Ep 44 - It's Not the Slippery Beaver

The Cool Dad Shirt Podcast — Season 4 Episode 1: Snow Gin Fizz & Dad Tech Support Triumphs

Welcome back, listeners… somehow we’ve made it to Season Four of The Cool Dad Shirt Podcast, proving once and for all that quitting is for people with free storage space on their phones.

In this kickoff episode of 2026, Rich and Mike dive headfirst into the important issues facing modern dads today, including:

• Meniscus tears caused by… home improvement (the most middle-aged injury imaginable)
• The surprising emotional highs of a really good cup of coffee
• Rich’s invention of the world’s most seasonal and dangerous cocktail: the Snow Gin Fizz (feat. rogue rosemary shrapnel)
• Why office kitchenettes become dumping grounds for half-eaten holiday mystery treats
• The true pinnacle of human evolution: remote tech support for your parents
• The eternal frustration of texting autocorrect and the life-changing discovery of… swipe typing
• A nostalgic trip back to above-ground pool whirlpools and the lost art of “fill it up and check the oil”
• Plus: double-neck guitars, missed phone calls, and Rich asking the question no one asked: “Am I sexist… or just startled by male phlebotomists?”

It’s classic dad-pop culture comedy, equal parts heartfelt, ridiculous, and mildly orthopedic.

Season Four is here. Expectations are low. Spirits are high. And the Snow Gin Fizz may or may not be FDA approved.

#Cool Dad Shirt Podcast, #dad comedy podcast, #Season 4 Episode 1, #funny parenting podcast, #meniscus tear story, #invented gin cocktail, #Snow Gin Fizz, #dad life humor, #coffee obsession, #tech support for parents, #nostalgic dad stories

Cocktail Warning

Do not insert herbs into spherical ice molds unless you enjoy being attacked by floating rosemary needles.

Transcript

The EQ is different. It sounds like you have it on the Dexter setting. Welcome to season four. We're on season four.

Man, they're still not paying me. I got to call my agent. Welcome to season four of the Cool Dad Shirt podcast.

Who would have thunk? I would have.

Edit that out.

We assumed we're going to keep going.

So season four, that's quite a success. I think we have passed multiple thresholds. Can't say it. I'll try it one more time. I think we have passed multiple thresholds where people have aborted and bailed out of their podcast. So we've already been successful by many measures.

That's absolutely true. And by the 4th season, I would have expected you could have pronounced that word correctly.

My expectations for season four were much higher than many things I've delivered so far.

No, feeling good, feeling good. Here we go. So, Mike, what are we...

I'm counting on you, Rich, for some super hot 2026 topics.

No pressure, no pressure. All right, well, today... Today we're going to go over a few items, including I now know how to spell the word meniscus. I have a nomination for Mankind's Greatest Achievement. There's lots of them out there, but I think our demographic might be able to connect with the one I'm going to propose today. I invented a new cocktail that started out great. I may have gone too far with it. We'll talk about what went wrong there. And we'll answer the question, am I A sexist?

Wait, did you say, am I sexy?

We can discuss that too, but now the topic is, am I a sexist? Leave your comments below.

And this cocktail is, could it perhaps be a slippery beaver?

No, it's not the slippery beaver. I'll start there. No, it's called a... No, I titled it the Snow Gin Fizz. You've heard of the Slow Gin Fizz. It's a very old drink, right? So I circumstances have turned it into something different. And so that's the phrase I came up with.

I love it already. I can't wait to get into the ingredients and hear a full description of what it tastes like.

What do you got this fine day?

I'd like to talk about summer whirlpools. I can't understand a single word, but I love the band. And is coffee really that good?

Okay, all right. These are provocative.

All these and more in this episode, season four of the Cool Dad Shirt podcast.

