying these weird brands."
It's such like a Mike Judge movie or something.
Yeah.
Mike Judge could make the counterpart.
I also think of like Mike Judge teamed up with like Adam Curtis
and would make this.
Because it's also very Adam Curtis where it's like
there's a mythology that we love,
and then we like learn the truth,
and we're just like, "No, no, no, no, no."
Everyone just buries their head in the sand and is like,
"No, no, no, no. We like the story better."
Right.
So it sounds like there's a couple people who take credit,
who are part of the team.
Well, and also there's a classic thing here where the--
it sounds like the Frito-Lay story is basically,
yeah, there's a team,
a team of R&D people put it together.
This woman named Lynn Greenfeld,
who had recently got her MBA.
Sounds like she kind of spearheaded it.
Somebody else maybe named it.
I don't know.
But then as I read the whole article,
it's a little strange because there's one dude
who was the CEO of Frito-Lay for a while
who says, "No, I remember.
Richard Montanez came in and pitched this to me."
Right.
Al Carey.
Right.
But then the opposing side of that was that
in Montanez's book, he had--
there was like 60 references he pitched
to this other CEO in Ricoh or something
who didn't start working for Frito-Lay until like '91,
which was like a year after Flamin' Hot was on the market
or something like that.
So the timelines were just--
I mean, it's so funny that it's only 30 years ago
and it's still like--
it just goes to show the fallibility of memory
and even like people can't even agree on
a story that really doesn't matter
in the grand scheme of things.
It sounds like basically as Montanez's profile grew,
this one woman was kind of like, "What?"
Yeah, there's another thing that kind of cracked me up
reading the article, which was,
you know, like Flamin' Hot was sort of like
big on the internet with like the kids.
It was sort of like a meme object for younger people
and everyone that had worked on the original product
were like retired and like not hanging out
on that part of the internet.
So this is only crossing their desk recently.
Right.
Kind of what we were saying,
like as Montanez's profile grew,
that's when they sort of like finally started
interacting with the story.
Even though like Flamin' Hot had been
like sort of like a meme for years.
Yeah, they had been checked out on the rise.
Yeah.
So what was Frito-Lay's actual statement about it?
Something to the effect of like,
while we still celebrate Richard,
we can't verify that he,
there's like our records indicate
he did not work on the development of Flamin' Hot,
but we still celebrate Richard.
My theory, we haven't talked this,
my sort of QAnon theory about this
is that he is sort of a creation of the company.
Like he's Fred the Baker, IRL.
Like they want him to be the guy.
And so they're mortified anyone is saying that he's not.
Like he's the story.
He's the, he's, and they did it in a way that's like,
would you ever be like Fred the Baker
doesn't really make the donuts?
Yeah, but we understand that Fred the Baker
is like an actor playing like a fictional character.
Yeah, we think, we think.
Colonel Sanders might be a good.
Or Colonel Sanders.
I just think that like,
but no, of course this is the Adam Curtis, you know.
We need the story, like this is real.
But I think that there's something,
so, you know, I think they were like,
here's this guy there and he just sort of was like,
I'll go along with this story.
And he's essentially the mascot.
It's a psy-op.
So it's a psy-op and they're celebrating him
the way you'd celebrate your mascot.
But it's too probably problematic.
You can't call a real person.
Well, hold on a second,
because there was something interesting in the article.
Obviously, you get stories like this all the time,
especially in America,
where somebody will like fully fabricate an identity,
something like that,
some like P.T. Barnum or, you know,
just somebody coming out of nowhere being like,
yeah, I invented this and they can make it pretty far
until somebody's like, no, you didn't.
You weren't, what are you even talking about?
It's not quite that cut and dry with Mr. Montanez
because he truly did have a remarkable story.
He did, and I think does still work for Frito-Lay.
And here's the thing.
I think he's retired now.
Oh, he's retired,
but he's still pulling in the big bucks with the speaking piece.
I think they were like, yeah,
if you're doing the like motivational speaking,
you need to retire.
He's out there hanging out with his good friend,
Oscar De La Hoya, just killing it.
There's a lot of Oscar De La Hoya on his Instagram.
Hell yeah.
But here's the thing, which they say in the article,
at the very least, he did develop sabrositas.
Is that what they're called?
Is that the Flamin' Hot popcorn?
No, but he was instrumental in the Flamin' Hot popcorn.
So he is part of the Flamin' Hot story no matter what.
Is that what it's called, sabrositas?
Yeah, it's under the Fritos umbrella.
It's a Fritos sort of parallel to the Flamin' Hot.
So it's almost like a Flamin' Hot Frito.
Yeah.
You know, maybe it's like Flamin' Hot is Fleetwood Mac
and he's like Stevie Nicks or Lindsey Buckingham.
And they're just like,
"I know we weren't around for the first five albums,
the Peter Green era, but you know what?
When we came on, we made it Fleetwood Mac.
And I don't care who started this band,
Fleetwood Mac is about Stevie Nicks
and Lindsey Buckingham or something."
You know what I mean?
It might be something like that,
where he really did do something so important for the brand
that he wanted to just simplify the story by saying,
"Well, look, that's human nature.
People want to simplify stories just to make their story simpler,
just to make their story more straightforward,
perhaps for reasons of self-aggrandizing."
And if you tell that, that becomes your reality.
I mean, it reminded me of the Brian Williams story.
Remember, he was like,
he said he was in like a helicopter they got shot at,
like over Afghanistan or Iraq or something.
Right.
He'd been telling that story for a while
as like a wartime correspondent.
And then someone was like, "No, you weren't, dude."
And he got fired and it became this whole thing.
I remember listening to this special,
his interview with him years later,
and he was talking about the fallibility of memory.
He's like, "Yeah, I guess I wasn't.
I did report from Iraq, Afghanistan,
and I saw tons of crazy stuff,
but I guess somehow things got screwy in my head as time went on."
And that's the story I told myself.
And then that became the reality.
I mean, there's so many studies on memory.
The things that you recall the most are the things,
like the memories in your head that you recall the most
are probably the farthest from actual reality
because it's like a tape that you play over and over again.
And each time you play it in your head,
it gets a little degraded.
And so I could see it being a situation like that.
Can I posit a different theory?
Sure.
He came up with his version of a similar Flaming Hot thing
and brought it there.
And they'd already had,
there's like this kind of idea is out in the zeitgeist.
As ideas are, and they're looking at other products,
he comes up with something and he says,
"I think I have something good."
The test markets are already out for these Flaming Hot Cheetos,
and it's actually Frito-Lay that looks at this guy
and they tell him he invented it.
So you're going like full CIA.
Yeah, I think that I was thinking when I was reading
in my version of what this movie would be,
and I wanted to pitch it to you guys,
is that we actually go with the LA Times story
and that guy's like, what is it, Pat O'Neill?
Tom O'Neill.
He's chaos and he's looking at all the timelines
and what did this and really, yeah, it's full on.
He's like, he's saying he was here at this point,
but he didn't graduate college or high school
and he's putting it all together.
And really what we learn is that you have these
high-level executives at Frito-Lay who are basically like,
"This guy's going to be our patsy.
We're going to make tell..."
So he thinks he invented it.
Well, Montaigne has made a statement that sort of supports your theory.
He said that at the time Frito-Lay had five divisions.
He doesn't know what the other parts of the company were doing
and he'd never heard of Greenfeld.
And he's quoted saying,
"I'm not even going to try to dispute that lady
because I don't know.
All I can tell you is what I did,
all I have is my history, what I did,
what I didn't like."
"Which was given to me by a strange gentleman."
Well, he didn't talk about acid.
I mean, he's...
"All I can tell you is I was doing a lot of acid on the time,
given to me by a military doctor."
To Frito-Lay.
Okay, sorry.
Frito-Lay brought in a military doctor.
It wasn't an acid then.
I mean, he didn't speak explicitly about the acid,
but he just said,
"All I have is my history and what I did in my kitchen."
Well, you know, I seem to recall,
I might have the number wrong,
but reading that written language,
which didn't exist in every culture,
not every culture had written language,
but it was, I don't know who you call it,
linguists or whoever studies the written language,
orthographists, whatever,
they can say that written language was invented,
they know for a fact it was invented like five times
in different parts of the world.
Wow, independently.
Independently, and that they can say,
like basically all written language stems from one of these,
I might have the number wrong, but five times,
like Arabic and somewhere in what's now called the Americas,
maybe like the Aztecs had a version of written language,
but that they can kind of trace written language
to a few separate places.
So if, you know, human beings invented writing,
essentially five different times,
totally different styles, unrelated cultures,
not in contact with each other,
who's to say that in a big organization like Frito-Lay
in the late '80s, early '90s,
it could not have been invented different times.
I also feel like that's some human nature (beep)
where like if people had an idea for something,
even if they didn't get to market first,
they'll still kind of be like, yeah, but you know,
I was there first.
Yeah.
Maybe it's not that crazy that the Midwestern division
could have been researching and starting to put out
Flamin' Hot Cheetos.
It's not, is it impossible that Montañez could have been saying,
we need some more spicy products, did do a big pitch.
And somebody was like, well, you know,
we've been rolling out these Flamin' Hot Cheetos.
And he was like, let me try these.
And he was like, okay,
this is exactly what I'm talking about anyway.
Here's my, I don't know.
It's not impossible.
I like that.
It's a more generous read.
It's more ambiguous.
Cause it'd be easy for, yeah.
I mean like the headline was like Richard Montanez is a fraud,
which is like too hard.
I didn't like that energy at all, which is tough,
which is real rough.
And I like this more ambiguous kind of messy version or
convergent evolution with the Flamin' Hot product idea.
♪ Hot Cheetos and Takis ♪
♪ I can't get enough of these Hot Cheetos and Takis ♪
♪ Got my fingers stained red ♪
♪ And I can't not get 'em on me ♪
♪ You can catch me in my groove ♪
♪ Eating Hot Cheetos and Takis ♪
♪ Pow ♪
♪ Snack, snack, snack ♪
♪ Crunch, snack, snack, snack ♪
♪ Hot Cheetos and Takis ♪
♪ Hot Cheetos and Takis ♪
♪ You can catch me in my groove ♪
♪ Eating Hot Cheetos and Takis ♪
- You know what, I guess, well,
we need some insight from some other people on this,
but I have seen people reference the racial angle of all this.
That these Flamin' Hot products were often marketed
to people of Hispanic descent.
And the story that of Richard Montaigne is being like,
I brought my culture to this big white owned corporation
and I changed culture and I did something.
And he does talk about that a lot.
Like he's involved in Mexican American charities
and foundations and stuff.
And he, it's important to him.
He's very proud of where he comes from
and he talks about it a lot.
So there is this like funny angle too,
where obviously that story probably feels
a little bit better to imagine.
All right, this like giant company actually allowed somebody
from like a different group to rise through the ranks
because they had a great idea and they brought their culture.
Like that's kind of like some American dream type (beep)
But think about this, maybe in his head, he's like,
you know what, I (beep) invented Sabrositas.
And that's just as important as Flamin' Hot Cheetos.
But you know what, because it has more of a Spanish sounding name.
These (beep) white meme Lords don't talk about it as much.
So you know what, (beep) it.
I'm backwards engineering Flamin' Hot into my story
because the gringos are never going to talk about Sabrositas
the same way they talk about Flamin' Hot
because it's simply not in English, you know?
- The writer of the film Flamin' Hot,
I think, you know, he's captured that spirit.
He spoke to Variety and he said,
I think enough of the story is true.
The heart and soul and spirit of the story is true.
He's a guy who should remain the face of Flamin' Hot Cheetos.
Ultimately it doesn't matter.
- I was reading a column right before we started taping
in the LA Times by Gustavo Arellano.
And he was saying why people were so upset about this story.
