Adal-Cover

Ep. 50

Cheeseburger

23 May 2023

Runtime: 00:47:47

Improviser Adal Rifai joins the Almost Plausible crew in this hilarious story about a pair of food truck owners who face off during a cooking battle with a hefty cash prize. Despite their initial headbutting, the chefs soon discover they have more in common than just their cuisine, leading to a romantic entanglement.

Guest Links

References

Corrections

Referring to Kevin Kline, Adal said, “the only thing he’s done in the last 20 years is Bob’s Burgers.” Since 2003, Kevin Kline has worked on nearly 30 projects, most of which are not burger related.

Transcript

[Intro music begins]

[Shep]
So, but he eats the burger, and the cycle starts again?

[Adal]
Oh, I’m sorry. I thought we were making the magic of movies. I didn’t think I was presenting a thesis. Shep, wait till we get you to your bullshit and I’m going to rip you apart.

[Shep]
Oh, no. I’ve made a big mistake.

[Intro music]

[Thomas]
Hey there, story fans. Welcome to Almost Plausible, the podcast where we take ordinary objects and turn them into movies. I’m Thomas J. Brown. And joining me on today’s episode are Emily-

[Emily]
Hey, guys.

[Thomas]
F. Paul Shepard,

[Shep]
Happy to be here.

[Thomas]
And special guest Adal Rifai.

[Adal]
Bing bong.

[Thomas]
Adal is an improviser, a writer, and a prolific podcaster. If you recognize his voice, it could be as host of the Jackbox game Guesspionage, but it may also be from one of his many podcasts: Hello from the Magic Tavern, Siblings Peculiar, Hey Riddle Riddle, or his newest show, Tell Me About It. If you haven’t heard any of those shows, it’s possible you heard him as a guest on one of over 200 other podcasts. Adal, welcome to the show. Tell us about your relationship to movies and writing. But first, are you in a secret battle with Paul F. Tompkins to see who can make more podcast guest appearances?

[Adal]
I think it’s quite public. Paul won’t address it. Paul won’t address it. It’s because he’s scared. No, obviously, I don’t think anyone will ever surpass him. But-

[Thomas]
No, I don’t think so, either.

[Adal]
My DMs are open, so I’m ready to guest on anything and everything. My relationship, the aforementioned question, my relationship to movies and writing?

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Adal]
Always loved movies. I think to get more specific, if I may, when I was a child, I was introduced to a lot of stuff I probably shouldn’t have seen early on. And I think that made me really love darker movies, dark comedies, horrors, stuff like that. So, I mean, I remember even being a little kid, it’s not film, but I remember being a younger kid and my parents letting me watch Twin Peaks with them, and me just being like, “This is the most fucked up thing I’ve ever seen.” And going to sleep, having nightmares, being wrapped in a tarp. So that really jacked me up. But I think since then, I have always loved movies, but I skew towards the darker, the weirder. But I’m absolutely a cinephile. I’d say my top three movies, which are kind of goofy, but they’re all from a certain era, my top three movies would be Beetlejuice, Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Coming to America.

[Thomas]
Nice.

[Emily]
Oh, those are amazing choices.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
It’s not Beetlejuice three times?

[Adal]
I mean, calm down. Just-

[Emily]
You’ve said it twice now, Shep, you’re going to summon him.

[Adal]
And then running out the top five might be Little Shop of Horrors with Rick Moranis and The Thing. John Carpenter’s The Thing.

[Emily]
I still have not seen that.

[Shep]
It’s so good.

[Emily]
And I feel like am obsessed with horror movies. And it’s a travesty.

[Adal]
It’s the best.

[Emily]
I haven’t watched it.

[Adal]
It’s the best.

[Thomas]
I don’t like horror movies, and it’s fantastic.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Adal]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Same.

[Thomas]
All right, well, since you’re the guest, you get to choose today’s topic. What will our movie be about?

[Adal]
I think what I’d like to do, because I’m very into food as well, so I like cinema, I like food. Combine the two and I’m a very happy man. So I think we’re going to go with cheeseburgers.

[Thomas]
Cheeseburgers. That’s what I had for lunch today.

[Adal]
Yum.

[Thomas]
Well, each episode of Almost Plausible begins with a pitch session where each of us shares the ideas we’ve come up with for a movie about, in this case, a cheeseburger. We’ll work together to choose the pitch we like the best and then develop it into a story. Adal, what are your pitches for a cheeseburger?

[Adal]
Okay. So I’m not sure exactly how long these should be or how good they should be. And I think mine may not tick either box. So the first one here, here’s the first one: So there’s a cheeseburger. And this cheeseburger is being raised by two humans. And the cheeseburger has always felt a little different. Feels like he didn’t really fit in. And he takes a 23andMe test, and he kind of sees all his ingredients and he makes a mission. He makes it a mission to try and track down all the ingredients to see if any of them are his true parents. It’s kind of like a road trip movie, like Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, which is also in my top ten movies. Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, one of the greatest movies all time. So it’s a road trip adventure, and he makes his way to a field of wheat. He makes his way to a tomato field. He makes his way to wherever mustard comes from.

[Thomas]
I think also a field.

[Shep]
Mustard seed.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah, it comes from a field.

[Adal]
And then eventually, towards the end of the movie, the emotional climax, he meets a cow. The cow’s name we’ll say is Grilliam, because that’s fun. And his mom is, I guess, the milk. Milk from a different cow. And her name is Patty. So it’s Grilliam and Patty are the parents. And that’s fun because he’s a burger.

[Thomas]
Amazing.

[Adal]
And the movie ends with him having this really beautiful connection with the cow that supplied the milk and his father the cow. And there’s a montage where they’re just having all this fun. They’re playing games, they’re catching up, they’re showing home movies and pictures. And then the dad eats the burger and the whole cycle starts again. And what a beautiful metaphor for life.

[Emily]
I love it.

[Adal]
What do we want to call this? Farm… Heart to Farm? Farm to Table! No Farm to Heart. Farm to Heart to Table.

[Emily]
I like Farm to Heart. I’m down with that one.

[Adal]
Yeah. Farm to Heart. And it’s the number two, like the Step Up movies. So that’s number one and then number two-

[Shep]
I have so many questions about this one.

[Adal]
Oh, yeah.

[Shep]
The dad cow is still alive?

[Adal]
Yeah.

[Shep]
But where did the meat come from?

