Oh, ridiculous historians.

Have you ever tried to cross the Atlantic Ocean in a canoe?

If so, boy, do we have a story for you.

Gustav Brohman tried to do that very thing.

You know how it is.

It's eighteen ninety five.

You look at a log as seater and you think, maybe I can make a sailboat out of it, and then maybe I can you know, go across the world.

Mm hmm.

Yeah, maybe not circumnavigate the globe, but maybe the next best thing.

Also, you know, Shenanigans ensued.

There are problems.

This boat wasn't exactly the most seaworthy of vessels, but people took an interest in Broman's insane quest, as did we.

Yes, we did back in twenty eighteen.

Here's the episode.

Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio.

How often have you wondered what exactly is a milkshake duck?

Welcome to the show, fellow ridiculous historians.

And by the time this episode is over, you will know what a milkshake duck is.

But I don't think we should spoil it just yet.

No, I mean, I just learned it myself.

Ben.

Apparently it's part of the zeit guys, it's a very very current creation, and your nol lets me, we are not milkshake ducks ourselves, I don't think so.

Neither of one would hope.

Neither, of course, is super producer Casey Pegram.

When we were banding this story about at first, I was a little concerned that it might be and I pitched part of this.

I was a little concerned that it might be too close thematically to some things we had done fairly recently, like the.

One where the guy tried to start an island nation.

Similar, similar, similar, Sorry, I have the tune the dark Winged Duck stuck in my head, but it's milkshake duck, milkshake duck.

Let's get dangerous exactly.

So our story begins with a fellow named Gustaf Broman, g as I like to call him Broman.

So Gustav Broman makes big news.

We don't know a ton about his maybe his early life, but we do know when he popped in the eyes of the media, and that was in eighteen ninety five, he made a pretty astonishing and ambitious claim.

He did he claimed, or dare I say, he announced unequivocally that he would sail a thirteen foot long boat made from a cedar log across the Atlantic Ocean.

This big news, my friend, big poppin' news.

He decreed it.

Yeah, feeding frenzy.

And remember, you know the late eighteen hundreds, this is a time when these sorts of stunts are tremendously popular.

Right, So he would ride this log, which he called the Gustav Adolph the Second, in honor of, of course, the king of Sweden.

Right, what else would you name a canoe?

But here's the thing.

His plan seemed pretty ridiculous just just from the beginning.

So here's how he pitched his decree.

He said, I'm going to sail across the Atlantic in this amazing boat I've made from a cedar log.

I'm going to start in Coos Bay, Oregon, which was then known as Marshfield, and then I'm gonna sail down the coast to San Francisco.

Notice the Atlantic is nowhere in the picture here yet.

And then he says, then I'm gonna hop on a train with the boat and take the train across the country to New York.

So he's got a thirteen foot boat.

How is he transporting this thing?

Like you he's got a shipping container.

Yeah, he's taking it on the he's hitting the rails with it.

Yeah.

So this this idea seems seems pretty weird, Like why wouldn't you just start in New York?

Right?

Yeah, it's almost as though he's got ulterior motives.

Ben almost And this is where we learned a really weird phrase or a phrase that was unfamiliar to us.

Do you remember that quote that was published about Gustav's journey which said, if arrangement can be made with the over land railroads, upon his arrival in San Francisco, he will place machinery in his boat or put around wheels, and by the use of naptha or electricity around her, direct to New York by rail and then prepare for a transatlantic voyage.

I'm sorry naphtha.

Right, So, what the heck is naphtha?

At first, I was confused because there's a brand of laundry soap called Fell's Naphtha, which is used for treating stains.

But the is a flammable liquid hydrocarbon mixture.

So it's a fuel.

Yeah, it's a fuel, natural gas, petroleum distillates, distallation, cold tar, and peat and in different areas and regions in different times.

It could also just be a word for crude oil or refined products like kerosene.

So let's amend this.

On my part, he was riding the rails, but he was going to make his boat into a miniature train car that was part of his stick, so it would actually ride the rails itself in end on wheels.

Interesting.

Yeah, I'd like to see that people have done that.

There's a I have some car stuff episodes in the back about like a rocket sled on rails and things of that nature.

But what happened next?

How did he get all this?

How did he accomplish all these amazing things?

Well, Ben, he didn't, my friend, he just didn't.