Here we go. Soap meniscus. That's a word I didn't know how to spell at first until you actually tear yours, then you start doing research on what that means, what you do, and so on and so forth. I sadly do not have a good story of how I tore the... meniscus in my left knee. I was putting up some blinds. I kneeled down to grab a screw that I had dropped and I felt something pop followed by immense pain. Actually, I thought it wasn't that bad, but by the next day, I realized I could barely walk and sleeping was very super uncomfortable. I tried to tough it out for five days, but by the end of the week, I had to go speak to somebody about it. And she was great. She went through the whole thing. It wasn't a torn ACL. We went through a whole litany of things to check out. She said, well, You can, most people get by just with some, take it easy. What is it? Rest, ice, compression, and elevation, stuff like that. So after week #3, I was not feeling much better. I was like, I'm going back for the MRI and find out what really is going on. But She predicted four to six weeks to start feeling better. And I'm in week #5 right now, and I am finally walking pain-free and back on track. So I wish this was a more exciting story, but you do a deep dive into all the AI stuff, which is, if you're not using AI, you got to get in there. It answers all kinds of amazing things. You can throw all sorts of weird variables in there, and it does a really good job of coaching you of where you are, where you need to be, and stuff you should be doing. So Rich is on the mend.

Good to hear. I mean, these things unfortunately become a little more common as we get older. Did the doctor describe any medication or physical therapy or exercises for you to work on.

So she grabbed my leg, like twisted it, turned it, pushed it forward, pushed it back. She said, does any of that hurt? I said, none of that hurts. She grabbed.

I love when they start off with, does it hurt when I do this?

Why are you doing that? No, none of those things hurt. So she said, okay, your knee is stable. It's not a torn ACL. It's not that serious. But she did, she like clamped and grabbed my knee. And that really, really hurt A lot. She said, yeah, that's right on the joint line. This is just textbook meniscus tear. So she said, are you in a ton of pain? I said, it's just really uncomfortable. I'm not painful. I had like one day of Advil and that was it. I said, I'm doing okay. It's just super, super uncomfortable. She said, if it's really bad, we can give you a cortisone shot. She said, we can put you into an MRI, although I think we already know what happened. She said, my advice would be to get something on the books to come back in six weeks. If you feel better, just cancel it. And that's where we are. So good shape. Yeah.

While we have your medical file open. I know you were doing a lot of running and increased cardiovascular activity to help remedy your diabetic concerns.

So this is a fascinating story. Yeah, I don't know how, I can't remember if we got into this at all. Strangely, I have some sort of genetic thing for the life of me. And we joke around all the time how healthy I am. I eat almost zero sugar. My sugar is approaching 0. I occasionally have some bread. Once in a while, some pasta, but it's really, really limited. Never desserts, no sweets, no donuts, no muffins, none of that stuff. I don't do any of those things anymore. And yet my glucose is always bouncing like 108 to 112, and I cannot for the life of me get that down. The troubling part was in September, my A1C actually left normal and hit to 5.7, which is like the beginning of pre-diabetes, and that totally freaked me out. So I hit it hard in the other direction, which included some interval running. I changed just from boring running that I hate anyway to boring running that I hate but in intervals, which is kind of good. You run like 1/4 mile, you walk 100 yards, you run 1/4 mile. So you start cycling your cardiovascular system. I really upped my weightlifting. I've gotten back into doing some legit lifting and I started taking the supplement berberine, which is supposed to have a blunting effect on your blood glucose. And dude, at the three-month mark, I went back and got all my blood worked. Oh, that just goes right into my other story. I'm happy to report. I pulled my A1C back into normal. I feel like 1,000,000 bucks. But interestingly enough, what coincided with this was the meniscus tear. My cardio went to zero. Dude, I couldn't do any cardio exercise whatsoever. I lost over that period of time 5 pounds. And then even when I stopped the cardio, I kept the five pounds. Not that I was big anyway, but you start getting that dad bod, the little gut. I mean, pretty thin most of the time anyway. But that's pretty much gone. Like I have a really nice flat stomach and it wasn't so much the cardio. I think it was clamping down on the diet, maybe the supplements. I don't know. That's hard to say. But I think it's largely the resistance training. The weight training seems to have done the trick.

Yeah, you eat one of the leanest diets I know of anybody. In fact, I bring your name up all the time.

It's infuriating. I'm doing everything right. Like I'm dancing around diabetes. Oh my God.