[Adal]
Shep, I’m so glad you asked. See, this is first of all, let me say my script is watertight. So as much as you nasty little folks want to poke your fingers in there, you will not be able to. His dad had to have surgery. His dad had to have surgery. So he lost a flank and he was still able to live. And then when they did the surgery, the doctors were like, “That’s a pretty good chunk of meat. There was like a little growth, but we could lop off the growth, and it’s not going to taint the meat, so waste not, want not.” So they end up selling that big flank to a local butcher. And that’s where our hero comes from.

[Shep]
Lop the growth off? I think you have higher standards for-

[Adal]
I like the way that you said lop my growth off. Like Prodigy might sing it. “Lop my growth off.” (sings)

[Shep]
So, but he eats the burger, and the cycle starts again?

[Adal]
Oh, I’m sorry. I thought we were making the magic of movies. I didn’t think I was presenting a thesis. Shep, wait till we get you to your bullshit and I’m going to rip you apart.

[Shep]
Oh, no. I’ve made a big mistake.

[Thomas]
Oh, my God.

[Adal]
But the cow is definitely going to eat the burger. And then as it processes all the nutrients and lack of nutrients and hormones and everything, it goes all throughout his body. The child is reabsorbed into the dad, and then the growth is going to appear from one of those ingredients. There’s got to be some ingredient that’s going to cause another growth and it all starts over again.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
It sounds kind of like a Greek myth.

[Adal]
Yes. It’s like so Uranus gives birth to Kronos, and then Kronos castrates Uranus with a scythe. And then Uranus comes to Kronos in a dream and says “Your child will also kill you.” So Kronos has all his children, eats them all, except his wife steals Zeus away and feeds Kronos a rock wrapped in baby clothes. And Kronos is so fucking stupid. He eats the rock covered in baby clothes. And then Zeus is able to come back as a young man and poisons his dad. So he barfs up all his children. And then the children defeat Kronos. So you caught me. This is a one for one.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Adal]
We’re all based on Greek mythology.

[Emily]
Right?

[Shep]
There are no new stories that would that’s what we’ve learned.

[Adal]
No.

[Thomas]
It’s true. Yeah.

[Adal]
There are no new cows.

[Emily]
No.

[Shep]
Just the same cow over and over.

[Adal]
Yes. So that’s Farm to Heart. Any other brain busters? Anybody else want to challenge Daddy? Anybody wants to challenge-

[Shep]
Don’t do it. Learn from my mistake.

[Adal]
You want to try and sit in Daddy’s recliner?

[Thomas]
I just love the idea of the sort of heartwarming coming together and everything, and then all of a sudden, the cow is just, like, chomp out of nowhere.

[Adal]
Yeah. And then my second movie: This is going to be kind of on the fly here. My second movie is going to be called, let’s start with the title because that’s the easiest. It’s going to be called The Grill Is Gone. So this is a cheeseburger whose parents are other cheeseburgers. So this is totally different from the get go-

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Adal]
Because, I mean, like Stuart Little, he’s raised by humans, and you’re like, what’s going on? And blah, blah, blah. So the last one is like Stuart Little. This is hamburgers having hamburgers and cheeseburgers having cheeseburgers.

[Shep]
Well, in the book, Stewart Little, he’s a human. He just looks like a mouse, but he is a human. He had human parents.

[Adal]
Is this the hill you die on? So in The Grill Is Gone, it’s a cheeseburger. Parents are both cheeseburgers, and they grow up in a diner. They have this diner and they serve tinier cheeseburgers. And we never kind of mentioned that. We never really think about it because if we think about it too long, we start to weep. And the child, it’s a small Michigan town, and the child is just expected to take over the diner when the parents retire, what have you. So this young cheeseburger woman, because cheeseburgers can be women, everyone, she don’t want to own a diner.

[Thomas]
Ah.

[Adal]
She don’t want to man the grill. So she’s just kind of making her parents happy. She’s staying put. And then one day her father falls ill. And they’re like, “You have to take over the diner.” And she says, “No thanks.” And she runs off in the middle of the night. And she enrolls in high school. And this isn’t just any high school. This is called.. think, Adal, think! This is called Fast Food High. Like Fast Times at Ridgemont High. So it’s basically Fast Times at Ridgemont High, but with the cheeseburger as the lead. And she falls in love with a box of fries.

[Thomas]
And then there’s a milkshake that comes out of the pool and takes its top off.

[Adal]
Thank you. And Kevin Klein eventually marries that milkshake. What else? I mean, it starts off as like a family drama, but it becomes this sort of coming-of-age teenage comedy set in a high school. It’s a romp. It’s a classic. It’s fun. And all the different teachers are all like, there’s a packet of mayonnaise, who’s a PE. Teacher. And spicy chicken sandwich is like the Spanish teacher and stuff. So there’s a lot of fun there. And who do we want to- Do we get into, like, casting?

[Emily]
We can.

[Thomas]
Sure.

[Emily]
Absolutely.

[Thomas]
That can be fun.

[Adal]
We can. Okay. I think.

[Shep]
Which character is Mark Hamill going to play?

[Emily]
He’s clearly the mayonnaise gym teacher.

[Adal]
He’s clearly the mayonnaise gym teacher. Yes. I thought that was implied.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Adal]
Here’s the thing. I don’t want to go the route of, like, Seth Rogen or- That gets so boring to me, when I hear Chris Pratt voice everything. So I’m going to really go out on a limb and make this weird. And I’m going to say the young female cheeseburger is voiced by Tom Hardy, who I think is one of our greatest actors and has range.

[Emily]
Yes.

[Shep]
Completely agree.

[Emily]
Yeah, he if anyone can pull it off, it’s him.

[Adal]
Yes, exactly. So that’s fun. And I think the fries are played by Phoebe Waller-Bridge so that’s The Grill Is Gone.

[Shep]
Wonderful.

[Emily]
I love it.

[Adal]
I wish somebody else would have gone first so I could have get a feel with how this goes.

[Emily]
Trust me, you’re right there.

[Shep]
You kind of nailed it.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Adal]
I have no gauge on if this is anywhere near what you all do.

[Emily]
You are on target.

[Thomas]
No, you’re spot on. Emily, what do you have for us this week?

[Emily]
Well, keeping on theme with Adal, this is some kismet here. A young hamburger is tired of her ordinary life and dreams of being something special. She starts experimenting with a new identity while away at college. At first, it’s all very innocent. She tries ketchup a few times, adds a little mustard to the mix, but eventually she’s on pickles and onions and occasionally lettuce. Then one day, she discovers her true, authentic self when she meets a grilled cheese sandwich. Cheese is the answer she’s been searching for her whole life.

[Adal]
Aw.

