Massenomics Podcast - Ep. 371: Jordan Wong

Episode Date: May 15, 2023

Big Jordan Wong joins us for this one to discuss the evolution of the powerlifting community over the last 15 years. We also talk about running meets, Chinese food, and hurricanes. Juggernaut AI: juggernautai.app and use code MASSENOMICS to save 10% The Strength Co: https://store.thestrength.co/ BearFoot Shoes: https://bearfoot.store/ and use code MASSENOMICS to save 10% Swiss Link: https://www.swisslink.com and use code MASS to save 15% Spud Inc: https://www.spud-inc-straps.com/ Texas Power Bars: https://www.texaspowerbars.com/

You know, thanks for what you do with your podcasts and all the rest. You're doing a great job. Hope everybody keeps tuning in. You get a lot of good info, a lot of insights, understandings on how to get strong, how to stay strong, how to use your strength. You do a great job, dude. You make things better than they are in real life, I think.

If you don't follow Massanomics, y'all do it. Social media, website, everything. Massanomics! Massanomics! side everything massonomics welcome back everyone for episode 371 of the massonomics podcast recorded live from western northeast south dakota and eastern southeast south dakota this is recorded live and in full color my name is tanner and my name is tommy just this just a smidgen here oh changing the angle this time there we go how's that fabulous a little off centered or something

i feel better about this yeah so this is episode 371 we're coming to you live from studio 6.9 again of course we have a lot of stuff on our our list of topics to get to today we've got a special guest uh big jordan wong is going to be joining us a little later and then i don't know we've got about 10 different things on our list i'd be surprised if we get to half of it tommy that's usually how it goes there's just not enough time that's uh the podcast you know the individual podcasts go quick but the podcasting years go fast that is the problem that reminds me you know our youtube this last week was if anyone hasn't caught it yet there was a a brief history of the massonomics podcast do check that out it's uh i think it's you know it's it's informative and a little humorous all at once. It's mostly informative, though, honestly, isn't it?

It is mostly informative. And if you are somewhat new to the show, or even if you've only been listening to the show for three years, there probably is something in there that you'll say, wow, that's really how shitty that was for that long. I thought they sucked now. Wow, they really sucked then. it was a really interesting look down memory road though even for for me i'm like huh that's kind of crazy though like when you i forgot about

several of the things in there until we put the video together and started uh really looking at those things i you just forget about it you know yeah so do uh make sure you're subscribing to our youtube channel we do have uh um new we've gone now i think 12 or 13 weeks with a new video every single every single week i thought that was a really fun i think that one in particular is really cool uh then this next week we got a or tomorrow as we're recording we've got one that comes out about uh cerberus uh sandbags how to fill those properly very informative i watched that today and there was a couple spots on it where i was actually laughing pretty hard you surprised me with a couple things in there what i would say about that video is obviously watch it and subscribe to our youtube channel but make sure to watch

all the way through the end of the video yeah you have to watch to the very end of one. It's like you watched a Marvel movie and now you're getting surprised with some. That's what it is like, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. That's a good point. Now you know what the sequel, you're getting a hint of what the sequel is going to be, you know? Yeah. You know what else I'm getting a hint of, Tommy?

What's that? I'm getting a hint of The Strength Co. And if I'm listening closely, I think I hear something. This is The Strength Company. We've set out to build a better barbell plate on American soil. We ended up here at Wisconsin's legendary Wapaka Foundry. With over 60 years of ironworking experience, the foundry had the knowledge, technology, and processes

to build our weights to our exact specifications. The Strength Company plates are slim but rugged, smooth but easy to grip, and electro-coated for durability and to look great in your gym. This is the next generation of American Iron. Only available from The Strength Company. Make sure to check out The Strength Co. They are also sponsors and vendors at the Lift Hard, Live Easy Classic in July in western northeast South Dakota. And this just in, they do have even some special Lift Hard, Live Easy limited edition merch of their own that they will have for sale at the meet.

So exciting stuff there. Can't wait to get my grubby little paws on. I know. Me too. This episode is also brought to you by Barefoot Shoes, who is also going to be at the Lift Hard Live Easy Classic this summer with a booth of their own. We'll get to that in a minute. But most shoes harm your mobility by over restricting your foot's natural movement barefoot shoes are designed with minimal restrictions so your feet can move

the way they're supposed to move with more strength and confidence in every step barefoot shoes was founded by chris duffin who attributes proper foot biomechanics as foundational to his success in squatting and deadlifting over 1 000000 pounds for reps. He helped create the company to provide a minimalist shoe that can be worn for anything from deadlifts to walking your dog. Go to www.barefoot.shoes to check out the best minimalist shoes available. And while you're there, make sure to use code MASSANOMICS to save 10% on your next order. That's www.barefoot.shoes.

Code MASSANOMICS will save you 10%. Thanks, Barefoot. Not for your hands. Not for the hands. They're for the lower portion of your body. Yeah. Tommy, did you see the Arnold documentary that's coming out on Netflix?

I just saw. Did Arnold have a post on instagram was it yesterday hinting at this and that was the first i'd first i'd ever heard of it and i have not looked into it anymore but i'm excited to watch it whenever that comes i think it comes out in june here already and it's one man three lifetimes, or three lives lived, which I haven't looked into it at all any more than that, but obviously it's got to be bodybuilding, acting, politics, right? That's a key to mine for me. Right, which is he really kind of crazy

how successful he became at all three of those when you look at it really is who was even you can't i guess you would maybe say the rock is the closest but also his he's kind of different in a way too i guess i don't know he's more lame to me in some ways well he feels way more corporate like in every yes that's what i and that's like a better description. I don't have a problem with the rock at all. He seems like a cool guy, but everything he does seems polished and thought out.

Yeah. Like nothing feels organic at all. Like everything feels like, what is the, what can we do to make this feel as organic as possible? And also it's going to be as fake as possible too. Like it's, it's just how everything feels.

Doesn't it? Yeah. It feels totally manufactured. I couldn't agree more. Whereas Arnold, uh, be as fake as possible too like it's it's just how everything feels doesn't it yeah it feels totally manufactured i couldn't agree more whereas arnold uh i guess it's a different time then it well yes and that part of it is arnold probably would have been pretty similar if the role was the way it was then but right right i'm excited for that documentary of course though like it's uh you know and if it's made well i don't know is it made by netflix or it's just on netflix actually i don't know yeah i don't know if actually netflix makes anything i think they just pay people to make things isn't that okay

okay i don't know but if netflix but some stuff is on netflix that they really didn't have anything to do with other than just like buying it up right? Yeah, I mean, I think that's how most of it is. If it's on Netflix, it's because Netflix paid to pick it up. I don't think Netflix has the Netflix studio where Netflix is like... They don't, okay. I didn't know if they did. I don't think they do.

I think just pay for rights for stuff. Some of these similar companies have stuff like that, though, right? Or is that not the case? I think they just like even Amazon and Apple and all that is that not the case i think they're just paying people even amazon and like okay apple and all that hulu and they're just pay like if something's a hulu original they're just you know they're not it's like the way i understand is like inside it doesn't get confusing here but they pitch it someone's pitching it to them and they say oh yes we want to pick that up here's your check right you know but they don't have an in-house team of all right here's the netflix cinematographer that shoots but that's not true for hbo or is that also true

there i i think actually no i it's just hbo pieces these people that do okay yeah yeah and that's where it gets confusing is like no one really has these in-house like creative. Right. Just paying different people to do stuff. Right. Brand, you know. Yeah. Yeah. The more you know. Did you ever read the Arnold biography?

Yeah, I've got that. Yes, I have. That's what this. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You've got it right there, too. That's the back cover of it right there. I can almost read that again.

It's been like at least I was living in my two own two houses ago, so it's probably been at least 10 years. That must have been about when it came out, wasn't it? Yeah. Because that's about when I was reading it too, and I never actually finished it. And now I kind of feel like it's calling my name up there. I sort of want to read it now. I got a laundry list of books to get through here. So I still haven't quite, I've gotten closer to the end of, what am i reading now before other uh yeah 1984 so not done yet um no i have not finished 1984

yet so stay tuned i'll do official wrap up when i finish that and go on to my next uh this actually puts additional pressure on me now because the number of weeks i go through and i'm like yeah i haven't finished this 250 page book i am i think we talked about it last week but i am the opposite of a speed reader though like i have to i can read quickly but i cannot absorb it quickly like it just is slow yeah it's a skill you you're talking though last week really did really make me feel like i need to start reading again that's all it took was someone to say it and i think that the thing that would really get me over the hump would be that e-reader so that the light because i don't have lamps i don't have lamps around and at night i hate having every light on so i think maybe i just need to get

an e-reader and then i'll be like i spent money on this now i have to read so that's what i'm playing with in my brain right now i just haven't committed yet yeah there was quite a bit of uh discussion about books amongst the crew after all this book talk so let's uh like if anyone's ever read a book before all everyone like giving their statistics like yeah i haven't read a book in like four years or like yeah i might read six a year you know there's a lot of different who was illiterate and who could read at a third grade level oh you guys know how to read yes uh i'm getting very thirsty right now tanner should we crack into a cold ass crispy one i got a sweaty crispy one right here just teasing myself sitting to the side i'd mind in a drink spot or light

yeah i have a lack of metal things that are easy to have on camera like you. What do you got over there, though? That looks good. Now that's refreshing. That looks good already. Polar cranberry lime. You know what I just thought of when I said that? Polar.

Am I supposed to say the A sound or the E sound on that? Oh, that's also been a big topic of conversation, hasn't it? You could say we don't quite got that one in the bag yet, do we? That's a good flavor, though. That's like a four and a half star drink right there. Yeah, it's a banger. I've got a classic LaCroix lemon. Lemon, not limoncello.

Just straight up lemon. So what's better to you, lemon or lime LaCroix? Which one's better? That's a really hard question. I'd probably go lime, but it is one of those things where if I have enough lime, because lime is always my go-to, the default choice. After I have enough lime, a lemon is pretty damn refreshing, you know? I think I like lemon a little better than lime.

Wow. But also the same would be true if I had too many of these. I'd be like, I'd like a lime. Variety. It's the spice of life, isn't it? Polar. Hardly newer. Baylor? Ah, that is a crispy crack i give a old lemon here's

a four all day for me probably yeah we both we both brought the a game this week with these cans with these here cans brought in that good stuff uh you had a couple things in here too well actually let me mention this one i don't know if you saw this it's kind of oddly almost was like barely or almost nearly going unnoticed to me but the heaviest deadlift ever by a female i just saw like post mentioning it i did not see the video though it's not making the rounds not that much that i've seen it's at uh sarah eats bacon is her handle on instagram uh she deadlifted 600 and the this is the biggest raw deadlift by a woman ever maybe just the biggest deadlift for uh at least raw it's the biggest raw deadlift ever by a female 640.5 pounds

sarah eats bacon i was not familiar with her and I just like barely even heard about it, which was kind of a weird thought. I'm trying to track this down right now and of course I can't. She just looked like she didn't have a big following yet, so it didn't. It's Sarah S-A-R-A.

There we go. Now I got her. 819 followers. That is amazing that you can have the biggest okay let's see yeah let's see we're working with here uh one of the david says that she trains out uh either trains or was lifting at big jesse burdick's gym uh friend of the podcast she trains there damn it's good's a good lift, too. Yeah, it seems like she's deserving of a larger following. That'll probably be to come with this, I would think. So I'm guessing she broke Tamara Walcott's record then.

That must just be chipping it. It's got to be, yeah. It's right in there, isn't it? Wasn't she right around 650? Yeah, because I think hers was like 638 or 639 or, you know, like very similar. So that must be a chip. Yeah, really strong for sure, though. Not bad.

Impressive stuff. Yeah. This is an interesting thing. I noticed sometimes I listen to the FM radio on the way to school and schools and work in the morning. I'm not sure what those words mean. Can you explain what that... Well... What does FM stand for, actually? I i don't know what does it stand for

what does it's not satellite or it's not am it's not fm it's xm no i don't uh let's find out frequency modulation okay what's am more you know um i was listening sometimes i listened to the fm radio in the morning and the damnedest thing happened i was listening and uh um they said uh next up new song from nickelback and i was like really i didn't know that they were making new songs and i can't remember what the name was of it what the what the name of was, but I heard the name and I'm like, that is such a name of a Nickelback song. You could just throw 50 words in a hat and pull out three of them in any order.

And you're like, yep, that's the name of a Nickelback song. Okay, and I don't know if this is just timing or if this actually does coincide with this, but there is an account. There's a guy, he interviews all these musicians. His name is Nardwar. And he just had on his, on his Instagram page, he had an interview with the Nickelback guys. And I didn't know if that was new or old or what, but if they did just have an album come

out, then maybe that is new actually. Yeah, it must be. I mean, they must've just had an album come out and so i did uh catch the song and i was like maybe it's gonna seem like way different you know because sometimes like when somebody's gone for a while music has changed in yeah since they were really at their peak it has for sure and not only did the title fit it perfectly, like 30, 10 seconds into the song, I'm like, yeah, this is like. This is it. It fits the formula.

