Smells Like Humans
Top 5% global podcast! Smells Like Humans is a seasonal podcast dedicated to bringing a humorous perspective to quirky and curious aspects of human behavior. Each show, the SLH crew will focus on a different topic, and share personal stories and observations in a way that sounds like you’re hanging out with your funny friends. The stories and commentary are presented with humor and warmth, since let’s face it: we all smell like humans. (Contact us: contactSLH19581980@gmail.com)
Smells Like Humans
THE MOST WONDERFUL FOOD FIGHT IN THE WORLD
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Madeline joins Ross to discuss a fabulous food fight ritual. Tangents include: fontanelles; headless tyrants; community; the shroud of Turin; Honda Civic; Torta 900; emotional sausage casing; dangerous Iceland; Pliny the Elder (again) and yet another example of Ross' misspent youth.
Notes:
- https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/21/magazine/battle-oranges-italy.html?searchResultPosition=1
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivrea
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shroud_of_Turin
- https://www.autoevolution.com/cars/honda-civic-3-doors-1972.html#aeng_honda-civic-3-doors-1972-12
Contact us: contactSLH19581980@gmail.com
And this kid seems he's convincing. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00You had mastered the art of bullshit even then. I was an actor. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Welcome to another episode of Smells Like Humans. This is the podcast where we explore the curious things that people do, the very human things that grab our attention and cause us to wonder, What? And why? I'm Ross, your host. My guest today is a sparkling human whose mind works so fast that it can turn off the light switch and tuck itself into bed before the room gets dark. It's Madeline.
SPEAKER_00Hello.
SPEAKER_01And welcome everyone. Friends, we are so glad to have you here, and we're so glad that you're willing to help us by sharing the show with someone you know. We appreciate that. Now we know, Madeline, that humans can carry around a little frustration and disappointment.
SPEAKER_00Oh god, yeah.
SPEAKER_01And all of life's little and big slights somewhere deep inside and stuffed down until one day they just blow. Mm-hmm. Have you ever just blown? Oh my god, yeah. Really? Oh yeah. Have you ever just watched your wig just blow right off your head, right out the window?
SPEAKER_00Yes, and you feel like you're outside of your body watching it happen and you can't stop it.
SPEAKER_01Wow, I would love to see this.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I'm a pretty like calm, yes, calm waters person, right? So it's how I read you. Yeah, it takes a lot for me to blow a gasket, but when it happens, I think that means that when it happens, it's all the more impressive, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Do you ever do you ever like when you really lose it, do you have the uh awareness that man, I'm really losing it, but I don't care right now because I'm going for it. Yes. Because that's how I feel.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. I'm like, nope, this is happening. I'm committing to I'm committing to the bit, and I will deal with the consequences later.
SPEAKER_01The next time you feel like you've got no more room to stuff your feelings into your emotional sausage casing, you might consider a trip to Ivrea, Italy.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01Have you ever heard of Ivrea, I V R E A?
SPEAKER_00I have not. So have you.
SPEAKER_01Where is Ivrea, you're wondering.
SPEAKER_00I am wondering, though.
SPEAKER_01It's in northwest Italy.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01It's so far northwest that you can drive to Geneva, Switzerland in a mere two and a half hours.
SPEAKER_00So the chocolate there must be very good, too.
SPEAKER_01Well, funny that you mention that. When you go, you must try the Torta Novicento.
SPEAKER_00Oh, okay, I'm in.
SPEAKER_01So that's the 900 cake. It's a very sweet chocolate cake whose recipe has been a closely guarded secret for over a century. The authentic Torta Novicento can only be bought from the Bala cake shop.
SPEAKER_00Oh, I'm in. I'm so in.
SPEAKER_01That's the kind of thing I love about Italy because it's like, okay, we make a cake.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_01You can only get it here, and you can only get it in this shop.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01If that you want the good one.
SPEAKER_00Right, exactly. There's knockoffs everywhere, but this is the real deal.
SPEAKER_01You want the real chocolate cake, you gotta go here. You gotta go here. I just love that. That is exactly where I want to be.
SPEAKER_00Yes, yes.
SPEAKER_01Now it's kind of in between Milan and Turin.
SPEAKER_00I don't know Turin.
SPEAKER_01Well, you need to know about Turin. You know what it's famous for.
SPEAKER_00No, it wasn't famous for. The Shroud of Turin. Oh, that makes sense. Do you know about the shroud? I do know about the shroud.
SPEAKER_01You know, the thing about the shroud is it's didn't really turn the current shroud.
SPEAKER_00Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_01That's in Turin. Allegedly, it's Jesus' burial cloth.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_01There are various problems with this particular cloth in that it only turned up like in the Middle Ages sometime or a little later.
SPEAKER_00Convenient. Okay.
SPEAKER_01And most of the scientific evidence seems to suggest that it's a fake. Okay. For various reasons. Okay. In any case, it's still fun to go see the shroud.
SPEAKER_00I bet.
SPEAKER_01Who wouldn't like a shroud? I read this article about Evrea.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Which is near Turin, which is how this whole thing is.