[Emily]
She visits home on spring break and her parents are devastated. They cannot believe their daughter has mutilated herself by adding cheese. They don’t want a cheeseburger in their family, so they throw her out. Now she must navigate the world as a cheeseburger. But with the help of her chosen family, a bacon hot dog and an avocado grilled cheese sandwich, she learns she’s not alone in the world.

[Adal]
That’s- I’m crying. Emily, that’s beautiful. Emily, I have a few questions for you.

[Emily]
Absolutely.

[Adal]
Two questions for you. One, am I in guessing that in this world, if you’re a hamburger with cheese, you can’t be buried in a hamburger cemetery.

[Emily]
Exactly. 100%.

[Adal]
Yes. Okay. That’s what I thought. And then two: Emily, I just want you to agree with me. Isn’t it weird we said that Kevin Klein eventually married a milkshake from my movie? And isn’t it weird he was in the movie In and out, which is also a fast-food chain?

[Shep]
Ah!

[Emily]
Oh, my God. That is fantastic.

[Adal]
Just fast food for thought.

[Shep]
Good catch.

[Thomas]
I love that you clearly haven’t been paying attention to anything that we’ve been saying.

[Adal]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Just been connecting the dots quietly there.

[Adal]
My brain is a cork board with only red string and-

[Emily]
Beautiful.

[Shep]
I mean, I also spend most of my time just thinking about Kevin Klein. So.

[Emily]
Who doesn’t?

[Adal]
I am so, I mean, I know he’s on- Well, speaking of, this is weird. The only thing he’s done in the last 20 years is Bob’s Burgers. Wait, what is going on?

[Emily]
Oh, my God.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah. Bob’s Burgers. So Kevin Klein has to be in this movie, is what I’m hearing.

[Thomas]
I think no, yeah. No matter what we pick, obviously he’s going to be in it.

[Adal]
Something strange is going on. Kevin Klein, if you’re listening. Which we assume you are.

[Emily]
Yeah, of course.

[Shep]
He’s always listening.

[Adal]
Please come on. To talk about what’s going on with you and fast food.

[Thomas]
He’s going to listen to this episode and be like, “Oh shit, they’re on to me.”

[Adal]
So Emily, did you say the title of this movie?

[Emily]
I don’t have a title for this one.

[Adal]
Okay. So I feel like “Cheese” has to be in the title.

[Emily]
Of course.

[Adal]
Cheese Me Do.

[Emily]
Cheesn’t She Lovely?

[Shep and Thomas]
Cheesn’t She Lovely!

[Adal]
Everyone shut the fuck up. We have the title, Cheesn’t She Lovely.

[Emily]
All right.

[Adal]
Outstanding. I love that.

[Thomas]
100 points to Emily there. All right, well, I’ll do mine. Mine’s real quick. I say mine’s real quick. I have like a whole giant page long thing that I came up with. The problem is that mine doesn’t have a clear ending. I sort of have painted the protagonist into a corner, but if we like the idea, we can kind of talk about it and maybe figure out how to get her out of that corner.

[Adal]
Hell yeah.

[Thomas]
So basically, there’s this woman and she’s a VR content creator. So there’s a place that’s a Metaverse type of VR space that’s a very popular thing. And she creates 3D content for people to buy in the marketplace, and that’s her job. And one day she ends up creating a cheeseburger and puts a worm inside. Not like a worm, like an earthworm or something like that, but like a computer worm, like a virus type of thing.

[Adal]
Yes. A Trojan horse, if you will.

[Thomas]
Basically, yeah.

[Adal]
Greek greek mythology, if I may.

[Thomas]
Back to that. And so the worm ends up like taking off and she gets into big trouble, but she manages to sort of escape. And so I have her on the run and avoiding the authorities, but the problem is that what she has done is a felony. So I don’t really know what her goal is because she can’t undo that.

[Emily]
I was going to say, does she do it on purpose? Why did she release the worm? Was it an accident? Was her code wrong?

[Shep]
Even if it’s an accident, it’s still a crime.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Adal]
Okay, I can only in my mind’s eye, I can only picture Hillary Swank as this character. So unless someone else has anyone else, we’ll say it’s Hillary Swank.

[Emily]
That works.

[Thomas]
Works for me.

[Adal]
Can we ask, Thomas? What does the worm do? Like, what devastation or destruction does it cause?

[Thomas]
So the idea that I kind of had is it’s similar to a worm that was released on MySpace. So I was thinking maybe something along those lines where maybe there was like a hacker challenge that she saw and she thought, “Oh, I think I know a way that I could make that happen.” And so she created this cheeseburger payload.

[Adal]
How do we feel it- Hold on. Dead stop.

[Thomas]
Oh, boy, I’ve been dead stopped!

[Adal]
All I want in the world is to have the nickname Cheeseburger Payload. If there’s a way, if people can just start casually calling me that. Cheeseburger Payload is the best name I’ve ever heard my fucking life. So she’s on the run. Hillary Swink is on the lam. How do we feel about her going into the Metaverse? Like, that’s how she has to kind of make things right.

[Thomas]
Yeah, so I’d had that thought. She obviously isn’t going to be able to use her account. Her account’s gonna to be locked immediately.

[Adal]
Of course. But she has an old hacker friend…

[Thomas]
Well, so one idea that I had is maybe there’s like a guy that she’s friends with online who’s simping for her, and he actually works for the company that runs the Metaverse, and so he’s able to get her in the building and so she can have access in the server room or something.

[Adal]
Love this. They’ve never met offline.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Adal]
And if I may get him work, because he’s one of my favorite actors, and I feel like he never works anymore: John Hawkes. I feel like he’s one of the better actors of the last 25 years, and he just doesn’t get- I’m sure he’s on something. I’m sure he’s doing some TV show, but I feel like he deserves more movies.

[Emily]
Yeah. Okay. I totally know who you’re talking about now.

[Adal]
He’s so good. Watch Winter’s Bone. He is incredible. Okay, so John Hawks helps Hillary Swank get into the Metaverse.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Adal]
And then do we think she has to, like, track down the worm? Do we think she has to eat the burger? What do we think?

[Thomas]
Well, I mean, I feel like her goal must be to try to undo the harm she has done. And since she wrote the code and created the burger, she would know exactly how to make it work. Maybe she has to write a second worm to go in and remove all the code that got spread around.

[Shep]
Right. Something that eats all the burgers.

[Adal]
Yes.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah, I like that. That’s my pitch. Shep, what do you have for us?

[Shep]
Okay, well, the perfect cheeseburger movie already exists. It’s called The Menu.

[Emily]
I agree.

[Adal]
Wonderful movie.

