68: Under Covers. A Century Club Special

In a special episode Nate and Tiff welcome Sara and Jesse Marsh to play Century Club (1 shot of beer per minute for 100 minutes) while playing cover songs from these catergories: 1) Awesome cover, your favorite one 2) Did not need to be done 3) Better than the original 4) By someone you know 5) From a soundtrack 6) Rock version of a country song or vice versa 7) You gotta hear this one

67: The Pregnancy Pact

Nate's sister Sara and her husband Jesse fly into Amsterdam for Thanksgiving and a movie trivia challenge. Blood flows like...well, blood.

66: You're Not Doing So Well, Work Harder

Tiff's back from Germany, our friend Amber stops by. Moving sucks so Obama decides to win again, Willard do NOT see that coming. Gramma moves in with Ted Nugent Tiff gives Obama the Myers Briggs by proxy Football (soccer) movie test Me and this mentally challenged gentleman would like 4000 dollars worth of candy please.

Check out this episode!

65: Redeptioned, Shawshank Style

Nate and Tiff deconstruct Charlie Murphy.
Tiff finally sees Shawshank Redemption.
Do we have mice?
Tiff tests Nate on action movies.
Nate huffs welding fumes with an old pro.
Felix Baumgarten jumps from space.

Episode 64: Valerie Married Her Father

Description
Friends are EXPENSIVE, Nate gets a job, "I am familiar with porn", Valerie married her father, name that rom com and more.

PLEASE subscribe on iTunes, tell your friends and like us on Facebook.

 Thanks for listening.

Episode 63: Compton House Party

Subscribe on iTunes and leave a comment, yeah? Click here to see us on iTunes

Better than Goodwill, we hope

Why am I sitting alone? This is hilarious!!

Um, I bitch slapped a porcupine....nine times

Mud walking, you only do it once.

You stole 3.1 MILLION and that's your haircut??

Episode 62: I Sent You a Postcard Gramma

Joe and Nick from The Found Footage Film Fest stop by for a chat, Nick explains how it works, Joe shares his new postcards.
http://foundfootagefest.com/
Follow the boys on Twitter

@jojopickett  

@nickprueher

Layover Reservations Episode 1: Shanghai

Check out Nate's new travel show "Layover Reservations"
A short film with facts and observations about someplace Nate and Tiff have recently visited.
The first episode is Shanghai, China.

61: The Trilogy Closes

The Trailer

The Show

Herring.

Herring? It's good.
Really, when is the last time you ate one?
Last Christmas
They must be awesome.

60: The Heart Attack, Man

Animal cruelty in China, fistfights in Pargue, the Opera and much, much more!!

An Old School Blog About China Part 1

 We're in China, just accept that fact so I can start in the middle without a whole bunch of airport talk and time change blah blah blah. We got into Shanghai from the airport by taking a bullet train called the Maglev. It's like, dumb fast. It goes 301 kilometers per hour (187 MPH) which turns a 45 minute ride into a 6 minute blur, no foolin'. 

We're staying with Cat, a friend from Germany who now lives in The French Concession area of Shanghai.

This is Cat

We did a bunch of cool stuff in Shanghai and I'll write about it someday but for right now, hold your horses, Boris. We've been here for a couple days and it's time to catch the train to Beijing.

You, are now caught up. Congratulations, take a sip of your drink.

Cheers!

 We said our goodbyes to Cat and leave her and some new friends at a beer festival where we've been watching grown men play a drinking game called “Boat Race”. It's the same game that makes Paul Rudd vomit all over Vince Vaugh in the movie "I Love You, Man." It makes me want to vomit just watching. It's the kind of game that doesn't have a winner, despite the cheers.

 We hail a cab back to Cat’s house to collect our things. The cab drops us off a couple blocks away from the apartment and we were told in broken English that the house was a few blocks behind us, he had misread the number. As the cab pulled away I realized that were not even on the correct street. We take off walking in the direction we had come from, figuring the enemy you know is better than the one you don’t. We find a store with signs written in English, I inquire inside and am given quick directions to Wu-Kang Lu. If our friend’s street name wasn’t so close to Wu-Tang Clan we might still be wandering around Shanghai’s hazy nights.