I know, I'm so, I'm ashamed of myself. I ate two giant slices of pizza last night, an appetizer, and I'm thinking, man, this guy hasn't had a slice of bread in like 9 months. He's given up Dr. Pepper for 19 years already. I mean, you were eating a Pop-Tart on her last broadcast. When I order my pizza, I'm like, I'll have a large pie with crushed Pop-Tarts.

Look how many sprinkles you can put on it. It's so bad. But yeah, the good news is, well, the good news is it turns out diet and exercise do really work in case anybody was wondering. But I'm doing much better. I'm probably in the best shape of my life and I feel great. Yeah.

Unfortunately, you got no more room to go though.

There's not much enough.

You're eating like rice cakes and water. You're running for four hours a day.

I would never eat rice. Oh God, don't eat rice. That's terrible. No, I'm down to, I'm down to red meat and broccoli is where is my next step?

Wow. Oh man. By the way, this episode is brought to you by WebMD.

Yeah, so yeah, but I'm in a good place. It's all good.

What else do aging dads talk about?

It's true. I may have swerved into that next phase. Yeah, but no. What do you got?

I was drinking a cup of coffee the other day and I was feeling very excited about it. I started to ask myself the question, was it the taste of the coffee that excited me? Old people don't have a lot going on, so they kind of look forward to that moment. So I was trying to pinpoint if it was any combination of the two or one more so than the other.

I've firmly, there's two things. I like, we're kind of serious about coffee here. So like really well-made coffee is delicious. I love coffee now. I didn't when I was younger. I do now and it's a bit of a ritual. I kind of like, especially, you know, I kind of hustle in the mornings of the workday, but on the weekend I'll do a pour over and it, dude, it tastes great. I savor it. I love it. I love it, love it, love it.

Does taste really good and there's no denying some cups are better than others, but I can't help to think that if I had a lot There's a lot of other cool things going on in my life. Would I be sitting here right now drinking this coffee?

I would say you would be, yes.

I think I would be.

We can stay on the beverage track here and talk about the cocktail I invented.

I think this is a perfect segue for the, don't tell me, snow, slow, the snow slippery beaver.

No, but you might be onto something.

No, seriously, tell us about your newly invented cocktail.

My buddy Lance is spending weekends up in Lake Placid and I went to visit him and we were just going to make a drink. We were in for the evening and he had some gin, but to our surprise, the house didn't have any ice made in there. So it was just gin and seltzer. And it's like, oh, this is really not good. Could we just put the pint glass in the freezer for 6 minutes and It's very snowy. It's very winter right now at the moment. I said, jeez, just go out and grab a handful of snow and throw it in the pine glass. We'll take it from there. So he's like, oh, that's funny. Let's do that. So he did it. And of course it came in with a handful of pine needles and stuff like that. It was actually very, very funny, but it did gin and the seltzer down very nicely. To which point we were joking around. I'm like, God, that's like a, it's gin and it's fizz with a seltzer and it's full of. That's a snow gin fizz. So I got this great idea. So we ran with the name. And I had tried some time ago a gin that was very evergreeny. It tastes like a Christmas tree, honestly. I think it's a St. George. I should have it handy. Show prep already. My poor show prep is continuing right on into season 4. St. George's, I think it is. And it's a very evergreen kind of flavor to it. So I said, oh, you know what I'll do? I'll try just making it with that because it gives you the pine taste. And then I'll get like a sprig of rosemary and stick it in to kind of represent the pine. And that was delicious. That was great. It was interesting. As you sip it, you get the aromatic scents from the rosemary, which is delightful. And then I thought, wow, to be a little bit more true to the snow, I have these spherical ice molds. What if I put the rosemary inside the spherical ice mold and it comes out looking like a snowball full of pine needles? And it's got the botanicals that as it melts, the botanicals start enriching you. I said, Crystal, you're a genius. So there's a little prep time. I had to go buy more rosemary. I stuck it in the mold. Of course, you got to go at least a day. I built this thing. I set up a camera with a light, with an umbrella. I was like, oh, this is, I'm going to end up in a magazine with this one. I took a great photo. The first sip is like, yeah, dude, you nailed it. But the downside is about 3 minutes later, the rosemary needle started releasing from the ice. which sounds brilliant, except it just mucks up the drink very, very quickly. You're sipping it and it's like sticking to your face. It was terrible. I couldn't actually even finish it because just all the stuff floated, you know, it floats, so it's hitting you in the face. So I took a great idea a little too far, but give yourself a snow gin fizz try around the holiday season. You will love it.