[Thomas]
Very good.

[Shep]
But here’s a pitch for maybe the second best one. Two longtime rival food truck owners are facing off in this Rolling Restaurant Rally, a competition with some large amount of money as the prize. The food trucks race to a location and then set up shop for a bit while the public there and experts judge their food and then race to the next location, and so on and so on. So most of the food trucks in town each have unique dishes, but these two overlap. They both serve cheeseburgers. So at first, they try to sabotage each other, playing pranks, stealing ingredients. Nothing major but inconvenient. But they realize they both have a passion for making delicious food, and they start to grow closer, and each inspires the other to come up with creative recipes. And the two take the lead in the competition. But they are both sabotaged by a third competitor, and they have to join forces to make it to the end. And it could also easily be a rom-com.

[Adal]
This sucks. I want to hate this. I want to hate this because of the way you treated me. But I like it. But I like it.

[Shep]
I get that reaction a lot, so.

[Thomas]
Well, Adal, if we want to poke holes in it, presumably these cheeseburger trucks would serve fries. Boy, driving around with hot oil would be not a great plan.

[Adal]
Yes.

[Shep]
So they don’t serve fries. No, they don’t serve fries. No fries.

[Thomas]
A burger without fries?

[Shep]
That’s right.

[Thomas]
You lose.

[Emily]
Lots of food trucks have fries.

[Thomas]
Yeah. My friends who run a food truck, they always have to remember to turn the oil off at a certain time so it can cool down before they leave.

[Adal]
I bet. I bet.

[Thomas]
Well, we’ve heard all the pitches.

[Adal]
Yes.

[Thomas]
Is there one in particular that is really jumping out at us as, like, “This is a fun one. I think we should develop this”? I mean, as much as the fry oil thing is ridiculous, I do like that idea.

[Adal]
Let’s do Shep’s.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Shep]
I don’t have any more than what I’ve already said.

[Adal]
Can I get a T shirt? This can be Almost Plausible merch. Can I get one that just, it just says “Shep’s Kiss”?

[Emily]
Yes.

[Thomas]
Well, I think that needs to be Almost Plausible merch now.

[Emily]
That’s going on the list.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Adal]
It’s just a pair of lips with a beard around it, and then the fingers going up, and it says Shep’s Kiss.

[Emily]
Perfect.

[Thomas]
All right, we’ve chosen a pitch. Let’s take a break here. And when we come back, we’ll figure out our story for cheeseburger.

[Break]

[Thomas]
We’re back. We’ve chosen Shep’s story about a pair of food truck owners. I think right off the top, we should figure out, do we want this to be a rom-com?

[Shep]
Yes.

[Emily]
Yes.

[Thomas]
All right, that was easy.

[Shep]
Well, Adal, what do you think?

[Adal]
No. Yeah. Here’s what I’ll say. I think we have to do a rom-com because somewhere in the title or on TikTok, when we do our hashtags for promotion for this movie, we got to use the hashtag “#meatcute”. So it’s got to be.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Well, that’s the title.

[Thomas]
Our two main characters both operate cheeseburger food trucks.

[Adal]
Yes.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Adal]
Okay.

[Thomas]
And so do we need to figure out how many other trucks? Is this, like, an elimination style thing where it comes down to just those two at the end, or is it a points system?

[Emily]
Is it like a food truck festival?

[Adal]
It’s like “Top Truck”. It’s like Top Chef with food trucks.

[Emily]
They actually did that.

[Adal]
Oh, really?

[Emily]
And they had to travel around the country.

[Thomas]
That’s right. I remember that.

[Emily]
It was weird.

[Adal]
With the Top Chef people or a totally different crew?

[Emily]
Different people, but similar.

[Adal]
Okay. Wow.

[Thomas]
I’m just trying to figure out if we’re going to eliminate food trucks as we go along. So there’s, like, a looming threat of possibly being removed from the competition.

[Emily]
Then it should be by elimination. Like, maybe it’s a weird you know how they do the pop-

[Thomas]
There’s different challenges they have to complete.

[Emily]
Yeah. It’s a challenge thing. They do the pop-up restaurants and stuff, and they just do the text of where it’s going to be. So they do that with the food trucks. If you’ve passed to the next step, they’ll text you the next location for the food rally, and then you show up with your truck and sell your food.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah.

[Adal]
Nice.

[Thomas]
There you go.

[Adal]
Yeah. And so what happens is the villain, he, like, pops the tires on one of the food trucks.

[Thomas]
Oh, jeez.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
With a big chef’s knife.

[Adal]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Of course.

[Adal]
The one person’s driving to race to the location, and they look behind them, and their love interest is gone. So they circle back, and their love interest is crying on the side of the road, like, “Go ahead without me.” But then they’re like, “Come with me.” And there’s also-

[Shep]
“Come with me if you want to win.”

[Adal]
Exactly.

[Thomas]
I was thinking the same thing.

[Adal]
And there’s also this sort of- I imagine that they’re two separate food trucks. I imagine there’s, like a Reese’s peanut butter cup situation where it’s like, one has chocolate, one has peanut butter, and then at the end, the villain tries to sabotage them by colliding their foods together. And wouldn’t you know it, they’re better together.

[Thomas]
I actually really like that.

[Emily]
This is awesome.

[Thomas]
That does feel like a total rom-com thing.

[Adal]
Yeah, but I mean, they’re not making peanut butter cups, clearly.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Adal]
That’s just an analogy.

[Shep]
What do you mean the villain smashes their food together to ruin it? What?

[Adal]
You know sometimes when you’re having, like, lasagna and schnitzel and you’re-

[Thomas]
That classic family dinner of lasagna and schnitzel.

[Adal]
Yeah. When relatives are over and your sibling goes to the bathroom and you lift up three sheets of lasagna and you tuck that schnitzel in between, and it’s almost like princess and the pea. But princess and the schnitzel. You tuck that schnitzel in there, you lay down the lasagna, and then they come back and your shoulders are moving up and down because you can’t stop giggling, but you don’t want them to hear you. And then they take a big old bite and they go, “This is the best lasagna I’ve ever had.” And you go “Wha-?” And then you take a bite and you go, “I’m a genius.” You’ve never had that happen?

[Shep]
I’ve not had that specific situation happen. No.

[Thomas]
You said that they are longtime rivals, but what if one of them is new to town and is like- so the person expects, like, “Oh, I’m going to win,” or “I’m going to place really well,” or “I’m going to win the cheeseburger category” or whatever it is. And so the new person shows up, and it’s like instant rivalry because maybe they’ve come specifically for this.