And it was sort of like, he outlined a brief history
of like gringo corporate world taking over Mexican food.
There was Arch West who created the Dorito.
He went down to Mexico for vacation in the 1950s or '60s.
And he's like had tortilla chips,
which I guess were maybe a little novel
in the United States in the 1950s.
And he's like, oh, we should take this tortilla chip idea
and make it corporate and put it in grocery stores
and call it Doritos.
And then of course, famously Glenn Bell.
- Glenn Bell, Taco Bell.
- You know, would visit this taqueria in San Bernardino
near the original McDonald's location
and would grill this family
about how they were making their tacos
and then open Taco Bell.
And so, you know, the story of Montaigne
is kind of flipping the script a little bit.
People found some satisfaction in that.
And then, so that's why I think there's a,
in this column he was writing,
that's why people were so upset
about the kind of reversal of it.
- That happens a lot, strong emotions on both sides
and the truth might be a casualty,
but people wanna believe what they wanna believe.
This is a tweet somebody sent me.
Somebody named Rodrigo Nunez wrote,
"Richard Montaigne might not have invented hot Cheetos,
"but he got away with claiming he did
"and made a living off of that.
"First Mexican to pull off a white man move
"with such efficacy.
"A true pioneer."
So that's a take.
- That's also a very American story.
- Yeah, what if Montaigne came out and was just like,
"What did I do that's any different
"than what Glenn (beep) Bell did?
"And you (beep) people eating your Taco Bell.
"Go to hell.
"I invented this (beep)."
The movie's coming out next year.
(laughing)
- I mean, Jake, you wrote to the text thread
that the movie just got a whole lot more interesting.
And the reality is, I mean, the reality is like,
what kind of movie is it without this?
Like, this is a real third actor.
- No, I know.
This would be amazing.
And this would be like making it into like a,
like a Steven Soderbergh or, you know,
Fincher kind of film.
I mean, I hope that they address this in an upcoming film.
I doubt it.
Maybe, maybe they'll like rewrite the script.
- That would be amazing.
- Take it down to the studs.
- You can make such a,
taking it down to the studs.
That's a new Mountain Bruce song.
- Yeah.
- No, that'd be amazing.
But one thing I've learned from reading more about the movie
and hearing from the screenwriter
is this movie is being produced by a well-known producer
of Christian films.
And obviously there's many films that have Christian themes,
but when they say Christian films,
they mean specifically type of like inspirational,
feel good stories.
- Aspirational family.
- So.
- (beep) that.
- Yeah.
- So the rights may come back to market
because they may say we can't do this story the way it is,
in which case maybe we all pool our money
and try to buy the rights to this.
'Cause I think that making that sort of
lifetime inspirational movie up into the third act
when then the wheels fall off is a great movie.
- I think we, yeah,
I think it's a time crisis presents
in association with Mike Judge and Adam Curtis.
Those are the people I want to work with.
- And Sunderbergh.
(laughing)
- Well, also I kind of remember seeing a trailer
for a kind of inspirational Christian movie
that took place at a college.
And I'm pretty sure, you know,
just like any kind of movie with an agenda,
they portray certain people
as these like really 2D caricatures.
And as I recall in this movie,
it's a professor who's giving a lecture at a college
and going like, just like some smug
kind of like caricature of like,
just like a terrible liberal atheist.
And this person goes,
and that is why we conclusively know
that God does not exist.
And then there's like a Christian student who stands up
and is like, "Um, professor?"
And he's like, "Yes."
And the kid's like, "Uh, can I ask you a question?"
And I think that's what the movie is.
Is like basically this kid just like owning
this piece of (beep) smug atheist professor.
And then like, I imagine in the movie by the end of it,
the professor's probably like down on his knees
just like, "Please forgive me, Lord."
And it's not hard to imagine
what the atheist liberal version of that would be too,
where they would have a two-dimensional Christian character
just being like, you know.
- Yeah, yeah.
- But anyway, I could, if we went that route,
I could also picture they create,
and no disrespect to the talented journalist
who wrote this story,
but I could imagine they create this like weird caricature
of like a smug journalist
who comes to the Montanhas family home
and is just like, "Open up, man.
"I'm gonna take you down.
"You better sit and talk to me."
And then like the door opens
and Montanhas is just like,
"You've been harassing my family for weeks now,
"but if you insist, come in.
"I'll tell you my real story."
And the guy's like, "Hell yeah."
And you see, he sits down on his couch
and this guy like texts his like friend,
just like, "This chump just opened the door for me.
"Scoop of a lifetime."
And then we cut back to him as he tells the story.
And then by the end of it,
the journalist is just like a puddle
and is just like, "I'm so (beep) sorry, Mr. Montanhas."
And he's like, "It's all right, man.
"Maybe you give them some Flamin' Hot Cheetos or something."
That would be like the really beautiful inspirational film.
- Yeah, I mean, that's the ones
they're gonna probably make.
- If they reference this at all.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I would love just some serious, like just ambiguous,
just what the hell happened.
Paul Thomas Anderson.
(laughing)
Directs.
- Well, I think that's the--
- Flamin' Hot.
Flamin' Hot Mess, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson.
And then by the end, you're just like,
"What the hell even happened?"
- 8/24.
I'm in 8/4 production.
- Just like three hours and 40 minutes.
- What was the one he did, like Inherent Vice style,
where you're just like, "What even was that?"
- How great a scene is it in the boardroom
where they're like, someone's like,
"But the story broke.
"We're (beep)."
And he didn't create it.
And another executive's like,
"Yeah, he did."
And he's like, "No, he didn't."
"Well, not really, but why, he could've."
And you're just having this crazy conversation.
And at the end, he goes, "He needs to,
"like he's the creator.
"That's it."
And he just is allowed to live his life
as reaping the rewards,
because as far as the last 20 years of his life is concerned,
he's the creator.
- It's like that scene from the first episode of Chernobyl.
Excellent miniseries, where like all these Frito-Lay people
are like freaking out,
and then they're just like,
"Wait, hold on a second."
The rarely seen kind of like executive major OG dude
from Rancho Cucamonga's coming in.
He sits down, he's like,
"What seems to be the problem here?"
And they're just like,
"LA Times is calling Montaigne's a fraud."
And he's just like, "Well, that's silly.
"He invented Flamin' Hot Cheetos."
And they're like, "No, sir.
"According to the article, he in fact did not."
"Well, that's strange, because he did."
"No, even our internal investigation
"is showing that a woman named Lynn Greenfeld,"
and he's like, "Well, you better go check again,
"because Richard Montaigne has invented Flamin' Hot Cheetos."
"Well, sir, we did check.
"If I was you, I would go check again."
And they like start to get it,
and he's just like, "Because of course,
"he invented Flamin' Hot Cheetos."
"Of course, sir.
"Maybe somebody got it wrong."
- Fully Soviet, fully corporate group think.
I love it, I love it.
- And then he doses the meeting.
"Everybody, have a cup of this tea."
I really wonder if there's a little bit more to the story,
where Montaigne's actually had been dreaming of a spicy,
we need to know how widespread Flamin' Hot Cheetos were
in the first few years.
I don't know, man.
But that's cool that they're still making the movie.
At least they seem to be right now,
the screenwriters out there.
Eva Longoria's probably not trying to comment
on this too soon, but--
- If it comes out in theaters,
needless to say, we're all going.
- Oh yeah.
- TC Field Trip.
Even though the Arc Light's closed,
we'll go to the AMC and Burbank or whatever.
- Sorry, this is an important event.
We're driving out to Rancho.
- Oh, yeah.
- We're doing a Cucamonga field trip for this.
- True, true.
- We're paying our respects.
- You know who else would kill this?
Charlie Kaufman.
- Oh yeah.
- Yeah, I was just thinking,
the line, 'cause I was just thinking of it,
I wrote myself a good line for this movie,
but it was almost too comical.
It would have to be if Charlie Kaufman did it,
which is, I like Ezra's take on that sort of exact,
you know, the head of Frito-Lay coming in.
After that whole conversation, he says,
"Because do you know what happens
"if Montana did not create the Flaming Hot Cheeto?"
And the junior exec is like, "No, I don't."
And his response is, "That's right, because he did."
(laughs)
Like some kind of like, it's dark,
but then the guy, it's just diluted, kind of surreal.
You don't want to live in a world
where Richard Montanez did not invent the Flaming Hot Cheeto.
That, my friend, is a frightening world.
That's a dark world.
It's a violent world.
Luckily for us, it's a world that doesn't exist.
Do you understand?
(laughs)
- Who are you guys picturing as Montanez?
'Cause I'm kind of liking John Leguizamo for this one.
I feel like he could get an Oscar out of this role.
- I mean, I thought of Louise Guzman.
- Well, I guess he probably is the right age.
- Guzman is good.
- But Louise Guzman has a lot of,
there's a lot of pathos in him too.
- Oh yeah.
- Well, I think they said they already casted.
I don't know if they announced the names.
They might not be super well-known actors.
- Maybe someone younger than Guzman or-
- Well, also, yeah, no, it has to be,
'cause also we're going back to the beginning.
We might need three different actors.
- Early '80s.
- It might be like a millennial pitch.
- I mean, Louise Guzman, I bet Guzman's in his 50s.
- Last pitch also is that it seems like
he and Lynn Greenfeld have no personal interaction,
but there's also the Fincher version, Social Network,
where the whole thing is framed by an arbitration
with lawyers, where,
because I was just thinking of the iconic line
from Social Network, which is like,
"If those guys invented Facebook,
they would have invented Facebook,"
which is also like that kind of weird,
like, "I own the narrative, and you know what?
Whatever they might've done before me,
I did enough that I do own this,
because I'm here," right?
You know, which is like,
probably a lot of people feel that way.
People buy into their own reality,
and certainly when it comes to business or anything
that could benefit somebody personally,
even more reason to buy into it.
So that idea of like Zuckerberg just being like,
"Whatever you guys f***ing came up with before me,
the reason I'm here and you're there
is because I invented Facebook,
and if not, you would have been there."
So you could imagine Montaigne is just like
saying to like Lynn Greenfeld, just like,
although he's got a real cool demeanor
compared to Zuckerberg,
he'd just be like, "Lynn, if you invented Flamin' Hot,
you would have invented Flamin' Hot.
There'd be a movie directed by..."
It wouldn't be Eva Longoria if it was Lynn Greenfeld.
"There'd be a movie about you.
There'd be a book about you.
But you didn't.
There isn't, because you didn't."
Just like that kind of like...
- He's got the shades on.
- Well, here's the thing.
It seems like his book is still coming out.
Penguin is gonna release it,
so we gotta read it.
We gotta find out more.
I wonder how doggedly the journalist
is gonna pursue this,
and maybe we will do a follow-up with him.
I think it's good that we just kind of
hashed it out TC style today
before having any guests,
because I think there's more to learn, but...
- And I like this journalist being
sort of a part of that story.
I think that that's gonna be really fun.
I can see this,
'cause driven to take down this guy,
that's also complicated.
That Zodiac, like having the Zodiac element.
- Okay, so I think we decided
we're gonna offer the picture to Fincher.
- I think so.
- Fincher would absolutely crush this.
- He just did Manc,
kind of black and white throwback.
- Yeah, just even more esoteric and obscure,
the Flamin' Hot story.
- I mean, he's...
- I think it's very broad.
- Now, people are gonna love it,
and yeah, it's gonna look like the social network.
It's gonna be kind of moody.