Yeah. Oh, just to a T. I'm like, no, there's nothing different here. There is nothing different to new about it. They were singing about photographs and stuff like that. It's like photographs and rock stars. They just mashed up all the. It was like photographs and rock stars. They just mashed up all the... It was a photograph.

It said, this photograph reminds me of a rock star. It's really easy to do when I have all these songs. I don't know if anyone else has heard that and if maybe they have a different take on it, but I think if you listen to it, you'd be like, nothing surprising here, is there? Yeah, it's, you know know i think we bring up nickelback about once every 80 episodes on this show and uh it's probably been about 80 episodes so here we are again and it all kind of comes back to nickelback it always does that's why they call

it nickel back yeah about once a year for some reason they come up and we'll be in the car and I'll turn on either Rockstar. I'll turn on Rockstar and tell my wife, like, the song actually isn't too bad. And she's like, you know, it's pretty tolerable actually. Yeah, yeah. Sometimes you have to remove yourself enough from things to appreciate them more. Two best ones to me, I'm not thinking very hard.

There could be better ones. But the two best ones to me off the'm not thinking very hard. There could be better ones. But the two best ones to me off the top of my head, Rockstar and How You Remind Me. Yeah. But How You Remind Me, that song's from 2001, it says. So 22 years it was there. Still holding weight, though, after 22 years. Still slaps. You know who else holds weight?

Who? Our supporting members. Oh. I'd like to support our supporting members a little bit here. First thing in supporting, well, first things first, telling you what this is. Someone said, what the hell is a supporting our supporting members segment? Well, it's a relatively new segment to the Massonomics podcast. It's our chance to give back a little bit to uh the people

that give to us so if you want to get on on the supporting member crew you go to our website you get signed up we've got several different membership options you know we still have new members flocking in by the day and we'd love to have you get in on that also you get things like access to our exclusive very very extremely active Discord community full of like-minded individuals. There's a discount code for you in there. You get early information on drops. You get access to our meet, the first to be able to sign up for our meet,

that sort of thing. All kinds of stuff, too much stuff to even mention. In addition to all that, our crew, the crew, is starting their own podcast, which we've talked about a little bit here. It's going to be an unpaid and underrated podcast. They've done some recording, as far as I'm aware of it. They're getting the hosting set up now. I think they're working on recording their second episode maybe even,

and I am extremely excited. And Mastonomics is the sponsor of the unpaid and underrated podcast i mean i know we're at least one of the sponsors naturally um so i'm really excited to see that take off and uh take flight in its first published episodes i'll be one of the first listeners i I can guarantee that. I've been loosely following this because I do want to listen. Has the pilot episode been officially published or is it in some

secret back channel that people are listening to? It's only secret back channel for now. The crew was working, not to give anyone any personalized credit, I think the crew is working on getting that published as we speak. The crew is also working on

recording another episode tomorrow night, it says. Perfect. So, if you join our supporting members, you could get in on the Unpaid and Underrated podcast. It is by and for the crew, so you could get in on that. Also this week, Big Matthias Cash, no stranger to supporting our supporting members, competed in a USAPL meet. He hit a 584 squad, a 347 bench, and a 606 deadlift for a 1537 total. Very good, well-rounded numbers there.

Congrats to Big Jake from State Farm. He graduated. He's not only from State Farm, he's also a graduate of medical school now. So Big Jake and the crew is one of our official doctors. Really doing things with his life out there. Yes. Slow down.

And I did see he gave most of the credit to that, to the crew and being a supporting member. He said, yeah, I've got to give credit where credit is due. Thank you, Tanner and Tommy. I think that's what he said in his. I mean, I definitely thought that there was no way he wasn't thinking that while he was graduating. So if you think it's just a bunch of dumbasses in the crew, you're partly correct. But there also is like doctors and lawyers in there.

Very distinguished people. There is such a wide variety of professions within the crew. Oh, man. The widest, most... If we had a spreadsheet of anonymous professions, like we didn't even put people's names in it, we just listed all the professions that have existed in this Discord at some point, man, you would be blown away if we told you some of them.

There's doctors, there's lawyers, there's mechanics, there's engineers, there's people that work for companies like NASA, and there's high-ranking officers in in there and like just business owners yeah yeah business owners um social porn stars pornography stars adult active adult performers uh yeah uh people in social media with incredibly large followings yeah electricians um welders basically every trade that you could yeah we had uh people someone with a enormous you know i'm not i'm not gonna not gonna call name names on everything but there's someone that joined it up

just even this week that has an enormous social media following. So it is a really fun, cool, I'm just bragging about it at this point, I guess, but I don't know, it is cool. It is funny to think about all the diverse backgrounds that exist in there. Yeah, there is. And last, of course not least, Big Jeff, who I believe he's not in listening live tonight.

I think he said he's going to be up after his thing. But Big Jeff was a guest on a different podcast this week. I saw that. Talking about he's a financial planner. And I listened to the full episode. It was great. Are you smarter now? I think it couldn't hurt.

You know, along with all my reading i think it's just another piece of the right your brain is just overflowing with knowledge it's oozing out yes um it was good though i don't know the organ you know it seemed like a pretty pretty well put together podcast that he was on there and it was uh it was a really good segment or a really good uh interview you know what i was thinking could be a funny funny thing for us maybe to do on supporting our supporting members sometime like throwing this sprinkling this in here instead of doing like where we read out accomplishments for people for the week supporting our members we just pre we're going to give someone say 30 seconds of air

time like a supporting member where they get to say whatever they want for 30 seconds so it's like big jeff was my example you know he's a financial planner yeah he's like where we we say big jeff welcome to the podcast you are on the clock and we press start and we just say you talk and we are shut we are uh hanging up on you at 30 seconds so it's like maybe he wants to pitch his uh his his company or something like that uh almost like where people can get their own little ads and i like it i like it that's that's good yeah 30 seconds the floor is yours and if you want us to talk you can but it's yours but and at 30 seconds no matter if you're mid-sentence, the phone is being hung up at that point in time.

I think we should probably implement that. I think we might have to get that going. So that could be a fun addition to supporting our supporting members here soon, I think. Yeah, I totally agree. I like that. Okay, good. And if you want to become a supporting member, go to massanomics.com slash join

and see what this party is all about. Yeah. One quick thing on Nickelback, I did see someone say, I like your feet around your pants, and that reminded me of the song Pants Feet, which is an old-time classic, too. Is that DJ Cumberbund?

Yeah, I think it is, right? If it's not, I mean it's... If you haven't seen that, you have to look up Pants Feet by DJ Cumberbund. It is so funny. I know we've talked about it on the podcast, but someone sent it to me the other day, and I hadn't seen it for a while, and I had to watch it. I'm like, God, that's so funny.

It was just making me laugh. I forgot actually that existed until I read it in there, and it is hilarious. Especially that first time we saw it, when it was like drinking a lot of beers and you're just having a good time, and you don't know what's coming, and that hits you. It's hilarious.

I had an idea. Should we try to get DJ Cummerbund as a guest on the podcast? It could be pretty good. I feel like it'd be possible to get him. Oh, yeah, i think so i mean it's he's inaccessible no and it's he's obviously we've had a variety of guests on here over the seven years but um he's definitely outside of our normal yeah but uh i think that that would be a there's no doubt that that would be a fun one right it would be absolutely because we're just we just talk all these classic pop hits and uh just cult classics yeah thanks it's it's good stuff that is good

stuff you know what else is good stuff what's that are you gonna read an ad yeah okay make uh i have to go for two seconds so don't be done with your ad until I'm back. Okay. Should I start the 30-second timer on you? Well, it might be 35 seconds, but I'll be back very shortly. All right. Sounds good. Well, while Tommy's gone, we'll use this opportunity to talk to you about Juggernaut AI.

While Tommy's gone, we'll use this opportunity to talk to you about Juggernaut AI. Juggernaut AI is like having the best powerlifting coach in the world with you during every training session, helping you reach your true potential. It's trusted by lifters from all over the world, over 50,000 lifters, and that includes Tommy, who's not here right now, and myself. And there's over 15-plus quadrillionillion program variations i have no idea how many zeros that is uh it's more than anybody knows but the point is there um i was actually just having a conversation with someone else in the gym about this today there's been there's uh probably 15 of us at least at mass dynamics gym that all use juggernaut ai and it's funny how different our

training is than each other you know this isn't a cookie cutter uh excel template program which i'm not even saying for certain purposes there's nothing wrong with that but that's not what this is this is very especially the longer you use it the more, uh, customized and catered to say your needs for, for increasing your strength. And it's just funny how myself and say, uh, Tommy's brother, Ryan flying, Ryan, how we can both be using this for months and just how dissimilar our programming is at that point in time. You know, they all start off with a similar base, but, uh, the longer you do it, I think, uh, the more valuable it becomes and the more you get out of it. Interesting note, also I saw Big Basement Brandon recently switched back to Juggernaut AI,

but do not use Basement Brandon's discount code. Make sure to use the Mastonomics discount code, which is Mastonomics, and that'll save you 10% on the lifetime of that Juggernaut AI membership. Oh, I'm back. And don't use the app when you sign up. Go to the web browser. It's juggernautai.app, and that's where you can get signed up and use the discount code Mastonomics. Okay.

I was talking about how Basement Brandon is back on the Juggernaut AI train with us. We missed him. I thought he was out, and they pulled him back in. Yep. Always keep him coming back for more. Today's episode is also brought to you by Texas Power Bars. Buddy Caps first started lifting weights in the late 60s and began power lifting in the mid-70s.

At the time, he was working for Image Barbell, building gym equipment. Around 1976, a local machine shop started making Olympic bars for them, calling it the Image Bar. In 1977, Image local machine shop started making Olympic bars for them, calling it the Image Bar. In 1977, Image Barbell became Champion Barbell. It was then that Buddy started looking at the bars with an intent of changing them for the better. In 1979, Buddy bought his first lathe to be in addressing the known issues. In 1980, his passion, drive, and purpose now had a greater mission. Buddy set out on his own to make what he believed was the greatest bar he had ever seen and trained with,

and the Texas Power Bar was born. It was strong as a house with the best knurling and was maintenance-free. Hundreds of state, national, international, and world powerlifting records have been and continue to be set and broken on the Texas Power Bar. To learn more about Texas Power Bars and buy one of their legendary bars, visit TexasPowerowerbars.com is uh our guest waiting to hop he is there and waiting uh i should probably kick everyone else out shouldn't i yeah you kick everyone else out uh can you talk at all while you're kicking people

out i was gonna ask you about something yeah yeah i uh well i'll try well when maybe this is follow-up for after our guests but uh people have been also asking if you've got any good recent commercial gym experiences or stories. Not a ton. It's been really dead lately. I think now that the weather's getting nicer, people are like, oh, I'll do my running and stuff outside, or I'm just not going to go to the gym because there's stuff to do. So that's been my biggest takeaway is it's just been pretty empty lately.

So I don't have a ton of exciting stuff to report there, unfortunately. Yeah, well, we need to hit on the weather after we talk to Big Jordan too, so let's not forget about the weather. Okay, so let's see. He is allowed to unmute himself. I suppose we might want to mute him. It's a tougher interview when he's muted, right? Well, it's definitely a different experience, right?

All right, I'll let him in. And he should be joining any moment now. All right. Big Jordan, are you out there? I am. Ooh, there we go. There we go. Ah, there he is.

How's it going? I'll get my phone number. What'd you say? How'd I get your phone number? Yeah. Oh, we have connections. Don't you don't worry about that. Uh,

yeah, you're, you're, uh, live on the massonomics podcast with Tanner and Tommy. How's it going? What's up, Jordan?

This isn't the live large podcast. Oh, shoot. I knew we messed something up. No. How are you guys doing? Pretty good. We're excited to get you on. It's been a long time coming, I think. Don't you think? Yeah, I guess so.

Too long. I bought one of your shirts. It was in your notes. Is that what I said? That we need to get you on the podcast sometime soon? Yeah. Yeah. I have all my assistant writes all those, so I don't really know what's in those. Most important to kick off, what's in your can over there? We saw you can shopping earlier today.

I had to get this. What do you got? Orange. Orange. Have we ever had straight up orange before, Taylor? I don't think so. So that's an orange LaCroix that you've got it looks like uh how is it well orange is my favorite flavor for like everything so it's the best um drinking um that cheaper all these stuff uh waterloo

but i had to switch to this for tonight yeah the high strength stuff had to go to publics and spend all my fucking money so so we um we usually give it a five you know a rating zero to five jd power and associates awards and you can use half points so it could be you give that a two a two and a half a three three and a four what do you give that on a zero to five four oh that's a good rating that's really good you know i've always called it like la crooks and i was corrected one day and i was like shit i'm a fucking idiot yeah lacroix is really it was really the fancy one though you know it's like the for the hoity-toity people i think well it sounds fancy now that I know how to pronounce it. It's got that French stuff going on. Yeah.