It was what they call a fool's air.

And it was almost as though, no, it was as though he never really intended on having success in any of these.

Like you said earlier, it seems a little like he's going around, as you know, something to get to with something else.

Right, Yeah, and why do it this way?

It just seems utterly wrong headed.

And it was, and he had no intention of completing this mission right.

Four thousand people reportedly came to watch him attempt to sail down the coast again into San Francisco.

His ship, which was pretty impractical, was immediately blown into a sandbar far enough from sure that nobody could get close enough to ask him what was going on, And he just.

Kind of hung out there for a while.

He was out of reach, he was out of reach from any assistance, and then finally, luckily the tides were on his side and they kind of got him moving again.

The tides got him moving again, and on March fourteenth of eighteen ninety five, he arrived in San Francisco.

Aboard the steamer or wait, not on the Gustav Adolf No, it was in the cargo.

Really, yeah, why, I don't know.

I don't know.

It's it's a little it's a little suspicious.

So the La Times reported that the captain of the steamer had taken Gustav Browman aboard to prevent him from drowning as his boat capsized over and over and over again.

We're getting some of this info from a fantastic article on slate dot com called Meet Gustav Broman, the nineteenth century man who attempted to cross the Atlantic in a log boat, by Matthew Dessum.

And there's some great excerpts from reporting from the time, and there's a really good AP headline we're going to get to in a little bit that just makes me fills me with joy.

But here's a little excerpt from the San Francisco call piece.

They were not feeling mister Browman's boat situation or his what do you call somebody that makes boats a ship, a shipwright, a ship rights?

Is that what it is?

A boat rights?

Between a ship and a boat.

That's the question.

I would say this is more of a boat.

Yeah, well, let's give him some crowd.

Let's call him a boat right.

A boat right.

They took issue with his boat right ting skills and had this to say.

The craft, fitted with contrivances never before seen on land or sea, and having more depth than beam, is about his safe for passenger service.

It's a bale of hay, they said.

They laughed, not content with the natural crankiness consequent upon its unship like construction.

The architect has riveted brass, chain.

Plates and other articles to the rail and deck absurd, which further raises her center of gravity, making her an elegant and graceful capsize her if it is safe to say that the bold navigator will navigate his uncanny and uninteresting craft into some fake museum.

They are really given it to him here, and it would be proven that she was designed not for ocean travel but for the midway nickel trade.

And they had a good laugh.

So you ad lived a lot of that.

Yeah, I really appreciate how you were going from Matt Berry at the beginning.

I think, yeah, that's a true description.

Yeah, like that's that's we have to emphasize that.

You can you can feel the snark on the San Francisco call, but everything they're saying about this log boat is absolutely accurate.

No, it's true.

I was just more tickled by the very haughty, toughty nature of the sick burns in this Yeah.

Yeah, that's yeah, that's what I mean.

That's what I'm saying, like snarky.

And they have that one line in the end from that excerpt says she was designed not for ocean travel, but for the midway nickel trade.

And they were right that this boat seemed designed for something else, but they didn't know what the actual scheme was.

You see Gustav Broman and again his real name, as far as we know, was sort of already a celebrity, just not in boding circles.

He was a celebrity to law enforcement.

Police across California knew about this guy.

And as soon as his boat made the news is what is his elegant capsizing boat?

That's law enforcement contacted reporters and gave them the hitherto unknown full details of Broman's life story.

And this is where it gets stranger and stranger.

We mentioned that earlier ap wire headline, which is which is beautiful?

A Russian finn.

He is a funny kind of finny cuss.

Oh, a finny cuss, A finny cuss.

But there is a method in his cussedness, for with all his evil doings, he always comes out on top.

Uh huh.

So this is where we learn about Gustav Broman and his rap sheet that was like a mile long.

Yeah yeah, yeah, okay, so you want to through some of these examples.

Boy, howdie do?

I Yeah?

A funny kind of finny cuss.

Indeed, so apparently he was known all over California for running a series of varying degrees of bonkers scams.

And now I'm laughing, but like one of them, particular is really cold blooded, right, Ben.

Yes, one is definitely not.

Look, we are often tempted to paint hilarious cartoonish con artist as what they are, you know, buffoons, but we have to remember that a lot of these people are cold blooded, right, So this is a reptilian thing.

Gustav Broman makes his law enforcement debut in San Pedro, Los Angeles County.