- ♪ Lately things don't seem the same ♪
♪ I can't focus on anything ♪
♪ Sure I'll go to the baseball game ♪
♪ I'll watch the players, I don't know their names ♪
♪ But I think I know what'll cheer me up ♪
♪ It's a sweet chili heat in a cup ♪
♪ Mix it with a sweet and salty brew ♪
♪ For $15 it oughta do ♪
♪ But it was the worst margarita ♪
♪ The worst margarita ♪
♪ It was the worst margarita of my life ♪
- Okay, Jake, after we write that 800-page oral history
of Whole Foods,
we're gonna do our chaos-type book
about Flamin' Hot Cheetos.
Maybe we just call it Flamin' Hot Chaos.
(laughing)
- Didn't we have a theory that Whole Foods
was actually like a CIA op?
- I think so.
I'll just leave you with one more quote from Montaignez.
He said, talking about Frito-Lay,
he said, "I was their greatest ambassador,
"but I will say this.
"You're going to love your company
"more than they will ever love you.
"Keep that in perspective."
Damn. - Oof.
- It's kinda hurt. - True words.
- Although, it does seem like Frito-Lay
is being pretty mellow about it.
I'm sure from Frito-Lay's perspective,
they're just like, "Who cares?
"We like the story, we like Richard.
"Whatever." - Yeah.
They interviewed people that worked for Frito-Lay
like 30 years ago, who were like,
"I don't remember Richard."
You know the current management at Frito-Lay,
when they caught wind of the story,
they were just like, "Oh my God.
"Really, LA Times?"
- Well, actually, a friend of the show,
she was on five years ago, Jennifer Sines,
I saw her name pop up.
She was the CMO.
She's really tight with Montaignez.
She popped up in the article,
and she shouted him out,
and she's like, I don't know if she blurbed his book
or something, or, you know, they're tight.
- I mean, look, the guy who wrote this
is clearly a very talented journalist,
and he did, by interviewing all those people,
piece out one significant thread of the story,
which Frito-Lay would say is the real story.
He interviewed those people,
and he found out the Lynn Greenfields
and the Midwestern marketing people,
he did piece that together.
So now it is a question of,
can all these things be true?
And we're gonna spend the next 20 years of our life
figuring that out.
We're not disputing his journalism.
We're just asking, you know, that's one article.
We're asking in a book-length form,
what else can we find?
In 2041, Flamin' Hot Chaos is gonna drop.
Maybe Tom O'Neill's serve as kind of like an advisor to us.
We'll get him back on the--
- He's like, guys, don't do it.
Don't do it!
- Guys, it's not worth it.
You're gonna lose 20 years of your life.
- Your marriages and your happiness are more important.
- Oh, God.
- 2041.
- 2040.
Me and Jake just like sharing like a studio apartment.
We alternate who gets to like--
Like every other night, it's just like,
all right, it's Thursday.
Jake, you get the bed tonight,
and you're like, hell yeah!
I'll crash out on the sleeping bag.
- Apple canceled time crisis 10 years prior.
(laughing)
You guys would not stop talking about
this Flamin' Hot origin story.
I mean, listenership eventually just plummeted.
- It's like once every few months,
we roll up just like unshaven, hair all (beep) up.
We have brunch with Rashida, Hannah,
and our adult children.
They're just like--
(laughing)
- Remarried.
- Oh, yeah.
They're like super cool, like buff, slick new husbands
who actually like work in corporate PR.
(laughing)
- Yeah.
- Just, he's like very like on edge,
like disheveled losers.
- Rolling up.
Oh my God.
- Flamin' Hot chaos.
I mean, that's a movie there too.
I feel like we came up with five movies today.
- That's pure Zodiac.
That's pure Gyllenhaal and Downey in Zodiac,
just like losing it.
- Oh, boy.
Now for something completely different.
Seinfeld, when we were texting
about all this Flamin' Hot chaos,
you hit the thread with an interesting product
that you had seen just doing your usual grocery shopping.
You want to tell us a little bit about that?
- Yeah, sure.
It was a few weeks ago, as I recall,
and I was in the grocery store,
just getting food products for my house,
and I happened across--
- Getting what?
- Food products for my house, for our pantry.
- Okay, food products.
- It was a Saturday night in the grocery store
getting food products for my house.
(imitates gun firing)
(laughing)
- So there I am in the chip section,
and I happened across a product called Veggie Straws,
but what really drew my eye to it
was that it was an edition of,
it was a version of Veggie Straws called Screamin' Hot.
I just thought it was funny
because obviously they're drafting off
of the Flamin' Hot name,
but the best that they could come up with
was Screamin' Hot,
which doesn't really, to me,
sound like an idiom in the vernacular.
I've never heard anybody say,
"Oh, that was Screamin' Hot,"
and then I started thinking about,
well, you're eating it and then you're screamin'
'cause it's so hot,
or is the veggie straw itself so hot
that it's making a sound?
So I took a picture,
and the conversation just reminded me,
and then Ezra, you went on this whole tear
about how unhealthy veggie straws are.
- That was like a classic kind of thread moment
when, kind of similar to some Zodiac/Flamin' Hot Chaos thing,
where a thread goes a little bit dead
except for two guys doggedly pursuing it.
(laughing)
- Well, I was completely tapped out.
- Jake was tapped out.
Everybody, it was like kind of bedtime,
and me and Seinfeld were just going back about veggie straws
because when you sent that,
I think I was very interested in the Screamin' Hot angle
'cause it's kind of lame.
Oh, you gotta have your Flamin' Hot,
it's gotta be Screamin' Hot, I agree.
Kind of a strange word choice,
but then also just made me think about veggie straws
and specifically, well, this is something I found out.
If you had asked me before yesterday,
I would have said that veggie straws is a brand.
Now, it turns out, veggie straws is like Frosted Flakes.
So to anybody listening at home,
anybody in the TC community,
go ahead and make your own veggie straws.
You can.
I looked it up, you can find all sorts of off-brand veggie straws.
The one that most of us are familiar with,
the brand is Garden Veggie Straws.
And anyway, the reason I was thinking about it is like,
that's just such a bad snack.
And I'll admit, there's been times I've been starving
and I ate it and I kind of liked it,
but it's like, the fact that it's portrayed as being healthy,
they're so ugly.
It's such like a styrofoam vibe.
And there's something just truly,
I know this is overused in culture in general
and probably especially on TC,
but there's something about Garden Veggie Straws
that I truly find dystopian.
It's like some Wally (beep).
It makes me imagine just like the remnants of human civilization
are living on a space station.
Somebody's like, "Time for your veggie straws."
They're sad, they're dry.
The packaging always has so much air.
The individual serving of veggie straws,
I'll admit, I've housed them.
I've even semi-enjoyed them in moments of extreme hunger,
but there's something about it.
It's just like, oh man, (beep) veggie straws.
- The bag is full of air.
The straws themselves are quite porous
and full of air as well.
And also, why is it a straw?
- Yeah, why is it a straw? - I have a few questions.
- Yeah.
- I'm not familiar with this product.
- At all? You've never had veggie straws?
- First of all, never heard of it or seen it.
So is it literally a straw that you could drink V8 through?
(laughs)
And secondly-- - Great question.
- Ezra, is this a regular grocery item at your house?
- No, where am I having these-- - What are you having
on these veggie straws?
You don't have beer in your house,
but you have veggie straws?
- Just like 11 p.m., just like,
"Babe, I'm doing a veggie straw run."
- Babe, I'm starving.
I need some veggie straws.
- Oh, maybe there's some veggie straws in the pantry.
- Who the (beep) ate my screaming hots?
(laughs)
- You're down there just throwing them.
- All this in the (beep) damn pantry is veggie straws.
(laughs)
- This strikes me as like a green room type of item.
- Yeah, maybe it's a green room item.
Although maybe we did have veggie straws
in the house for a while,
and that's how I grew to hate them.
Maybe we did end up with a big box
of individually wrapped veggie straws.
God knows why.
It seems like a green room thing.
It just feels like a real sad,
kind of like waiting room vibe.
Just like...
- Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do,
do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do.
(laughs)
Matt, cue up "Waiting Room."
- That's Fugazi?
- Oh, yeah.
- Tight.
♪ I am a patient boy ♪
♪ I wait, I wait, I wait, I wait ♪
♪ My time's the one that's gotta train ♪
♪ Everybody move it, everybody move it ♪
♪ Everybody move it, move it, move it, move it ♪
♪ Please don't leave me to remain ♪
♪ Live away from all the noise ♪
♪ All the noise ♪
♪ In that side of town ♪
♪ Everybody's always down ♪
♪ To the ground ♪
♪ Because they can't get up ♪
♪ Come on and get up ♪
♪ Come on and get up ♪
- Nick, are you familiar with veggie straws?
- Yeah, I am, 'cause I think that
it's sort of a standard kid's thing.
- Right, and you have like a nine-year-old son.
- I have a nine-year-old son.
You know--
- Is he in the room?
- You don't keep him in the house.
- Is he in the room?
- I'll get him in the room.
I'll pull up a photo,
and he can say what his sort of immediate take on it.
You know, I think with a nine-year-old,
he doesn't really have a food that he likes.
Do you know what I mean?
I think it's just sort of like--
- Kind of like a picky age?
- Nothing?
- Chicken fingers?
- No, no, no, he'll sort of basically,
there's things he likes and things he doesn't.
Do you know, I don't think that, you know,
and for the most part, it's like chicken fingers
and probably these veggie straws all fall into a similar,
like, they're getting the job done.
They're calories, but I don't think he's,
you know, if it's not dessert, to be honest,
he really doesn't, you know,
if it's not dessert or spaghetti, does he really care?
I don't keep veggie straws in the house, though,
but I don't have what I imagine Ezra might have.
We don't have like that drawer of snacks.
Do you know, that just sort of like,
even if they're in the healthy, we just don't have that.
That's just not--
- Trail mix? No?
- No, I keep trail mix 'cause I like trail mix.
- Oh, hell yeah.
- So you gotta have a snack drawer.
- But I don't really have a snack drawer.
Like, I remember growing up,
like Jordan Stein had just a sick snack drawer.
- Shout out to Jordan Stein.
- You know Jordan, you know--
- Mutual friend Jordan Stein.
- As I said, I forgot, I think that Jake knows Jordan Stein.
- Wait, Jake, you know this guy, Jordan Stein?
This is a real person?
- Yeah, small world style.
I know him from San Francisco.
- Well, yeah, but you know,
he had that sort of late '80s, early '90s snack drawer
that had like ho-ho, like, you know,
he had just like a lot of the snacks
that like my family would never keep, you know?
- Wow. - Like little Debbie's.
- Wow, like just a decadent snack drawer.
- A very decadent snack drawer.
So, but I do think that I know
that there's a certain kind of snack drawers now
that will have like the individual like Annie's, you know,
or a big thing that I think kids eat now
is like the Pirate's Booty, like popcorn.
Like that, I guess we do have,
there must have been a time with the veggie straws.
- I mean, I was kind of looking it up,
like it looked like a dude named,
I think his name was Rick Bellow invented them,
but of course at this point
they're owned by a giant company,
Heinz Celestial Group, which is the same company
that Celestial is talking about, Celestial Seasonings Tea.
So it's kind of like a vaguely health,
healthy-ish brand, they own Celestial Seasonings.
- Have we covered Celestial?
- Yeah, yeah, we talked about their origin,
which I feel like was some Colorado hippies, I think.
- Yeah, but I think it took a left turn.
- Like they were members
of a kind of religious cult or something.
- Yeah.
- Although I'm sure at this point, you know,
it's owned by a giant company.
Celestial Seasonings Tea,
Linda McCartney Foods,
Ella's Kitchen, Empire Kosher,
Terra Chips, Terra Chips,
also just like a funny, funny brand
and also veggie straws.
All right, so we got an actual nine-year-old.
Hey, what's up, Max?
Welcome to Time Crisis.
- What's up, Max?
- Hello.
- So you're nine?
- Yes.
- You know what the kids are eating
in terms of snacks, right?