SPEAKER_01In between Milan and Turin and two and a half hour drive from Geneva. This is just to orient you.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01And I was delighted. I didn't expect the article. I didn't expect to read it. I turned to it randomly. I didn't expect to finish it.
SPEAKER_00You turned to it randomly?
SPEAKER_01I turned to it. I turned. Turned to it. Yeah, I got you. I turned. I took a left turn. Wow. And I started reading. And maybe because of the way it was written, or maybe because of I think this is more what struck me as just the just the delight of this ritual that's performed at this town every year. I I was so delighted I wanted to share it with you.
SPEAKER_00Okay, I'm so excited.
SPEAKER_01And with you, all of you listening. Have you ever been filled with delight when you're just reading something?
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_01You've been filled with delight.
SPEAKER_00I have been filled with delight.
SPEAKER_01Which is different than when you're about to blow.
SPEAKER_00Right. Similar but different. Two sides of a coin.
SPEAKER_01Different sausage casing.
SPEAKER_00Different sausage cases. Different sausage, different casing.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so this happens every year. This ritual that I'm about to explain.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01They had to take a couple years off during COVID, which people really it would really bother people. It involves thousands of local people.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01And over 18,000 pounds of oranges.
SPEAKER_00Oh my God.
SPEAKER_01It's Italy's most ancient historical carnival. Okay. Apparently. Wow. Although this the narrative behind it is, you know, a little controversial, but we'll explore it.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01I'm gonna read you some quotes from this article I read. So when this three-day festival starts, the buildings in town are covered with all sorts of plastic sheeting to protect them. And they board up the windows and they put tarps up. Over the three days, 8,000 people in Ivrea throw 900 tons of oranges at one another, one orange at a time, while tens of thousands of other people watch.
SPEAKER_00Oh my gosh.
SPEAKER_01They throw the oranges very hard, viciously, often while screaming profanities at their targets, yowling like Braveheart. And they would throw the oranges for hours until their eyebrows were matted with pulp and their shirts soaked through.
SPEAKER_00Oh my God.
SPEAKER_01But they would also keep smiling as they threw the oranges, embracing and joking and cheering one another on, exhibiting a deranged, seeming but euphoric sense of abandon and belonging. Oh a freedom that was easy to envy but difficult to understand.
SPEAKER_00That is That's a delicious sentence.
SPEAKER_01I I I you could see while I was taking it this is an annual winter ritual that has now sort of been folded into a pre-Lenten carnival.
SPEAKER_00So it's like I love that.
SPEAKER_01And I want to show you a picture. I brought a couple of the color pictures out of the magazine to show you, just give a sense of this. Look at so I have a picture of the crowd.
SPEAKER_00Oh my god, there's so many of them. And they're dear listeners.
SPEAKER_01They're just they're just packed into this old square. Yes. And this is what the ground looks like. It just gets the guy said it's like trying to wait after the, you know, by the end of the third day, it's like it's like it snowed three times.
SPEAKER_00It must smell incredible.
SPEAKER_01It's gonna smell a lot like used oranges.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01What happens is, and I'll explain why they do this.
SPEAKER_00Okay, okay.
SPEAKER_01But so everybody crowds in and they're waiting and chanting and cheering and they're wearing different uniforms, they're on teams.
SPEAKER_00Okay, I love it. I love it.
SPEAKER_01So they're the orange throwers, they're organized into nine teams. They each have a different flag, okay, their own logo, okay, a captain and a uniform.
SPEAKER_00I love it.
SPEAKER_01They have names like the devils, the mercenaries, the black panthers, and death.
SPEAKER_00Amazing.
SPEAKER_01So they start at about two o'clock. Okay, they're all crowded shoulder to shoulder in the square in that picture I showed you. They're waiting. Everybody, you know, before this happens, they've had a few drinks. Oh, yeah. They got their drink on, they had some, you know, something called Bombardino.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01Which is a boozy eggnoggy concoction, served warm. They're mostly men, but there are many women, and there's older people and some babies. Okay, I love it. Babies attached to their parents. And so this this horse-drawn cart comes in, and on the cart is people dressed as sort of medieval soldiers, and their heads and faces are covered with these creepy leather helmets. I love it. And when they get into the middle, they start pummeling the people in the square as hard as they can with oranges, and the people in a square are throwing the oranges back. Okay. And this goes on until all the oranges in the horse-drawn cart are gone.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01And then that cart leaves, and there ever's applause for everyone. Yeah. That cart leaves, and then another one comes in. And this goes on for three days.
SPEAKER_00Are the carts providing? Do people do the people in the crowd already have their own oranges, or do they pick up the ones that were thrown at them and then throw them back?
SPEAKER_01The the both. Both. So the oranges are provided. There's oranges and crates.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01Just thousands and thousands of them all around the side. Okay, I love it. So you don't have to provide your own.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Oranges will be provided for you.
SPEAKER_01Oranges will be provided. So the carriage comes in, stops in the middle of the square, and then this pummeling starts.
