Ok so every year in March they have the NCAA Division I basketball tournament and they call it “March Madness” which is where 68 teams compete in a 3-week long tournament single elimination-style to see who will be crowned king of the dance, or some Jim Nantz-inspired term like that. So when I was a freshman in a college back in 20–(**does the thing where you hide your mouth and muddle your words to protect your age cuz I’m getting OLD**), me and some buddies all made brackets to see who would be crowned king of the bracket for king of the dance, I think we had an acronym or something. The winner would get a pooled cash prize (likely something in the $17 total range because we were pretty poor) and the loser had to do something real stupid like fast for an entire week. I think it was originally thrown out there as a joke example, but at some point it just became the reality of it. Now, this is a pretty harsh punishment as far as those go, but frankly, I wasn’t too concerned, because I am a SPORTS FIEND. Well, famous last words…

Ok, so do you like how I just jumped RIGHT into the story? So often times when you read things on the internet like blogs or articles or recipes or cheat code pages or erotic fan fiction or other stuff you get these long rambling intro sections that no one in their right mind reads all of and you just find yourself scrolling and scrolling and scrolling and sometimes you get some really brutal run-on sentences and it just seems so silly like who has the time in their life to read through every single little detail you throw in there like it’s the autobiography of Scott Farrell or “Triumph, Tears, and Tales of the Stage” as some people know it which by the way I do not recommend reading because yours truly is coming out with the audiobook for it in a few months time here! And often times these articles/blurbs/blog posts/entries/articles/blurbs/blog posts will find any excuse possible to use every single synonym in the thesaurus to describe their story or their recipe or whatever it might be and it just ends up leading to these super long and bloated and and lengthy and protracted and delayed and dragging and lingering and prolonged and sustained and boundless and diffusive and dilatory and drawn-out and limitless and long-winded and draining and debilitating and taxing and tiresome and depleting and fatiguous (I made that one up) paragraphs that just go on and on and on and you find yourself what the hell you’re actually doing here reading it? Thank GOD I didn’t do that with my opening paragraph. That would be miserable.

AND THEN next thing you know it spills into another paragraph that just goes on and on and on…Ok, I’m kidding. I’m done. Anyways, enjoy this recipe for mini frittatas!

Ok, so as you can probably predict, my bracket absolutely tanked. I think I picked Wofford vs BYU-Hawaii in the Championship Game because I like a cinderella but man it just did not pan out. Yep, I lost, and thus, I had to fast for an entire week. No solid food. No yogurt or jell-o. No coffee. No tea. Nothing with calories or any nutrition anything. No vitamins. Just water. Plain ole Chicago tap water. The plan was to go from 12:00:00 AM on a Monday morning (start of the week) until 11:59:59 PM on a Sunday night, and this must’ve been sometime in April or May. I thought to myself, “Hey, this should be a good challenge, but it’ll be a great opportunity to work off some of that freshman 15 (which was up to about a freshman 23 at that point).”

Ok, so Day 1, Monday, was really not too bad. Classic Monday. Go to class. Take a nap (Nearly every weekday of Winter Quarter freshman year I would take a nap in my dorm room from 2-4pm and listen to some sort of John Williams or James Newton Howard film score). Do homework. Practice piano for 3-4 hours. It really wasn’t too bad. The first thing you notice when you’re on a water fast (for me at least) was not how hungry I felt, but how ’empty’ life felt without setting time aside for meals. I think this mental challenge was just as tough as the hunger pains for me over the course of the week, and it was the most noticeable thing for me on Day 1. Nighttime rolled around and I definitely started to feel the hunger come on — It’s pretty rare that we just cruise right through the night without filling up on a meal 2-4 hours before falling asleep, right? That part was a little weird, but I didn’t have too much trouble sleeping which was good.

Day 2, Tuesday. Same routine. Class. Nap. Homework. Piano. Classic stuff. By midday Tuesday at about the 36-hour point, it was starting to get pretty uncomfortable. I think I still pooped on Tuesday, but that was probably my last one for awhile. The hunger was flaring up about as bad as it would ever get. The one nice thing about the water fast is that your ‘hunger’ pretty much subsides once you get around 72-96 hours, it’s just the cravings and extra time all of a sudden that really mess you up. Tuesday was bad. It reminded me of the scene(s) in ‘Trainspotting’ when Renton (Ewan McGregor) tries to get clean by locking himself in his room. Turns out when you haven’t had food for 36-40 hours, all you really want to think about is how much you miss food. It’s harder to sleep. All you do is lie there awake thinking about how much you wish you could eat. How if you just had a sandwich or something from the student center this misery would all be over. Woof.