So good. Now we finally settled the question of what's in the can. Second question, and this is probably the second most important thing. We've had Andy Huang on the podcast before, and I don't know if you know, but his Instagram handle is that huge Asian guy how do you feel about him calling himself that

like the important word is that like he's saying he's that huge Asian guy he is that huge Asian guy every time I see him in person it's not Andy it's that huge Asian guy yeah we took a picture together at the kern in 2017 and i think i put the caption that huge asian guy and that medium asian guy

but didn't officially change the instagram name that could be a good instagram chain name change if you ever you have changed your instagram handle before though haven't you no not in like eight years okay because what is it right now is it wong strong yeah stw ong it's like a spin on the word strong right i wish i could like say i made that up with my um i used to turn with the guy chad walker and he was just saying it in the gym one day joking around and kind of just stuck that That's how I made up a name. That is how good nicknames start. I always try to give myself cool nicknames, but that never really sticks like that.

So I guess it doesn't work that way. What's one of them. Um, I kind of made that up. I don't even really try to get myself. Well, everyone's big around here, you know,

so you're big Jordan, obviously like, um, we have, uh, you have been, around here you know so you're big jordan obviously like um we have uh you have been uh you know a massonomic supporter for a lot of years though too like that's actually actually cool it's always fun when we get people on here that um you know also get you know because we interview people that maybe they don't give a shit about massonomics and that's fine too because we want to talk to them about stuff or like just have never even really heard of us before, so it's just like they have no idea what they're even getting into. What got me into it was the old trading cards. Yeah.

And I don't even know if you guys had apparel yet when you guys started that. Or maybe it was just in the very beginning. We had apparel. It was just not the apparel people were buying. Yeah, we had probably two or three t-shirts. Well, trading cards did it well we did one of you right yeah it was my first meet had the long hair the glasses yeah it was like an asian lesbian am i allowed to say lesbian it's 2023 i think i mean we're not the subject matter experts for sure, but like, I think it's okay. All right.

That's funny. You kind of a little, just reminded me of it there a little while ago, you had a funny post about, it was basically like what I would call the history of powerlifting drama. And, you know, this was a couple, you know, this was kind of when the USPA thing was going on and you went down this really funny list that's i mean funny because of how accurate it seemed of like this was like this is the track record of powerlifting and where the drama goes and kind of how it goes like full circle all the time and um it just was pretty spot on i think yeah i Yeah, I've been through it all. I mean, I've been through it all.

I didn't get touched by anyone from the USPA, but I haven't done any touching either. I am still technically a judge with him in Florida. Okay. Yeah. But they seem like they are doing, like, trying to do better. I would hate to even comment. Or has it just been, like, people have just moved on to the next thing? Yeah, like, I don't, I would hate to even comment because I don't know well enough to the next.

Yeah. Like I don't, I don't really even know what to say about it. Honestly, I think people move on to the next thing. It's kind of what I assumed. It's just too much work to be angry at that for that long. So it's,

Oh yeah. Like I get it, but yeah, I mean, I also think, I mean, some people might disagree, but I think people like to pick something and then stick to it for a while

and have a reason to talk all the time and make posts all the time and then they move on to the next thing yeah like i was um at a uspa meet in florida in february in the midst of the whole thing and if you didn't know what was going on like it was just like every other florida meet that they've held i mean they've been around for about 10 years. Rich Vika and the grill bench guys. That's a gym and Clearwater, Jen Routsinger and all them. Like they put on great events. You could put probably one a month on from them and everyone's going to

fill up. I mean, they just run a good event. People have fun. They forget all that shit. And honestly, they don't even know that stuff because it's so many newer lifters it's just it attracts everyone that doesn't follow all this right yeah the people that aren't tainted by uh

by the by the cesspool yeah well and you talk about having seen it all it's funny you kind of have we were talking about it you're not that old uh i think you're younger than both of us but i was looking on uh open power lifting i think it showed your first meet of 2009 i don't know if you and i we could look back on the rookie card i don't know but um and you've done over 30 meets in that amount of time yeah yeah it was 17 in 2009 so i think i'm 31 now third fuck i'm 32 now yeah um yeah 2009 i think i competed four times in that first year and when i started i competed a lot like probably four to five times a year and then i kind of went to like two to three and then one to two yeah do you feel kind of like an old head now like someone that's

kind of seen it all and done it all and uh that knows the power lifting you know knows the ins and outs of the power lifting world like i don't think like that but sometimes when like like when you say something like that or people are talking about something a long time ago i'm like oh yeah i guess i have been around a long time i I mean, really, when I started lifting, um, I was reading articles cause you know, when you get into lifting, you just read everything to get better. And I was reading about box squats and shit, not realizing the only training back then, like the content was multi-ply lifting. So that's what I came up with. I mean, that's why I have a wide stance

i just saw it on the internet and i was like oh i'm gonna power lift i have a wide stance and it just stuck so yeah you do you have a particularly wide squat stance too it's kind of like um what was a hulk smash or adam uh from out in california he trained at yeah adam um yeah i don't remember his last name but yeah you know but he's he had that all like i mean your stance am i wrong is it kind i mean it kind of looks similar to what his is like too isn't it yeah so i think people like when they talk about my squat they think it's a very wide stance like shane holler i train with him all the time his stance is wider than mine but my feet flare out so much and when i squat i just open my hips

really big and i think it just gives an illusion that i'm wider than i am yeah that makes sense uh do you ever squat like say as an alternative squat style do you ever do you ever uh for i don't know whatever training purpose squat with a narrower stance, or do you just, do you always use that? I think I do until I see it, like, on camera, and I'm still pretty wide. So, like, when I used to be able to train high bar, I'd try to go more narrow, and it would still look pretty wide. I've always front squatted with, like, my regular squat stance, even though I think it's a little more narrow.

I mean, so, no. Yeah. Does anyone ever tell you no yeah yeah does anyone ever tell you like the belt squat does anyone ever tell you the problem you could squat more if you just did a normal a narrow stance you know there's always people nobody's ever told me that no one ever says really dumb shit like that to me so i'm kind of lucky yeah can you can you use the belt squat like we have like the rhino and i'm wondering like if you could stand on that platform or not in that way. Yeah.

I have the same belt squat. Okay. So I can emulate my regular belt or my regular squat. And then sometimes I actually do go a little more narrow and hold onto the handles just to get a little more quad work. But I prefer the hack squat or the pendulum squat because I can't stand putting that belt on and off. Yeah.

It's a pain in the ass. It's a pain in the ass. And talking about, we were talking about how long you've been around is also, I was impressed looking at the meats you've done. So you did a rum raw unity multiple times, which was for anyone that doesn't know or remember, you know, that kind of was like one of the, if not the first big raw meats that were going on. You've done a boss of bosses.

You've done the Kern. You've done the showdown. You've done the ghost clash so as i was looking at him like damn jordan did like every one of the big did you ever do reebok record breakers maybe that's one that you didn't do i did do that okay so you did that one too like like him you've did you did every one you know i'm when i look at the list i'm like is there a big one that you ever didn't do um i mean maybe you didn't do the kern every single year or you didn't do record breakers every single year but like you've you've been and experienced that each one of these that i consider like the big ones yeah i started to get a little better at lifting

around the time of the um backyard meet of the century and i always wanted to go out to that but they stopped doing it and i guess that kind of transitioned to the rebar record breaker so right maybe i did do that one technically um yeah i've never been to a uh one of the pioneer ones i'd like to do one of them because they always turned out pretty good i did do the um ipo worlds in vegas which is like you uspas whatever international thing yeah i just thought it'd be cool to go to las vegas so i did that and you cover the rest of them there's a meet on open power lifting that says like australia but that's not me okay it's in there somewhere so what uh of all those uh i don know, maybe it's tough to pick one, but what was the coolest experience

of all those? I think it was the showdown. That was the most fun I've had at a meet just because of circumstances with Joe. In Kansas City. Okay, yeah, we were there watching that. Yes, it was awesome. And that was fun for me. The Hawaiian Bros restaurant down the street. Fucking love that.

Have you heard us talk about Hawaiian Brosian bros because we loved we loved hawaiian bros too yeah yeah i went there for lunch and i want to go back we got it delivered yeah we always got it delivered when we were there so good yeah that's that's the shit yeah the uh ufc was in kansas city like a few weeks ago and i was watching on tv and i'm like next time go there, I should just go to that event just so I can go to the Hawaiian Bros. Yeah, that was one of the best parts. But when you and Joe had that squat back and forth, there's a few electric moments of that meet,

but that was as good as any of it when that was going on. That's one of the most memorable things of that entire weekend to me. People like us standing on our chairs in the back to be able to see what's going on. It was pretty cool. Yeah, I've never really had a head-to-head experience like that. I'll be completely honest. On paper, for that meet, he should have blown me out of the water.

My training wasn't that great. But that day, it was just there and took advantage of it so it's like the old saying goes it'll be there on meat day right yeah i mean i tell myself that sometimes and it's definitely not but yeah actually the one time i really had a good training cycle was not this year's ghost but last year's ghost like everything went perfect and that was one of the worst like performances i ever had on the squat yeah but it wasn't there on meat day it was not there on me day uh so with your you and joe uh chasing that squat back and forth and you know it was a big deal big deal at that meet and even before and after and since then.

Would you say, do you have a friendly rivalry with him, or does he piss you off? Both. Not because it's him. So I guess if we had to rewind a little bit, I did that Raw unity meet in 2015. And I was like a blown up fat two 42 squad, seven 27,

miss seven 49. And I was just like, I think I'm going to drop away class and try to break down a green's record. And it was seven 83 at the time. So like saying that out loud, it's pretty fucking stupid. Cause I was only four months later,

but I pretty much just only thought about that for the next like four months and did everything I could to do it. I did it. And then I missed the pier, broke it. And then I pretty much stopped going to two 20. Cause I was just fat. Then finally I was like,

all right, I'm gonna do this one more time. And then I did. And that's what you saw. And now I've just been trying to get it back. And I plan on going head to head with joe at the american pro this year that uh is virginia or where yeah virginia and that sounds like that is like the venue or the the power lifting meet for putting on a spectacle yeah i wasn't there last year i was thinking about going to spectate but but it's a pain in the ass to get there.

You have to fly to, it looks like Washington DC and drive an hour away to wherever it is in Virginia. So I just watched on YouTube. That speaking of being a meets being a pain in the ass to get to, you know, we've got one coming up in July in Western Northeast, South Dakota.

If you're looking for a interesting road trip, a couple of flights. I already go out fly. No, definitely not drive. coming up in July in western northeast South Dakota if you're looking for an interesting road trip. A couple flights. If I were to go, I would fly. I would definitely not drive. Western, eastern, north. Maybe next year. Are you guys going to do it again?

We'll see how this goes. I mean, you know how it goes. You always want it to be bigger and better, but we've got to at least get one under our belt first. And if it goes like we hope it does, I'd probably be crazy to think we won't do it again. No, I'd love to make it out to that. Like, so in the beginning of the show you talked about, I've been supporting you guys for a long time. I always tend to purposely support the companies that give back to powerlifting, put out content. You guys keep me entertained consistently. you put a podcast out every monday i listen to most of them and

shit you post on the internet it's funny sometimes i'll give you guys my money then you got companies that just show up release some shirts and it's like all right well i'm not gonna go above and beyond to line your pockets, you know? Right. Yeah, you're wearing the Blue Ribbon Powerlifting tank. Yeah. I did it on purpose. Yeah. There we go.

We were just talking about bringing that one back sometime. We haven't had that one for sale for a while. We might have to do that. Yeah, this is the type of beer my friends used to drink when we were young because it was the cheapest yeah but now you know hipsters drink that beer it's cool to drink uh pbr now really yeah well i don't know if tommy's that right i might just be talking i think it kind of went in a phase like it was definitely uh it was getting hyped up for a while and i feel like that hype's died down a little bit on PBR lately. I'm not one of those beer nerds, but it always, like, maybe it's you guys. I don't understand the people that act like they like IPA beers.

I don't like it. I don't mind. To me, it's like this. It's like, you know, it's super carbonated, and there's, like, weird flavors going on. It's like seltzer. Like, that's what you have. It's way different. I mean, I get that.

Yes, I get that. It's like that. But it's just, I don't't know it's something weird for your taste buds i think that's why i like it yeah like i will go drink a fucking mango white claw before i have some ipa to look cool in front of the guys at the bar i would also probably rather have a mango white claw i could drink it i can drink an ipa or two and then i'm like yeah i don't really like this anymore but my wife fits into that category and I give her shit all the time. I just think she likes the most expensive beer. It's like that one's $12 a glass.

Mmm. I can already tell it's delicious. I will say the thing with IPAs though, is there is, I think as far as beers and I'm not a beer snob by any means. I mean, I will drink anything. I don't care. It does not bother me. But, um, I think with ipas especially warm enough

get at the right temp uh what uh ipas especially there's like a huge range of like okay there's things that taste like more fruity light beers and you probably wouldn't know it's an ipa and then there's like really crazy stuff that's like 12 and like it has so much stuff going on so there is a range if you can find something that you like in there then it fits a little better see i like the fruity beers i mean i guess i'm just a fruity guy and i'll go to some restaurant and i'll just read it'll say something like citrus or whatever on it in order and drink oh this tastes like shit i go back look at the menu i got that stupid aftertaste in my mouth i'm like oh, oh, it's a fucking IPA beer. There goes eight bucks.