- Yes, garden veggie straws.
So they're meant for,
you blow through them and drink things through it.
That's what you do.
- Wait, really?
- Wow, good call, James.
- Would you ever actually drink something through it?
Or have you?
- I have before.
I did it with water,
but then the bottom got all soggy
and it was terrible.
- Wait, and so when are you and your peers
drinking beverages through garden veggie straws?
Where is this happening, at school?
- No, it happens at home.
- Have we ever had these in our house?
- Yeah, we have.
- Oh, so that's news to me.
- Max, with you and your friends,
I imagine Flamin' Hot Cheetos are pretty cool, right?
That's a cool snack.
- Yeah.
- Invented, of course, by Richard Montanez.
- Yeah, cool.
(laughing)
- But you know, it's interesting.
It's a cool snack 'cause it's like the bad boy of snacks.
- It's a bad boy snack
and invented by a very cool guy, Richard Montanez.
(laughing)
But Max, are garden veggie straws considered cool
when you and your friends are playing
League of Legends or whatever
and you're chatting with each other on the headset,
would you just be like,
"All right, fellas, who's eating what?"
Somebody be like, "I'm crushing some veggie straws."
You guys would be like, "Oh, jealous."
Is that what's happening in your community?
- No.
I imagine this would happen in the 1990s,
but not in the 2000s.
That's not what kids are like now.
- Okay, but so when you and your boys are gaming,
what's a cool snack to be crushing?
- Cheetos.
- Okay.
- Hands down.
Regular Cheetos or Flamin' Hot?
- Flamin' Hot.
- But also, part of my question
is not just what you would enjoy eating,
but I know when people are playing video games together,
there's a lot of teasing,
a lot of competitive talk.
- That doesn't happen to the people on the team.
It happens to the people playing against us.
- So if someone were playing against you,
if you were playing a game and they were like,
"Oh yeah, I'm over here and I'm eating these veggie straws,"
are you roasting that person?
- Um, I mean, I guess.
I guess.
- This is what I think.
This is a pretty esoteric conversation
for a nine-year-old, I think.
You know, I have a feeling.
I can see it now.
No one wants the veggie straws.
- They have the word veggie in their name.
- Right.
- Veggie sort.
- True.
- Great point.
- That is a good point.
I think that--
- Strike one.
- Yeah, strike one.
Look, I'm looking at the thing right now.
This has a whole lot of strikes going on.
It's got the word garden, got the word veggie,
and it's being sold by 30% less fat.
I mean, that's like on the, you know--
- The I in veggie is a tomato.
- Four strikes.
- I mean, who invented this, Michelle Obama?
But you know, the thing I think it has going for it
now that I can feel, it is sort of tactile.
I can feel that you would blow through it.
Like when I asked Max, yeah, you would--
- Sorry, Max, have you actually drank a liquid
through a veggie straw?
- Yes.
- Water.
- Yeah.
- 'Cause I can't think of another beverage
that would work well with that.
Chocolate milk would be disgusting.
- Right.
- Mountain dew would be disgusting.
V8 would work.
- Oh, brown celery soda.
You ever had that?
- No, not familiar.
- It's like an old school Jewish deli soda
called Cel-Ray, and I guess it's made out of celery somehow.
- Clamato.
- Oh, clamato, that'd be good.
- Clam juice?
- Clam juice would work.
- (beep)
- I'm interested, do you--
- It's a weird product.
- Is there a flavor profile to these two,
or do they all basically take--
- No, they're all the same.
They're just different colors.
They just wanted to rebrand,
and they just made them different colors.
That's all they did.
- But they're selling it as though,
like, one, I assume, is a carrot?
- No, it's not.
It's completely the same.
It's just bread.
- Well, listen to this, Max.
- It's made of bread.
- Max, you probably already know this,
but in November 2013, Heinz Celestial,
the parent company of veggie straws,
Garden Veggie Straws, was targeted
in a class action lawsuit claiming
that they falsely labeled their products as organic
to mislead consumers into purchasing them,
and they settled.
- Who has the time to sue them?
- And then in 2017--
- That's a great question.
- They were sued by two men after discovering
there are no actual vegetables in the veggie straws,
although the bag contains photos
of spinach, tomatoes, and potatoes on the front.
So you're absolutely right that
it doesn't actually contain any of the vegetables,
although it contains something called spinach powder.
I don't know.
Maybe these guys--
- It just doesn't contain meat.
(laughing)
- Right.
- Therefore, it's veggie.
(laughing)
- Well, apparently this is a huge thing
I was reading about,
that there's been a lot of lawsuits with companies
where they label their product not as organic,
not as veggie, but merely as natural.
(laughing)
And there's been a lot of ink spilled
with court opinions, lawyers, corporate PR statements.
Basically, because natural is such a vague term
that you can kind of like,
you can call almost anything natural.
- You could call anything natural because--
- Literally anything.
- Humans are a product of the natural environment
and anything that humans make, therefore, is natural.
- And anything on Earth is made in some way
from what God gave us.
- Building blocks.
♪ I'm gonna be around my vegetables ♪
♪ I'm gonna chop down my vegetables ♪
♪ I love you most of all ♪
♪ My favorite vegetable ♪
♪ If you brought a big brown bag of them home ♪
♪ I'd jump up and down and hope you'd toss me a carrot ♪
♪ I'm gonna keep well my vegetables ♪
♪ Cart off and sell my vegetables ♪
♪ I love you most of all ♪
♪ My favorite vegetable ♪
♪ Oh, oh, oh, oh ♪
♪ Tape a veggie on a joint ♪
♪ I tried to kick the ball ♪
♪ But my tenny flew right off ♪
♪ I'm red as a beet ♪
♪ 'Cause I'm so embarrassed ♪
- Nick, shout out to your son, Max.
When I was nine, I certainly would never use the word rebrand
(laughing)
or have an opinion about a lawsuit.
- Yeah, he said, yeah, 'cause that may have gone over--
- Very savvy young man.
- Just like 20 years from now, just like,
"So Max, what made you wanna become a lawyer?"
He's like, "Well, when I was nine, I did a guest appearance
"on an internet radio show my father was a part of,
"and something that they told me about
"just really got my goat.
"It was a frivolous lawsuit that two scumbags
"waged against garden veggie straws."
And you know, I was a relative fan of the brand.
I would occasionally drink water through the straw,
using it as if it was a plastic straw,
you know, things of that nature.
And there's something about hearing that there are people
who would sue over something like that.
It just, I realized I needed to study the law
to prevent travesties like this from happening.
- Expert in tort reform, Max Weidenfeld.
(laughing)
- Wait, so the court dismissed the case stating,
"Plaintiffs must allege more than a mere possibility
"that the advertisement might conceivably be misunderstood
"by some few consumers," blah, blah, blah.
The court also said that it was not misleading
to call the product veggie straws,
since Hein does use vegetable-based ingredients
in the product.
Okay, that's not crazy.
They use tomato paste and spinach powder.
And then they said--
- I want there to be a band called Spinach Powder.
- Spinach Powder.
I think there was a '60s psychedelic band
called Ultimate Spinach.
- That's a good name.
- From Boston.
And they also said--
- Ultimate Spinach.
- That was Ultimate Spinach out of Boston.
"Since vegetables grow in a garden,
"the court also said it wasn't misleading
"to characterize the product as coming from
"a garden."
You heard it here, folks.
Throw a little bit of spinach powder in your product,
and you can call that (beep) garden veggie whatever.
- Yeah, technically, this plant material
was grown out of the earth.
So that is a garden.
- Butterfingers rolls out these green butterfingers
called garden veggie butterfingers.
It's like, we just put in a tiny bit of spinach powder.
- Green fingers.
- Oh, green fingers, that's a good one.
Green thumbs.
- By the way, Matt just texted me.
I was like, 'cause I know when I started,
when Max was talking, I was looking at the photos,
I was like, I do feel I've eaten these.
It felt like, Matt texted, and he was like,
"Yeah, we kept those in the Apple studio
"when we would do this IRL."
- There you go.
- And there would be times when we'd be doing
our three-hour sessions, and we wouldn't have
to eat something and be like,
"I don't really want a Kind bar."
- And I will say, I would think,
"Oh, I want something that is remotely healthy."
- But these aren't healthy.
And I would go for the, like, it tricked you,
and I would have the sort of, yeah,
I can sort of remember that taste.
- Now, there's something about garden veggie straws
that I think feel like a collective delusion,
where even if you ate it, you're not sure you ever had it.
Even if you've seen it, you're not sure you ever saw it.
Like, Jake, you probably crushed 50 bags of them
over your lifetime.
- I'm sure you're right.
This is the next Adam Curtis documentary.
(laughs)
Eight hours on veggie straws.
But this was a collective delusion.
The veggie straw paradox.
It's Mandela effect.
That would be like a good one to say to people like,
"Do you remember a product called garden veggie straws?"
"Uh, yeah, I think I ate that a lot."
Never existed.
"No, no, you're kidding me."
"No, no, literally, Google it.
"Garden veggie straws, it's not a product."
"No, I remember, I drank water through one of them
"when I was nine."
"No, dude, there literally is nothing called veggie straws."
"You're probably remembering Pirate's Booty or something,
"or Taro Chips."
- I love that.
- Veggie straws did not exist.
And it's the Berenstain Bears, not the Berenstein Bears.
- I mean, this is just circling back
to the fallibility of human memory.
- We also gotta get into the multiverse theory.
Alternate timelines.
(laughs)
- I'm on the Sensible Portions website here,
and if you're looking for a snack to consume this July 4th,
Veggie Straws has the Stars and Stripes edition.
- Oh, no.
Red, white, and blue?
- Veggie straws with, it's red, white, and blue.
Actually, it's orange, purple, and white.
But they have little star-shaped,
almost like a Chex Mix style.
- Oh, so it's like the classic veggie straws
is the stripes, and then they have the stars.
- They got the stars thrown in.
Seems like a missed opportunity
to not call it Straws and Stripes,
but there you have it.
- All right, well, I guess that could be
the TC July 4th challenge this year.
Invite everybody over for a barbecue,
and the only snacks you have
are these Stars and Stripes veggie straws.
And just use it as a conversation starter.
See how people react.
See who brings it up to you.
See who's familiar with the product.
And then also check in next day after
and see if anybody remembers it.
- I think I've brought this up on the show before,
but there's a movie that I think
would be a good TC movie called
Led Zeppelin Played Here, about a show.
- Not familiar.
- It's a documentary.
Maybe we should have this guy call in.
It's a documentary by the guy
that made Heavy Metal Parking Lot.
And it's about a show that Led Zeppelin played
in Maryland in 1969,
but there's no actual record of it.
- Like it could be a collective delusion?
- Yes, people remembering seeing Led Zeppelin
in 1969 playing at a high school auditorium in Maryland,
but it's actually not on their itinerary.
- And there's no surviving posters
or anything like that?
- No, there's no documentation of the show.
There's no, yeah, exactly,
like official documentation of the show.
But people swear they saw,
like many people in Maryland
swear that they saw Led Zeppelin play
at this specific, yeah, anyway,
I think we should watch that as a,
I think it should be a TC movie club.
- Okay, let's watch that for next time.
- On the steam of like collective memory
and collective delusion.
- And then we'll make a follow-up,
another film from TC Films.
- Oh, the I Ate Veggie Straws.
- Veggie straws were eaten here.
No, they weren't.
Anyway, if anybody has any good veggie straws stories,
please let us know.
I feel like we barely scratched the surface
with veggie straws.
Although maybe we got to try these screaming hots.
It sounds pretty good.
All right, should we get into the top five?
- It's time for the top five.
Five on iTunes.
- It's been a long time
since we've done a true comparative top five,
but we're going for it today.
Getting back to our roots.