Day 3, Wednesday. This was the day when I think I started to become more at peace with the situation both mentally and physically. I wasn’t as crazy hungry. I certainly wasn’t quite as tormented mentally, but the extra time in the day you get from not eating was still a big roadblock for me. See, it wasn’t a situation for me where it’s like “Oh, you have an extra 60-75 minutes in your day now, you can be so much more productive!” There wasn’t really anything else I was trying to do. I already had time for all the stuff I needed to do. You might think, “Hey Quinn, why don’t you read a book for fun?” Bitch please, college students don’t read books for fun. I think throughout the majority of the week I used my ‘extra time’ to play covers of Green Day songs on the piano. The other piano majors must’ve really loved that. Sorry guys.

Day 4, Thursday. At this point, I was at peace with everything going on with my body and my situation, but I was also starting to feel a little stir-crazy in the sense that up until this point, I felt like I had just been trying to ‘survive’ by doing as little as possible physically (which makes sense). However, I was really sick of sitting on my butt thinking about how great it was that I was actually surviving the 7-day water fast. So I decide to hit the gym. Now, this was a pretty cool accomplishment, considering I think I went to the gym all of 10 times my entire freshman year. I’d never really been exposed to a gym setting before college (other than the YMCA where I exclusively swam) so I had no idea what I was doing, but lo and behold, there’s pale overweight Quinn Furness, who hasn’t pooped for 48 hours, hopping on the treadmill without a single ounce of fuel in his body….I think I made it all of a mile and a half before my body basically said “Nah we’re good.” My oh my, that had to have been the biggest headache I’ve ever had in my life after that. One thing that is CRITICAL to successfully pulling off a water fast is drinking enough water. I’m happy to say that as I sit here writing this (on an 18:6 fasting fling of my own) in 2020, my water consumption is very high and that’s not a problem, but I can guarantee that back when I was a freshman in college, there’s no way in hell I was drinking enough water. Talk about a sick combo of dehydration and no food in your system. I was definitely out of commission the rest of the day.

Days 5-7, Friday-Sunday. I was over it as soon as I woke up on Friday. Fridays are great, right? End of the week, hang out with friends, have dinner together, do some late night snacking, all the hits. Well, when you take the food away, you lose a lot of the social aspects. I think I was too weak (in more ways than one) to go hang out with friends who were having meals, so I just started to feel more and more isolated. I would see my girlfriend-at-the-time Katie every day for sure, but being the pretty terrible boyfriend I’m sure I was when I was 19, I don’t remember her presence really doing too much for me one way or the other (that’s an overarching theme in general but I’ll save that for another post. Suffice to say though, it’s not her, it’s me) (Did that end up coming across like I wasn’t performing sexually or something? I didn’t want it to come across that way. We never had sex. She was really into dry humping though. First and last person I’ve ever dated who really liked that. Gotta tell ya, be careful when you’re doing that with jeans on. Woof, that can be tough on the boys). The last 3 days of the fast, I was really miserable. The hunger pains were not too awful, but I was just completely over the idea of me not being able to eat. All my friends thought I was a lunatic for not eating. The ones I’d lost the bet to didn’t believe that I’d gone this far without eating–Their doubting of my journey was really helpful to this whole process he said sarcastically. But alas, Sunday evening arrived, and around 11pm or so, I went to the student center to prepare for a feast. Because it was a Sunday evening, I don’t anything except for the C-store was open. Now, to be totally honest, I don’t remember exactly what I had. I’m fairly confident it included a 20-oz of Mountain Dew (maybe LiveWire or something), a family-size bag of potato chips, and definitely a sandwich of some sort, but I wanted to be careful as I’d read about how people really messed up their bodies by eating way too much coming off a fast. Ha, kind of funny how the guy who hasn’t eaten for 6+ days is worried about messing up his body. There was no big hoorah celebration. I ate my meal alone at midnight in the dorm kitchen probably watching Family Feud or something. For the most part, I had tried to keep this on the downlow, because no one who ever found out every had anything positive to say. Am I trying to defend the concept of water fasting for 7 days? Absolutely not. But constantly hearing negativity is going to decrease the quality of your life one way or another.