After packing our things we get into another cab and point out the train station on a map. The writing is too small for our cabbie to read and he begins to laugh. Although it is at our bad fortune to get in a cab with a man too poor to afford simple reading glasses, we must admit, it is sort of funny and we laugh too. Ha. Ha. Ha. I try to take a close up picture of the map, it has the words in Chinese and maybe I can blow it up on my phone and show the guy but the picture comes out blurry, I even make the “choo, choo” noise but he can’t understand and we’re sunk. As we un-load our bags from the cab I get the idea to show him our train tickets.
He raises 1 finger and says "ahhhhhh" I assume this means he understands, or thinks I am Number One Ok American Joe Doctor.
He flags down another cabby, and confirms that we need a train and we're back in business.
“Okay!” he says.
“Okay? Train?” says I, making the train noise again.
“Okay.” He says, putting our bags back in the car.
 “Okay?” I say, just making sure we agree.
 “Okay.” He says, just because it's the only English we both know.
 “Okay” I say, resigning our future into the hands of a man who shares exactly ONE word of communications with me which includes "ahhhhhhh" as it is not technically a word and more of an onomatopoeic sound, like bonk or wikes.

He laughs, closes the trunk and drives us 40 minutes to the train station. Tiffany, meanwhile is following every turn on the map with her finger just to make sure we're headed in the right direction. She puts the map down as we pull into the train station. After paying the equivalent of 3 euros we say goodbye and a nice man with a cart comes and takes our bags. He has on a snazzy blue one-size-fits-all hardware-store style smock, we assume he works for the train station and allow him. At the base of the stairs he tells us with simple hand gestures that we can leave all our belongings with him and pick them up in Beijing for 50Y we say no, we want our stuff with us. He drops the price to 35Y, we say no again and he’s disgusted and walks away. I try to give him 1Y for his trouble but he’s pissed that we took up his time.

Train Station

 --On a quick side note, I'm sure this man was reputable and I'm sure that people let him take their luggage all the time, but I don't know where I'm going, and I sure as hell won't know where to pick up my luggage when we arrive in Beijing.--

 On the train we are surprised to find that we are not staying together. Tiff is assigned to a room with two young Swedish girls and I have been given the top bunk in a room with three 50 year old Chinese men. The train has been open for only a few minutes but none of the men are wearing shoes and only one is wearing a shirt. This is a recipe for farts.

 Tiff has an open bunk in her room, I make it clear to the porter that I will be staying there. We pay a little cash and I’m able to buy the extra bunk with the Swedish girls and my girlfriend. I think we all agree this is a much better option.

 We talk for a bit and then watch a movie on my computer, it's dark by now and there is nothing to look at out the window, the dining car serves no drinks and only one “food” item which looks like a non-refrigerated Hungry Man Dinner. I consider trying it for the story but I don't want diarrhea that badly. We eat a sleeve of Chinese Pringles each and we settle in for the night. Tiff and I toss and turn most of the night, the train is hermetically sealed and there is no moving air. To make it worse whenever I feel the train change speed, which happens a LOT, I assume we’re about to have a head on collision with another train.

This is what I look like right now in this story

 As the sun rises we are pulling into Beijing and it looks like Tijuana on a bad day. Roofless houses, piles of used up tires waiting to be used 2 or 3 more times, poor, dirty people smoking cigarettes, kids in the streets dodging shitty 3 wheeled motorcycles. It’s not nice or exotic, it’s just messed up and sad.

We get to the train station, say our goodbyes to the Swedes and head outside to look for a subway station.

The Fartless Swedes

Our hotel is 20 cents and 2 train stops away, but after surveying the area and looking at our luggage we decide to wait in line with the rest of the good people of Beijing. The black market taxis try for our business but Tiff walks right on by. I feel the need to tell the man “no, thank you” but Tiff doesn’t, she walks past without a second glance, I wish I had her cold, black heart, but I don't, I need to treat people like they have a soul. We've been in line for a cab about 30 minutes, and as we're nearing the taxi stand, the police decide they need to move their van, it won’t start, which is sad and makes us consider robbing a bank. After several tries it comes to life with a “let me die” cough and begins to crop dust the entire taxi line with thick, carcinogenic exhaust, it's almost like being sprayed with a fine mist of gasoline and Communism.