Did the snow alter the flavor at all? Did you put the snow and you put the snow right into the glass?

Lance did it. I don't I don't think it tasted good because.

I would think that's frowned upon, right? I think that's frowned upon.

He checked the area to make sure there were no other agents in the mix, I think. No, I think it was weird. I drank it like a martini dry at room temperature, so. Perfect. So I avoided the concerns associated with eating raw snow.

Toxic snow. Exactly. Before the rosemary fell apart in the drink, though, that must have been a delightful flavor, right?

It was. No, it is very good. It's very, very botanical for sure. So you kind of have the evergreeny kind of gin flavor, which is good. It can be a little much, I mean, but it was a tasty cocktail.

We talked about this a while ago. We were going to take a stab at buying some pure alcohol and adding some botanicals to produce a personalized gin. It sounds like you've taken a bit of a stab at that. At least a cocktail.

Yeah. So we can, we'll keep working on it.

Yeah, absolutely. Is that a, you think that'll be a regular, regular weekend cocktail?

I think I'm going to reserve it for holiday time as part of the spirit around Christmas.

All right. It's a seasonal blend.

That's how we roll around here, yes. We specialize in concert with whatever's going on around us.

Excellent. Very topical. Speaking of holidays, people at work seem to be bringing in all their half-eaten, unwanted, leftover holiday treats. Is this a thing by you?

Yeah, I have a conspiracy theory. That is definitely a thing.

I go into the little kitchenette every day and there's some sort of pre-opened, half-eaten, bizarre, weird treats that I've never seen on the shelf at any grocery store. I don't know where they're coming from, but I feel like everybody's just bringing in their unwanted stuff and pushing it off on employees to be the guinea pigs.

And you can clearly see where your drunk uncle had taken a bite out of one of them. Come on, man.

No one likes the chocolate covered cherry. They're all back in there half eaten.

Yeah, the conspiracy theory is, I jokingly say, they're just trying to make all their co-workers fat so they look better.

Yeah, you have brought this up on a previous show. Bringing in that Halloween candy.

Yeah.

This is worse. At least Halloween candy. You got your Reese's, your Milky Way, your Snickers. It's, you know, it's stuff you've heard of. I can't even pronounce the names on some of this stuff.

These homemade concoctions.

There's so many too. I noticed watching movies nowadays with a spouse is so much different than it was when you're younger. We'll sit, we'll put on a movie. be a couple minutes into it. If I even so much as like slow blink, not even fall asleep, my wife instantly yells at me, scaring me out of any sleep that I might be dozing off to. It startles my whole body and wakes me up. And of course I always reply, I wasn't sleeping. I was just blinking my eyes. And then that anxiety, like it stays within my body for like 10 or 15 minutes, keeping me awake. And then, I might drift off. It's the same exact feeling when you're driving down the highway and you kind of veered a little right?

Touch that rumble strip.

Touch that rumble strip. It shocks you and your eyes have never been open wider. And then like 10 or 15 minutes later, same thing, you're hitting the strip again. That's exactly what watching a movie with like a spouse feels like nowadays.

I also frequently, yeah. So is she, is it because she doesn't want to explain the plot twist later to you that you slept through?