It was hard. It was REAL hard. As far as my “Hardest things I’ve had to do” list goes, this is at least Top 5, if not higher (other entries include detasseling corn in thunderstorms, loading a moving truck by yourself then driving through the night from Baltimore to Chicago then unloading the truck, getting denied by the vv cute Latina girl in my freshman dorm who I had a pseudo one night stand with but hey now she’s married and is expecting a baby boy so I’m actually really happy for her, and trying to stay in key and time with this really drunk lady in Wilmington, DE when we sang karaoke with Bon Jovi’s “I’ll Be There for You”). I never want to do something like this again, and I don’t plan to. I think I lost about 15-20 lbs total. Most of it was water weight, and I don’t think I kept any of it off, but damn those before and after pics were pretty amazing to look at. A true miracle of the human anatomy! **if this post gets 3 likes, we’ll release the photos**

Alright, that’s all I got for ya. Work’s been busy, but glad I was able to get this one in. I’m going to Alabama next week. If anyone has any survival tips, email me at beantownpodcast@yahoo.com Enjoy this fun picture — QD out

Yeah you heard me–It’s Quinn David Furness and we’re coming at you HARD with another fresh installment of the Beantown Blog. Before I jump into the juicy details of my incredible weight loss journey, I want you all to know that yes, beantownpodcast.com is still an active site. The problem is we haven’t been able to get all of our new podcasts on the ‘Podcasts’ page because of a technical glitch, but I’m blaming big tech. So for the time being, you can either access the most recent one from the home page, or you can find all our content on our SoundCloud page, or if you haven’t been accessing our content in the first place, just keep doing what you’re doing–I don’t get paid either way.

But let’s get to the good stuff–This entry is going to be bite-sized, you know, something you can read while sipping on your morning cup o joe or when you’re on the toilet with the runs from your morning cup o joe. By the way, I recently got the Evanston Township High School newsletter in my mailbox even though I didn’t go to ETHS. First I was gonna throw it away, but then I figured I would put it in my bathroom near the loo for visitors and guests to read. It has been a big hit. Many have reported calmer and less runny BMs as a result. Speaking of BMs, my weight loss!

You waited 3 paragraphs for this, so here’s the dirty little secret to how I lost 45 lbs in 5 days the RIGHT Way: 1) Develop extreme tonsillitis (it’s like regular tonsillitis but more extreme) with accompanying symptoms that mimic the flu; 2) Vomit and (apologies for language) shit your brains out until you’re not sure if what just came out was lunch from October or part of your liver; 3) Don’t eat anything for about 72 hours. Water and pills, it’s the only way to live your life! 4) This is optional, but I found it to really help out with that pesky water weight we’re always trying to lose before swimsuit season: Get that 103 degree fever going and don’t let up. If you feel it starting to break at any moment, throw on another quilt and ride the storm baby. Tell you what, I turned my boring queen-sized bed into a water bed after just 2 nights of ER-grade fever. 5) This is optional, but I find it helps for PR purposes. Many of you know the story of how I got alcohol poisoning on the Fourth of July many years ago and ended up vomiting on the Red Line on my way to work. Well, Wednesday night, despite feeling like pure death, I toughed it out and went to my focus group on ‘snacks’ for $125 (much to my chagrin it was not critiquing the new Daisy Fuentes 2020 calendar–look for an upcoming blog post on the negative effects of false advertising). On the way home, I knew there was no way I was going to make it, but where young Quinn would have foolishly tricked himself into believing he could make it all the way, I knew I had to either get off somewhere in Lakeview or it was gonna be all over. Well, literally all over me cuz where else are you supposed to vomit on a train? Shout out to the trash can at the Addison stop–you’re the real MVP. And shout out to my body for time and time again being excellent at giving me an approximately 60-second signal before I’m about to blow chunks–that is awfully impressive and saved me some trouble (note to 2015 Quinn on July 5th riding the Red Line south–listen to your gut man, literally).

Anyways, I’m down to 165 lbs and I’ve never felt more alive. I know what you’re saying–“Quinn, if you lost 45 lbs wouldn’t you only be down to somewhere right around 200 lbs?” Well, apparently the extreme tonsillitis can affect your ability to perform basic arithmetic as well. It’s really not my problem. I’ve gone down 3 pants sizes, my phone won’t even unlock for facial recognition anymore, and I just landed a part in my local community theater’s holiday production of Tchaikovsky’s ‘The Nutcracker’ as ‘Candy Cane #4.’ It’s a small part (literally) with relatively thin character development (again, literally), but I think it could really lead to something big. No one knew who Christian Bale was before ‘The Machinist,’ and now look at this guy. I’m a British accent and one public freakout at the lights guy away from getting a role in Terminator 7. I heard this is going to be the best one since Terminator 6. How many Terminators have there actually been? Can someone check? Christian Bale was in Terminator 4. I saw that by myself in theaters because my friends who invited me went to a different showtime without telling me. That’s the only time I saw a Terminator movie in theaters.