[Shep]
Here’s what I, in my mind was thinking. This is enemies to lovers.

[Thomas]
Sure.

[Shep]
So she’s running her food truck. He doesn’t have a food truck yet. And he hears that it’s really good, and so he goes but she closes early and doesn’t serve him food. And he’s so pissed off that she’s like, “No, I’m the best food, the best cheeseburger in town. I’ll serve when I want, and you don’t get one. No burger for you.” He buys a food truck just to have a rival cheeseburger food truck because he’s so mad at her and spends all this time studying the combinations of flavors and stuff to have this really good rival burger.

[Adal]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Because all the other food trucks sort of have this understanding that if you want to have a food truck, you have some unique food. You don’t step on anyone else’s toes. We’re all kind of in this together.

[Thomas]
Right. It’s a small-ish town.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Adal]
So Shep, correct me if I’m wrong. So you were incredulous about smashing their foods together, yet you want to start this movie off with irredeemable, toxic masculinity. You want to make everyone in the audience and in this movie hate this character for buying a food truck out of spite. He’s buying a food truck at a woman.

[Shep]
But see, I think this is a redeemable amount of toxic masculinity.

[Adal]
Uh huh.

[Shep]
I mean, if you’ve seen rom-coms, they’re all terrible.

[Emily]
She can fix him.

[Shep]
Right? She can fix him. Exactly.

[Emily]
So wait, he just has food truck money laying around.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
He’s like what is he, like, some kind of playboy?

[Adal]
Oh, he comes from money.

[Emily]
He’s an aimless billionaire’s son who doesn’t have a desire or initiative to do anything.

[Thomas]
He does have a desire. He wants a fucking cheeseburger.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
Well, then he gets spurned by a woman’s cheeseburger. So he’s like, “Fuck you. I’m doing this.”

[Shep]
He wrote a one hit wonder song in the he’s living off the royalties. Wait, that’s About a Boy.

[Emily]
It’s also the Christmas one. And Music and Lyrics.

[Adal]
Love Actually?

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Adal]
Okay, how do we feel about and, hey, feel free- Even though I’m a guest. And you, you all have been nothing but nice to me, except for Shep. Even though I’m a guest, feel free to tell me this is a bad idea. What if one of their food trucks was alive? One of their food trucks is Sentient. It’s an alien that came to Earth or something else, but it has its own will. And the trucks fall in love. Wait, there’s two of them? They’re both alive and the trucks fall in love?

[Thomas]
Maybe this is an animated film, and all the trucks are it’s like cars, but with people.

[Adal]
Yes. Yes.

[Emily]
Oh, I was thinking Herbie the Love Bug.

[Shep]
I was also thinking Herbie the Love Bug just got, you know, crashed and smashed and then rebuilt into a food truck and-

[Emily]
Yes, Herbie the Love Bug Takes on Portland.

[Shep]
Yeah, cause you want “Bug” in the title when you’re talking about food trucks.

[Adal]
Always.

[Thomas]
Right, right.

[Emily]
Oh, a thousand percent.

[Adal]
Always. Okay, so we’ll keep the cars (sighs) non-sentient, I guess, for budget sake or whatever.

[Shep]
I mean, I really like the house in Encanto, and there’s no explanation. It’s just a living house.

[Adal]
Yeah,

[Shep]
So I like magical reality. Which one is the main character?

[Adal]
I think it’s the is it the irredeemable angry man?

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
I don’t think that well, see, because he’s irredeemable. I think that she should be the main character.

[Adal]
Perfect.

[Shep]
And she maybe doesn’t know why he- she doesn’t recognize him as the customer she turned away someday.

[Adal]
Yes, it’s yes-

[Shep]
It’s just some guy that seems intent on ruining her business for no apparent reason. Wherever she parks, he comes and parks next to her, stealing her customers.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So it’s got to be from her perspective.

[Thomas]
Now this sentient truck thing is in my head, and I like her going back into the truck and being like, “What is this guy’s deal?” And, like, her having a whole conversation with the truck about, “Who is this guy?”

[Shep]
They’re all Knight Rider cars. They’re all talking.

[Adal]
Yes.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Adal]
It’s all the principal from Wonder Years, not Wonder Years, of Boy Meets World.

[Shep]
Yes. Yeah.

[Adal]
Okay, so let’s give this woman a name. It has to be-

[Thomas]
I mean, Patty was fine. We can go with that.

[Adal]
Patty. Okay, so she’s Patty and she has a pen that’s like a spatula. Like, it’s a spatula, but at the end it’s a pen. And we like that a lot.

[Emily]
Good merch tie-in.

[Adal]
Good. Great merch tie-in. So that’s Patty. And then what do we think our guy’s name is?

[Shep]
I mean, he’s an asshole, so he could be the Steve of the movie.

[Thomas]
I was thinking that.

[Emily]
Well, I was thinking the villain would be Steve.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah.

[Emily]
For sure.

[Shep]
Okay.

[Thomas]
The villain should be Steve.

[Emily]
Steve is always our bad guy.

[Adal]
Okay, interesting. On my podcast, we use the names Kevin’s and Susie’s. Yes.

[Shep]
Oh, it has to be Kevin, because it’s Kevin Klein.

[Thomas]
Oh, that’s right.

[Emily]
Oh, yeah, that’s right.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Adal]
Oh, yes, that’s right.

[Emily]
We’re going to do The Irishman CGI on him so he can be in this movie?

[Shep]
Well, it’s going to be animated, so he could just do the voice.

[Emily]
Oh, perfect.

[Adal]
Hold on. Emily, you beautiful bastard. You’ve given me the greatest idea. The villain has to be Joe Pesci. We’re talking classic Pesci. Not new, too cool for school Pesci, but classic. Eight Heads in a Duffel Bag. My Cousin Vinny.

[Emily]
Yes.

[Adal]
Classic Pesci. Lethal Weapon… three? Four?

[Emily]
Yeah. Leth- I was just gonna say Lethal Weapon Three.

[Adal]
Classic, classic Pesci. Where he’s just a little scamp, this guy. He’s an absolute scamp.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Adal]
And picture him in a hairnet in a food truck serving- and it’s one of those things where it’s like, what’s the woman from The Incredibles like, you can only see his eyes behind the food truck counter, and so he has to get up on a little step stool and it’s just like such a piece of shit.

[Emily]
Yes.

[Adal]
It’s so easy to imagine him as, like, just a piece of shit.

[Shep]
But he seems nice at the beginning.

[Adal]
Yes.

[Thomas]
So what kind of food does he serve?

[Emily]
Meatball subs.