He is arrested for or he had a hotel keeper arrested for robbing him aboute hundred dollars, but then later in court it was proved there was nothing more than a blackmailing scheme that Broman had come up with to try to extort money from the hotel.

He ended up getting caught essentially sleeping around with several women and citizens when they found out about his deceptive nature, literally tarred and feathered him and drove him out of town.

Wait, people really did that?

Yeah, people did that.

That's amazing.

So not only was he a cuss, he was also a lech.

Yes, he was both a cuss and a leech.

A lecherous cuss, a lecherous cuss or a cussed letch.

Right, I like that a lot, Ben cussrois letch sure, No, we're just churchifying words at this point.

But I like cussorists.

It's like a filthy susceress, rightactly.

So this this, although it may sound endearing because there's that instant karma that hits him, this doesn't really illustrate the true nature of this guy's behavior.

The real reptilian stuff occurs in Santa Cruz, where he and his brother lived in what was described as a shamp.

Yeah, and there's some outdated language in this one.

The ap refers to his brother as an imbecil, which today would obviously be considered a pretty nasty pejorative.

At the time was like it was actually a medical diagnosis.

I believe, right, it is correct for somebody with developmental disabilities.

That a fair way of saying it been.

That's a very fair way of putting it comes from the Latin word imbecillis meaning weak or weak minded, and at the time it included people at in IQ between twenty six and fifty according to the testing methods they used.

It's right, and I believe there was even a time where people that were categorized as that were sterilized.

There was forced sterilization of folks that were classified as being of lower IQ.

It was a whole thing.

Yeah, And if you have the morbid interest in this, we can break it down for you.

At the time when people use this sort of terminology as a description of cognitive ability as they saw it, imbecile was in between idiot and moron.

So an idiot was NIQ of zero to twenty five, imbecile twenty six to fifty, and moron was fifty one to seventy.

So these were these pejoratives have very specific meanings.

Yeah, for sure.

And again they were more or less like DSM level diagnoses or you know terms anyway, So Gustav's brother was in that was that in the middle category of what you discussion yep, yep, yeah.

So he was certainly not someone that could fully take care of himself, and his brother really took advantage of that in the most ungodly awful way you could possibly imagine.

Yes, he committed he quite possibly you had to say that he quite possibly committed fratricide.

He took out two insurance policies on his brother's life, one four five thousand dollars and the other for three thousand dollars.

And let's let's go to a handy inflation calculator here, just to see how much money that actually was.

All right, casey, if we could have that handy dandy inflation calculator, sound cue please, so people know it's working and we're not just making this up.

Perfect.

Three thousand dollars in the eighteen nineties would equal a little bit more than eighty six thousand dollars, and five thousand dollars would equal around one hundred and forty three thousand dollars, almost one hundred and forty four thousand, So these were significant amounts of money.

And took these two insurance policies out on his brother's life.

And then what happened not a month later, Yeah.

The shanty burned to the ground with the brother inside, and he was also burned to the ground.

The insurance companies say this is sketchy.

Yeah, of course it was.

It's never it's always a red flag when you take out an insurance policy on someone then a month later they die in a tragic accident.

That's that's not a good look.

For test of And so the insurance companies say, we're not going to pay this is ridiculous.

The cops arrest Broman and he is charged with arson and murder, and it does go to trial.

Yeah, and there's a woman at the trial who really reads in the Riot Act and gives a very strongly worded testimony against him.

But he received a new trial, and she kind of changed her tune a little bit, almost as though she were coerced or arm twisted in some way.

Ben, that is that what you're thinking of?

Or turned you know, you can flip does what they call it?

Him the mob?

Right right?

Nobody ever went broke betting on other people's moral failings, you know what I mean.

So he was discharged, he got the insurance money, and then afterwards they learned that the woman changed her testimony because he promised to give her a large a large lumpus scratch.

Yeah, a big.

Guy if she would not testify against him on that that second go round.

And then he I guess maybe he cleaned up his act a little bit nol because he moved to San Francisco and decided he was.

Going to be a decent man.

Well he was a he was a wealthy man at this point, right.

He got those uh, those insurance payouts.

That's true, I mean, I don't know.

It wasn't It wasn't like a millionaire money, but enough to start a new life and in a new town, sure at that time.