Hey friends, fans, and followers. Quinn David Furness here coming at you hard with another installment of the Beantown Blog. I’m hittin’ you up LIVE from DCA, aka Regan, in Arlington, Virginia. I’ve spent about as much time in airports the past 24 hours as I have out of them due to flight delays, and I have to connect in Cleveland later today, which might be the worst thing of all time, but minus that and the severe jet lag from changing time zones, I’m doing ok. Wait til they end DST this weekend. Combine that with a flight to Seattle and I think I might as well just keel over and die. Maybe that’s extreme.

Anyways walking around Crystal City really brought me back today to exactly 2 years ago, October 2017, when I ran my second-ever marathon, the Marine Corps Marathon, which starts and ends outside of the Pentagon. As a quick aside, I walked to the Pentagon today to maybe try to go undercover there but apparently post-9/11 you’re not allowed to do that anymore. Seems capricious and arbitrary but rules are rules I guess. Probably an Obama-era thing?

The 2017 Marine Corps Marathon was not a pleasant experience for me, so I thought what better way to feel sorry for myself for an extended period of time than to share my pain with you all :))) That’s a triple chin cuz I had fajitas for lunch–Mercy. Ok, so it’s mid to late October 2 years ago. The marathon is on a Sunday. Monday-Thursday the week of, I’m working in Pittsburgh. Then Friday and Saturday I’m working in Philadelphia. And of course the race is in Arlington. So first problem, I really haven’t had time to workout correctly or eat well the week of the race, cuz I’m just out in PA TCBing, you feel me? So rough leadup to the race. It gets a lot worse. With marathons, you have to pickup your packet in person 1 or 2 days before. Here’s the issue: I’m in PA the whole week and the race expo is at National Harbor (in Maryland across the river from DCA). So Friday, I work until about 2pm in downtown Philly, and the expo closes in National Harbor at 8. Now, that’s only about 150 miles, so you’d think hey, not too bad. Wrong. Friday afternoon traffic in the DMV might be Dante’s 5th level of hell. 95 was backed up between Boston and Savannah. Woof. I leave Philly right after 2pm and don’t get to Nat’l Harbor until 7:30 with just enough time to meander through the hellscape that is that area to get my packet. I’m literally at the expo for all of 10 minutes before I turn around and hop right back in the car. I then drive 3 and a half hours BACK to Philadelphia as I have to work there the next morning.

So Saturday comes, I work in the morning and afternoon, then it’s about 5pm and I have to first go to my home in Baltimore to get my marathon stuff before driving down to DCA, where I have to drop my rental car off. I then have to take the train into DC to my friend’s apartment, where I’m crashing on her guest bed (TYSM to Annie and Zach, you all are the real MVPs). All the travel is fine, but that’s a lot of segments, and I don’t get to the apartment until close to midnight. After a short restless sleep (road games can be tough), I wake up at 4am to eat and stretch for the race (I believe start time is about 7am). The plan is to just uber to the pentagon, as I wanted a no fuss morning. Mistake: I hope in the Uber, and we go all of 4 blocks or so before the driver tells me there’s no way he’s taking me down there. He was a very kind man. Eye roll. He then asks me to get out of the Uber. So there I am in the middle of DC at 5:30am with no clue where I am and not a great idea of where I need to go. To top it all off, I’m stuck in a huge crowd of runners who are congregating for a DIFFERENT race. Wow, that was fun. Eventually after asking enough people, I make my way to the train and get to the Pentagon right before start time.

The race itself was awful. It was about 80 degrees without a cloud in the sky (for those of you who aren’t runners, that’s nice for about 1 mile and then it’s miserable for the last 25.2 miles). The route is also fairly hilly at the start, and this really knocked me on my ass. By mile 13, my iPod died (2007 iPod Nano is still going strong but this specific day was not its finest hour). At mile 16, I pulled my hamstring. Lemme tell ya, even with all the adrenaline, a full 10 miles on a gimpy leg is a LONG 10 miles. By somewhere around mile 20 or so, I could tell the heat exhaustion was present and I was headed toward heat stroke. I don’t really know where the distinction between those two are, so I’m not sure which one I ended up with, but it was miserable. Finally, after over 4 hours of more or less utter and complete disaster, the race was over. However, I still had to get to an Enterprise near Georgetown where I was renting a car to then drive back to Baltimore to grab my work stuff before driving to West Virginia for another work trip. Getting there was not easy–On the train, it was terribly hot, and after feeling super light-headed for awhile, my body finally caved and I passed out. After remaining unconscious for what was probably 10-15 minutes (this part of the story is slightly unclear for obvious reasons) , I woke up having missed my stop. Finally, after backtracking a little bit, I got to the Enterprise. While the rest of the day was still challenging, the worst of it was over. By 7pm or so, I made it to West Virginia, where I proceeded to eat a big ole bowl of gumbo (obviously, cuz it was West Virginia) before crashing hard.