[Adal]
Meatball subs. Yes. And it’s got to be something where Patty and Kevin are doing something new, even if it’s as simple as, like, a brioche bun or something, they have to be doing something slightly new, aioli or whatever it might be. And Joe Pesci is just like, “No, it has to be old school. I live food. My family is food.” He’s probably from Brooklyn or somewhere where he’s-

[Shep]
His family is food. His dad was a cow.

[Adal]
Yes.

[Shep]
He is actually a burger.

[Adal]
See, now we’re talking. Why are we fighting? Shep, why are we fighting? That’s the best idea I’ve heard all day. So what do we think his name is? It’s got to be, like, Angelo or some sort of- it’s got to be like an old school-

[Shep]
Not just Joe?

[Adal]
Joe’s a great one. It’s got to sound like he eats meatball subs every day.

[Emily]
Yeah. Tony.

[Adal]
Meatball Tony. Yeah, Meatball Tony is good. I like that.

[Thomas]
He’s like multi-generational family, originally from the old world.

[Adal]
100%.

[Emily]
Uses Nona’s recipe.

[Adal]
Yes, absolutely.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Adal]
And he calls sauce gravy. Like, if you say “sauce”, he’s like, “It’s gravy.” And you’re like, “I don’t care. What are we doing? Nobody cares.” Yes, this is good. This is good. So we have Meatball Joe, Patty, and Kevin.

[Shep]
Is it Meatball Joe or is it Tony?

[Emily]
It’s Tony.

[Adal]
Oh, Meatball Tony. I’m sorry. Meatball Tony, but played by Joe Pesci, who I also call Meatball Joe.

[Thomas]
So how has Tony done in the past? Has he ever won? Has he been close to winning? He feels like this is his year.

[Emily]
Yeah, he always lands in the top five.

[Adal]
I assume this is a modern day movie.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Adal]
What if in like the 70s, the 80s, the early 90s, he cleaned house, but once, like, molecular gastronomy and all this, like, newfangled tweezers and shit, once all this new food hit and like, Bon Appétit and all these magazines come out and food culture- foodie culture start to develop, he started to just fall out of position. He never would rank anymore. He’d sniff the finals, but he’d never make it. And so he has this real chip on his shoulder of, like, old school needs to come back. And he hates any sort of new thing.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Adal]
He hates progress. He hates change.

[Shep]
I love all of that. And I just want to add one thing: Patty is like his student. He used to be top dog and would win.

[Adal]
Yes.

[Shep]
He’s number one. He still uses the same old recipe. He never changed ingredients. And when Patty got her food truck and started in, because they’re all in it together, they’re all kind of a family. They all help each other. He took her under his wing, and, like, “Here’s what you do. Here’s how you do it. Here’s a recipe you can use to make a really good cheeseburger.”

[Thomas]
Well burgers and fries. Classic food. Perfect. Right up his alley.

[Shep]
Yeah. So when she is, like, doing really well and could potentially win, he’s happy for her because she’s really using his teachings. So it’s really kind of his win, if you think about it. But towards the end, as it progresses, when she starts working with Kevin and combining weird ingredients or unique new recipes, he’s so angry. That’s why he sabotages-

[Thomas]
It’s a betrayal.

[Shep]
It’s a betrayal!

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
He trusted her!

[Adal]
I like I like this a lot because he absolutely raises the stakes. And now we have even more fuel for his fury. When we figure out what they’re making, like, what the combination is that’s going to win, it has to be of the people, because if it’s like they put a foie gras torchon on a burger, I think the audience is going to be like, “Fuck you.” Like, “Eat the rich.” So I think it can’t be caviar, it can’t be foie gras.

[Emily]
No.

[Adal]
It has to be something… It has to be like a secret sauce or like, something simple because otherwise the audience will be pissed.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
Right. I like the secret sauce idea.

[Adal]
Yeah.

[Shep]
It’s some local recipe in one of the towns they’re going through.

[Adal]
Yes.

[Thomas]
I don’t like pickles because I don’t like cucumbers and-

[Shep]
Right. Same.

[Adal]
Well, hold on. I know people who hate one, like the other. Is that really a thing? Like, you truly don’t like pickles because it feels like biting into a cucumber, so it must be like a texture thing or what?

[Thomas]
No, actually, I find the texture quite different.

[Shep]
Yeah, it’s a flavor thing.

[Adal]
Oh, got you.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Adal]
Okay.

[Emily]
So you can taste the cucumber in a pickle.

[Thomas]
To an extent. Yeah. I mean, I don’t like the way it tastes, but I like dill, and I like pickling spices and stuff like that.

[Adal]
Gotcha. Okay.

[Emily]
Do you like dill, vinegar and salt?

[Thomas]
Yeah. I’m a human. So we saw one time kelp pickles online, and so we ordered them and tried them, and they were really good. And so what if kelp-

[Adal]
Did you say kelp pickles?

[Thomas]
Yeah, like seaweed.

[Adal]
Oh, wow. Okay.

[Thomas]
And so what if maybe their sauce is like a local… there’s, like, a kelp that grows. This is like a coastal town, and there’s a kelp that grows out, and so they use that to make, like, a fry sauce or something that they put on the burger. And so it has this really local-

[Adal]
Yes.

[Thomas]
Focus.

[Emily]
So it tastes like the town they’re in.

[Thomas]
Right. And so that’s the judges really like that, and it supports the local kelp industry and-

[Shep]
Right.

[Adal]
Absolutely. We love supporting our locals, and I think that’s cool because they could have discovered, they will have discovered it on, like, a romantic walk.

[Shep]
OOH.

[Emily]
Oh, yeah.

[Adal]
Like when they first go on a walk and it’s like the sun’s starting to set, they go by the water.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Adal]
They’re like, “Oh, did you know you can eat a lot of seaweed and kelp?” And they’re like, “Okay.” And so they’re just kind of picking things and eating it and feeding them to each other, and they’re like, “I’ve never seen this before. It has to be something brand new, right?”

[Emily]
It’s a new, invasive species.

[Adal]
Yeah. I mean, they win, but in three years, the town is destroyed.

[Emily and Thomas]
Right.

[Adal]
It’s the start of The Last of Us. But I think they’re like, “What is this?” And they taste it. Maybe Kevin feeds it to Patty and she’s like, “Oh, my god.” And he goes, “Oh, gross. It’s bad. You can spit it out.” And she goes-

[Shep]
What? He’s fed it to her without tasting it first himself?

[Adal]
Absolutely.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Oh, that’s right. He is an asshole. I forgot.