Just to break it up a little, here's a pic of me and the Beijing Train Station

 We get our taxi, point out a spot on the map and he takes off into one of the most complicated U-turn situations I have ever seen. We must have gone a 2 miles and taken 9 lefts in the wrong direction trying to get headed north. Luckily, the cab is cheap and we have plenty of time. He drops us off only a few blocks from our hotel. “Close enough”, we're finding, is a common credo of China’s cab drivers. We walk up the street to where our hotel should be only to find that it’s a Peking duck restaurant. We decide, after consulting the map that it “must be around here somewhere” and begin walking the perimeter of a super mall. It is not there. Frustrated, I stop at the tourist travel help desk and shove my way through the plastic garbage jewelry store at the front to the help desk at the rear. The girl there is very nice and talks me through the fact that I don’t know right from left. She writes our address and hotel name in Chinese and we are on our way. After consulting a cop we make her left instead of the right I thought we should take. As we walk down the street past Cartier shops and the Hilton I start to feel better. If our hotel is in this neighborhood it's GOT to be nice, right?

Keep Reading!!

An Old School Blog About China Part 2

A few minutes later, when we find the street our hotel is on, that feeling leaves. Our hotel is on THIS street?

Correction, this filthy ALLEY

Didn't we pass this shit hole on the way into town? It’s a local street, which means is smells like cabbage, feet, dumplings, urine, hot grease and burning hair, never all at once, but changing and rotating step by step. I tell Tiff, that if we find our hotel on this street we need to be in before dark. We are looking for number 35 and we’re passing lucky number 13 when I see the construction site coming up fast. It looks like they've crushed building numbers 23 into the mid 60s and they’re blocking the road to make more room for the palatial Waldorf Astoria which sits comfortably on the main road, one clean block over. We ask the construction men where the hotel is, they give us some pointing, grunting directions and when we turn to walk back the way we came, they begin to laugh.
All of them.
Hard.

This is the most I've ever heard the Chinese laugh yet, cumulatively, not a particularly jocular group of people, but I haven’t seen much reason to be. The last (and first) Chinese laugh I heard was from that cab driver who was laughing BECAUSE HE COULD NOT READ. We have come to a fork in our journey; go to back where we came and start again or follow the directions of the jokey construction workers and see what happens next. We choose our own adventure, roll the dice and see what happens. We follow the construction worker's “directions” make two lefts, and HOT DAMN! 30 yards up the road, HOTEL flashes in red.

We found it.

We walk into the reception area and talk to the nice Engrish speaking cliché that is running the front desk. It is 10 am and we can check in at 1:00.

 “1:00?” We ask. 
“1:00” she says. “Your room will be ready at 3:00”
“3:00 or 1:00?”
“Right” she says.
 “1:00?”
“No, 3:00.”
“Okay, 3:00.”
 “Oh, and there won’t be any hot water from tonight, (May 20th) at midnight until the 27th”. But we can swim and shower at a 5 star hotel and they’ll give us a coupon.
 “Where is it?”
“It’s close.”

Good enough, no point in arguing. Arguing doesn’t make hot water and if she gave us an address we couldn't understand it anyways. We leave our stuff at reception and take off walking, headed toward the Forbidden City. If you've never seen the Forbidden City It’s HUGE.

And I mean like 8 Vegas hotels huge.    

There are 8700 rooms in The Forbidden City and we’re allowed to see inside about 10% of them. They’re all like ball rooms, 3 to 6 stories tall and open. Even the living quarters are huge open rooms. 

 The throne rooms, and there are several, are just huge ornate rooms with a throne in the middle.  

There are enormous courtyards

and a 52 meter wide moat to keep everyone without 6 dollars out. 

 Michael stops us, he’s a tour guide and for 80Y will get us inside quick and show us the REAL Forbidden City. Tiff walks on but I talk to him, the guide book we have says to ignore these guys but I don’t have that in me, I have to let him down easy.
 “We’re good” I say.
 “You don‘t want to wait in this big long line with all these morons do you?”

This Woman's shirt says "Guggi"

“Yeah, kinda. We’ll be fine, thanks for your help.”
 "I'm an artist"
 "Me too"
 He leaves us alone. The line full of morons takes 4 minutes, all of it is spent shoving or being shoved. The Chinese don’t understand waiting your turn, which makes me proud to be a turn-waiting American. The Forbidden City is crowded, I liked it better back when it was forbidden.

  It’s magical and all that but I’m bored in about 40 minutes. 

All the buildings are sealed off, and the windows are jammed with people wielding cameras.