So what did we learn from this race: 1) Hate hill running. This was one thing I really struggled with in Baltimore. Maybe it’s ‘better’ for you than regular flat running (AKA Chicago), but man, I really hated it. 2) The Marine Corps Marathon course was cool, but there were a few spots that were awful. Notably the bridge right at the end. You basically go 3 miles (it’s like mile 19-21) on the highway with no water or shade, and when it’s 80 degrees and cloudless and you’ve been running for 3 hours already, it’s not fun. 3) Keeping up your exercise routine while traveling is tough enough. Running a marathon while is really hard.

Just got called for my flight. QD out. Peace yo

Hey followers, Quinn David Furness writing to you LIVE from Bloomington, Indiana, population 85,000, and about half of those are Indiana University students. So I spend a lot of time on the road every fall recruiting …On average I’d say I probably go to about 10-15 different states. Off the top of my head, this fall I’m hitting 13 states, and no, Hawaii (my white whale, state #50, the last one I haven’t visited) is not on the agenda. I’m still hoping to go this winter but need to figure out when that’s gonna happen from a timing perspective. Then I just need to bite the bullet and do it. I’m thinking about going for about 5 days and doing an Airbnb close to Waikiki Beach. Ever since I saw the Wackiki Wabbit cartoon as a kid (link here) I’ve just had that itch to go visit ya know? My favorite part is that cool native drum music they get goin’, I really want a piece of that action. I will probably just stick to Oahu/Honolulu and do the touristy stuff and some hiking there. I think I would really enjoy the big island and the volcano hiking there seems sweet but I’m also pretty cheap and doing Hawaii on the cheap takes some finagling. Did I use that word right? Anyways, I haven’t talked about my love for Arcade Fire much in the past year, so if you wanna listen to what I’m listening to while writing this, check this out. Damn that’s the good stuff.

So you might be wondering to yourself “Hey! I forgot the Beantown Blog even existed!” Well I would say so did I, but I didn’t, I just haven’t been writing much lately. In fact I haven’t been super “creative” in general lately. Haven’t been playing much music, haven’t been performing standup, and haven’t been writing that much or really doing that much with the podcast honestly. It’s not a depression thing. I’m just in the middle of travel season and that has taken up September and August was busy just trying to squeeze the last bits of summer out then work picked up so I really just haven’t had as much time sitting at my desk. Rest assured though that the Beantown Blog is still here and new episodes of the Beantown Podcast do in fact still come out on a weekly basis!

So I’m in Bloomington, Indiana tonight, and although I’m not really looking to date anyone on the road (or do one night stands for that matter, ain’t nobody got time for that), I do like using social dating apps here and there to meet interesting people to see if they wanna get a drink, go to a concert, play trivia etc. Although I’m an introvert, I do like spending some of my free time getting to meet new people and learn from their experiences, particularly when I’m in a new environment like Bloomington, Indiana. I got a great introduction to the local culture through some of the fine god-fearing right-wing radio programs I was listening to on the drive over, but I yearned for more. I should also mention that I had a 4 hour drive yesterday from Iowa City to Champaign and the first 3 hours and 45 minutes were pretty bland as far as the radio goes. I was listening to this one rock station that was taking requests so I requested “I’m Still Standing” by Elton John and they said no. That was too bad. But anyways I finally find the classical station and of course RIGHT BEFORE I get to my hotel, they come out with Rach 2, which is more or less the greatest piece of music ever written. So I only got to catch the first movement! You better believe I turned on the 2nd and 3rd movements once I sat down with dinner Some people watch Fox News or porn or stuff while they’re eating dinner. I listen to Russian music.