And we're going to be comparing
the top five Billboard hits this week,
2021 to the top five in 1990.
Why 1990?
- That was the year that Frito-Lay
released a test version of Flamin' Hot.
- So this was the year that they first tested them,
unbeknownst to Mr. Montaignez,
who half a country away
was dreaming of a similar product.
Doesn't prove anything.
We should also point out,
a lot of times we'll do the top five songs
on Apple Music, the streaming charts,
but we chose not to this week
because all five of them are dominated by one artist.
That artist is J. Cole.
We got nothing against him.
People don't need to hear us
hear five J. Cole songs for the first time.
And you know, like, it's not good radio.
- But Jake, do you know who J. Cole is?
- No, I mean, I've heard of him.
Because I do this show.
I've been doing this show
that sort of will occasionally
delve into contemporary music.
- Have we talked about J. Cole before?
- I've heard of him only because of this show.
- His full name is Jake Colestreth.
- Oh!
- John Jake Colestreth.
(laughing)
He's an American painter and rapper.
I think he's from, where's he from, North Carolina?
- Yeah.
- I don't know that much about him,
but he always seemed like an interesting dude to me
because he's like, really popular rapper,
but like, truly on his own trip.
- What do you mean?
- Well, there used to be a meme, kind of,
that was based in truth,
that was kind of making fun of passionate J. Cole fans.
And as I recall, and Seinfeld,
you might remember this better than me,
you're a meme expert,
basically the meme was,
it would be used in different contexts,
but basically it was poking fun
at the J. Cole fans' obsession with the fact
that he had gone double platinum with no features.
- He didn't have any, like,
other famous rappers' gaslighting songs.
- Exactly, no features, and obviously,
hip hop, often, you know,
a lot of great music comes about through features.
I guess a hater might say that
some albums have too many features
or they feel kind of like, a little bit R&D'd
in a corporate way, it's like,
let's get that guy on that song,
and that guy, that person on that song,
you know, just to kind of spread your chips out on the table.
I think that's the kind of, like, cynical view
of an album with a lot of features.
And also, I think they're also just saying,
he did it by himself.
This is truly a man apart.
And this man didn't need anybody else,
any other rappers to feature on his album,
it was him speaking his truth,
and he went double platinum.
So it is, you know, people might have joked about it,
but it is something to be proud of.
So he weirdly is like this huge,
I know this is gonna sound just like,
almost like, groan-worthy TC type (beep)
He's almost like on some Grateful Dead (beep)
where, truly on his own trip--
(laughing)
- First time they've come up this episode.
- All right, yeah, so we're doing pretty good.
But like, truly on his own trip,
this is my understanding, and again,
I've never gone really deep,
but it's somebody's on their own trip,
really has a big audience,
and other people don't quite get it sometimes,
and are even harsh about it,
but truly built something of their own.
You know, the Grateful Dead are on some
double platinum with no features (beep)
- For sure.
- So anyway, that's J. Cole,
and we don't need to listen to five J. Cole songs,
although we encourage you to go check out his new album,
I just don't think you need to hear us--
- Yeah.
- Even by the second one, we'd already be like,
what are we talking about?
But somebody was just saying that,
speaking of being on his own trip,
he's not even in America right now.
Seinfeld, you said he's in Rwanda?
- Yeah, he's signed with this Rwandan basketball team,
the Rwandan Nationals, I think?
Let's see.
Oh, it's the Patriots, the Rwanda Patriots.
- The Pats.
- Pats, yeah, the Rwanda Pats,
and I was seeing on Twitter the other night
that they won their first,
whatever game they were playing, they won.
So it looks like J. Cole is definitely an asset to the team.
Congratulations, J. Cole.
- I hope someone makes this sort of J. Cole Rwanda,
Grateful Dead Lithuania shirt.
- Ooh, like a tie-dye shorts and jersey combo.
- Yeah.
- That's pretty tight.
- That's wild.
Is he a starter on that Rwandan team,
or is he like the 11th man on the bench?
That's crazy.
- That'd be pretty brutal if J. Cole flew to Rwanda,
and he didn't get any game time.
- Right, I mean, it's just like--
- He's a shooting guard,
and he's a big basketball fan.
Actually, all his albums have a basketball theme.
- Well, clearly he's a big basketball fan.
- But I mean, to the extent that it's made its way
into his music and to the iconography of his--
- Wow.
- But yeah, you're right.
I mean, if he's on a professional basketball team,
yeah, he must like the sport.
- This is like when the dead played Egypt, man.
Not a lot of people going to play in front of the pyramids.
- Have you read a lot about that?
The dead playing at the pyramids?
- A decent amount.
- Who was at those shows?
Like people that lived in Cairo?
Like deadheads, like Egyptian deadheads,
or like French deadheads that came over for the weekend?
- I think a lot of American deadheads made the trek.
- That went all the way over.
- Yeah, and I don't think it was like a huge audience
by dead standards.
- Yeah, I've heard those shows weren't very good.
- That's what they say.
I'm sure they're just being hard on themselves, but you know.
- That's really trippy to think about.
Can you imagine now just like,
didn't go with John Mayer,
or like Fish playing at the pyramids.
It's like, it's hard to picture.
- And they had to really work hard to get over there,
as I recall reading.
Like, you know, they had to get like
the State Department involved.
- Oh, I'm sure.
- It's also pretty amazing,
'cause if something like that happened now,
it would obviously be for the 'gram.
You know, like it would be,
you'd have this audience for social media.
Doing it then was literally
for no one outside of the company there.
Like, there's no marketing element around it.
- I mean, yeah, rock shows in front of the pyramids
is like a,
I guess depending on the band,
it's like a cool idea.
If it's sort of like Limp Bizkit's
playing in front of the pyramids,
I'd just be like, oh man, that's rough.
- I'd watch that.
- I'd check it out.
- By the way, J. Cole was not a starter.
Matt did some number crunching,
and he came off the bench.
In the final minute of the first quarter,
he got three points, three rebounds,
and two assists in 17 minutes.
Is that good?
- Sorry, so he played 17 minutes total.
- Yeah, Matt--
- So he sounds like he's like a sixth or seventh man.
- Yeah, I think so.
- Okay, so--
- This is real love of the game (beep)
- It's not go to Rwanda so you can start.
It's go to Rwanda so you can like
play like a third of the game.
- Maybe he's killing two birds with one stone.
- Respect.
- Maybe he wanted to go to Rwanda,
spend some time there, get to know the country,
and he wanted to play basketball,
and it's like, it's not about starting.
- Love of the game.
- And also, as I recall, with the Dead show,
I think they filmed it,
and they were planning on making the money back,
'cause it must have been extremely expensive
to schlep all that stuff for a one-off show.
I think they were planning on filming it,
releasing a record and a movie
to kind of make their money back,
and they just didn't think they played that well,
so they're just kind of like,
"All right, (beep) it, man."
I don't know, like late '70s,
just like, "We're $975,000 in the hole.
"It is what it is."
- Those must have been some bad shows,
'cause like, I mean,
we're all familiar with like the dregs
of like the live catalog of the Dead.
It can get pretty--
- How bad could it be?
- It can get pretty gnarly,
as a guy that's been listening to--
- Maybe like "Piano" was out of tune or something.
- Yeah, like as someone that's been looking
at like the weird desert,
like, "Oh man, when the sun set,
"the temperature dropped like crazy,
"and everything went out of tune."
- Jake, we gotta call into Steve Parish's radio show
next time, just be like,
"Steve, how bad were those shows really?
"What was the problem?"
Just like, "Well, Jake, I'm glad you asked that, man.
"When the sun sets in the desert,
"boy, does it get cold.
"We had some serious tuning issues."
- It dropped 25 degrees in the course of 15 minutes.
- No, 'cause I mean,
as someone that's been listening
to the Dead series station pretty consistently
for like five or six years,
and they play some absolute dog (beep) station,
I've never once encountered a track
from the Egypt shows.
Never once.
I've never heard a single track.
- I don't think I've ever heard, wait.
- Can you just bring it up?
- Is it on archive.org?
- Matt, can we play this?
- I love how this is how we're starting the top five,
by the way.
- I think Richard Pictures--
- Yeah, it's on Apple Music, guys.
- Oh, it is?
- Do you wanna hear it?
- Okay, so--
- Yeah, yeah, I wanna hear it.
- It looks like maybe--
- Richard Pictures in front of the pyramid?
- It looks like they didn't release it
until 30 years later.
So I don't think it came,
it did not come out in Jerry's lifetime.
- What year was this that they did this?
'78?
- Is there a track you wanna hear, Jake?
- Read the set list.
- What's the track listing?
- Yeah.
- Jack Straw, Roe Jimmy,
Nu Nu Mingle with Blues,
Candyman Looks Like Rain,
Stagger Leaves, I Need a Miracle.
- It's a good set list, except for Miracle.
Throw in Roe Jimmy.
(chuckles)
(smooth jazz music)
Julie catch a rabbit
by his head
It's a little slow.
Come back stepful
like you walk on air
Back to where you belong
Don't you come up no more
- What's interesting is Jerry put out
Cats Under the Stars, I think in '78,
which has that sort of Egyptian iconography
on the cover.
I think Richard Pictures is gonna do a version
of Cats Under the Stars.
- Oh, great song.
- We were just talking the other day about like,
oh man, quarantine's over.
- Time to get back on the road.
- Let's start rehearsing.
Let's get some shows on the books
for like Q3, Q4.
- Gonna let it go
When I say Roe
Jimmy Roe
- I mean, this sounds pretty on point.
- Yeah, it's just slow.
But maybe you know that out there in the desert wind
in front of the pyramids?
Felt right just to take it slow.
Seems to come on
Way to go
- Their voices sound good.
Get down the road
- I mean, but we're gonna listen to like
a full Jerry solo to really judge?
- It's weird to think about people just like
standing in like sand.
- Lesh recalled that through the shows he observed
quote, an increasing number of shadowy figures
gathering just at the edge of the illuminated area
at the stage and audience, not locals,
as they all seem to be wearing the same garment,
a dark hooded robe.
These it turned out are the Bedouin,
the nomadic horsemen of the desert
drawn in by the music and lights.
Each night they've remained to dance and sway rhythmically
for the duration of the show.
End quote.
Kretzmann recalls, quote,
Egypt instantly became the biggest, baddest,
and most legendary field trip that we took
during our entire 30 years as a band.
It was priceless and perfect at half a million dollars
a bargain in the end, albeit a very expensive bargain.
- Bedouin community was feeling it.
- Oh yeah.
- That sounds sick.
I'm feeling it.
- I wonder if Jerry was sober for these shows.
He couldn't score heroin.
Didn't hook up in Egypt.
- I wonder about that.
- Who knows?
- We got to bang out this top five.
We got a comparative top five coming now.
- Let's do this.
Let's do this.
1990, May of 1990.
- The number five song this week in 1990,
Janet Jackson, "All Right."
Had a lot of Janet Jackson over the years.
- Is that sampling her brother?
- No, I think that's like a drum break.
Yeah, classic Jimmy Jam, Terry Lewis,
and Janet Jackson production.
- That recurring, like, is crazy.
- Yeah.
I wonder if that's from--
- I think that's one of the songs early '90s that did that.
Reminds me of "House of Pain."
- Well, they had the girl who goes, "Rrrr."
- "Rrrr."
- And then of course there was,
even before this era was the, "Hoo, rrr."
- Oh, "It Takes Two."
- ♪ It takes two to make a thing go right ♪
- Oh yeah.
- "Rrrr."
Might even be the same drum break.
All right, classic Janet Jackson production.
I say let's keep moving.
The number five song this week in our time,
Doja Cat featuring SZA, "Kiss Me More."
It's a song about kissing.