Well, then it must not be meant to be $13.50 down the drain. I'll just reorder a strawberry daiquiri or something. That will fail. Yeah, so talking about meats, you run meats of your own, right? I mean, how many have you run and put on, or how many do you do a year usually? So I opened my gym at the end of 2020. First meet was June, 2021.

I did two in 2021, I guess, technically five in 2022. That is a lot. Yeah. Yeah. So in 2022, we did a meet called coins for a cause. It was a push pull. I had to put it in the back of my gym, like in the parking lot. And that was just to raise money for a local, like weightlifting team for a cause it was a push pull i had to put in the back of my gym like in the parking lot and that was just to raise money for a local like weightlifting team for a middle school and we raised ten thousand dollars dang we got stationed yeah and then june's our like

annual showcase super classic and then august i put on a weekend meet day one was a is for the youth teenagers and juniors we had no juniors it was all teenagers or under and the next day we did something called the master showdown i think it was called the master showdown it was master master showcase and that was 40 plus now you're speaking our language old dudes yeah all those old dudes they fucking show up because you can get those state records and all those medals i made the mistake of for because i know how the masters guys like the records i made the mistake of making it where if you break or set a state any any record in the federation i should have went and looked at how many vacant fucking records they were i paid out so much money to

those guys yeah yeah i mean pretty much everything we made from the door the prior day for the youth meet went to them it was a big day too because we had a charity event for a local um like a rescue a pet rescue so like i did squat i squatted 500 for reps uh riley press no bench, no, 135 for reps. And we had someone, Brett, do a deadlift. And we had a bunch of companies match like dollar for pound. And we raised like five grand for them. So it was a really big turnout just locally.

And this year we're going to put on two meets. So do you have any advice for us? So we are bringing, I guess to clarify, you know, we brought in a meat director, Big Dave out of North Dakota. He runs several meats a year, so we're not even really direct. He's facilitating a lot of that stuff for us, so that I think is a great move for us, simplifies some of that stuff that we don't have to worry about. But do you have any other good advice that comes to your mind on running a meet? Well, since you have a meet director, if anyone complains, just blame him.

That's one. He, yes. But really, I say one thing that I'm fortunate enough to be is around a whole bunch of lifters that have been around for a long time. So in Florida, there's a whole bunch of like trevor jaffe and we had who riley another girl melissa just we can hit the shane holler craig foster they're all around me so i could have them come at any minute and just help out so like alexis she's come down you guys know alexis alexis now. Used to be a Cisherman. Alexis fan on Instagram.

I don't know if I do. Yeah. I look her up, I guess. Okay. But she comes to everyone, but now she starts lifting at them. So now I need to replace her, basically. And yeah, so all those people, they make it a smooth process. I get all the credit, which is cool.

But yeah, my mom runs the score table with another girl annie and they kill it once they figured out the system and i have a very good amount of people from my gym that help with the whole um setting up breaking down so i know i kind of just rambled there but the moral of all that bullshit was if you have a good staff and like support around you it's going to go really smooth and that's what we tried to do yeah we've tried to like don't be those guys that send out a facebook post the night before the meeting but hey we need a spotter and loader to buy pizza we actually already we've already you know we're still months several a few months out we've already even paid the spotter and loader crew that's coming in to run it so we're like we want we want that stuff to uh and we're like yeah i mean we're getting sponsors like why we pay them a little bit and make it worth their time

and uh uh obviously it's going to be part of the of our meeting i think part of the draws is just going to be fun so like people might want to some people like that might want to come but yeah that's we're trying to cover our basis on stuff like that. Dan was supposed to do your meet, right? Yeah. So that's, you know, obviously you've seen what Dan has said. Who knows what his future holds? I think, I think there's a pretty good, I think, I mean, what he said is he still wants

to come and hang out. I don't think he's going to, I don't know if he's going to lift. He hasn't said he's not, I kind of assume he's not, but maybe he'll come and just take a couple, a couple lifts for the hell of it. I could see Dan, Dan will do whatever the hell he wants to do. You know, as long as he comes for the party, I don't even care if he lifts like the after parties, half the battle, you know, three fourths of it for us. So, I mean, I'm sure he'll probably show up if he said he was going to, I mean, like he did my meet last year and he did another local meet i think right after mine or right before and his whole big like i've heard him talking podcasts about and he's

even told me he just likes to go support people that yeah give back to the sport so yeah and he's been cool he's been uh a good supporter of us for several years and stuff so that's awesome and yeah you should carpool with the florida people actually dan uh uh lindsay uh loves to lift or lindsey gray she's uh she did my december meet okay she's from that same area yeah yeah she's signed up too so you can just maybe you know just go away in their uh check bags or something that you can get here. Yeah, I'll just not do that. I'll just book my own flight.

July, what's the weekend? July 22nd. Shit, I might be able to do that. Hey, keep it in mind. Keep it in mind. Yeah, your gym, you know, over the last year, you've been through some, like,

I don't know. What could you tell the story of what you've had to go, go through with your, with your gym? Um, well, I opened it up because I know this isn't what you're referring to, but I opened it up because the whole COVID shit pretty much made the gym.

I worked at go bankrupt. They closed us down. I opened the gym I worked at go bankrupt. They closed us down. I opened the gym the next week or whatever. Fast forward to September, 2022 hurricane. What was that hurricane called? I don't know. I was actually trying to think of that earlier today when I was,

you know, thinking about hurricane Ian. Okay. There you go. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That came. And it's funny. i was at the gym that morning and usually seven and four in my whole life

hurricanes come and everyone's like freaking the fuck out and i'm just i'm that guy's guy we'll be fine like we like meyer has only been hit hard by one that was charlie back in 2004 and i was like they all say they're gonna come this way whatever actually do you remember uh hurricane irma was in like um i don't know if it was like 2019 i was in port charlotte 2017 yeah 20 i was in port charlotte uh when hurricane irma because you're from really you're from port charlotte right north port same same thing basically right yeah why are we in port charlotte uh my in-laws lived there during the uh uh winters and i've been there i haven't been there for several years i always figure if i or maybe three years i've when i go back i'm going to look you up and come check out the gym now that you're there but yeah so i i come every so many years so i'll eventually be there and get to

check out the gym so good but we had to evacuate to uh atlanta i don't know yeah yeah it missed us yeah um yeah i hung out by my cousin's house he he actually just i think bought or built a house and it was like vacant i had like air mattress there just because my home is a older one so i went there and nothing happened we just got a lot of rain and I left the next day and that's kind of what I thought was going to happen for Hurricane Ian but no it just wrecked us I got flooded in my house um the gym obviously got destroyed like the roof pretty much collapsed in the building and then that was fixed so are you in the same location? Yeah. Okay. So what was it like?

What was the timeline like? Say the hurricane came through on whatever night of the week it was. So were you able to be at the gym like the next day to see what it was like there? Was it like a week until you could even get there? What was that so the day after i asked um actually had a few people reach out to me and tell me the gym was fine right because they kind of just looked in the window and like oh it looks good whatever and then one guy his name's eric he's like oh the gym's like destroyed he's like there's water like he made it sound like it was flooded like this high up and i don't think it ever was and maybe i just misinterpreted what he texted me and then i had to go the next day because i was flooded in so i'd actually go through the woods

and get to a main road and someone from my gym picked me up in their truck and we all went there and it was pretty fucked up um but actually, no, I'm missing the part. The day before I went out, so the day that I was totally got fucked up, the girl I told you about, Alexis, she was a few times over. She made it down there with some people from her town. And they went in the gym and just cleaned everything up and bagged everything up and saved all the plates and stuff from rusting. Then I got there and I just saw how fucked up it really

was and then i thought just on the condition of the building that i was going to have to definitely find a new location but we were able to fix it in about two months so was the gym closed for a couple months or yeah yep so luckily there's a few gyms around me so there's a commercial gym and there's another strength-based gym called rhino gym in port charlotte and then my friend chad he's got a whole separate building next to his house that's just a gym and a lot of us went there a few other people went to the other two gyms so we're still still able to train and like keep our training up so that was good so were you able equipment like damage beyond repair were you able to salvage all the equipment none of the equipment was really damaged the only i think this is funny so

the kabuki deadlift bar i just bought it that's the only one that rusted up. And of course that was the one that was like fucking six or 700 bucks. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, there's that. But the other, the stuff that got damaged was like the belts and some of the banners,

they got really wet and all that, but everything was salvageable. Yeah. That's good. Yeah. How about from like your members, uh, like in you running the gym, you know, you said you got to like, did people continue to pay their membership and stuff over that?

They did. I would say I had less than five people asked me to pause it or cancel it. So that really helped me like fix the gym because obviously I didn't pay rent during that time because the whole building was screwed up and they're pretty aware of what happened so i got a little bit of a break there but the money coming in from the memberships was able to help me pay for the repairs um trevor jaffe started to go fund me for me like which was weird i mean because i've always like made fun of that and then i ended up raising i think that's a legit you know like there's like levels of uh what you have a go fund me for you know and like that's a real yeah like reason to have from a natural disaster yeah the

way i the way i justify that is like i feel like i could make it happen like maybe i would just took out a small loan or something and but the thing is what i really appreciate about the go fund me was in my opinion that kind of kept together like the whole community my gym is because really like everyone's a smaller gym but we still have almost 200 members but everyone like pretty much knows each other and our friends and they kind of just kept them together rather than making them disperse for good. And chances are a lot of them probably wouldn't continue lifting if they didn't have that type of environment. So I was happy about that.

Yeah, that's cool. Uh, it seems like you're getting new equipment and different stuff all the time. What, uh, when it comes to running the gym, what's your favorite thing to spend money on,

and what's your least favorite thing to have to spend money on at the gym? Obviously, the favorite thing is equipment. It's kind of fun for me, too, because I get a lot of it on Facebook Marketplace. I'm a fan of these. I'm not really a machine guy too much, but I'm a fan of the older machines because they just all seem to work better than the newer like arsenal stuff. We did get a big piece, the pendulum squat from Atlantis. One of my members actually bought it for the gym as a gift.

So that was very generous. Tanner, you got to work on the members you got up there. Yeah. We need more, more to be fair. There's people that have chipped in some stuff but maybe not that level of piece of equipment yeah yeah so favorite thing is definitely the equipment and my least favorite thing is the nickel and dime shit like toilet paper like yeah and i got a lot of women at my gym like i said i had about 200 members probably

70 percent are females and they all have to wipe both times when they go to the bathroom. You want to be like, can some of you just shit at home before you come too? Shit, piss, because, again, I guess they have to wipe their fronts too, right? Women. Yeah, got to keep those UTIs away. I like the paper towels because I'm always running out of them. The hand soap. I'm always yelled at weekly, like i'm missing something from the bathroom and there's a public's right up the

street and public's is very expensive compared to other places so if i'm in a rush i'm spending even more money yeah yeah but okay um so with the gym like is one more thing on the meats that i was thinking are is it fun running meats i mean do you enjoy it is it stressful or is it fun or is it just a combination of all that yeah so i'm in a weird spot so obviously preparing for the meat and doing all the back end work that's a little stressful because you have to keep everyone's name on the spreadsheet track the payments get the divisions right put it in the open lifter program and i'm sure i could delegate some of that but maybe it's partly me being a control freak but at the same time if something gets fucked up i want it to be something i could fix like on the spot because i know i messed up then like figuring it out. The stressful part also is just always worrying about like the staff,

like in the lifters and everything's worried about everyone else. I actually had a dream last night. It's funny you say that, that it was a Friday night. The meet was a Saturday. And for some reason I forgot to transport all the equipment. So I was scrambling to do that by myself woke up in the middle of the night in a panic and you're like i can't sleep the rest of the night yeah and then the fun part is just the actual meet itself i mean i think i run a pretty good meet in terms

of it being fun for people i get food trucks trucks coming out. I always have a good venue, loud music and everyone just seems to vibe well there. I've never said that word vibe out loud before. Sounds pretty stupid. Um, but yeah, there's that and a lot of lifters from my gym to the meat too. So it's just seeing them all compete as well. And I do coach a lot of them too. So really big multitasking. Yeah. Have you ever done one of your meets? Like, is that possible? No, I would definitely not do that.

The only thing I've done at a meet was, or one of my meets was that one I told you about for the charity. So like in between everyone, I just squatted the 501 for reps and then went back to doing my job. Yeah. That's cool. Big Jordan, since you listen to the podcast, you probably know about overrated, underrated. But just in case someone's tuning in for the first time, we'll explain it anyways. We've got this little game we like to play with every guest,

and we've got a special Big Jordan set of topics for you. And you have your druthers to elaborate as much or as little on each one you can vibe with it however you want to you just have to remember uh that you have you can't ride the line you got to decide if each one is like one of these is going to be about chinese food don't spoil anything play the game are you i don't know i'm just guessing are you looking at our cheat sheet i am not i'm just guessing okay all right uh overrated underrated toyota tundras overrated really like i have one i like it but the best thing about it is the the front camera so like you got a camera on the front

the sides in the back but i'll say it's a little overrated for the price tag but i think any vehicle is once you start driving it that's uh i agree with that any truck especially yeah the yes oh yeah i will say for like so i'll just say the truck was, I think 62, the other trucks, like the GMCs, I feel don't look as cool as mine. Yours does look really cool. Yeah. And like, I have, it's funny. Like I always go to the store or gas station or whatever. It was like, Oh, you got that TRD pro stuff.