Great point. I should have led with. My wife hates having to explain movies to me. And even if I'm watching them, there's so many, for whatever reason, I don't understand. I don't know what it is. And I got to ask questions. And even though she's seeing it for the first time, she's like intuitive enough to read into it and know exactly what's going on. There's like no problems at all. Oh yeah, well, her sister left, you know, and she moved to Chicago. And then after that, I'm like, where did you get this from? I didn't pick up any of that. the first scene, the only scene I've seen so far is they're on a beach in Florida. How do you know all that? I'm amazed. So in my eyes, she's the go-to. If I'm confused, she's the go-to. She's always picking up on it. She knows. In the thick of the movie, she has no patience for catching me up to speed. That's a bit of an issue. And you're like, You're like, can we pause this for a minute? I got the whiteboard over here. You're going to have to connect these plot lines. My job is clearly to sit next to her, hold her hand, stay awake, and once in a while, offer a subtle and soft reaction, like, wow. Holy. It can't be loud either because if I say it too loud, she might miss something somebody's saying. Right, So I got to be careful with the volume of my expression, but that's my role. I got to sit, I can't fall asleep, hold her hand, and just watch very intently. It's much different. It's so much different. 20 years ago, I could fall asleep, eat a snack. She'd pause the movie. What happened was her and her sister were separated and then they reunited at a coffee shop. And then after that, they found out that they knew the same people. She'll gladly explain the whole thing to me with such enthusiasm and excitement knowing that she was helping me through this plot.

You should turn the tables on her and say, remember when you were excited to explain plot lines to me?

What happened?

What happened?

Those days are over, Mike. Your questions are just irrelevant. You're mocking the movie.

You're not respecting what's going on here.

Even when I am, though, even when I am, so different.

So, you know, as mankind chugs along and I'm feeling very optimistic for the future, we just keep inventing and making new things, awesome stuff. The solid-state battery is coming. That's going to change the world. AI is awesome. I know there's some concerning parts about all of those things, but I tried to review once in a while what the crowning achievement is of our species. And I think it might be the ability to take control in a video call with your parents of their computer. Tech support in recent years has had a dramatic improvement where you're not trying to troubleshoot it over the phone anymore. You can just say, your computer's going to ask you if I can take control of the computer, all you have to do is click yes and I will take it from here. That has put many hours a week back into my life, just that very simple thing right there. And frustration, wait, everybody's less frustrated now as well.

Yeah, that's a pain point for our parents. I know. You get that call, something so simple. It creates a lot of frustration.

Yeah, the idea that your e-mail is in a web browser stored someplace else is still something I cannot explain. It's not really on your computer. But and where things go. The picture you want to attach to the e-mail, that is on your computer. Okay, I see where this is getting confusing. Just let go of the mouse. I'm going to take it from here.

Just let me do this. I still make occasional house calls, though.

Yes. Well, you're relatively local to your dad. I'm trying to do this in Florida.

Sometimes you need to check the physical hardware, make sure everything's attached properly and connected. Yeah, that remote desktop is truly a lifesaver.

The downside of that, 40-minute phone call, there was a lamp obscuring about this much. It was something like this. I kept wanting to say, do you not see the lamp on your screen? Like when you look at the window of view, you don't see that like 10% of your face is showing. And then I go to like this, but it was so funny. I didn't want to. Yeah.

I saw you had sent me a picture. It looked like your dad was being teleported by a UFO. It looked like the UFO came in. It was hovering over him. And that cone shaped light was over him, teleporting him into the UFO.

You didn't even know what it was. I told you.

I didn't know it was a lit up. It made perfect sense then.

So yeah, didn't even notice.

I have a bit of a technology New Year's resolution. I'm so sick of correcting text messages. And we talk a lot about text messages. I'm so tired of my phone correcting words, what it thinks I should be typing. And I'm so tired of my fingers not hitting what I swear I hit. I swear I typed the word hello. According to the phone, it thinks I'm typing a lot of different letters. And there's a piece of me that almost doesn't even want to go back anymore. And this is unfair for the recipient, right? Because all I want to do is just type it, however it comes back, I want to send it. And then in my mind, I'm like, let them figure it out. And that's so unfair, but I'm... I'm so frustrated with, okay, let me go back. Let me try to scroll over, fix those letters. It's wasting a lot of time in my life.

I agree. And I have one of those personalities where I go back and edit text messages because I can't allow a misspelling or a comma that should have been there. It's really not psychologically healthy to live your life like that. But I'm also in the same boat. I have the same problem. Like, is my typing really? In the past six months, my typing has gotten 700 worse? What is going on here?