[upbeat music]
- ♪ We hug and yes, we make love ♪
♪ And always just say goodnight ♪
- I'm already kind of intrigued by that guitar part.
- Is that a cardigan sample?
- It is pretty cardigans.
I was thinking that.
- Oh, good call.
- ♪ 'Cause I need your lips on mine ♪
♪ Can you kiss me more? ♪
♪ We're so young, boy ♪
♪ We ain't got nothing to lose ♪
♪ Oh, oh, oh, oh ♪
♪ It's just principle ♪
♪ Baby, hold me 'cause I like the way you move ♪
♪ Oh, oh, oh, oh ♪
- ♪ Love, love, when you're so sweet ♪
- And I guess they credited the writers
of Olivia Newton-John's physical.
- ♪ I love my tongue, I want it ♪
- ♪ I love your eyes, your name ♪
♪ I can never say ♪
♪ I love your taste, la, la, la, la ♪
- ♪ All along, my tongue, I want it ♪
♪ I be like coffee, something ♪
♪ But we could be corny ♪
♪ Okay, sugar, I ain't no dummy, dummy ♪
♪ I like to say what if, but if we could kiss ♪
♪ And just cut the rubbish ♪
♪ Then I might be onto something ♪
♪ I ain't giving you one in public ♪
♪ I'm giving you hundreds, come get it ♪
♪ Something we just gotta get into ♪
- The guitar part also kind of reminds me
of like "In Rainbows" or something.
I can see that a little bit.
Get Tom York on the remix.
- ♪ When we French, we fresh, give me two ♪
♪ When I bite that lip, come get me too ♪
♪ You want lipstick, lip gloss, hickeys too ♪
♪ Oh, kiss my boy, we're so young, boy ♪
♪ We ain't got nothing to lose ♪
- I'm surprised they had to give physical credit.
- I don't even hear it. - It's just that rhythm.
♪ Let's get physical ♪
Pretty different.
- But yeah, I hear the cardigans more
than I hear the Olivia Newton-John.
- Yeah, maybe it was just to distract you
from the cardigans thing.
All right, solid.
The number four song this week in 1990.
Big song.
"Wilson Phillips, Hold On."
[upbeat music]
♪ ♪
This is a big song.
- So is Wilson Phillips the offspring
of Brian Wilson?
- And John Phillips from Mamas and Papas?
- So, okay, it is like the offspring
of the Beach Boys and the Mamas and Papas.
- And wait, Carney Wilson's dad is Brian Wilson
or one of the other Wilsons?
- I don't know, that's what I'm asking.
- Oh, yeah, no, no, her--okay.
Her father is Brian Wilson.
- China Phillips.
- Was John and Michelle Phillips' daughter
from Mamas and Papas.
So, and then the other two were Carney and Wendy Wilson,
two daughters of Brian Wilson.
- Wow. - And they wrote this song
with Glenn Ballard.
- Who would go on to work with friend of the show
Alanis Morissette.
- That's right, and who also wrote--co-wrote
"Man in the Mirror" for Michael Jackson.
- Oh, wow.
♪ Don't you know things will change ♪
♪ Things will go your way ♪
♪ If you hold on for one more day ♪
♪ Can you hold on for one more day ♪
♪ Things will go your way ♪
♪ Hold on for one more day ♪
- China Phillips wrote the song's lyrics
while battling substance abuse
as well as being in a really bad relationship,
and she based the lyrics off of the principles taught in AA,
specifically the idea that things had to be taken
one day at a time.
Heavy. That's true.
It's the only way to take life, one day at a time.
- It's really odd to think about the children of big rock stars
from generations prior, like, forming bands.
- They really probably understood each other.
- It'd just be, like, funny if you, like--
it was just, like--
there was a band, like, in, like, eight years
that's sort of like--
"Julie Casablanca's kid and, uh,
one of the Destner Brothers kids from the National."
Or it's just, like, a little more random.
It's like, "His kid and, um,
Fieldy from 'Corn Sun.'"
And they're just like, "You know,
the old folks don't get it,"
but then they do an interview and they're like,
"Listen, man, both of our dads are just, like,
some old-ass dudes in bands, and, like,
we understand each other.
It's all the same, man."
We don't hold those weird biases of, like,
an early 2000s rock fan, you know?
We're, like, a different generation.
- ♪ I'm ready to go your way ♪
- Hold on!
- ♪ For one more day ♪
- ♪ I know that there is pain ♪
♪ But you hold on for one more day ♪
- ♪ Break free from the chains ♪
- ♪ Yeah, I know that there is pain ♪
♪ But you hold on for one more day ♪
♪ And you break free, break from the chains ♪
- ♪ Someday somebody's gonna make you ♪
♪ Want to turn around and say goodbye ♪
- Oh, yeah. This is what it's all about.
The just drums and vocals part of this song.
- ♪ Don't you know, don't you know ♪
♪ There's a chain, oh, you should go your way ♪
- Do you think Wilson Phillips still plays shows?
- They might get together every now and then.
Wilson Phillips is an American pop group
formed in Los Angeles in 1989.
So they made an album-- this album in 1990.
Then they followed up with one in '92.
Then nothing until 2004.
- Wow.
- And then in 2010, they did a Christmas album.
And 2012, one more.
- Wow.
- In 2017, the group performed on the season finale
of NBC's "The New Celebrity Apprentice."
- Okay, so they're still out there.
Whoa, this album had three number-one hits.
- Wow, really?
- This is the biggest, but yeah.
Also, "Release Me" and "You're in Love."
Okay, number four, back in our time,
The Weeknd and Ariana Grande teamed up
for a song together called "Save Your Tears."
[upbeat music]
♪ ♪
- ♪ I saw you dancing in a crowded room ♪
♪ You looked so happy when I'm not with you ♪
♪ But the news-- ♪
- Oh, wait, is this The Killers' one?
- The Weeknd's on his '80s tip still.
- Yeah, this--oh, he did this at the Super Bowl.
Obviously, it's '80s,
but it also just really reminds me of The Killers.
Maybe 'cause he says "run away," and that's a Killers song.
- Yeah.
- ♪ I'll make you cry when I run away ♪
- It'd be interesting if they brought in, like,
Adam from the War on Drugs.
It's not that far off.
- Oh, no, yeah.
- If he added some just, like, weird guitar parts.
War on Drugs remix.
I'm down with this.
- Yeah, I remember this from the Super Bowl.
I think it's pretty good.
- Real throwback.
- Back in '90, the number three song,
absolutely beautiful song,
Sinead O'Connor, "Nothing Compares to You."
- Holy cow.
Oh, man.
Is this an Eileen Scarf song?
"A Little Late"-- or "You're a Little Too Old."
When this came out.
- Yeah, this is a little too late.
This is a little too real.
- ♪ Since you took your love away ♪
♪ I go out every night and sleep all day ♪
♪ Since you took your love away ♪
- Famously written by Prince.
- ♪ Every night and sleep all day ♪
- We were talking last time about "Red Red Wine."
This song also kind of goes in that category
that's, like, that kind of just, like,
deeply, like, hopeless vibe of just, like,
it's a rap, I'm never gonna get over this breakup.
- Yeah.
- And, like, trying to have some fake fun.
- You go to a restaurant.
- I can go to-- I can have dinner wherever I want.
- ♪ I can't go to a fancy restaurant ♪
♪ But nothing, I said nothing to you ♪
- The ex was just knocked down to fancy restaurants.
- You know, the last-- this first Sinead record,
I mean, this whole thing hits heavy.
Like, the last track on this record is--
- This is the second Sinead record, I think.
- Oh, is it? - Yeah.
- Well, I remember on this record--
- Early Sinead.
- Okay.
I thought this was a first.
My bad.
But I remember this record, the last song is--
is, um, the last time I ever saw--
basically, the last I ever saw you.
It's about, like-- it's like a divorce song.
- Wow.
- Which is a nice compliment to this.
- ♪ Without you, son ♪
♪ Oh, oh, oh ♪
♪ Nothing can stop these lonely tears from falling ♪
♪ Tell me, baby ♪
♪ Where did I go wrong? ♪
♪ ♪
♪ I've put my arms around every boy I see ♪
♪ It only reminded me ♪
♪ Oh, oh, oh ♪
♪ I went to the doctor ♪
♪ And guess what he told me ♪
♪ Guess what he told me ♪
♪ He said, "Girl, you better try to have fun ♪
♪ No matter what you do ♪
♪ But he's a fool ♪
♪ 'Cause nothing compares ♪
♪ Nothing compares to you ♪
- Did you guys ever listen to Sinead O'Connor's reggae album?
- No.
- No, man.
- 2005, produced by Sly and Robbie.
- Oh. Major.
♪ ♪
- It's a classic, minimalist, powerful, beautiful song.
- Sounds like she got into kind of a dust-up with Prince.
- She said they had a punch-up.
- Yeah.
They didn't get along.
They hung out a few times, and it didn't go well.
- Now, did he write this for her, or there's, like, a Prince version?
- No, he's--this is on her record.
I feel like this is on "Sign of the Times" or something.
- No, he wrote it in '84. - No, he wrote this for her.
- No, he didn't write it for her?
- No, it says he wrote it in '84. - It was on her record.
- And he gave it to the family, a band that was signed
to his Paisley Park record label.
They recorded the song in '85 for their debut album,
but it was not released as a single.
- Hold on. This wasn't on a Prince record?
- It wasn't released by Prince until 2018, a live--
- My bad.
- Okay, there's a live version on his '93 album,
the hit "/b-side," so maybe he was just doing it live a lot.
- Were you listening to some Prince live bootlegs
back in the day?
- Absolutely not.
- You know, Prince does have a dead, like, following.
People who are, like, obsessed with him.
- Oh, absolutely. Oh, yeah.
- Well, 'cause, you know, he famously had an album
that, like, wasn't released or something
called "The Black Album" in the '80s,
so I think there was this-- - Wow.
- There really is a thing with Princeheads
where people are just like, "Oh, you like Prince?
You haven't heard this sh--."
And it's just this weird vibe of, like, really having,
like, the works.
- Maya Rudolph is a huge Princehead, right?
She's in a Prince cover band. - Yeah, I've heard that.
- She is? - Yeah, she's a major Princehead.
- Do they play around? - She probably has, like,
hand-labeled tapes of just, like,
"Oh, you gotta catch that '87 show, man."
- Any band with, like, super prolific output,
there's those crazy heads.
Does Maya Rudolph's cover band play around L.A.?
- I'm trying to find-- - Yeah, that sounds familiar.
- They're called Princess. It's a great name.
- I was gonna actually suggest, I think,
a Richard Pichard's Princess show.
- Did you catch that, uh... - Pretty tight.
- That Princess Richard Pichard show?
That was really wild.
- When Maya got on stage to sing "To Lay Me Down,"
I mean... [laughter]
Jake and Maya duetting "To Lay Me Down" was fierce.
- Now, I do feel like, in that era,
I bet some deadheads liked Prince.
I bet a lot of Prince heads did not like the dead.
I just feel like if you're a hardcore Prince head
in, like, the Touch of Grey era,
you're probably like, "What?" - Yeah.
- I'll tell you one thing about Jerry Garcia and Prince--
two excellent guitarists. - Yeah.
Although I don't think Prince has his own--
he doesn't have his own voice on the guitar.
He shreds, but it's, like, it's generic shredding.
- Right. What makes him amazing
is as a vocalist, songwriter, and producer.
- Yeah.
- Was Maya Rudolph in The Rentals?
I think she was.
- Oh, she was a member of The Rentals?
- Yeah, do you remember that band?
- Yeah, that was the dude from Weezer.
- Matt Sharp.
- Rentals, were they Friends of P?
- Yes, Friends of P.
- Friends with P?
- And the first song on that record's really good.