[Emily]
He’s a man.

[Adal]
You never pulled out a woman’s kelp for her, it’s just gentlemen behavior.

[Shep]
I thought that they would be on a walk somewhere, and then there would be some local stall or something selling food made out of this kelp.

[Adal]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Some little old fishmonger’s wife selling-

[Shep]
Right. They’re not picking up kelp off the sand and eating it.

[Adal]
No, we can’t have that. We can’t introduce somebody selling it. Because then the minute Patty and Kevin hoist their trophy, we, as an audience, go, “Boo. What about mark? What about mark? Who sold that at his little stall? Mark has bills to pay. Boo.”

[Shep]
I thought you wanted to support local business. If they’re just doing it themselves, they’re not supporting local anything.

[Adal]
Shep, you dumb bitch. Shep. They are local. They are local when they help themselves, they’re helping the communities.

[Thomas]
It’ll trickle down.

[Adal]
Yes.

[Shep]
You didn’t want them to buy it from Mark. You wanted them to source it themselves and cut out all the middlemen.

[Emily]
Well, okay, so they source it themselves at first, and then later on down the line, Mark builds up his own stall and starts selling it to the tourists who come to taste the burger.

[Thomas]
In the denoument, we see a kelp stand.

[Adal]
It’s called Kelp Help.

[Emily]
Yep.

[Shep]
Self Kelp.

[Adal]
Kelp Is on the Way.

[Thomas]
Yes. It’s good.

[Adal]
Self Kelp is good. Self Kelp is good.

[Thomas]
Kelp Yourself.

[Adal]
Kelp yourself. Well, that sounds like fuck yourself.

[Shep]
“Go kelp yourself.”

[Adal]
“Go kelp yourself.”

[Emily]
Well, I think that’s what Tony screams at them at the end.

[Adal]
Yeah. So I think and here’s the question, this is maybe the most political divisive issue we have to solve before we end.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Adal]
When they have their success. So their secret kelp sauce helps elevate them to win the trophy and win the contest. Surely they get some sort of financial reward. So it’s got to be something of like, we have to decide, do they stick to their roots and keep their food truck, merge it into one food truck? Or do they take that money and roll it into a brick-and-mortar restaurant? Or is that going against what a food- Because to me, a food truck represents something. Like, I feel like for whatever reason, you could have a millionaire, a multimillionaire with a food truck, and people will flock to it because the food truck represents simplicity and affordability and whatever else. Right?

[Emily]
Yeah. It’s food for the working man.

[Adal]
It’s food for the working man.

[Emily]
It represents the proletariat.

[Adal]
Yes. So do we dare have them open up their own restaurant to make more money, or is them being ambitious gross to the audience?

[Shep]
I think that they each keep their separate food truck, and he no longer just parks next to her. He goes on a different route, and they talk to each other on the phone because they can still communicate.

[Adal]
Wow, romance is dead.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Why don’t they conquer and divide the town? And they-

[Shep]
She don’t need no man. She’s fine on her own.

[Thomas]
If it’s a rom.com, we want to see them together at the end. So it’s cute if they’re working together in one truck and they’re sharing that space and enjoying being there together.

[Adal]
Shep? Are you in a relationship? Are you married?

[Shep]
Oh, no.

[Thomas]
It shows.

[Adal]
I wonder why, when your idea of a happy ending, when your idea of a happy ending is they both move a million miles away from each other and talk on the phone.

[Shep]
Yes. That’s the dream. Or maybe they reconcile with Meatball Tony and have him run the other food truck. They’re working together in one, and Tony is learning the new ways.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah.

[Adal]
Oh.

[Thomas]
So part of the reason that Tony feels so betrayed is that he, like, really wants to win because he needs the money, because his truck is not doing well, because he’s not doing honey dusted roasted Brussels sprouts or whatever crazy thing that-

[Adal]
My favorite cereal. Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Adal]
“Honey dusted rusted brussels sprouts. Yum!”

[Thomas]
Just add Kombucha. And so-

[Adal]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
He’s not doing any of that stuff, and so people aren’t interested, like, “Oh, it’s just a meatball, so I can go to Subway and get that.” And he’s like, “No, this is better. Trust me.” So maybe he ends up with either the other food truck, like you said, or they buy him a brick-and-mortar location or I don’t know, something like that. But they help him out, and so that helps reconcile that relationship.

[Adal]
I love this, because when we roll this out to test audiences, I think a lot of the feedback, I think a lot of the cards that we’re going to get, the comment cards are going to say, “I love Joe Pesci. His character didn’t deserve- just because he was old school. He didn’t deserve to fizzle out and get bested.” So I think at the end, at the very end, we see an instance where they’re happy, they’re celebrating, we get closure on them, and then we hear a very familiar voice go, “All right, order up. I got two this, I got three that. I got hold the ding and a big gaba.” And the camera pulls out, and it’s Joe Pesci, and he’s running the kitchen, and he’s happy because you see him also pick up a knife, and he starts to chop up kelp, because he’s like, “I can get into this. I can change this. Old dog knows new tricks.” So I think we redeem him at the end by letting him be a part of their business, and he starts to see what ingenuity and creativity and progress can offer the culinary world. I think that’s fun. I like that a lot.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Yep.

[Adal]
And also, his meatball subs are on the menu.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Of course.

[Adal]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
It’s a classic staple.

[Adal]
It’s a classic.

[Shep]
You can’t get rid of the meatball sub.

[Adal]
Absolutely.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Yeah. Especially if we establish that Patty and Tony are close at the beginning. They got this kind of father daughter relationship, and so not only is he losing the contest, he’s losing basically his surrogate daughter.

[Adal]
Yeah. I love this.

[Thomas]
Well, I think we have the bones of a pretty good story here. Who wants to give us a quick rundown of what we have to remind us all how the story goes?

[Adal]
Not it.

[Emily]
Nope.

[Shep]
I wasn’t listening.

[Adal]
To your own movie? So this is called Meat Cute.

[Emily]
Yeah, Meat Cute.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Adal]
And this is a movie starring Kevin Klein and-

[Shep]
Or Kevin Klein inspired.

[Adal]
Kevin Klein type.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Adal]
Who’s the guy from 30 Days of Night? Josh Hartnett.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Adal]
Josh Hartnett, I think, should be Kevin. And then Rachael… Rachael Leigh Cook. Rachael Leigh Cook should be Patty, I think.

[Thomas]
I can see that for sure.