I am puzzled by it. Is there any way to sort of recalibrate this? Because I swear I'm hitting the H, I swear that was an M. Why is it typing a different letter? I almost thought, I love my iPhone, but maybe keyboards on other manufacturers have different sensitivity. Maybe there's greater accuracy. I feel like every message I send now requires re-editing and editing.

And party makes it like, kids just deal with it. You've been sending me stupid slang that I can't figure out either. So right back at you.

I'm wondering if there's a macro or some settings you could create where you hit a letter and it will paste it with a sentence like, thanks, I'll talk to you later. in a little while, or I'll call you back later, or yes, I will transfer money into your account, stuff like that. Yes. How much do you need right now? Which Nigerian palace am I sending this to? Those frequently typed responses.

Do you ever swipe the letters? You can just drag your finger over, and actually that does a pretty good guess at what you're typing. You ever try that?

Like, hello, I can just slide my finger around.

Yeah, you keep your finger on the screen and just go H-E-L-L-O. Yeah, move it around, and it is pretty good at guessing. Pretty good. Yeah, fire me a text message right now.

I got a fire text right now. Let's see. Rich, H-E-L-L-O. Wow, you're on to something, Rich.

Right, yeah, go ahead and write a sentence to me. I can affirm that it came through and it was spelled correctly. Good job, Mike. It automatically puts a space.

I'm not even joking. This works better than my typing. You are welcome. Rich, thank you. have solved my New Year's resolution gripe.

We are just moments into the new year.

We're literally 30 minutes into our first call of the new year and already you're solving problems.

That's what season 4 is going to be like, listeners.

It's going to be a problem-solving season.

Send us your worst annoyance this year.

More health and tech related this year, I think.

In keeping with the times, we're very, we're very topical here.

I was talking to my kids recently about some things we used to do when we were kids. They normally just assume it's like an upstate thing or up because I lived in the country. But I was trying to explain the joy and excitement we would have in the summer when you'd go to a friend's house and they had a pool. And most of the time, they're always above ground pools. And the big excitement would be like, let's make a whirlpool. And you and all your buddies would get together and you would start off real slow to get that water going. And then you would speed up. Before you knew it, that thing was spinning pretty good, right? You would throw objects in it and they would get pulled in. And then when you're all done. You would say, all right, turn the other way. You would try to walk back the other way or swim. It was impossible. It was so hard. You know, my kids are looking at me like, dad, you know, like, there's no internet. Come on. I'm so sorry you had nothing to do when you were a kid. And I'm trying to tell him, I'm not kidding. That was a lot of fun.

Well, don't pretend for a second. Yeah, they're not going to think of that the next time they're swimming.

Nowadays, all their friends have giant square in-ground pools.

It doesn't work in a square in-ground pool. We were so poor. All our pools were round.

Yeah, there was a round pool. They didn't have all these fancy pools. I felt embarrassed by the end of the story. The other thing I explained to them was the term fill it up and check the oil. They're like, dad, what are you talking about? And I said, as a kid, I'd be in the car with my parents and you would go to a gas station. No one would be in a hurry. A man would come out. He'd ask, you know, oh, what can I do for you? And they would say, fill it up and check the oil. And they would fill up the tank with gas, open up the hood, check your oil, see if you needed any and added it.

My father, And my father, as previously mentioned, died when I was young, and my mother remarried, and that's, I have a great dad now. But I used to, in the summertime, he owned a service station, and that's what I did from age like 12, 13, and 14. I filled up gas in the 1970s. That's what I did. I had a, my father would walk around with this, like this red rag and hang out of his back pocket. And yeah, I was so, I was so into being like my dad. I've just stuffed this giant thing in my back pocket. So when you check the oil, you know, you pulled out the rag, you check the oil for the person, you show, you dip it in again, you show the person your oil looks good. And I got a type, a class A carcinogen in my back pocket as a child for three summers in a row.

If the gas fumes from filling it up don't get, yes, the oil in your pocket will.

It's remarkable I'm still here.

Kids don't understand that. It's sad. It really is sad.

Yeah, it is. That's how the world worked. I mean, it was very real.