Yeah, so you met a nice lady.

You met a nice, nice woman.

She was named you will hear, alternately described as Missus Lee Roy or simply Missus Roy.

She was both a widow and wealthy.

Ah, the old married the wealthy widow scamed on to that one.

W W, which is the origin of the I R S tax form, the W two.

Yeah, is that true?

Probably?

Maybe?

Okay, Okay, I'm going to choose to believe that because that's what I do.

So what happened, What happened, Well, what happened was he he put a ring on it on Missus Leroy a quite a a big old rock, a very valuable diamond ring.

So things look to be, you know, optimistic, trending toward perhaps a happy ending.

If we want to believe in the inherent goodness of all people.

You mean, the idea that people change, that people can change for the better.

What is it you always say, ben, people don't really change.

That He's become more people.

We say, people change, And that's true, But it's a misnomer.

As time goes on, we've become more concentrated versions of ourselves.

Yeah, it seems like it was happening with our boy, our boy Broman here.

Possibly the police did not believe that he had turned over a new leaf.

They had heard that Broman was back in town.

They're like, we got our eye on you, Broman, because this is the time, this is the time in American history where you could actually.

Have someone go into a town and then one of the towns people say, you got a lot of nerves showing your face around here, you know what I mean.

I don't know if that still happens in the US anymore.

That's probably where the expression get right out of town came from.

We should bring that back.

That's good.

I like to use it from time to time.

You know what, I think it fits.

I think it's really well no, but I only use it in anger when I want someone to literally leave town forever.

But I say it in kind of a funny way.

So they are, they're typically confused.

They're probably getting mixed message.

I get right out of town and then they go and I'm like, no, go, I don't want you here.

Well, I hope you don't have too many of those situations.

Man, it sounds like real, real weird Larry David moment.

Ben, I am flush with enemies, sir.

Flushed with enemies, Well then you might have something in common with Broman.

I hope none of your enemies or in law enforcement, they they say, you know, we know what you're doing.

You have a lot of noise coming back here, and we don't have anything on you yet, but we know how you operate, Gustav, so we strongly advise you to leave the state.

Don't make this ugly.

Yeah, you're right, Ben, he was definitely flushed with enemies.

It looks almost as though he never met a man or woman that he didn't turn into an enemy.

As it turns out, the woman from Santa Cruz, who herself not a particularly law abiding citizen, she flouted the law, flipped her testimony in exchange for ill gotten blood money, you know, from the cold blooded burning alive of a person with a developmental disability.

She was going to take that money and run with it.

But hey, surprise, surprise, she got her instant karma too, and he didn't pay.

Could have told her that was coming.

Not exactly a shamal uh huh.

So she came a gun in for him, didn't she bet?

And he knew a knife, and he knew that the cops were on the way.

This angry person from Sara Cruz was threatening to kill him, and if she really wanted to burn down the house, she could also take him to jail for witness tampering, knowing that she would get charged with perjury.

So he took the famous advice that so many sketchy people have received were given to one another throughout the years, and he high tailed it from Mexico.

He went south of the border.

He went down south to get out of the heat, you know what I mean, wait for it to die down totally.

And there he would remain ben for a year's time.

I don't know, I don't know why I'm talking late.

I think it's from the AP report that we read in the old timy language.

I'm just kind of like lapsing into that little bit.

And yeah, year's time, and there he took his constitutional indeed, well the better part of four seasons, yes time.

And as the seasons passed and the heat dissipated, so broman sallied forth yet again for these States United, mopping his brow against them heat of the Mexican son.

Yes, yes, And so he returned to California.

He was next heard of in Sacramento, Sacramento, which is the state capital of California.

There we go, nailed it.

Huh uh, Casey, can we get a correct answer game show?

That's perfect?

How about can I get a little round of applause to a little pat on the back?

Sound it?

Now?

It's fine.

Any of that stuff if you want it, thanks, Casey.

So Broman has returned and he's been living in Sacramento.

He had been visiting the house of a woman whose last name was Brown, and he went to the chief of police with a story, and he said, look, I know we have a history, but I am coming to you as a victim.

Chief.

I've been robbed.

I've been robbed of eight grand You gotta help me eight dodge?

Yeah, A big ones and big ones.

What's some other colloquialisms for one thousand dollars eight?

Uh oh?