We won’t get to see what we saw until we can download the pictures later. This is dead history, it’s glassed, sealed and out of reach. I’m a hands-on children’s museum guy. I don’t care for art museums and I would be fine with 7 photos of this.
It's big. I get it.
Old. I get it.
Ornate. Saw it at the entrance. 

We walk almost straight though the city because, praise His name, Tiff’s feet hurt, which takes a close second to my boredom.

Tiff heard about a bar we should check out in a cool part of the city. We try a cab but he doesn’t won’t take us for less than 100Y (about 10 bucks) Not a lot for a cab at home but it's 10X the usual price here. A black market cabbie says he knows where it is and he’ll take the job for 60Y. It’s a 14Y cab ride but we’re thirsty and rich. We jump in his black Volkswagen and take off, 2 blocks later someone cuts him off, and he gets road rage. 


Like ROAD. RAGE. 


 And starts driving like Chinese Dale Earnhardt's ghost, swearing and yelling, I turn on my video camera and Tiff grabs my arm. He cuts back and forth in front of some guy, who probably has no idea what he's done to raise the ire of this wack job but plays along. The two go back and forth, cutting each other off, slamming on brakes and yelling at each other until we get to our turn…our driver hesitates...do I let him go?...You can hear the wheels turning in his head... he hesitates... almost decides to lets his prey go free, and then CHANGES HIS MIND!!! Fuck it! I am going to KILL THIS MOTHERFUCKER!! 


We scream across 3 lanes and almost hit a bus so we can continue the hunt. Tiff is now cutting my circulation off at my wrist. Our driver is yelling and I’m taping the scene. Traffic, horrifically, comes to a stop, our driver pulls his E brake, opens the door gets out and and starts yelling in the middle of the road, Tiff is telling me to open the door and RUN but I’m curious as to how far this will go, plus, we are in the middle of the highway. 
The other guy can now see that he is dealing with a guy who thinks Geto Boys lyrics are real, so he cuts off a couple cars, shoves his way into an illegal bus lane makes his escape. Like a gazelle escaping the clutches of a lion. Run free gazelle, live to chew thoughtfully for another day. 


Our guy is mad and he lets us know as best he can but he might as well be giving us his grandmother’s recipe for chocolate chip cookies for all we know. We are now a couple miles off course and he’s obviously lost, we drive to the area we’re supposed to be in and he tries to get us to agree to go to a mall. We say no. He drives us to a Russian bar and tries to tell us it’s the place. We point our spot out on the map and he drives on. Obviously upset with the decision he’s made to let us in his car. We’re now driving in circles. He wants us out but we’re not getting out until we see Paddy’s Pub. 
Fifteen minutes of driving circles and I spot it out my window. We are all happy. We had agreed on 60. He wants 100, and honestly, after living through the ride I think it's worth it, but I say 70, Tiff hits me, I say 80 and he agrees. When we get out the cab, Tiff let’s me know that we agreed on 60 and I’m a moron for paying a cent more. We walk to the pub and I have never had a more refreshing beer in my life. 

58: Covered in Patches

Nate's friend Patches comes over to wreck Tiff's little white house and her perfect little picket fence, proverbally of course.

57: Lisbon Redux

I understand the first time I posted this it wasn't the whole show. THIS is the whole show

57: Live in Portugal

I hate museums. There, I said it.

56: I Don't Know How People Have Babies

"who has the balls to search for kiddie porn?"

55: We Want to Talk About You

"It's a sex bathroom, there's a glory hole."

54: Rude Awakening

"You should tattoo that on my baby"

53: Spanish in Spain

Show 53 is ready for you kids...Tiff delivers a million euro shoe...Nate eats through the trash...Tiff can't use a Dutch oven... and game cheaters and line cutters can suck it...

Episode 52: I'm a Nut

"You gotta get the nooks and crannies on Saturday night.

51: Superman

Nate: "That wasn't instrumental, I heard lyrics"
Tiff: "Well, that was the award they got"

50: Day Drinking

WHACHAAAA!! I went up like Micheal Jordan goin' in for a dunk, man

49: Ghost Stories

He grew up down the street from Fran Drescher.
He won't shut up.
He's your dentist.
Enjoy.

48: I'm All Out Of Blacks

Description
"we talked about this when we went to Rambo"

47: Burlesque and Guns

Description
"It's a fuckin' ball jack, it's insane" - Mac