So I’m talking to this IU student on Hinge, she’s perfectly attractive (again, not looking to date, just meet interesting people) but she’s one of those girls who describes herself as a “potato” and that whole culture and it’s not like those types of people are inherently lacking in self-confidence because they’re trying to make a joke out of it but after you continually self-deprecate yourself over and over again enough, it can really mess with your psyche. So it’s funny the first time, but when they keep on with that line of humor, I really start to worry about those people. That’s why I’m confident in my dad body. Hey, I welcome the lifestyle I chose. Work out 6 days a week. Don’t eat like complete shit but enjoy yourself. If that’s the recipe for a dad bod then I’m the head chef. So I’m talking to this IU girl and I’m like “what’re you up to tonight?” and she says “I’m playing trivia then I usually get a drink afterward” so I’m like “oh that’s perfect I would love to join you” and she’s like “sounds great!” and this was at about 4pm and trivia is apparently at 8. So I get to my hotel and quickly get a run and a shower in, then I drive 15 minutes to the trivia spot and I get there and it’s pretty deserted and I don’t see her. So I text her and say “Hey where are you at?” And time passes yada yada yada all you need to know is she definitely was not there, and I got trivia ghosted. That was a bummer because I don’t get to socialize that much on the road for obvious reasons so I was really looking forward to it. Oh well.. So I had to decide if I wanted to stay and play alone or go back to my hotel room and get work done, and me being a responsible adult, I left after my one beer and one round of trivia to go back to my room and do expense reports. No word on whether or not I won, but I can confirm that I did know the 10th chemical element that was also a car model was “Neon.” Who’s the master of science now, bitch

Update: I texted this person again on my way home just saying something kind like “Sorry I missed ya!” I’m a big fan of the kind text. And she responded right away and said “Omg lol I didn’t know you were serious.” This is why 20-year olds have such a bad reputation. Maybe next time I will use Grindr to find trivia mates.

(i still have this bathrobe by the way)

So this past weekend was the Game of Thrones finale! WOW! I’d never seen an episode before but I know a lot of people are probably looking for a trusted source to provide some sort of recap. I get it–If you watch all of Game of Thrones, it takes like 73 hours, whereas I could just tell you exactly what happened on my Beantown Blog.

So in order to understand the series finale you have to know a little bit about what happened beforehand. So Sean Bean is Ned Stark and it’s looking like he’s gonna be the King of Game of Thrones early on but then it’s like the JFK Assassination and he dies at the end of season one. The next 6 seasons are just a lot of whodunnit type stuff where you try to figure out who killed Sean Bean and also why. It’s worth noting too that there’s this kid named Raisin Bran or Bran for short and he got pushed out of a window by a dragon I think. Then there’s Jon Snow who apparently is a ghost? Idk, they were saying something about a ghost. Then there’s the blonde chick, Emilia Clarke, and she’s not really important except she gave birth to some dragon eggs so she can control them so she’s pretty overpowered so it’s kinda silly what happens to her later but I’m getting there. Then you have Sophie Turner who is also not too hard on the eyes, seems like she’s kinda doing her own thing. Oh don’t let me forget about Peter Dinklage, who I know mostly from Elf but he’s pretty good in this one too. I think there are some KKK guys too but in Game of Thrones they call them whitewalkers but they weren’t in the finale so we don’t really have to talk about them. That was a big misstep by the writers. And the red wedding is where they killed Jaime Lannister I think? Idk, everyone’s always talking about Jaime but you don’t actually see him so I bet he died or the writers forgot about him. And there’s the young brunette girl who everyone was talking about a few weeks ago cuz she got nailed LIVE on TV and I would link you to that clip but it’s pretty NSFW and the Beantown Blog is a family operation. If you’re curious though from what I can tell it seems like Game of Thrones is mostly Emilia Clarke having sex. It’s kind of like Shameless but with dragons and Ed Sheerhan and less William H Macy. Did you know that he and Felicity Huffman are a couple but he avoided the college admissions scandal? That’s crazy. Good for him

So the Game of Thrones finale, which I think was titled something like “Lust for Power” or something opens and it kinda looks like Chernobyl after the reactor melted down, or present day Mississippi. A lot of crumbling buildings and apparently it’s snowing which makes sense cuz the motto of the show is ‘winter is coming’ which i thought was a sexual innuendo at first but now I’m not sure. So Dinklage is walking through the rubble in like super slo mo. Eventually he sees his grandparents who got killed in a building collapse of some kind, i didn’t really understand that part. Then Emilia Clarke comes out and she’s going like full on Julianne Moore from Hunger Games 3 mode, like I get that when you’re hot it boosts your self-confidence but this is taken to a whole new level. And I’ll also add she doesn’t speak english very well cuz I think she was giving a speech in some sort of congolese dialect? Not sure, I didn’t understand it. Then Jon Snow and Dinklage are just hanging out and also the young brunette girl who was getting nailed earlier and they kind of make it seem like something’s gonna go down but nothing goes down and it’s honestly a pretty big letdown.