And I'm like, I don't know what the fuck that means, but apparently it's awesome. I've never driven off road in my life. Not on purpose at least, but you could, if you wanted to. So the options that I have to press certain buttons that I have in the car or in the truck, but I don't know what they mean. So, okay. Good answer. Overrated or underrated Wong from Marvel. Dude, I don't even know what that is it's have you ever seen doctor strange i have but i didn't pay attention because it was stupid as fuck i did not like it very boring strange is not a very good one yeah i've watched some of the avengers

movies and i've seen bits and pieces of a lot of them but I'm the guy that's like so he hears you gotta stay for the credit so I stay for the credits and I don't know what that means like I don't get it yeah I'm a terrible Asian not a good superhero nerd or any of that shit so well and this guy this guy's name is even Wong so yeah you're not not holding up that one very good so by default we're going to say that you have to say that one's overrated because you've never even never even heard of them i would agree with overrated just because dr strange as like a standalone movie is overrated at a certain point it's like not all these people need their own movie like some of these aren't

good uh stories yeah like i was watching it remember it. I just kind of tuned out. I was like, I can't follow it. I don't get it. Yeah, I think that's strange. Yeah. It was very strange. I probably got a good guess on your answer to the next one because it's been hit on a couple times here already. But overrated or underrated Publix?

I'll say underrated. I talk shit about the prices, but it's the best grocery store you're going to go into. What's good about them? I don't think they exist in this part of the country. No, I mean they're big in Florida and around there, but not up here. We don't have them.

There's two big reasons why they're good. One, their subs are great. And two, it's not walmart uh that's like that's really like it sounds like a joke but i will like pay more money to not go to walmart yeah i hate walmart um i'm just thinking uh out loud uh what uh like if you probably know this and uh what is it punta gorda is if you go like across the bridge from port charlotte is that uh the town that's across the bridge yeah okay have you ever been to the celtic ray before it's like yeah i've been there okay is that overrated or underrated i've been there overrated because they all got that like nerd beer i don't know about that's true that is right yeah yeah okay what about i think what about gators have you ever been there like it's a wing spot uh

in i've never been there but i think my mom used to talk about their wings. Yeah. It was either there or Boomers, but I think it was Gators, but I don't think I've ever been there. Okay. I wouldn't want to be a bar called Boomers right now. No one under 50 is coming in. I don't even know if they're still around. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Last topic here for you, overrated or underrated, uh, American Chinese food. You guessed it. You guessed the last, uh, you knew what it was already. I mean, it's really good. Uh, I guess I'll say on, I don't know. Um, I can't write the line. Yeah. It's all we think out loud American Chinese food so that means you're not getting dog, you're not getting cat you're getting General Tau's chicken

which is probably low quality chicken but it tastes really good but everyone eats it anyways it is good maybe some sesame chicken maybe orange chicken I'm going to say underrated because you have those

people that act like they're all dirty gross restaurants even if they are just taste the food yeah taste the food and tell me you don't like it because i can't like there's a cockroach on the wall have you had a good egg roll before it's fucking good like i'm not gonna pass that up funny story my the only reason why i live here is my so my father's the chinese one my mom was the the yellow hunter she's the white one and they moved here from upstate new york and new jersey to open up the first chinese restaurant in north port called the china walker so they had the first american chinese restaurant awesome yeah now there's like fucking 50 of them but do they still have i mean is that still uh no they sold it when i was like 11 and they went and got like college degrees and shit does your dad did he have like the the restaurant menu and then like oh we're gonna

make good chinese food at home and he had a different menu for that not really so like he would always get he'd make me like noodles and stuff for the china like the chinese food at home um i had four cats growing up and he never killed any of them fed them to me so i was lucky there because i really loved. But other than that, just the noodles are good. I think good ham fried rice from a good Chinese restaurant is so good. I could eat that by the five-gallon bucket. Do you know the Panda Inn? What was it, Port Charlotte? No, I don't think so. was in port charlotte oh no i don't think so that was a there's all you can eat chinese buffet and they failed like every health inspection ever and closed down but it was so good like

hey i would still eat there knowing who's the uh big bodybuilder that had a gym in uh port charlotte maybe he still does he's like a he's almost kind of less like uh yeah there you go yeah he's friends with hulk hogan yeah yeah yeah he's buddies with hulk hogan that's what it is yeah yeah yeah actually one of his best friends comes to my gym and owns um the hurricane shutter company actually tropical storm protection well yeah so mel he lives in north port had the gym in port port Charlotte. And I never really went to that gym, but I do believe when he owned it, that was like the most popular gym in port Charlotte because he was there.

Does he still have that? Or is that, uh, no, he sold it to some people. Is it still in that same location? Yep. Yeah.

So actually in that same Plaza, there's a CrossFit gym and that's where I put on a lot of the powerlifting meets that I hold. Okay. So around the other end. Yeah, I was actually put on a lot of the powerlifting meets that I hold. Okay. So we're on the other end. Yeah. I was actually is crazy. One of the years I was there,

I was eating out at a restaurant and that dude walked in and I'm like, obviously into lifting and stuff. And I'm like, I didn't talk to him, but I'm like, Holy shit. Who is this dude? And then I went to a gym to get a day pass like the next day.

And I'm like, ah, it's this, this guy owns the gym. And then I looked him up and he, I don't know if he is a former like IFBB pro or what uh but he has the look of it for sure yeah I don't know his bodybuilding background but I do know if you like continue to google him he was like a convicted felon hell's angels guy okay that's now like not that and like I think he's very religious and he puts them in a lot of, um,

bodybuilding shows in town now. Okay. So he's a big promoter of bodybuilding. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, we're getting kind of all, if anyone listened to this is from a port Charlotte,

they're going to be super excited about all the North. I don't think anyone's from my gym. Yeah. Yeah. They'll check it out. Oh, we didn't know there was going to be so much Northport talk in this. Yeah, that's good. Good news, it looks like

you passed overrated, underrated. Oh, good. I was hoping for more. Well, we usually just do more for this. Tanner threw a couple bonus ones in there even. Yeah, you're kind of cheating, like knowing all of them before we even... One of them was very obvious.

Look at these eyes. You, usually like very obvious. Yeah. Look at these eyes. You read us like a book. Yeah. What, what style tattoo art is that on your arm there? I don't know. He just drew shit on it. It's the, I guess technically it's like Polynesian.

Then I got one of the cats that I have that died. Yeah. I'm that died. Yeah. I'm that guy. What's the cat's name? Midnight. Ah, good name. She's dead now.

Yeah. Well, I think I, uh, I thought I saw a couple of things on your Instagram page about cats. Anyways, too. So are you,

do you like dogs too? Or are you just more of a cat, cat guy? So I just always had the cats growing up so i guess i just was a cat guy by default but in my current life like i like dogs i don't think i it's funny i say this to have a fucking child but i'm not around enough to take care of a dog take it out to eat i mean they're talking to you take it out to shit yeah like with my daughter like i split the custody with her mom it's pretty much 50 50 but also she's at daycare in school all

day so right like yeah and also when you yeah when you have kids though too it is way you're like the pets you're like oh yeah it's hard yeah yeah you're like yeah i don't have a lot of time uh yeah we'll see how everything shakes out today and if we're lucky yeah it's hard yeah yeah you're like yeah i don't have a lot of time uh yeah we'll see how everything shakes out today and if we're lucky then it's your turn yeah so to get her to shut up sometimes i facetime santa there's like a youtube video where like you can facetime oh yeah whatever so every time he's like oh what do you want for christmas she's like a puppy i'm like shut the fuck up because is your daughter about five ish or somewhere in there she'll be four in august okay yeah we've we've both got kids about that same age so we get it too

yeah you might have to try that santa trick oh it works we usually like santa's more of a threat like you know if you don't uh no i've been, too. I'm like, do you want me to call Santa? Like, pick your shit up. She's like, don't call Santa. I'm like, it's May. I'm going to do this for a couple of weeks. At least for the next four years. No, shit, because I know what month it is.

Yeah. Awesome. Yeah, we really appreciate you coming on. We got to talk about getting you to Western Northeast South Dakota, one of these, if not this year, maybe next year. And when I'm down in Florida next, I'm going to look you up and come. You can teach me how to squat wide. Okay.

You don't have to look me up. Just message me on Instagram. I think you should look you up. I'll text you. I like your vibe. So I think we can make something happen. Anything you want to get out there? Well,

like how do people check out the gym or if they want you to coach you, anything like that? Yeah. So my, can you to contact me? My Instagram is Wong, W O N G strong S T W O N G. The gym's name is showcase strength and fitness.

It also has an Instagram called showcase strength and fitness. makes sense i had a website i let the domain expire so i don't have a website anymore and i didn't really know how to update it anyways because i'm a fucking idiot and yeah that's about it awesome um all the information for the powerlifting meets i put on are on both of those instagrams. And that's it. All right. Good stuff. Thanks, Jordan.

We appreciate it. Thanks a lot, Jordan. Thank you. I'll see you later. Yeah. Cut him off. Now that he's gone,

we can finally talk shit about him. I got some Florida cool beans. Yeah. They're probably, we didn't ask him about the weather but those beans probably aren't those beans probably aren't all that cool and uh probably getting warm this time of year yeah well it's worth talking about um well that was fun first of all i knew jordan would be a fun guy to have on but uh uh we're trying the last two episodes this one and with Big Laws last week, we actually did the, I don't know if we talked about this,

we actually did the interview via Zoom. So we are on video with Laws and now this week Big Jordan. Last week we weren't recording video on it. We're trying recording video on it this week. So if you check out the YouTube or even if you don't, check video on it this week so we'll see yeah so if if you check out the youtube or even if you don't check out the youtube this week there might be jordan's face on the video if this works like we think it potentially could be working um at the very least this is still the the excellent uh audio and video presentation that we bring each week

but possibly there's potential that jordan's video may be a part of the youtube now also yeah as soon as we found out that you could record the audio track separately in zoom it was like oh that option opens up a whole new world yeah and some of this stuff it is just and we talked about it more a lot of times with this uh distance podcasting it has just been over time figuring out these other things like little there's no manual on this shit no there's not there's not and there's so many different alternative minor different ways to do everything it's like this doesn't work with our setup this does you know and like we it is a process of figuring this out over time and just

when you think no i think we got it all figured out we got it optimized it's like well looks like we actually could do this and try you know try that you could ask 50 different people that do remote podcasts how they do it and i'm fairly certain you will get 50 very different answers yeah there is just no consistent it's it's whatever works for you and your audience and your editing and and there's just so many different and not even that your guests too there's just so many pieces to it that it's yeah that's part of it then too so even if um the video of it works out and we can put uh our guests you know jordan's video on youtube it might not be like that every time because we have some guests that uh struggle we have some guests that struggle to answer the some guests that struggle to answer the phone. So asking them to get into Zoom is a big ask.

But that's also why, for anyone listening last week and this week, you might notice just at the very start of our guest and the very end of our guest, it feels slightly different than the timing of when it's on our typical phone call because there's not as much of a, like, yes, I hung up the phone right now. Zoom, anyone, if you've ever done a Zoom meeting, you know there's always that buffer of a like yes i hung up the phone right now like zoom anyone if you've ever done a zoom meeting you know there's always that buffer of like waiting for someone to get in and they're in and they're waiting to turn their camera on and their microphone and that whole thing

so it's probably like but you know it's as a listener it's like it may be like a two or three seconds you might not even hardly notice there's any difference but that is why there's a different well that's what's going on right here. And it is fun doing the interviews like that, I think. Like after these last two weeks, I'm like, it is a different vibe. There's a different element to it. Yeah, otherwise you kind of, you sort of just get in a daze and then you're just kind of like, it's like when you listen to a podcast,

you might just be picturing in your head what that person is maybe doing or saying, whereas this is like, no, you're actually looking right at them and seeing what they're doing right and you see when you say something if they're smiling or uh you know you there's like just that the non-verbal feedback that you get that you don't get i mean the other way still works just fine we've had some great conversations that way too but this is a interesting difference you know it is interesting to try this out like this yeah this could be this could be the next big thing tanner this just also do make sure another reason to be subscribing to our youtube channel though right i mean absolutely if you're not you're just a big big dumbass at this point a big stupid old dumbass big old hairy dumbass uh and not to mention all the gym hacks we have going on our youtube all the

time god special cameo in this week's video by larry legend uh don't miss that tuned so you didn't you said there's no real big uh new juicy commercial gym news that's just been a little slower no not really it really is pretty slow this time of year. No, at this point, I have gone at noon enough that I, for the most part, don't even really get that surprise when I see people come in there. For the most part, I recognize all the faces. Like, yeah, I've seen you a lot. I have seen a couple different people in the last week or two wearing, they look like athletes and they're wearing

mathematics gear they're wearing clothing that uh correlates to one of the large colleges in the couple hundred mile radius and it's like okay yeah you're probably a basketball player uh you clearly look like you play football you're the end so you're getting i think some more of those like you know college is kind of winding down here so probably some of those coming home or just on a little break but i that's about all i've noticed really did you see i think i made a might have sent you a snap today the exciting news that maxomics gym this week was a little change of programming on the on the gym television did you yeah how are you i'm curious how you're doing that down there. Pretty advanced stuff now, but I do have YouTube on the TV now via Roku Stick.