[Adal]
So Josh Hartnett as Kevin. Rachael Leigh Cook as Patty. They own food trucks, and they kind of see each other around, and they like each other. And Joe Pesci I forget what’s going on. Joe Pesci trained Patty in the ways of meatballs. As I’m saying it, I hate this movie. Beep out any contributions I made, but don’t cut me out. Beep me out.

[Thomas]
OK, so Meat Cute. We have a woman who’s, Patty, who’s running a food truck. She’s sort of been trained in the ways of operating a food truck by another food truck owner, Tony, who’s played by Joe Pesci or voiced by Joe Pesci. And Kevin comes to town. He’s heard good things about Patty’s food truck. He wants a burger. It’s late. She’s tired. She does not sell him a burger. And he takes this as a personal insult. And to get back at her, he buys and starts his own rival food truck business, selling exactly the same food that she does. He goes everywhere she goes. He, like, follows her twitter and sees, “Oh, she’s going to be down by the beach today. I’ll be down by the beach today.” Wherever she goes, he goes.

[Shep]
You make it sound ridiculous when you recap it.

[Thomas]
It’s a rom-com. Of course it’s ridiculous. So there’s a local contest for food truck owners, and everybody, of course, enters the contest. They all want to win. There’s a big cash prize. Kevin and Patty are sort of trying to one up each other, changing up their recipes. And this really upsets Tony because he’s a strict traditionalist, and he sees that Patty, his protégé, is changing her recipes to try to be more popular and win points with the judges. And this infuriates him. So now he’s antagonistic toward her. The three of them are all sort of antagonistic toward each other because they’re in this contest, and they have those sort of external social reasons why they’re mad at each other. But then Patty and Kevin kind of, maybe some things happen where they take inspiration from each other and they both realize, “Gosh, the other person’s really clever and creative with their cooking. I like what they’re doing.” And they kind of start to soften up on each other, and then maybe something happens, and one of them takes pity on the other and helps them out. They start maybe going on little just social dates, not like romantic dates.

[Shep]
Right. They’re friends.

[Adal]
They’re friends.

[Thomas]
They’re friends, and they realize, like, “Maybe we can help each other out a bit more.” While they’re out on the date, they eat some kelp, and that inspires them to create their best final burger yet, which together, they create this burger and win the contest. And then somehow Joe Pesci gets a restaurant at the end.

[Adal]
Somehow. Round of applause.

[Emily]
Kevin sells his food truck that he bought out of spite so that he can give Tony the money to open his brick-and-mortar store.

[Thomas]
Right. There you go.

[Emily]
And then that’s how they both end up together in the one food truck.

[Thomas]
Yeah. There you go.

[Adal]
Thomas, A plus recap. Two quick things.

[Thomas]
Thank you. Yeah.

[Adal]
One, subconsciously, my brain does this to me. My brain plays these little tricks on me where they’re like, “Think of this,” and I’m like, “Okay, I’ll think of it.” And then it’s like, “Got your ass.” My brain made me think of Josh Hartnett because a lot of food truck drivers wear hairnets. And my brain made me think of Rachel Lee Cook, because Cook is in her last name, like, Rachel Line Cook.

[Thomas]
Because she’s cook. Yeah. Rachel Line Cook. Yeah.

[Adal]
My brain is a piece of shit.

[Shep]
No. This a-plus casting.

[Thomas]
Your brain is broken in the best way possible.

[Adal]
Okay, thank you. And then the second thing I’ll say is, this is kind of the story of Orpheus and Eurydice and Meatball Tony is basically Hades. So it all comes back to Greek mythology.

[Emily]
It all comes back to Greek mythology.

[Adal]
It’s all Greek. It’s all Greek to me, which is where that phrase comes from.

[Thomas]
We’d love to hear your thoughts on today’s show about a cheeseburger. Was it grilled to perfection, or was it a nothing burger? Let us know by leaving a comment on our website, reaching out on social media, or sending us an email. Links to all of those can be found at AlmostPlausible.com Adal it has been wonderful having you on the show. What are you up to that you want our listeners to know about?

[Adal]
It’s been a goddamn delight to improvise with the three of you and just hang out with the three of you. Thank you all so much. Even Shep. Shep-

[Shep]
I’ll take it.

[Thomas]
He’s the Tony of our story.

[Adal]
Shep, at first, when you were dogging my ideas, I was like, “What is this guy’s deal?” And then the more I got to know you, I was just like, “This guy keeps it real.”

[Emily]
Yes.

[Adal]
He shoots from the hip. He’s a real John Hawkes in Deadwood. And I appreciate you. I think you bring a good energy. People- What was your question?

[Thomas]
What are your plugs?

[Adal]
I want to plug Shep as a person and a personality. Big fan. Big fan. Shep’s Kiss. And then I also want to plug check out my aforementioned podcast. You can check out Hello from the Magic Tavern, which is an improvised fantasy podcast in which I play a talking badger/shapeshifter.

[Thomas]
Eight years now, right? That’s been going on?

[Adal]
We just hit eight years. Yeah. You can also check out Hey Riddle Riddle, which is me and two insanely talented people trying to solve riddles and lateral thinking problems and having fun along the way doing improvised scenes. And you can also check out, as you mentioned, my new, I didn’t create it, but I’m a host of it. It’s a game show called Tell Me About It. And it’s where I play a multi-billionaire, so it’s true to life. I play a multi-billionaire who kind of hosts a game show where people come on to sell me on their interests and prove that the things they enjoy are actually interesting. And I put them through their paces with my co-host, Eric Silver, and we try and see if what they enjoy really is enjoyable.

[Thomas]
We’ll definitely go check those out. And thank you for listening to this show.

[Thomas]
Also a huge thanks to Adal “Cheeseburger Payload” Rifai-

[Adal]
Yes!

[Thomas]
For joining us and bringing the idea of a cheeseburger.

[Adal]
Ha.

[Thomas]
Emily. Shep, and I are busy cooking up a new idea for the next episode of Almost Plausible.

[Outro music]

[Adal]
We did it. So after, you said, after this HBO execs, come on?

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Adal]
And we-

[Thomas]
Yeah, yeah.

[Emily]
And then they give us money.

[Thomas]
It’s basically like Shark Tank now, so.

[Adal]
And we yeah, we negotiate exactly how many millions we get?

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
Actually like that idea for a podcast.

[Adal]
Oh, and also check out Joe Pesci’s Christmas album. He did, like, a Christmas album or something. And then maybe it’s not Christmas.

[Shep]
What?

[Adal]
It might not be Christmas, but Joe Pesci made an album.

[Emily]
He did make an album.

[Adal]
You got to listen to that. Bye.

[Shep]
They always screw you over in the drive thru.

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