So then they put Dinklage in prison because he’s short? Idk, I expected better from Emilia Clarke. They don’t really explain it but oh well. Then Jon Snow and Dinklage are talking in his prison cell for what seems like about 47 minutes and 13 seconds. It’s not even a compelling conversation. It’s rather bland. I don’t think the Jon Snow guy is really a good actor. Basically Dinklage wants Snow to get rid of Emilia Clarke which makes sense because Emilia is gonna kill dinklage I think but like if you’re Jon Snow and you get to come home to Emilia Clarke every night? Hot Dog. Photo for reference:

So then Jon Snow goes to the rooftop where Emilia Clarke’s hanging out and they talk a little bit but it’s not really that interesting. Then they kiss but then he stabs her! Like no one saw that coming. Honestly I kinda wished they would’ve banged before any killing because one of the big appeals of Game of Thrones is that it’s basically porn with swords but this episode didn’t have any of the former. So now she’s dead but then that dragon shows up. I heard she had a couple but apparently the other ones were busy. But then the dragon doesn’t kill Jon Snow which makes no sense and he just blows up the chair which is like ??? Then the dragon, I think its name was like Dungeon or something, takes off and you’re like is that it? And apparently that’s it, the dragon just leaves and doesn’t come back. walk away bitch. Then we get like this stupid fellowship of the ring style roundtable discussion with all these white dudes we’ve frankly never met before which is a real kick in the crotch for the last 30 minutes of an 8-season show. It also has Sophie Turner and Dinklage and the brunette who was getting it a few episodes and it also has the one token black guy. Every show has to have one. I think his name is Grey Hound. So Grey Hound is there with dinklage and he wants to kill dinklage but the council is like “whoa there hold on buddy” and there’s another 20 minutes of REALLY boring dialogue and eventually they choose the invalid who apparently didn’t die when Dungeon the Dragon pushed him out of the window in the previous season. Raisin Bran, I remember his name now.

So at the end apparently they let Dinklage go free and now he’s got a cushy job as like Raisin Bran’s chief advisor. Sophie Turner is also queen apparently? I guess she and Bran are married but I didn’t see that so must’ve been when I was in the bathroom. The brunette from earlier is doing some sort of Ponce de Leon crap, maybe looking for more exotic men to sleep with. I also forgot to mention Captain Phasma is in this show (she’s like 9 feet tall) but they don’t really give her anything to do. She’s writing in some sort of book which is a pretty clear rip off of Samwise Gamgee at the end of Return of the King but oh well!!! And they send Jon Snow to do KnightWatch with this other guy named Dortmund I think and they have a pet dog with red eyes and it seems like they’re mainly just shepherding immigrants through the woods? You don’t really know where they’re going or why they’re all the way up there, they don’t really do a good job of explaining it which was stupid.

And honestly that’s pretty much it. Everyone was always talking about all the sex and incest and Sean Bean and KKK dudes or ‘white walkers’ and Ed Sheerhan and Will Champion from Coldplay but honestly this finale was like 75 minutes of REALLY slow and boring conversation that really didn’t mean much and like 1 interesting set piece with Emilia Clarke and Jon Snow. So at the end of the day we didn’t learn anything more about Sean Bean’s killers OR his parents which sucked because it kind of seems like they just gave up on that storyline. Suffice to say I will not be watching anymore of this show!

Quinn’s rating: TWO THUMBS DOWN

hey cyberspace, quinn david furness coming to you LIVE from tennessee. For those loyal beantown podcast friends of the podcast, or ‘beaners’ as they are affectionately known, you might remember one year ago when we did a podcast LIVE from the banks of the Mississippi in Memphis looking across the river to Arkansas (to refresh your memory, head here)

Well it’s one year later in 2019 and I was back in Memphis this week. Probably the best thing about Memphis is Gibson’s Donuts. For those of you who aren’t as informed, Gibson’s has the best donuts in the world. Now I know all you PNW SJW snobs are gonna try to come @ me in regards to Voodoo, but let me tell you what the difference is. Voodoo is all about creating a spectacle. The 30 min line running out the door, the exorbitant prices, the psychedelic colors and all that jazz, oh and also the pink boxes. It’s fun, I get it. But here’s what I want when I go to get donuts–I want damn good donuts. I don’t want the glitz, I don’t want the glam, they’re donuts, not a Poison cover band. Gibson’s is where it is AT.

So I didn’t have time to relax on the banks of the Mississippi because we were running around the city for work, but I did get my Gibson’s–3 classic old fashioneds with a light glaze, and 3 New Orleans donuts. I’d never even HEARD of a New Orleans donut until an Emory alum on Wednesday told me about them. Mercy mercy me. Basically imagine a donut hole but about twice as big and just solid like a rock. Those babies were SUPA HOT FIRE. If you ever get the chance, they’ll change your life.