I mean, you know, fill it up and check the oil. You were doing it.

And I'm pretty cognizant. I can't even remember the last time I checked my own oil. It just, cars are made so much better now. So different. I mean, I remember as a kid pouring quarts of oil into customers' cars. That's just, that's how it was back in the 70s and 80s.

Just keep putting it in there.

Loose smoke. I can still smell it.

That red rag is it's synonymous with checking the oil at a gas station.

I wish I had photos from that era.

Hey, here's something I find interesting. You ever get a phone call from somebody, you miss it and then immediately call them back and then they don't pick up?

Dude, that drives me.

I'm like, I can't wrap my head around it.

Did you hit the hang up button and just throw your phone into the backyard?

I don't own a phone any longer. I just threw it into the lake.

Mike didn't pick up. I just winged this thing into the woods. I just, yeah, no, I'm with you. What is wrong? Just fire me a text. Can't talk now.

Sometimes it might be an error, but other times I'm puzzled by it. You just called and now I'm getting your voicemail. And then what I'll do is I'll think to myself, oh, they're probably in a dead zone. I'll wait a minute. I'll call back again. Same thing. No pickup.

Yes. If 6 minutes went by, okay, they're on to something else. They can't take the call now. But unless that person was planning on a one second phone call with you, they can pick it up in 3 seconds.

Tell me you're busy, you got to run, you just wanted to tell me something. I've been listening to a few different podcasts, and one thing that drives me a little crazy is when some of them have a guest on, they go on and on about saying, oh yeah, he's the best, oh my god, he's the best. On today's show, she's the absolute best. And they say that show after show, and I'm wondering what the previous guests think when they hear that next guest come on and they're going on about them being the best. Do they feel jealous? Do they like them more? I wonder how their feelings are.

I was 10 guests ago. I'm feeling very bad now.

I'm 9 less than that person.

I swear if the next episode comes along and they say that again. Yeah, I think it's all the entertainment hype, I think. It's the best.

If we have guests on, I'm never, ever going to say they're the best.

No, they have to earn it.

Here's today's guest. We don't know how good they are or if they're the best. You decide.

I guess we're about to find out, aren't we?

I can't vouch for this, Jabroni.

This could go one of two ways. Let's be honest.

You, sir.

That's a wicked old fallback.

Speaking of Jay, have you heard his single? This makes me angry. Listen, forget being good at one thing, but being good at like something you do on the side.

So yes, and he has been.

It is a killer track.

He's almost got me to like that genre of music. That's the closest I've come to enjoying. And it is something, yes. And he's been on a tear with the comedy. Like every two days he's got something hysterical and he's having a killer 2026.

Friend, show guest, has a track out called, I think it's called Sky, or the band is called Sky of Ghosts, and the track is Life Leaves. I think it's already popping up on some metal charts on Spotify.

Yeah, and it's, he meant, well, on our show, he mentioned he did that years ago and wanted to get back into it. Well, he's back into it. Good job, Jay. Yes, well done.

Yeah, we'll have to have him back on the show.

We'll tag him in the show notes. Hey, the show notes, by the way, we put some effort into the show notes. If you don't go back and read them or you never have, please do, because there's additional comedy built into those as well, because we're givers.

Yeah, it's one thing to not listen to the show, but at least read the show notes.

You'll be in and out in like 2 1/2 minutes.

They're even quicker than the 23 minutes that we put out. They are.

This hilarity is all condensed down into an easy to absorb paragraph.

And then, if you like, if you like the show notes, then give the show a listen. Hey, what's your take on? the double neck guitar. I feel like it has not got a lot of love recently. And I didn't know, I don't see a lot of people pulling out the double neck guitar these days. Is it because there's a lot of digital effects? Is it because you got a guitar tech in the wings that can toss over a change of guitar? As a guitar player, Rich, do you have any thoughts on this?