Okay. I was wondering if that's what you did or not. Never done that before. I've always thought about it. The other day, I'm like, why don't I just try that out? They are like $30. They're so cheap. It's crazy how cheap those things actually are. Well, I thought about the TV itself even.

I'm like this shitty, like this TV we have in there is at least 15 years old. I bought it new and it's, it's really small. It's got a funny line in the center of it, but it's got a thick bezel. Those don't exist anymore. But I also like it's part of the,

cause I'm like, it is part of the charm is that it is old. Yes. Right. And that's what I'm like. I could go buy a brand new TV, probably a 10 times bigger one for like $300. But I'm like,

kind of when I started, it's funny when I started the gym, I specifically did not want any TV. Oh, we talked about it. We talked about it. Yeah. That was of like a hard and fast rule. I'm like,

cause that was part of what I didn't like at the Y is like, this TV is way different. It's not playing the weather channel and the nightly news. hard and fast rule i'm like because that was part of what i didn't like at the wise but this tv is way different right it's not playing the weather channel and the nightly news and that's why i don't want people standing around watching sports center and the news yeah that's like i'm like that's the wrong vibe for our gym in my opinion uh so that's why when we did add it it was all just like the gimmick was just uh dvds on repeat which i still think is the funnest and funniest but a spin-off of that now it's on uh right now it's on the massonomics youtube uh competitions playlist um do we have a playlist actually okay yeah and there's maybe like 14 15 videos and it's mostly all competitions from like 2015 to 2019 a lot of guys are gonna like that uh even just today like i got it going before

i started my lift and then you know you kind of go to the other side of your left hand and i once i came back over i was like oh what is on there and then i was like it caught me like three times and i'm like oh that is so interesting and then like seeing some of the people i'm like god i've almost like forgot about that person by now and uh yeah it was uh it's really i think it's it's i mean obviously i'm gonna like it but i think it's a fun twist for a while it was like one of those it was it was like the massonomics party we had that was above the gym that one year remember and we just turned on it's the same thing the party started and on the tv we put the mass economics competition playlist and like when the night started we were kind of talking and everything and then

later on we're all just sitting around no one's really talking we're all just watching the competition it's so it's interesting because it is like because then you're like oh yeah look yeah oh ryan look what you do right here oh, I didn't remember this. You start going down memory lane, and it gets really fun. Actually, like the meet came on where we tell the story about how you were sick. And I'm like, oh, yeah, that was when Tommy had the shits. And there he is. And you missed your third attempt squat or something. I'm like, yeah, he had the shits and was just barely able to get squatting there.

And it is just funny to watch that. You know, I'm like, yeah, he had the shits and like, was just like barely able to get squatting there. Yeah. And it was, it is just funny to watch that. Um, I also thought about putting it on like the podcast playlist and then that doesn't work because our TV usually doesn't really even have volume. Right. Or it barely does. Yeah. You still can't hear it because the music's so loud.

Right. Right. But then I'm like, it's a funny thought because it would take like a month for it even to like get through, like playing 24-7, it would take like a month to actually get through the... That is good. Well, but you do have the option now to basically just throw it on Masonomics and see what it spits out at you.

So can you do that? Can you just say like... I mean, we could go to the channel and just make a playlist of everything. Yeah, right, right. But it seems like maybe you can do that though. Anyways, that seems like a... There probably is a way. I've never been so into someone's channel that I just wanted it to play 24-7.

So I don't have a ton of experience. It took me, you know, doing the vanity of it being our own channel to want to play it 24-7. Did you have something about Bar Bend in here? Yeah. Did you see the news regarding them? No. Oh, you didn't hear about this? No.

Is it actually big news? It's about them. It's not news by them. It's about them. Oh, I'm intrigued. I have suspicions just of my own. Oh, wow. Okay.

This isn't actually on their Instagram. It's on. Okay. And this is also very funny to me. So as someone that has been on the Bar Bend podcast twice. Yeah, you have been twice. That's on. Okay, and this is also very funny to me. So as someone that has been on the Bar Bend podcast twice. Yeah, you have been twice. That's right, yeah. And they've done multiple articles about us too.

Yeah, David Thomas Tao has interviewed me. Did you know that he's the co-founder of Bar Bend? I thought maybe something like that. I didn't know what his level was in there. No, I think I did know that. Okay, I know what his level was in there. No, I thought I, that's, I think I did know that. Okay. I did not know he was the co-founder, which is very funny to me, but he had a screenshot of a tweet, which is, that's all good.

All good news is on Instagram, a screenshot of a tweet, right? Some of my favorite. He posted this yesterday. That's right. he said in 2016 i co-founded barbend.com in 2022 we had over 31 million users and drove 19 million dollars in gross merchandise value we just got acquired so barbend got purchased pillar four i don't know who actually bought them i didn't i didn't look into it that far but um yeah interesting to to see that and then he also had uh i want to find disney oh it's honest okay so he said i did not realize this barbend it says has 18 full-time

employees would you ever guess that no i mean i assume that a few full-time employees but not that many and then it says they've published 10 000 articles and they must say i got like it says 800 000 in a like seed round funding in 2017 so i'm curious how much uh i would assume the buyout was fairly high yeah Yeah, I just sure, just I hope that... They keep it real? Well, yeah, this buyout doesn't negatively affect the massonomics attention that they divvy out. You know, they share memes, they get us on the podcast,

they do articles based on stuff we got going on. I like to think that someone, they get acquired and someone's going to do a deep audit. You know, they haven't, someone acquired them, but they didn't look into their social media at all. And now they're going to do like a deep audit and be like,

okay, yeah, we kind of see what you guys did with your social media. But what really stands out to us is occasionally you repost these Masonomics guys and those guys are solid gold. Yeah, what's their story? Are they for sale? Can we acquire them as well?

Can they become our sixth pillar? They are the missing pillar. We must acquire them. I like that. Yeah, interesting to see. I'd imagine barbed end, it is somewhat faceless. There's not faces to it in a way that a lot of other things are. So I can't imagine it'll change a whole lot from an outsider's perspective.

But yeah, it'll be interesting to see what happens with that whole thing. I've got something in here. Do you know what this, it's at the top of the list. I don't know if you're looking at the list, but do you know what, when you see that word, one word topic item, do you know what this uh it's at the top of the list i don't know if you're looking at the list but do you know what uh when you see that word one word topic item do you know what i'm going to talk about there stanley steamer stanley from the office flat stanley stanley kubrick stanley the manly all wrong oh okay so i'm curious if you know about this or not or if it'll be new to you i i do you know about this stupid ass uh stanley water bottle craze no well look up this uh i know what a stanley water bottle is yeah like a hydro flask right or yeah kind of yeah yeah um they're

everywhere um i have seen that uh i i have heard that they're somewhat popular i didn't we have like three that popped up in our household in like the last six months and uh you know it was a couple months ago for the first time i'm like stanley like like i just i just was thinking about it like this yeah i'm like why is stan like you know i assume it's the it's stanley tools the same brand uh why are they now like why do we suddenly have more of these than we do hydro flasks and uh what's the other popular one yeti um yetis also in our house we probably have god i don't know, 25 Hydroflask, Yetis, Stanleys. What did people do like 20 years ago? How did people have like piss warm water all the time? Like what containers did people put water in back then?

Because everyone has these things all over the place. A canteen, a canteen. Yeah. Like I guess it was just like igloo coolers. Probably, yeah. Okay, I don't think this Stanley is the same as the tool company. It's not? Okay, that's confusing to me.

I never looked into it. Yeah, so it does not appear that the Stanley, the thermos company has anything to do with tools from what I can see on their website. Okay. But, yeah, I didn't know that they had this modern because when you think until recently when you thought stanley you thought the old classic thermos you know yeah like that was what they had and then it was there's a regional sporting goods store around here called shields

and it's probably about a year ago they had those their thermoses but it had like this newer logo and it seemed a little sleeker and cooler and more modern i thought oh this is a this is a new look for them this is interesting and that was all i thought of it and then yeah like you said in the last couple months i've started to see it's especially with them it seems like the popular style is this more of the coffee mug thermos style, right? Well, the ones I see everywhere are they're like 40 ounces and they have a tapered bottom to fit in a cup holder and they have a straw built into the lid. Yeah, but it has like an actual mug stem thing to grab onto. But they're big.

They're really big. Every cubicle desk at my work that I walk by, that's what I noticed when we had a few of those. Then the next day at work, I walk by, that's what I noticed when we had a few of those. Then the next day at work, I'm like, everyone has that. There was one sitting on every desk. And like a year ago, it would have been a hydro flask or it would have been a Yeti. And now I was like, wait a second,

every desk has a Stanley on it. And I'm like, what happened to their Yetis? Those should be like lifetime indestructible products. I think what it is, I think it's a couple things here. And I think this is why this market works so good is, one, it's expensive. And so, but it's not like. It's $50. Yes.

I'm just looking it up right now. Yes. So it's expensive, but it's not like so expensive that people can't afford. You know, it's not like you're buying jewelry. No, you can just buy one. But it's a premium water. Like, if you want to buy water bottles, you can get a water bottle for a couple bucks or you can buy one for 50 which is significantly more expensive so it makes a good gift for

someone to say like hey i know there's a world of two dollar water bottles and you probably have some of them but i bought you a 50 one actually in the scheme of things i didn't spend that much money but you have the nicest water bottle you can get right you have you now have the nicest water bottle you might not have bought this yourself but and then yeah is that like water like my water my beverage hold like beverages are such a personal thing for people bubbly sparkling water you know and like beverages are such a everyone has like their little beverage and so then when you have this expensive little receptacle to hold your beverage in i think it's one of those things that it's like they're precious you know like people really really latch onto it and love it and so if you can keep feeding people

new expensive shapes and colors to put their beverages in they just got to keep buying them um they are not the same company stanley tools and stanley thermos you know stanley black and decker is a separate company uh and i'd never even looked at it to into it to that extent so that first of all makes a little more sense to me um also kind of confusing of the two prominent brands of the same name like that um that's a little a little bit i mean you're kind of not giving stanley steamer enough credit i don't think oh that's true uh well but i the only thing i think of when i see here stanley steamer is like taking a shit isn't that like uh yeah i don't like some weird sexual act i think it's a cleveland steamer okay but what about my point of this then though because you would agree everyone has a yeti

or a hydro flask or both at this point if you don't have a yeti a hydro flask or now a stanley i'd say you've done an amazing job avoiding trends in modern right but these are stainless steel almost like virtually like through normal wear and tear indestructible what happened to the yetis no that's that's the thing i'm saying this is it's just like it's gifting and it's just hoarding is what it is like it's those two things that's what it is it's gifting and hoarding yeah it's the my precious thing that's what it is. It's mine. It's fine. I need it. That's all it is. Yeah. I have, it's funny, thinking out loud, I've had three Hydroflasts in my life.

One of them I bought and lost. I actually lost that to Arnold one year. Two of the other ones were gifts to me. And then I have one Yeti of like the little short coffee mug that Yeti makes. And that was also a gift to me and then i have one yeti of like the little pump like the little short coffee mug that yeti makes and that was also a gift to me so i've got we've got i've got one of those at work yeah i do have one of those yeah i don't actually really like the flavor of coffee out of it that much i think i agree i like a ceramic mug way better for my coffee it does not i like i like the feeling the heft of it and holding it but i do not like the taste of coffee out of a stainless steel any actually i actually don't

know that i like the shape of that stainless steel handle either in comparison yeah i get what you're saying there i think it's like the novelty i think it's the novelty if it feels oh it's like metal and all this but i don't think coffee if i ever have a multiple tumblers coffee out of a metal tumbler i think is always not as good i my other thing about that is uh i don't keep like i drink a cup of coffee at a time and i don't keep it around for half of a day yeah and i don't need it to stay extra hot extra long like when i pour a cup of coffee i want to be able to drink it and when you put it inside of something stainless steel and if you put a cover on it i'm like this fucking thing stays hot for like oh you can't you have to leave the lid off because it's too hot

it's at the burning point for way too long and i don't keep my coffee around so long that i need it to stay hot for hours i'm like i'm drinking this cup of coffee the game i would get into is i'd take the lid off waiting for it to cool down and then i I'm like, I'm drinking this cup of coffee. The game I would get into is I'd take the lid off, waiting for it to cool down, and then I'd put the lid back on. Well, at that point, I'd waited too long. So then I've just locked in like lukewarm coffee at this point. And I also am notorious for like while I'm sitting here,

if I have a cup of coffee, preferably in the Masonomics mug back here, I'll pour, actually that one's the display. That's the display that's the display unit the other units in the cupboard don't put them in the dishwasher i do i put them in the dishwasher it held up surprisingly well for me i was having a conversation with the grant from the strength co the same way and he said his are perfect he puts it it's had no issues and um i think there's just some of those in the batch were bad yeah so it's just mine's getting a few

scuffs, but also it gets thrown into the bottom of the sink. And I do not, if I bought that from a store, instead of taking it out of inventory, I'd be like, well, yeah, if it's scratched, that's on me. I've given no care to that thing at all. But I will always pour a cup of coffee and okay, I'll sip on it.