Last thing–I’m gonna be in Vegas for the Kentucky Derby this weekend and I’m thinking about maybe throwing some $$$ on Win Win Win. What are your thoughts? I don’t usually bet/gamble but I might throw $20 out there just to see what happens, only cuz I’m in Vegas. Who do you like this weekend now that Omaha Beach is out? That was such a good horse name too…This weekend on the podcast I’ll be debuting my 2019 Top 10 Horse Names! As a reminder, ‘Pentateuch’ is currently in the #1 slot, 9 others still to be announced! Peace

First off, let me appeal to my Christian base by saying CHIRST IS RISEN. And for all you Jews out there, don’t think I forgot about you. It’s getting tougher and tougher to find lamb’s blood at the grocery store in the 21st century, but if you shop at the Halal places, you can usually find it. Have you guys ever considered teaming up for like a Halal/Kosher thing? It kind of all sounds the same to us gentiles anyways. All I’m saying is in this economy when everyone’s tightening their belts, any opportunity you can get to pinch some pennies is probably worth it for you guys. I always kinda felt like the Christians were the instigators historically anyways. Feels like Jews and Muslims kind of understand each other and then the Christians just bust into the Middle East like the Kool Aid Man and it all goes to hell, literally.

Anyways, thanks to all who’ve listened to my Easter Sermon from this past Sunday. If you’re curious, I decided I wanted to do it at about noon on Saturday, so when I got home from work, I made some mimosas, opened up my laptop, and started to write. I’ve never written a sermon before, so this was a relatively new experience for me. Despite all the Bible classes I took growing up homeschooled, sermon writing was usually reserved for the Ph.D. in Bible people. However, in scripture, the LORD says “Let he who hath received the word of GOD deliver it to his people” or something like that. I assume that’s a Bible verse somewhere. So I went to the GOSPEL [John 20 specifically] to find the whole thing where they find the empty tomb and then Jesus appears on the road to Emmaus, all that good stuff. I assume the same thing happens in some of the other Gospels too, but I like John because he seems like a straight shooter. So basically I just cut out the Mary Magdalene part because I’m still protesting ‘The Last Temptation of Christ’ but I read the rest of the chapter. Here’s what I learned from writing my sermon:

If you want a really effective sermon, you have to channel a few people to get in the right mood: First, Darrell Waltrip. You know him from his racing days or his announcing days. Boogity Boogity Boogity let’s go racing boys, that guy. The man has an accent like you wouldn’t believe. Another person is this counselor I work with in Nashville (who shall remain nameless), but that person is like if Paula Dean wasn’t a flaming racist. The last person is the LORD because you have to feel INSPIRED to deliver the message. Honestly, I was really happy with how my voice lasted throughout the half hour. There were some moments where it started to fade a bit but I got right back on the horse and kicked into high gear. I thank the mimosas for that but mostly I thank the LORD.

So another really good thing to do is share a good story. Having done some work in Appalachia recently, I’ve heard lots of stories about coal miners and about how OBAMA is destroying our economy and don’t get me started on OBAMACARE and OBAMATAPPING but this is a separate topic. So I hear a lot of stories, and one I heard was about how you have to have that one guy who goes into the shaft before anyone else to test for methane gas. And I thought to myself, gee that sounds a lot like our LORD JESUS CHRIST. My point here being it’s a good idea to have a tangible story for your audience to really grasp on to. You really can’t afford to lose your audience in the middle of a sermon. Some people like to do the story first and then kind of interweave that scripture passage in there, but if I’m being honest, that’s a little bit more work, and I only had about an hour to write a half hour long sermon.

One other thing that is good to do is improvise. If you’re curious, about 90% of the words I spoke in my sermon had been written out beforehand and I was essentially doing a monologue (but with DIVINE PASSION which is important to remember) for 30 minutes, but there were some classic moments where I went off script and let the LORD guide me. You remember that bit around Deal or No Deal? I said something like “God is the banker, and he wants you to take that deal. The deal of ETERNAL LIFE’ — And it’s way better in my Darrell Waltrip-esque accent. ARE YOU GONNA TAKE THAT DEAL?

That’s pretty much what I wanted to say. Thank you all for reading–Year Two has been a challenging one over here in Beantown but it’s special episodes like this that make it worth it. This weekend we have a show from Chicago and then I’m happy to announce that next weekend, we’ll have our first ever show from LAS VEGAS (and maybe the first ever Beantown Podcast from the Mountain Time Zone? But not actually cuz I just googled ‘time in las vegas’ and apparently it’s in Pacific. What a tease) Q Out.