And some writing It would be a my l but it doesn't make sense spoken fair Yeah.

Uh, we could make them up.

Simolinas there you go.

Yeah, isn't simolina the stuff that's in pasta.

Yeah, it's also Simolino flower.

Yeah, that's why.

That's that's what it is.

Yeah, the flower, that's that that makes the pasta.

Let's so we should keep going.

Oh, I'm I have a question for you.

Yes, what's the point of different pasta shapes?

Oh?

Some of them hold sauces better in different ways, because it's really it's like surface area.

I've always been wondering that.

Thank you, man, that's what I that's what I heard.

I'm also just making this up, and I want to come clean with everybody.

I don't know if W two stands for wealthy widow.

Write to your local I R S agent and ask them.

Yeah, they'll they'll, they'll be they'll get right back to you.

I'm sure.

Tell them, we tell them.

Tell them it's a matter of national security.

Man, we're really we're really dog paddling on this one.

Well wait, we got that Broman.

Broman though, this is an interesting turn, right, he goes to the cops, have all people what why would he do that?

Because he said he got robbed of eight Semolino's.

Large But this man's on the BOLO list at every sheriff's office from Tijuana to San Luis Obisbo.

It's speaking of like different times, not only to do the officers agreed to investigate this house with him, but they let him come along as they execute the search warrant.

That's not done.

That's not normal.

No, I couldn't do that.

I don't think they would do that.

It was a different time.

It was a different time.

So what happens when they go in there, Well, the detectives, search, detectives, officers, whatever you want to call him.

They searched the premises and they found twenty bucks in gold.

It's kind of a lot if you do the inflation thing.

What's that about?

Two hundred bucks?

I don't know.

I'm just underspitball in it here.

You want to do it for real?

Oh yeah, let's do it for real.

Wh'm not so twenty dollars.

In again around the eighteen nineties would be five hundred and seventy five dollars six cents.

Okay, so you know, a decent little haul.

And he Browman told them that he this was something he did.

He's like, he's like the crazy old lady that keeps all our money in a mattress, only he keeps his under the carpet or hidden beneath the floorboards because of experience.

Right, well, he'd been robbed.

I wonder why, he said, Oh see, you believe me now, I got robbed once before, and since then, I always mock my coin, meaning what like like he writes his name on it, like he maybe puts a specific scratch on it so you can see.

I got dipsies that those are mine.

I hate touching change so much.

I neative it.

Would you consider a gold piece change though?

I would probably have to just suck it up and touch it, like put it in your mouth.

Yeah, no, I'm sorry, Sorry, sorry, I've triggered you.

Well.

No, he told the officer to look behind a mirror, and then the officer found it diamond ring.

The police said, okaya, did he have to tell.

The officers this is definitely my coin because this is what the marketing looks like.

Yes, yeah, he did that.

Okay, I'm with you now, I'm back.

I'm back in it.

Because that proved he was associated right totally.

But the police for some reason still did not believe he was on the up and up, and they said, you know what, I think he's I don't know what he's getting up to But he's up to something by gum.

I mean, did he really think he was gonna like bamboozle some actual police officers to help him rob somebody's house.

Doesn't that seem kind of seem like what's going on here?

So he's a real bold fellow, this Gustav Broman.

So an officer came from Sacramento to obtain his record at the request of at the request of the police.

And remember missus Lee Roy or Missus Roy the lado on Vallejos Street.

She gets subpoened.

She didn't ask for any of this.

Ben's not She's just a wealthy widow caught in this man's crossfire.

You know, it's not right.

It's not right.

So it turns out Broman had the widow arrested for stealing the diamond ring that.

He gave her.

I'm sorry, all class, just adding insult to injury with what a D what a giant D.

Yeah, And the judge was like, lady, you know this is these this is tough, This is tough all around you.

Schev Broman arrested for perjury.

So you know, she swore out a warrant, but apparently it was never solved and the case in Sacramento was dismissed.

Back to the top of the story.

Yes, I'm a little confused about what he had to gain from this whole log jammin situation.

Ah, there's an answer.

Oh good, there's an answer.

Okay.

So I was confused too, because it was like.

I don't quite His schemes seemed to become more and more ridiculous, you know, increasingly circuitous.

I always mock my coin, mock my coin.

I pee on all of them.

Right, it's a it's very strange.

It's like Tommy in the Spoons, you know.