The first five minutes 10 minutes are the best then it starts to cool down and i'll just be sitting here i'm like whatever i'll drink that coffee when it's three hours later when it's like totally at room temperature and no good it's like i don't even care anymore it's what i have to some people like coffee temperature matters big time yeah i'm not really one of them. I do not like how hot coffee is coming out. It's not drinkable. Burning hot, yeah, that's too much. I don't.

And a lot of times I'm drinking coffee as a pre-workout before the gym. I'll be at work and I'm like, all right, I'm going to have my coffee and then I'm going to go to the gym. And I'm kind of like, all right, I want to have my coffee now and then go to the gym. And I'm like, okay, all right, I'm going to want to have my coffee now and then go to the gym. And I'm like, okay, this is scalding. And I don't know. I'm sure we'll, I bet our beverage container discussion is offensive to some people that have other takes on this.

You know, I bet that there's, they have personal evidence to support the need for a vast collection of stainless steel containers. Yeah, I get why people like this stuff, but at the same time, I just usually don't care enough to actually. Yeah. I'll use a cheap old shitty thing and not think twice about, you know. I just so rarely take beverages like with me you know now that we got kids you get kids and a wife and you realize like how beverages need to be with you at all times right and i'm just like i for me beverages are a lot of the same way of you view a coat it's like oh it's just another thing to keep track of that's true given the option i will be

like it's like a coat your coat your sunglasses and your coffee thermos i'll put up with sunglasses all day but it's like no oh no oh something to drink now i'll just find a water fountain i don't want to carry this around and stuff it in here and have it in this bag and then it's in the car then i forgot it here and that's that's actually part of a bigger conversation that i have with my wife where her and i disagree on this is just drinking fluids habits in general. I hear her and I take a very vastly different philosophy to this. I will fill up a 30 ounce glass of water and my intention is to drink the water and I drink the water. And then exactly where this is going.

the water and i drink the water and then exactly where this is going so i don't need frequent sips all day long of water because i am hydrated from like i drink a large uh you know uh i drink significant amounts of water at a time so then i don't thirst for frequent constant sips of water i i 100 agree with you for me drinking water isn't unless it's a a little fizzy water right drinking water isn't like a recreational thing it's like a job it's like oh like the alarm goes off for thirsty and it's like all right i have to i'll put down yeah i have to stop the alarm which requires drinking like a minimum of eight ounces of water. Right. And then it's like, all right, the alarm has been, has been stopped. We're good for another couple hours.

Yeah. But also my philosophy is if I'm not going to the gym, my default state is usually like, nope, just don't get thirsty and don't drink. I could go like, okay, I need to wake up and eat some breakfast and drink some water.

But then like through the workday, I could go from eight until 5 p.m and not drink a single thing and i don't even know if i think about it honestly i don't drinking water is doesn't even like going to the gym is good though yeah going to the gym all right between it's almost like a thing to do between sets like to spend some time i'll go drink that's like the only time it catch me just sipping on water yeah but outside of that, I do that at the gym too. I always, I don't need to bring a 16 ounce bottle of water with me to just like gingerly sip on it over the next two hours. It's just not worth the hassle,

you know? I agree. But my wife, man, Oh, I'm so thirsty. I'm so thirsty. She'll get a bottle of water and literally drink two ounces of it.

She's like, Oh oh it's so much better like you didn't even drink anything you can't i haven't opened a bottle of water and drinking like a third of it in my life i don't think like i open a bottle of water and i drink the whole thing almost every time or if you go to a gas station on a trip i might buy a big one and drink like right half of it in five minutes cars right maybe are pacing yourself you know right but yeah day-to-day life yeah water it's if i'm getting grabbing a you know say we have a case of waters around and they're like the what is how many else is that like 12 or 16 yeah whatever they are 90 of the time if i open that i drink the whole thing

in one minute or less probably usually in like 30 seconds because i want a drink and that bottle contains a drink in it like i almost always drink that entire thing and then crush it and throw it away like i can't imagine opening yeah it's god intended right these frequent sips are like a pandemic on today's society i think yeah that's what the water fountain's for it's the little sip machine in the corner you go help yourself there you don't got to carry anything now the water fountain you do not get much water out of a water when you drink out of water good some are good you know yeah it's like it's like when you're in

high school you always knew like where the good water fountains were you know like true this is the one that's got the pressure on it and it's cold and good the worst thing in the world is having to like get your mouth really close like it just trickles out you're like okay this is horribly disgusting right now like i'm sucking the water out of here man we had a couple at our high school that were really bad ones that i'm like god replace like i'm like well it just reminds me when you're saying that of, you know, you go to different schools in the area, you know, for sporting events and things, and you'd see a whole range of upkeep and modernness on the drinking fountain systems. And yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about.

You get those really bad ones that there was just nothing there. We had one, I'm actually thinking about this now. We had one in our gym that people almost didn't use because it was so bad. But it's really funny. It was an in-the-wall water fountain. It was recessed in the wall. And it was white ceramic. It was very old.

It had to have been original to the school. It was like porcelain, isn't it? Yes, porcelain. But it was a two-part water fountain thing the one you stuck your head in and got and the other one people just would like spit in it yeah but that's what it was for wasn't it i think so but that's discussed that's like why did there need to be a spitter i remember our high school having the exact same thing it had uh yeah the white porcelain yeah the white porcelain and the second one was a spitter right one was a spitter and like some water would kind of like barely trickle down there as if it was like cleaning up all that i totally forgot about that um is i mean that was a spitting

like that was a spittoon like people don't make those anymore because that's gross right i'd be shocked they're like oh wait we don't need a separate one for just spitting. I'm trying so hard to Google this and find something. And the words I'm typing are drinking fountain spitter white porcelain. I would say old porcelain water fountain spitter in a school. The other one you should type in though tanner to take you down memory lane is type in the old lk drinking fountain e l k a y okay and you find some that's the the middle uh that's like the brain yeah yeah yeah yeah i saw i i saw me one day and it was there's like the more modern one that's kind of curved on the front yes and then there's they have a different one that's shaped more like

just a box and it the meme was something like it's 3 p.m at school you've been dying of thirst all day which one you going with um i hate the ones that are uh motion detected oh god those never work right yeah that technology is bad because i remember there was the buttons on the front but a lot of them there was a few different styles there was the button that was like right on the little spigot and then there was some that had like more of a push lever like you'd push the throttle kind of with your thumb forward do you remember that yeah like on the spigot there was like a twister i like those yeah there's like a button oh the button sucks the button put like where it was like a stainless steel button that you push down and it's like and at some point barely would push though like it's like push versus not push was like a 16th of an inch like

the push in was just so slight where the turn throttle that yeah you could really you could really cut her loose and go yeah that is was a much better uh uh control what about the old porcelain spitter water fountain is that a that's definitely a thing though but like why doesn't that come up at all when i google stuff like that? We're just probably not. I don't have the right words here. How about double porcelain water fountain? No, that's still not right. Or did you say drinking fountain?

Maybe that's what it needs to be. There's water fountain. I keep getting fountains. Yeah, in a garden. Right. No, these still aren't quite looking right. I did find one 1953 porcelain school drinking fountains oh here we go here we go 19 1953 porcelain school drinking fountains it's got they're not in the wall they've been taken out but there is the two-piece system yep

there it is that's it and that second one is just a spitter i think uh-huh oh isn't it or not or maybe this is just two of them and one doesn't have the spout on it but that's the right look of what i'm thinking yeah the other one it did have just like that spigot at the top where it would just sort of drip down right that's what you're yeah yeah that's what is that's what you remember too right yeah yeah like our our high school you know had the armory in it yeah oh yeah that's what is that's what you remember too right yeah yeah like our our high school you know had the armory in it yeah oh yeah there's definitely one in there yeah and that's how it was is it had uh which is that do all states do that or is that just like a south dakota thing

i don't know like the armory thing and like yeah like armory is attached to schools shared with the national guard armory i don't know it's a very common thing or used to be i think less common now i don't think people are doing you very common thing or used to be. I think less common now. I don't think people are doing, you know, that's, people aren't building things that way. Yeah, the National Guard kind of has its own spots now.

That was a really interesting second half of podcast discussion, I think. I think some people tune in almost specifically for what we talk about after the guest. I think some people are going to have a little trip down memory lane there. If she never had a porcelain spitter water fountain, she's too young for you, bro.

I mean, people were like hawking loogies in that at basketball practice. I thought it was gross then. I actually didn't spit in it because the whole thing grossed me out that I was like, see, we had in the, in the wrestling room, we had this one when I'm looking at the old LK lineup here,

it's the doubles where they're right next to each other. And one's like six inches. They're touching. But one's like six inches higher than the other. And it was also, it's like six inches too. It's like, yeah.

Yeah. One's for, I guess people that are six inches shorter than everyone else. Like, but they can't reach this one. That's three feet off the ground. Um, but that was always the thing in the wrestling room.

Don't spit on the sink. Cause everyone would, or don't spit in the fountain. There was a garbage right next to it. Like the coach is just always yelling at everyone. It's like you spit in the garbage. Um, but I don't know. You get running, you get kind of that Flemmy stuff going on. It's like, you spit in the garbage. But I don't know. You get running.

You get kind of that phlegmy stuff going on. It's always in the wintertime. Everyone's kind of got that crud going around. I'm not a spitter, though, I think. Oh, I am. Oh, I could wake up in the morning, and I got to, like, that's 80% of what taking a shower is. It's like the steam and everything just clears me out.

I'm a nose blower in the morning. Oh, that too though but all of it it's just everything settles my wife's like you make way too many noises when you're taking a shower like i clear everything out what are all those things what's all going on there but like even you know basketball football practice and stuff i never like you know there's people spitting constantly i didn't all that often have the urge to spit it was almost something more like a force thing to just try sometimes like uh some people like some people were like spitting experts though

they could they could shoot a flea off of uh horses back from 10 yards but yeah some people was definitely like it was something to pass the time. Well, this is particularly disgusting, but some people are like loogie hawking. I'm like, how do you have to hawk so many loogies? I know. There wasn't a day

that went by at a practice that I didn't see them hawk a loogie. I'm like, what's wrong with your, uh, you need to go to an ENT. Yeah. Uh, honestly though,

I think that is the case. Cause I still do have some of that. And it is, I have like the worst allergies in the world. Right. It is like, I'm just thinking last night I was taking the dog for a walk and there was probably 10 times while I'm walking down the street while I'm like spitting because i just like have all this congestion all the time but for me it is an

allergy thing for sure allergy season they haven't really hit me too bad yet uh i don't know what the seat i don't even know what my allergies even are specifically but um it hasn't uh hit to me but weather's been awesome i don't know i assume it's been nice there too but weather's been awesome. I don't know. I assume it's been nice there too, but it's just been so nice every day. Yesterday was the bike rides every night with my daughters. And it's just like the bugs haven't come out yet. It hasn't been windy. It's like, like every night is almost like a picturesque night. I'm like, oh my God, it's so nice right now.

Yeah. Last night was the one where you're walking and you think i actually can't really feel a temperature right now i can't actually if you told me to say is it hot or cold i'd have a really hard time coming to any conclusion there it just doesn't really feel like it feels like room temperature right now and then when there's no wind it's oddly quiet and everything but yeah it's been it's been really nice around here today is the first time that i've started to notice some mosquitoes out though so okay i haven't yet it's been colder up there but they'll be coming your way soon i'm sure today was i think almost 80 degrees though here even so yeah it was it's gonna be ac season here soon for us actually this has been going it's been

okay in the mid 70s or higher basically all the time so i just tell everyone get to the basement if you're hot yeah that's the easiest way to do it yeah where it's like 60 degrees yeah we've got that half of the house for a reason use it the the earth is cooling that one rather than uh uh electricity and nobody touched the thermostat actually my wife is the main controller of the Cooling that one rather than electricity. And nobody touched the thermostat. Actually, my wife is the main controller of the thermostat in our house. Oh, my wife is just not aware of it. Otherwise, if she paid attention to it, it'd be set at 80 in the morning, be set at 65 by noon.