I do. I have thoughts on everything. You know that. No, I think it's all of the above. Part of it is definitely the showmanship made most famous by, I think, Jimmy Page playing a live version of Stairway to Heaven. Alex Likson, of course, from Rush does that a lot. Rick Nielsen from Cheap Trick, he's got a 5. You ever see his five neck guitar? And so that's kind of where this is going. For starters, it's very easy. And they're different combinations. Sometimes they're different tunings, but in the case of Jimmy Page and Stairway to Heaven, There's a 12 string and a six string. So he starts out playing the intro with a beautiful 12 string guitar. He just moves his hand out and continues on with the song there. So there's a very pragmatic reason, but it is definitely for show. It's so eye-catching. You can't not watch somebody play something that big. So yeah, and it's probably, you know, nowadays, you're right, the guitar techs people are running stuff out to you, just swapping guitars immediately.

As soon as you see one, it almost seems a little bit of a gag. Here comes the double neck.

That is definitely part of the showmanship. Yes, I agree. Paul Gilbert, one of my favorite guitar players, he was made famous probably most in Mr. Big back in the early 90s. He's got a double neck guitar and an unusual tuning. And the one guitar, there's only three strings on the guitar and they're tuned, we're getting deep in the weeds, sorry, listeners, if you're not into this kind of thing, they're tuned in octaves. So you can play these ridiculous riffs, like jumping dramatic octaves on just three strings. And it's unlike anything you've ever heard just because the really weird tuning, but of course the funny part is the six-string guitar only has three strings on it. To bring an earlier topic back around, I know we're all wondering if I am a sexist or not. Yes. You've been waiting, folks, all the...

I gotta take show notes of my own. That one almost slipped away from me.

Yeah, I didn't even think of that either. I'm doing a much better job at reading my show notes, as you'll recall from the last episode. My funniest joke was..... I was completely missed. We had to turn it into the title. The aforementioned blood work that I had done, I went in to get some blood taken. And I swear to God, for the first time in my life ever, the person who took my blood was not a woman. It was a dude. I don't think I've ever had a guy take my blood before. It was very, I'm probably making way too big a deal out of this, but it was very interesting. I don't know, it's always a woman, women are like kind and caring and nurturing, and it's all part of the healthcare thing that I guess I like. And so it was very weird to have some big, hairy, brutish guy shamming a needle into me. It was very strange. So I don't know, so that was, it felt a little sexist to think only women should do that job.

Unless he was a vampire, then it makes perfect sense.

Oh, I never got results. Where is that guy?

I don't get my blood drawn that often, but come to think of it, I don't ever remember going to a lab and having a guy draw my blood. No.

Yeah, so I don't know. I mean, there's really nothing weird about it other than for decades, I've never seen it. I really thought that story was going to go over better.

This episode brought to you by WebMD.

That's it for my list, man.

Yeah, same with me.

We got some laughs in there.

Couple, yeah. Nothing to be ashamed of on this episode.

We're setting the stage for a quality programming season. Yeah.

Listen, you can't come out with like a five out of five stars. You got to hit them with like a three and three quarters, four-star type episode. It's like the first track in any album. Yeah, the first track in any album. album. It's not the best track. It's a solid track. And then track two and three, things are really wrapping up.

Yeah, we don't want to peak in the first episode of 2026. No, It can't go downhill for the rest of the year.

No. We got to draw you in. We got to get you on the hook for a little bit here.

You guys are going to love a springtime when we get there.

Folks, wait till March. Oh man. People have already deleted this from their downloads. They haven't even made it to season four. Let's be honest. It's going to accidentally download and be like, those guys are still going. They'll be like, I thought I deleted this last season. Clear up space on my iPhone.

Stupid new phone, downloaded it all over again.

You go to the Apple Store, you forget. Backed up your phone last week. I don't need this.

The guy at the Apple Store was like, you want me to get this off your phone?

I see there's a lot of unlistened to podcasts. You know, it's taking up space on your phone. It's taking up space on your phone. Did you want me to delete these? Oh, please. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I freed up three more gig. Thank goodness.

You got 44 episodes of unlistened material.

That's it for me, Rich. I got, I'm out of topics.

Me as well. It was a good show. I think we're starting off the year in an excellent fashion and can't wait to get to the next one.

All right. That's a show. Thank you.

All right, man.

All right.

We'll catch up to you next time.