But here is the theory.

The theory comes from a guy named Detective Anthony, who was one of the many law enforcement officials familiar with Broman's escapades.

This detective believes that Broman had purposely made a terribly, terribly substandard boat because he wanted it to look like the kind of thing that would easily sink, because he was planning on the boat to be found bottom up in some beach, and he was going to essentially commit pseudo side, our favorite the word for faking one's death.

Detective Anthony specifically says Broman will probably have his life insured for a big sum, and after the boat has found, a confederate will apply for the insurance money and he and Broman will share it.

That is my belief from my knowledge of this man.

Question.

Sorry, I keep asking on this important.

Why do this so conspicuously?

Why make a big show of it so a bunch of witnesses that makes no sense, witnesses to his sad demise.

Yes, okay, I guess that makes a lot.

It's like, oh, four thousand people really did see him do it, And now now we see why he was going to sail down the coast to San Francisco first, and it made up this cocka made me story about what he was going to do by turning his boat into a railcar.

He had to be no intention of doing that.

Now he wanted somewhere between Marshfield and San Francisco for his boat.

He won to disappear and of his boat wash up on a remote area.

You got to give this guy at least a little bit of credit for his massive massive that's true.

See, that's so massive.

That's probably what kept capsizing the boat quite possibly, quite possibly.

So how does Detective Anthony's theory measure up up?

It measures.

It measures what happened.

What happened?

Oh yeah, he had a fifteen thousand dollars in life insurance policy that he took out on himself from the United States Accident Insurance Association.

Upon discovering this whole scheme, promptly canceled his policy.

Probably good business move to do that.

Surely this guy's reputation for insurance fraud or at least his like.

Because here's the thing, even when you get paid out for insurance policies, doesn't that make it harder to get insured again?

I guess he insured his brother before though, But what a series of red flags?

You think?

Well, that's the tough thing.

There's a great book called Playing Dead which details the ways in which people can attempt to fake their deaths.

And the thing that gets most people caught is when they attempt to receive some kind of money from an insurance agency or a will.

Because to do that you have to have someone you can trust who is able to collect for you, and they don't really have any compelling reason to hold up their side of the bargain.

You know what I mean?

I do.

It's also very very difficult to fake your death, just in case you're wondering, what can I, in this modern age do to make my life more interesting?

Don't don't try to fake your death so that maybe in lieu of a comic book recommendation, we could just do a book recommendation.

Yeah, you read books playing Dead.

I read A Plane Dead, A Journey through the World of Death Fraud by Elizabeth Greenwood.

Weren't we gonna maybe have an opportunity to interview miss Greenwood?

We did.

We did stuff that I want you to know.

Uh huh, yeah, it never quite happened.

It was that that was our fault.

I think I think we were the ones who dropped the ball.

And now it's like sort of like forgetting someone's name and then knowing them for years and then having to file it's too late.

You can't ask them any and we.

Can follow I can follow up with the email thread from twenty sixteen.

I have an idea, what's your idea, Let's do it for this show, and then it'll be like a fresh start.

There we go, and let's pretend to be different people about that.

What's your what's your alter ego of choice lately?

Ah man, I'm not going to say it on ex Powers astronaut with a secrets.

Oh that's a go to.

Yeah, Max Powers astronaut with a secret.

Mine is Neil Braun, Neil bra Neil Braun.

There we go.

I'm a I'm a German attache.

Nice, I like it, or maybe I'll be Swedish nice.

Nice.

Well, Doug, I have been using the alias Casey Pegram for quite some time, and I'm sorry about that.

Casey, I did have to stop.

I don't know which one of us it was, but the heat got pretty bad at jfk Oh boy, Yeah.

You've sullied my good name.

I think you sullied my fantastic alias Casey.

Or maybe there's a third Casey Pegrim out there.

There is, I've seen him on Google.

What Yeah, oh that's the one.

Then I was just having fun at a at Applebee's.

You like apple Bee's too, Yeah?

You, I'll go to an apple Bee's.

What's their signature appetizer?

Chicken crispers chicken?

Yeah, some kind of chicken thing.

We have to ask full Deck in about all mission control.

Deck is a huge fan of the apple Bee's because apparently, when you're there your family, No, that's Olive Gard.

What are you at Applebee's.

It's your friendly neighborhood grill.