Then at night in the afternoon, it'd also be 65 and then be like bedtime and go why is it so cold in here and be back up to like 82 so yeah for the most part i just tell her to stay away you know she's very reactionary when it comes to that thing you don't have a uh um government censoring nest thermostat. No, I figure I don't need Google to know what temperature I keep in my house. Also, the amount of times I change my temperature, I could maybe, yeah, programmable. I'm here all day long. I just want it the same temperature.

I don't leave the house and need it to shift up or down. Go down i'm here all the time i just want it to be the temperature it is so um and then on top of that i just don't like google google already probably knows way too much about all of us so anything i can do to keep google out of my stuff i'm i do that i couldn't i don't have one of those and i couldn't like if i programmed you know the in theory you should save on your energy cost if you program it to be like more moderate when you're gone right yeah well that's the thing we keep our so damn moderate all the time it'd be tough to squeeze many more pennies out of like uh like it'd be like in the winter you're gone like what do we want to turn it down to like 40 it's already at like 60 during the day you know like point where it's just like isn't it so kind of dangerous to like just be cranking your house way down and

right um but the the thought process is when you're at work you know you you do it more efficiently but yeah if you don't go to work then um what are we doing here you know exactly that's what i always say what are we doing here i'll tell you what we're doing here we know exactly that's what i always say what are we doing here i'll tell you what we're doing here we're talking about spud our good good good yellow friends over at spud ink straps uh talking about not referring like uh jordan when he was talking about yellow i'm talking about their straps are the color yellow at spud ink and that's spud dash ink dash straps.com spudink started because the lifting straps available at that time were not tough enough to handle the daily punishment that comes with training as a

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Bayonets, and they just looked pretty cool. For a second there, I thought, maybe I need one of these bayonets. And I haven't ordered one yet, but it's definitely on my radar. It'd be a really good workplace desk item, I think. Yeah. And if anyone gets out of line, I can just give them a little, you know, put the vibe out, right? Yeah. I might stab you if you say something I don't like vibe.

If you say something I don't like, Vibe. Should we bring this one in for the old homecoming? Wrap it up? Yeah, I think we're done, aren't we? Is that everything? I think we're done. That's everything. Everything for now?

Everything forever. This is, I think, the last. We kind of, we just, now with water fountains, we've officially covered it all. Yeah, I got to wrap this up. I got to go hit the lk here and get a little get a little drink on i'm gonna get one of those installed in my house now you can all take your stanley uh water bottles and get fucked i've got a water fountain right here cold water just always ready to go at the push of a button now the popular style is the one that has

the the silhouette of the water bottle filler if that's not a sign of the how the times have changed i don't know what is yeah yeah i don't like i don't care for that it looks too newfangled to me you're uh you're more of a traditionalist not none of this new age water bottle filling bull crap. I also really don't like the motion sensor thing. Like, why does it even need to be like that? What's wrong? Is it cleanlier to not press, all be pressing the same thing? That's it then, I suppose. But what do you say, motion sensor on what?

Like, to turn the water on. Like, there's no button. It's just like you have to lean. Like, the one at the Barnett center at northern is there's no button you just have to stand in front of it for it and like lean over i don't think i've ever i don't think i've ever experienced one of those next time you're in the motion sensor you're talking about the water bottle filler and i didn't really know how else you would do that i mean i guess you know there's no uh there's no button to push hmm i haven't experienced one of those yeah

i have to i'm just to swing by the barnett center the next time i'm in town just to try out their water fountain yeah like and it's funny like it's like lk makes some it's yeah the hands-free drinking fountain like the front of it where there's a button there's like a clear black uh piece like that's like the sensor yeah that has like a sensor yeah i see this here i didn't know what that actually was yeah those suck those are the worst because it never like you bend over and like water doesn't come out and then you feel like a jackass because you're like oh who's the dumbass that doesn't know how to run a water fountain over here right right um what would be the reason for that just so you're not not all the people are touching the same little thing it's a high touch surface i suppose um on the on the topic of some of the

worst and i'm saying the worst automated hands-free things i think everyone can agree the worst is the dyson hand blade air hand dryer you know i'm talking about oh yeah yeah uh yeah look up that that thing is it's shaped like a u and you put your hands into it i do not get i do not like whoever thought that was a good idea it makes no goddamn sense that thing is insane so it's shaped like a u and you put your hand in yeah yeah and all i think of the whole time is like oh i'm putting my first i'm like playing the game of operation dropping my hands i actually choose not to use that i'll let my hands drift if i see that i just i just shake my hands off and walk away i I'd never, ever use it. I like the classic old one that, you know, it's got the chrome piece that comes and angles down

and you put your hands underneath of it. Yeah, or now you get like those really high-powered ones that... Yes, that really... Yeah, that really blow. But the Dyson Airblade is the worst ever. I'm not sure how those ever got sold in stores. I'm sure I brought this up on the podcast before, but when I worked at Menards going through college,

I went to the bathroom so many times there that I had memorized what the air dryer said on it, and it was, save trees, eliminate paper towel waste, and maintain cleaner facilities with world-warm air dryers. And I read that every time like i like it was like an ocd thing like that every time i'm like i just had to read that and uh world warm air dryers that's what menards uses and you knew well what's on the top of every

urinal it's like uh the 3.8 uh 2.8 liters one gallon per flush or 3.8 liters oh yeah it's like 1.6 gallons per flush. Yeah. And it's all like the same brand too. And I can't think of what those are now either. Isn't there like Earl or something like that? Uh, urinal brand. Uh, let's see. I forget now.

American standard. Oh, Zurn. That's what I'm talking about. Ah, there you go. That's the one that you see everywhere. Yep. That's the brand right there. Yes. Zurn. you see that all but those automated flushers i think those do work those have i think

they got that tech on that yeah yeah that works pretty well and that i appreciate because that is one thing i don't want i'd prefer not to touch now that i'm very used to the automatic flushers whenever there is one, if you have the little handle that comes out that you have to flush, How do you... On a urinal, you're saying? Yeah, on a urinal.

How do you touch that handle? I honestly can't even think of the last time I was at a urinal that had an actual flushing handle. Like that, yeah. I for real can't even, I can't think of the last time I saw one. My thing is I refuse to go like this to it, open my hand.

I only go, if I have to do one of those, fist and bop it down. Because for some reason I'm like, ah, this is less invasive if it just touches the bottom of my hand. And they're usually sweating and dripping. They always are. Everything's always all soggy.

Always wet. Yeah, those have almost all converted to automatic flushers though yeah you just you do not see uh even and then for that matter the toilets too like uh it actually catches me off guard sometimes i'll walk away from a year like a urinal if it's not an automatic flusher and be like, oh, wait, I guess I have to flush this. Oh, not my problem. Let the next guy swim in my own piss. Tommy, where do they find you? Well, make sure to buy our stuff, become a supporting member. We do have our working hard pocket tees for sale.

We have our camo windbreaker so you don't get blown away in the wind. You can really break wind in that thing. And we also still have our leather patch hat for sale i like this thing tommy earlier was just talking about how he was wearing wearing the windbreaker every day and uh i like the patch hat too i wear the patch hat too i like it my favorite thing we've probably ever made for me is the working hard pocket tees. I've been wearing those all the time. Just wearing the shit out of them.

I do wear them. And they just work hard. They work hard just like you do. Tommy? I did remember one more thing. Oh, okay. I knew there was something I wanted to say, and I could not think of it. There is a YouTube channel that i followed for a long time

called uh the company man our company man and he just does like just talking like 10 minute videos on different companies yeah and he had one just like a week or two ago on menards oh and um i did not realize menards is still privately owned i just assumed that once a company reaches that size that they are not a privately owned company anymore but menards is still privately owned. I just assumed that once a company reaches that size that they are not a privately owned company anymore. But Menards is still privately owned. So I didn't really. And then there was all types of other stuff about, you know, the company in general and all that.

But you as a former employee, you'd probably enjoy that video, Tanner. I'd recommend you watch that. I just looked it up right now. I found it. I'm annoyed how the view count on that one is kind of low. I'm like, really? Well, I think it's because it's so regional. Like, people don't know, you of low i'm like really well i think it's because it's so regional like people don't know you know that's i'm sure that that's what it is

um yeah i didn't realize that menards they play hardball you know if lows or someone's going to move into the area they said like in chicago it was home depot or lows announced that they were going to come to a certain area and they it was like one or two years out before they opened menards opened up like three more locations within two miles of that location so they say they play really they play really tough with these other guys when they come into the area oh that's interesting one of the things they commented is also how and see we i for the first time in my life live in a town with a lowes and a home depot right and so don't, not really familiar with those stores, but they were saying how, when you go into either one of those stores, they kind of, you're very used to Menards. And they're saying how Lowe's and Home

Depot take way more of a warehouse look. Like if you took away their signage for the most part, you might not even know what store you're in where Menards, it has the white tile floor, the white linoleum and the whole thing it is a little more polished in the way that they do that like it doesn't have much of a it doesn't have that warehouse feel to it i mean it feels right still like a store like that but uh it feels a little more like more more lit and then they also have like the food section and some other odd sections in it you know that don't exist maybe in those other stores yeah so yeah there was you'll you'll like the video you should watch that yeah i will i really saw menards transform quite a bit in just the period of

time that i worked there really did it actually change while you're there yeah like i mean specifically our store changed a lot like they went through some huge additions and remodels oh really see that's in my brain that's just menards has always been that way i can't know think of it not being like that. I actually worked like overnights for a while where I just was coming in and doing remodeling. Like when the store was closed, I would be in there with a crew of people just doing remodel stuff. Huh. Yeah, so there was some pretty... But also like the company, I think just, it just was growing so much, honestly. I don't know if it's still, maybe it still is, but like at that point in time, it was

like really transforming into this much bigger thing. Right. Like it used to be like top brass would be like, they would come to every location, like every so often, like these, and then there just got to be so big and so many locations that stopped being like, you know, the president isn't like coming to stop by Aberdeen because that's one of like 700 stores, you know, instead of like one of a hundred, you know? Yeah. That makes sense. They said, uh, John Menard, is his name John Menard? Is that, yeah, that sounds also incredibly

paranoid. And I think Paulul menard too is there a paul could be i don't know okay he's incredibly paranoid like if workers would be doing home improvement projects he'd send like private investigators out to go watch and see what they're doing and make sure that none of the stuff was things that they took from the store and didn't actually pay for oh yeah he's incredibly like like a penny pincher to the max even yeah with this massive company i think it said he's the richest like a penny pincher to the max even yeah with this massive company i think it said he's the richest man in wisconsin i believe that i could believe that um they also like this is probably all stores like this do this but i know there's a lot secret shoppers

very often where is like spies sent in to like test you to see if you're uh you know you're retailing them like they come in and you're like you're a dick to them they're like yeah you just failed the your store just horrendously failed the secret shopper you know yeah that's like more stores should do that honestly right like everyone in menards seems to know their shit there's a lot of stuff there and it's very rare i actually don't know if i've ever had it probably because i asked the dumbest questions, but I don't know if I've ever gone to Menards and asked where something is and they didn't know. And sometimes I'm like,

how do you know where this one little thing is at? Because it's like- They're also very, you're not supposed to point. You're not supposed to be like, yes. Yeah, they take you there. Yeah, you're supposed to take them there. But I'm like, I- I know, that gets annoying too when you're like,

oh, where's this at? And they go, oh, let me, and they just start walking. Well, I as a shopper don't want them to even walk. I'm like, tell me and leave me alone. I know. I'd rather just say it's in that aisle and I'll go do my thing here because then I'm going to get there and be indecisive

and I don't need you standing next to me. Yeah. Menards is actually a really weird, really weird store. It is. A lot of it didn't really hit my brain how weird it was until you watch the video and they kind of talk about some of the things that it's different. And you go, yeah, that actually is kind of strange.

Once you take a step back and you don't like, because we've both, like that's been the story your whole life you go to, you know. But if you came to it with fresh eyes, you do realize it is kind of strange. Yeah, and that thing you talked about, John Menard being paranoid of, people do that all the time too like uh of uh sell like using stuff from the store and like their own home

improvement projects and stuff like that and like especially because there's like uh things that are red tagged you know they're um right like disconcered or damaged yeah like people will uh pull stuff out of inventory or like you you know, there's flexibility on pricing certain things. And like people, oh, if I had a nickel for every time I either witnessed or partook in something of that nature. But also to a certain extent, it's like, yeah, this like some of the stuff. It's not even like immoral. Yeah, right. It's like not it's like borderline of even justifying it as

being immoral. I think, you know, it's like, um, some things are a perk of working at places and they're like, you could justify yourself into being a thief by saying something like that, but you know, and that's how people end up in jail. Right, right, right. So that's a slippery slope, but there, that is maybe true to some extent in some places too yeah no i get it i get it well now let's wrap it up okay we can finally shut it down now we've talked about everything we could possibly talk about that was we even got all the urgent matters under control we got uh water fountains and menards taken care of now we can shut her down.

Alright, Tommy, where do they find you at? You can find me at Tomahawk underscore D. You can follow me at Tanner underscore Baird but just make sure to follow Mastonomics at Mastonomics. See ya. We'll see you next time.