- I don't think she played on the record,
according to Wikipedia.
- I'm really curious about this Prince cover band now.
I wonder what she does in it.
- I think sing.
- Vocals?
- Yeah.
All right.
We're gonna speed run.
- Where are we?
- We gotta speed run through the rest of this top five.
The number three song
in our current moment.
I've heard about this song,
I don't think I've actually heard it.
Justin Bieber, Peaches, featuring Daniel Caesar.
And then--
- Giveon?
- Giveon.
[piano music]
- I know this is an old man thing to say,
but all these songs have like nine songwriters.
- That's what's going on.
Oh, no, I have heard this.
[upbeat music]
- This is not a presidency of the United States of America cover.
- Damn.
- That would've been cool.
[upbeat music]
- So what's he saying?
I get my peaches out in Georgia,
I get my weed in California.
- Where, Justin?
Humboldt?
- I want more specifics.
- You know that Med Men on Melrose?
- Yeah.
- What's the sourcing?
- He's just hitting some plastic vape.
Could be from anywhere, man.
I've never been to Med Men.
- I go whenever my dad's in town.
- Just go check it out.
- Your dad's a big weed head.
- That's right, I forgot that.
[upbeat music]
- Wait, what's the third and fourth line?
- I take my chick up to the North, yeah,
and then he goes, "Badass, f---."
- So he takes his girlfriend up to Canada?
- Oh, probably. That makes sense.
- To visit his family, that badass, f---.
- This is a pretty good song.
Pretty good.
[upbeat music]
- I got my peaches out in Georgia,
I get my weed from California.
I took my chick up to the North, yeah.
I get my life right from the source, yeah.
Yeah, that's it.
- I get my life right from the source?
- It's not that interesting a lyric
to repeat this many times.
It's an opener to a song.
You don't need to repeat that like nine times.
Very half-baked.
- Wait, but hold on.
I might have to look at the lyrics real quick.
- There's nine people writing this song
and none of them are like, "Okay,
"can we write some other lyrics here?"
- I mean, this may be my dream talking,
but I do feel I've thought this in the car
when it comes on, "I think I get my life
"from the source," is beautiful.
I just think he's talking about his girl,
but there's something about saying,
"I get my life from the source" that I find--
- He's talking about JC.
- He's a man of God, yeah.
He's a man of faith.
- Or JC, or a girl, or the son.
There's something about, "I get my life from the source,"
that I do think is more poetic
than maybe the other ones that come before it.
- He says, "Peaches from Georgia, shocker.
"Weed from Cali."
Okay, cool.
I want some more specifics on that.
- Okay, wait, hold on.
He doesn't say, "I got my peaches out in Georgia."
Is that, he's referring to women or something?
- No, he means specifically the produce.
- Well, Justin could be alluding
to the connotations of the peach emoji,
which represents a butt in sexual context.
"Georgia peach" describes an attractive female.
All right.
And then, obviously, California's got weed.
"I took my chick up to the North, yeah."
As to where Justin gets his light,
we have seen him profess his Christianity in recent memory,
so we can assume he is talking about God,
the source of light in his life.
That's some hippie Christian (beep).
All I need is some good fruit, some good weed,
a nice camping trip up into kind of like
deeper British Columbia, and the light of God.
- I don't know if I've ever told you guys
in private any of this story,
but I was at a sauna, like a public,
you know, like a-- - Oh, I've heard this story.
- You've told me this story, but--
- Oh, you did tell TC?
- No, not-- - I don't think
I've ever told it on air. - All right,
you should tell it on air.
It's a good story.
- Well, I was at this--
It's sort of like a spa, sauna,
you know, anyone can go to.
It's not private.
I was laying in the, you know, in the sauna.
It was very, very hot,
and I sort of was laying out sweating,
and eyes were closed, and then I was hearing
this kind of like pretty, like, interesting conversation
between two other guys that were there,
and it started with, I believe,
I mean, it's been a while since I told this,
but I remember just hearing, like,
"Yeah, God's awesome, right?"
And I was like, "Hmm." - Hell yeah.
- Hell yeah.
And it was like, "I know, God's the best."
And then I was just listening to this conversation
about how great God is.
I mean, it was really, there wasn't a lot of substance.
It was just two guys talking about God.
- I was just talking to them the other day.
- Did these guys seem to know each other?
- Talking to God, like, on Tuesday.
- No, they didn't.
It seemed as though they didn't know each other.
And they were just-- - Interesting.
How did that conversation start?
- Well, I don't know.
I was there when it started,
and it started sort of like this,
but my eyes were closed.
I was really trying to sort of breathe myself
through the heat of this sauna.
And then I sat up, and I really came sort of face to face
with, I was like, "Oh, sh*t.
"You're Justin Bieber."
And then he sort of asked me where I was from.
- So he's just being like real kind vibe,
just you're another dude in the sauna.
He wanted to include you in the conversation.
- Yes, he wanted to include me in the conversation,
and maybe so I couldn't immediately--
- Hey, stranger.
- Yeah, hey, stranger.
- Hey, stranger, where are you from?
- Maybe you can't immediately, yeah.
And maybe you can't immediately get involved
in this God conversation,
so I'll just ask you where you're from.
- That's classy.
- And I was like, "Oh."
I thought it was very classy,
and I said, "I'm from here."
He goes, "You're always from here?"
And I was like, "No, no, I lived in Atlanta before."
And he said--
- Oh, he said, "Oh, I get my peaches out there."
- He actually said, saying better, he goes,
"I think I still own a house there."
(laughing)
- I think.
- I think, I think as well.
And I was like, "Oh, yeah."
And obviously I know you famously lived there
when you moved from Canada to work with Usher
in your teens.
And I was like, "Oh, yeah, that's cool."
And then the guy, you know,
we talked a bit more about sort of top level sort of stuff,
and then that guy left who was talking about God.
And then Justin Bieber says to me, he goes,
"Man, that guy was wild."
(laughing)
And I was like, "What?
"Like you didn't, you weren't part of that?"
Like actually that's when I first realized,
like, "Oh, you didn't know that guy."
- Well--
- You're just spreading kind vibes.
That guy wanted to come here,
he recognized you were Justin Bieber
in a sort of a public space.
- Well, it's probably that guy,
that guy knew that Justin Bieber is Christian,
and maybe that guy was like trying to think,
"What's a cool thing to say to Bieber
"if I hit him with some like,
"'Oh, dude, your first album changed my life.'"
He might be like a little bit,
"So let me just connect with him on love of God."
- On a God level.
And then after this whole thing,
there was a couple other moments
where I could just sort of,
it really did click to me.
I was like, "Oh, Bieber is doing what you said.
"He's spreading, he's connecting,
"and he knows what people want from him,
"and he's gonna give it to them."
And then I left, I took a shower,
and I was leaving, and I was like,
"Oh, s--t, I forgot something back inside."
So I had gone out to my car,
and I ran back inside,
and Bieber at this point was leaving,
and I was describing something,
and he said, "Oh, hey," to me.
And I was like, "Oh, yeah?"
And he goes, and he came to give me a hug,
and he goes, "That was really fun."
- Aw.
- And he gave me a hug,
and I realized, oh, for him,
yeah, this was probably like a night out.
Like, this was a connecting with the people moment
in a sauna.
- So he rolled to a sauna by himself.
- In West Hollywood.
Yes.
- Did you see any big dudes?
- No, no, I do, no.
I think that there was one big dude who I'd,
you know, it's a Russian bath,
so it's kind of hard to know exactly
who's with Bieber and who's with not,
but I did see someone there that I was like,
"I think this guy's with Bieber."
But he was in there alone.
Like, he was...
LARPing as a normie.
- This story makes Bieber sound chill as hell.
- I honestly, like, it really endeared me to him.
- All right, well, that definitely contextualizes
the "I get my light from the source."
Like, Bieber's tapped in.
- He did say, "Maybe I'll get a small peach
on my body somewhere."
I promised myself I didn't want to get tattoos on my hands,
and so I don't think I'm going to get tattoos on my hands.
Something about just being able to wear a suit
and not having tattoos on my hands.
I agree, Justin.
So maybe he's out of room, is what he's saying?
- Right, I mean, Justin is, you know,
let's say one of these days,
you want to give up the music stuff,
you want to get a job at a bank,
something like that,
they're not going to look too kindly on hand tattoos.
So, you know, do whatever you want on your chest,
your back, whatever.
But when you want to put a suit on,
keep the hands clean.
- That's a wild story, Nick.
- Yeah, it was really great.
- Okay, the number...
I'm going to burn through the rest of this.
- Where are we?
- Number two song, 1990, "Heart."
All I want to do is make love to you.
[upbeat music]
- Oh, interesting.
- Written by Mutt Lang.
- "Heart" just churning out hits through the decades.
- Initially had written the song for Don Henley,
but he declined.
- Whoa.
[upbeat music]
♪ It was a rainy night ♪
♪ When he came into sight ♪
♪ Standing by the road ♪
- Well, the original version of the song
was released in '79 by Dobie Gray.
- Oh.
Oh.
- Just picking.
- You know what Dobie Gray most famously did?
- What?
- ♪ Give me the beat, boys ♪
♪ And play me my song ♪
- Oh, really?
- Whoa, classic.
- ♪ Give me a ride ♪
♪ He accepted with a smile ♪
♪ So we drove for a while ♪
- I remember this song.
This song was very depressing.
♪ And he asked me his name ♪
- Oh, yeah.
- Not feeling it.
- It's like a weird one-night stand story.
- This is a very Eileen's Car song.
- Also worth pointing out.
- I feel...
- This is it.
- Go ahead.
- Incorrect.
All right, we've heard enough.
This is "Conjuring Something Dark" and Jake.
Interestingly, both "Heart" and "Wilson Phillips"
have a pair of Wilson sisters,
and they're both in the top five.
- Oh, true.
- Number two song.
- God, this song is depressing.
- There's some kind of sadness.
- Oh, like it's a one-night stand where they have a kid.
It's really, yeah, anyway.
Let's move on.
- This is a number two song right now.
Dua Lipa featuring DaBaby, "Levitating."
- ♪ Billboard, baby, Dua Lipa ♪
♪ Make 'em dance when they come on ♪
♪ Everybody looking for a dance floor to belong ♪
- ♪ If you wanna run away with me ♪
♪ I know a galaxy and I can take you for a ride ♪
♪ I had a premonition that we fell into a rhythm ♪
♪ Where the music don't stop for life ♪
♪ I hear the band start to play ♪
- Barack Obama included this
on his favorite song of 2020.
- All right.
- Hilarious.
- He's never heard this.
- I'm willing to believe he has.
- Maybe his daughters are playing it in the house.
What context would he hear this?
- I guess so.
- Just driving his car.
- Peloton class, yeah, the gym, working.
- Yeah, at the gym.
- Good call on the Peloton.
- Just sweating it out on the Peloton.
- Obama definitely does the Peloton, right?
- Yeah, seems like a Peloton guy.
- Interesting album title, "Future Nostalgia."
- Yeah.
Big album.
I mean, there's a lot of good things about this song.
You can cut it off, but I gotta say,
after recontextualizing Peaches
and rethinking of Bieber as this kind of, like,
hippie Christ figure,
this sounds a little corporate to me, I gotta say.
Especially the classic guest rapper
who kind of has, like, the--and DaBaby,
I love a lot of DaBaby songs.
Very talented. Success is well-deserved.
But, like, those moments in a remix
where the person says, like,
"I'm the rapper, and they're the pop star,
and here's our names again."
Obviously, that's a great tradition.
It can work a lot.
But I'm just not in the mood right now
because I'm picturing just--
I basically am in the zone where Justin Bieber is Jesus Christ
and his new song "Peaches" is the gospel,
and he's spreading the good word.