There you go, there you go.

And by the way, I love the Montrella sticks.

Monzarella sticks are usually you can't really mess up monzerella sticks.

I've seen it happens, it can.

Happen, they've but they do a good job of it.

Over at the Bees.

You like there at the Bees.

So what you're saying is they have a nice crispy exterior and a nice soft, gouey into and they're not so hot they burned the roof of your mouth, and they're evenly cooked.

And are they are seasoned?

Well, yeah, all the above.

Okay, so one time this this has nothing to do with the story of We're done right, We're basically we're just kind of world now.

We're just talking about talking about or other chain restaurants.

We're bringing some other restaurants.

Well, I was this thing about Applebee's for a long time.

I thought Paul was just pretending to like it, but he's serious.

We were on a video shoot one day and Casey, were you with that one?

Absolutely?

I was.

Yeah.

So we were on a video shoot one day years back, and I think I was I was field producing or something.

I say, okay, well we've we've wrapped this up.

This is a great shoot.

Time, it's time to grab lunch.

And we jokingly suggested to Paul that there was an Applebee's nearby.

He lost his mind and he had this this shining, almost noble, childlike glee.

I looked at it more as the the look of a madman.

It's very similar.

Yeah, kind of eyes glazed over, weird.

Rick to smile and we went and I think his his joy, his jubilation was contagious.

So if you ever want to make Paul deck and stay or apparently Casey pegram's, then just uh, send us some send us some Applebee's tickets.

Is that the right word.

Gift cards or something?

Gift cards?

You can buy those at your friendly neighborhood Kroger, CBS.

Even Yeah, or you could just leave us a review on your podcast app of choice.

Yeah, please do, and don't don't don't be too harsh on us for this little rambling tangent of an ending the episode.

We don't do it that often.

I don't think we're having a good time.

We're at the very end of the year and the end of our ropes, and there are so many There are so many casual dining restaurants that we didn't get to mention.

What about bob Evans.

Was that the one that's uh, that's like only in like Pennsylvania, maybe Canada to rest and stuff.

Yeah, their slogan is everybody is somebody at bob Evans.

Oh that's you know, the sinister It's also very like, yeah, we're all we're all people.

We're all here at bob Evans.

Have some pancakes so existential.

Yeah we are.

We are punchy as can be today.

I love it.

The universe is chaotic and meaningless at bob Evans.

Bob Evans, Ben, we got to get out of here.

Get but you know what this is the No, it's not true.

We're in record.

No, it's true.

Yeah, this is the third This is.

The Christmas episode.

If you want to plug that.

Oh oh, Casey says it's Christmas.

Oh yeah.

Very popular holidays, very popular holiday, uh, you know, celebrated by the religious and the secular alike, especially in the US, especially in the US.

So happy holidays, Merry Christmas, whatever you want to call it.

To you and yours, hope you are having a wonderful time.

On one more orbit round the sun, and as you look back on twenty eighteen, we hope you find it more full of fond memories than unpleasant ones.

We hope that you, regardless of your personal beliefs, get some get some quality time in with your family.

If you have that favorite movie watch, or you have that favorite board game or that family tradition, get together and play it.

Yeah, Happy holidays, all the best from all of us.

To all of you.

Should old acquaintance be forgot on days of old Lengthston lengths lengths sign Gustaff Broman.

There you go, oh oh oh, before we go this is we had to actually travel back in time.

We actually never even explained what the milkshake Duck was.

Right to make this correction because uh, and that was I had explicitly promised that it was.

The first sentence of the show.

So to explain what a milkshake Duck is, we have to give a shout out to a Twitter feed called a very pixelated boat Christmas and this No, Noel, you said you had never heard of this before.

Now I only heard of it like the other day.

Super producer Casey Pegrim turned me onto it.

And I think you know what casey, if you're okay with it, could you read the tweet that gave us the phrase milkshake duck.

Yeah.

So this is a tweet originally tweeted out June twelfth, of twenty sixteen, and it has already kind of entered the Internet lexicon as like shorthand for this phenomenon.

So it says, the whole Internet loves milkshake duck, a lovely duck that drinks milkshakes.

Five seconds later, we regret to inform you the duck is racist.

Ah Man.

So Gustav Brohman in that case, in this sense, is a milk shaped duck, because he was, for a very brief time, this American hero.

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