He's nude around a campfire in northern British Columbia.
Yep. He took his girl up north, badass b****.
[laughs]
Actually, so badass, dude, I took her on a plane.
She's so badass.
This is, like, maybe the worst top five we've ever done.
[laughs]
Usually, there's, like, one year that's good,
but, like, 1990 is, like, a real low point for pop music.
Well, okay, but--
And 2021 sucks, so it's just, like--
[laughs]
I think this is, like--
The 1990s stuff is so depressing.
Well, the Sinead is amazing.
Janet and Sinead were good.
No, the Janet was whatever.
The Sinead was solid.
I give it up for that Wilson Phillips song.
It's iconic. It's--
Depressing.
[laughs]
The palette is very depressing.
Weirdly, the modern top five was, like, very decent.
Like, the Doja Cat pointed at something we like.
The Weeknd pointed at something we like.
The Justin Bieber really felt like, you know,
a modern retelling of the gospel.
The Dua--
And that album--
The first single was, like, just, like, a great, modern,
kind of, like, funk disco song.
This one just had a feel a little bit of--
Honestly, the Obama on the Peloton was kind of a bummer image.
[laughs]
Michelle, you heard this song?
♪ Obama on the Peloton ♪
That's a [bleep] vampire wig.
Maybe that's too on the nose for a vampire wig.
Yeah, maybe a little too on the nose.
If Pavement was still a band--
♪ Danae, Obama on the Peloton ♪
I mean, obviously, Jigsaw are still putting out records,
like, every year, but I don't know.
It's a late Stephen Hawking song.
It's a little on the nose.
On the nose. That's a good song title.
That could be, like, a tight meta song
where it's, like, all a little too on the nose.
♪ Obama on the Peloton listening to Dua Lipa ♪
It's such a good--
On the nose.
That's, like, somebody who's, like, trying to do Father John Misty,
but they can't quite--
[laughter]
They can't quite get it right.
Just--
Like--
♪ Obama on the Peloton ♪
Father John is too witty for that one.
Josh Tillman really fell off his new record.
No, it would be, like, just, like, you know,
in the '90s, there's so many of those, like, brutal sub-sub bands
that were, like, doing some other [bleep]
It's like some Presidents of the USA [bleep]
A little bit.
♪ I wrote a song ♪
♪ Obama on the Peloton ♪
♪ Played it for my mom ♪
♪ She said that it sounded like Father John ♪
There's something there.
I played the song for my mom.
Father--I mean, Obama on the Peloton is, like,
if Beck was still in his '90s mode.
Well, if it was, like, '90s Beck rapping it
over, like, the "Loser" beat, I could maybe be on it.
Yeah.
Who, uh, Bloodhound Gang?
See, right, it's like, then you get into Bloodhound Gang territory,
and I respect them on some comedy [bleep]
but, like, "I asked Father John, 'What should I do for the song?'
"He said, 'Something about Obama on the Peloton.'"
Could be the--
the kind of laid-back white rapper.
Cake.
Yeah, dude, cake. I was just thinking cake.
No, but cake--
♪ Obama on the Peloton ♪
Cake has some great songs.
I know.
Cake kind of rules.
I [bleep] with cake.
Yeah.
We'll save that for another episode.
Cake deep dive.
They had a trumpet.
You know what's funny about Obama on the Peloton?
It's like--I was just reminded of this book recently.
I have a copy--somebody gave me a copy.
I never actually read it, but I know it's considered, like,
an excellent piece of literature from the past ten years.
It's George Saunders' Lincoln and the Bardo,
which is about--
His first novel.
Yeah, because he normally writes short stories.
Yeah.
And, you know, people say it's a very powerful book,
and as I understand it, it's about Lincoln grieving--
he had a son who died young.
So it's about, like--
I think the Bardo refers to, like, a Buddhist concept
that has to do with the transition to death or grieving--
I don't know exactly.
But anyway, apparently, like, a very serious, beautiful book,
Lincoln and the Bardo,
and then, like, Obama on the Peloton
is just, like, this depressing modern version.
And by the way, I want to point out,
I'm absolutely not criticizing Obama, Peloton.
Or Peloton.
There's just something about--
after Nick's, you know, the beautiful story
of Bieber and the sauna,
there's just something about the Obama on the Peloton
that's just not hidden correctly.
All right, the number one song in 1990,
"Madonna Vogue."
- What are you looking at?
- Does this cheer you up, Jake?
That's my least favorite Madonna hit.
- Oh, God.
- "Madonna on the Peloton"?
- I think 1990 is just a terrible year.
I love the intro of this song.
It is very, like, ooh.
I like that.
- Obama on the Peloton could almost be a lyric in "Vogue."
- Credit Gar-- [laughs]
Credit Garbo.
You know, as a vowed Madonna head--
we've discussed this on the show.
I mean, this--I feel like this is the low point.
- Well...
- It's not a fun song.
It's not poppy.
- It's real dance music.
- I guess.
- Taking a long time for the vocals to come in.
- Respect.
- You don't like that spoken word rap part that she does?
- No, I do like--this song is cool.
I mean...
she helped popularize the concept of voguing.
Maybe people look back on it, and they're like,
"It's not cool that she did that."
I don't know.
[upbeat music]
♪ ♪
- Okay, well, let's see.
The number one song. - Number one.
- Okay, so this is Silk Sonic,
which is Bruno Mars and Anderson...Pack.
And this is a-- - "Leave the Door Open."
That's a cool title.
♪ ♪
- I've heard this song.
♪ ♪
- This is their kind of, like, throwback.
They're getting into the tasteful palette
of the 1970s here.
- Seriously.
- ♪ What you doing? ♪
♪ Where you at? ♪
♪ Oh, you got plans? ♪
♪ Don't say that ♪
♪ I'm sipping wine ♪
♪ In a robe ♪
♪ I look too good ♪
♪ To be alone ♪
♪ My house clean ♪
♪ My pool warm ♪
♪ Just shame ♪
♪ Smooth like a newborn ♪
♪ We should be dancing, romancing ♪
♪ In the east wing and the west wing ♪
♪ Of this mansion ♪
♪ What's happening? ♪
♪ I ain't playing no games ♪
♪ Every word that I say ♪
♪ Is coming straight from my heart ♪
- Yeah, it's very, like, Philly sound.
- ♪ So why you trying to hang these up? ♪
- ♪ I'ma leave the door open ♪
- ♪ I'ma leave the door open ♪
- ♪ I'ma leave the door open, girl ♪
- ♪ I'ma leave the door open ♪
- ♪ Open ♪
- ♪ Let you feel the way I feel ♪
♪ And you want me like I want you tonight, baby ♪
- ♪ Tell me that you're coming through ♪
- ♪ Ooh ♪
- ♪ You're so sweet, so sweet, so tight, so ♪
- It's also got the same vibe as that, uh,
Jackson 5 song we listened to last time.
- Yeah.
- ♪ And if you're hungry, girl, I got filets ♪
- Wait, did he say "the lays" or "filets"?
Hold on, pause it.
"If you smoke, I got the haze,
and if you're hungry, girl, I got filets."
Damn, I really thought he said, "I got the lays."
- If you're hungry, I've got,
top of the line, filets in the cooler.
- Just go over to somebody's house, get, like, super high
off their purple haze, and then they're just like,
you're like, "Yo, I'm so hungry, where's the snack drawer?"
And they're just like, "Don't worry about it,
let me just cook you a super filet mignon."
- I have veggie straws.
[laughter]
- Let me expertly grill you this filet mignon.
- This song is very well crafted.
- Yeah. - Very throwback.
- It's very, yeah.
- Can't be mad at it at all.
- Wait, keep going, I wanna keep hearing it.
Can you keep playing it? - Yeah, yeah.
- ♪ I'm talkin' kissin', cuddlin' ♪
♪ Rose petals in the bathtub, girl, it's jumpin' ♪
- I do like the rhythm.
- Very delta.
- ♪ Every word that I say is comin' straight from the heart ♪
♪ So if you're tryin' to lay me some ♪
♪ I'ma leave the door open ♪
♪ I'ma leave the door open ♪
♪ I'ma leave the door open, girl ♪
♪ I'ma leave the door open ♪
♪ Let you feel the way I feel ♪
♪ Like I want you to not feel alone ♪
♪ Tell me that you're comin' through ♪
- I can't believe how throwback this is.
- It's the number one song.
We're at the end of history, man.
- It's totally end of history. - You can go full throwback now.
- You can go fully retro without being anxious about it.
- Right. - There's no anxiety of influence.
- History's over, baby.
- ♪ Girl, I'm tryin' to give you this ♪
♪ Oh, hey, I'ma leave my door open ♪
- I love the drumming on this.
- Yeah, well, that probably is Anderson .Paak.
He's a great drummer.
- Wow, this is like the most retro number one ever because--
- I know. Wait, like, Matt, "Throw On Everybody Plays the Fool."
That's from 1972.
I'm just so curious about, like, the palette comparison.
♪ ♪
- This could be, like, their follow-up single.
- Yeah. - It'd be like, "Hell yeah."
- ♪ Okay, so your heart broke ♪
♪ ♪
- ♪ You sit around ♪ - Bruno Mars' spoken word.
- ♪ Cryin', cryin' ♪ - Yeah, just with, like,
just 10%, like, a little bit funnier,
doing the random modern reference.
- Yeah. - ♪ Well, before you do anything rash ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Dig this ♪
all: ♪ Everybody plays a fool sometimes ♪
♪ There's no exception to the rule ♪
♪ Listen, baby ♪
♪ It may be factual, may be cruel ♪
♪ I ain't lyin' ♪
♪ Everybody plays a fool ♪
♪ Ooh, ooh, ooh ♪
♪ Falling in love is such an easy thing to do ♪
♪ And there's no guarantee that the one you love ♪
♪ Is gonna love you ♪
♪ Oh, oh, a loving eye, they cannot see ♪
♪ A certain person could never be ♪
♪ Love runs deeper than any ocean ♪
♪ It clouds your mind with emotion ♪
♪ It's a shadow, it's a shadow ♪
- Yeah. - ♪ Everybody plays a fool ♪
- I love "Clouds Your Mind With Emotion."
- Yeah, but that Silk Sonic song really had, like,
so many changes, kind of like this one does.
- Yeah. - Anyway.
- Well, it's also-- there really is something, like--
I'll have to do some research, but it's like,
of course there's always, like, these retro movements,
like Lou Bega, Mambo No. 5,
where he's doing some kind of-- he's dressing like he's from,
like, the '40s or something, but there is--
there's something interesting about this song.
It's like a-- - Yeah.
- No anxiety trying to bring in some, like,
modern hand clap to give it, like,
"All right, this is, like, not like some early Meghan Trainor."
- Yeah. - Or it's doo-wop, but, you know,
with some-- truly, like, an attention to detail
and a sophistication that, in another era,
you would probably find more in, like,
some, like, nerdy hipster music,
which obviously these lines have been crossed.
Interesting moment. We might look back on this
as, like, a real landmark No. 1
with our Adam Curtis voiceover. - Yeah.
Absolutely. - It's old, but it's different.
- "There was no anxiety of influence."
- Vanished. - I can't do a British accent.
I wish I could do a British accent. - I like your--
that's-- that feels right.
Through the looking glass and a history,
but gonna leave the door open.
History's over, but we're gonna leave the door open.
Gonna think about what that means.
Anyway... - Damn.
- Good seeing everybody. Remember, God is awesome.
And if you see a stranger in the sauna,
treat 'em with kindness.
Whether your day makes you feel like Bieber in the sauna
or Obama on the Peloton,
just remember to hold on, Father John.
Um, all right. - Damn, dude.
- See you in two weeks. Peace!
- "Time Crisis" with Ezra Koenig.
[BURP]
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