SPEAKER_00Just begins.
SPEAKER_01And then after that group is finished, they're applauded. Everyone gives everybody a round of applause. They leave, and the next one comes. And this goes on for hours. For three days.
SPEAKER_00Oh my god, incredible.
SPEAKER_01So it's not just, oh, we'll throw a few oranges and go home and watch Jeopardy. No way.
SPEAKER_00No, no.
SPEAKER_01This is a full day.
SPEAKER_00A full three days.
SPEAKER_01So what's interesting, there's so many interesting things about this, but the people are so committed to it. And they talk about for first timers, they call they need to be baptized. Oh my god. Where a first timer, otherwise perceived to be either new or weak, uh-huh. Kneels on the ground while a tight circle of his teammates whips overright oranges at his face from inches away. Oh my god. Everyone is throwing and being thrown at. They're working together to have a good time. There are older people in the crowd that have been doing it all their life. Yeah. But they look like they're feeble and shouldn't be there, but they're having a lot of things.
SPEAKER_00I mean they pelt it harder than anybody, I'm sure.
SPEAKER_01There's uh infant strapped to like their parents' chest.
SPEAKER_00Oh my god.
SPEAKER_01And the kids are taking some incoming. The article goes on to talk about what is this? How did this get started? As if it matters. I just think it's so great. I just think it's the greatest thing, but but it's like what's the history behind it? Legend has it that centuries ago there was a despicable, stingy, and cruel marquis. Is it marquis or marquis?
SPEAKER_00I think it depends on what language you're pronouncing it in.
SPEAKER_01So let's say marquis.
SPEAKER_00I like it.
SPEAKER_01M-A-R-Q-U-I-S.
SPEAKER_00The Marquis.
SPEAKER_01The Marquis?
SPEAKER_00The wicked Marquis.
SPEAKER_01He was wicked. He was stingy. He was cruel. He abducted peasant women on their wedding nights.
SPEAKER_00Oh, I hate this.
SPEAKER_01Oh, you're hating all of this. Yeah, yeah. He would abduct he would abduct them on their wedding nights and rape them.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's that.
SPEAKER_01One night, however, according to a mishmash of history and legend, a miller's daughter named Violetta. Violetta managed to fight him.
SPEAKER_00Hell yeah, get it.
SPEAKER_01Before long, apparently she appears in the window of the castle by firelight, holding his decapitated head in one hand.
SPEAKER_00Get it, Violet!
SPEAKER_01And it instantly ignited a revolt of the peasants.
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_01Her defiance incited the populace to burn the palace to the ground.
SPEAKER_00Burn the fucker down.
SPEAKER_01So they could free themselves to do whatever they pleased for the first time ever. And apparently what pleased them was hurling oranges at one another.
unknownI love it.
SPEAKER_01For days straight.
SPEAKER_00I love it.
SPEAKER_01So there's a lot of more to this history that and and it's all kind of muddled up.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_01F for example, originally, sometime in the Middle Ages, it wasn't oranges they threw, but it was beans. But they were throwing junk at each other. They were throwing food at each other. It may be the oldest food fight in the world. And then at some time in the mid-1800s, they weaponized oranges.
SPEAKER_00I love this.
SPEAKER_01And started using oranges. And it was apparently that was based on another tradition where girls on balconies would toss oranges to boys that they fancied. Okay.
SPEAKER_00Well, and then maybe if they were ones they didn't fancy, they pelted them with them. Yeah, maybe. Maybe. I don't know.
SPEAKER_01So it's all kind of melded together. The burly warriors on these horse-drawn carriages are stand-ins for the marquees. I see. So you gotta take them out. So that they represent the the the ty the tyranny that this community faced at one time. And then the people in the streets with the oranges represent the peasantry or not having it.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_01We're it's the symbolic uh toppling of evil regime. And then as I said, at some point the tradition was connected to carnival and pre-Lenten celebration, and so that's why they added in the raucous uh behavior and heavy drinking. Right. Because that's what good Christians do.
SPEAKER_00That's my under that's the understanding that I'm given. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Because you know you're gonna have to give up something for Lent.
SPEAKER_00Right. So get it while you can.
SPEAKER_01Get your pillage on.
SPEAKER_00Yep.
SPEAKER_01And the article he says it's a live action role-playing, it's historical reenactment, and it's Mardi Gras held at Colonial Williamsburg with head wounds and fruit.
SPEAKER_00I love this.
SPEAKER_01That's incredible. So great.
SPEAKER_00Sometimes I forget how young of a country America is, and then I think about how we just don't have shit like this, and it makes me really sad.
SPEAKER_01That is what I you gotta you got exactly where I wanted to go, which is we don't have anything like this.
SPEAKER_00We don't got shit.
SPEAKER_01And and you wouldn't be able to organize it here. No. Because there would be so many people would be, well, what first of all, there would be people who would be mad about wasting oranges.
SPEAKER_00Uh-uh.
SPEAKER_01Now in Ivrea, when somebody says, Don't you think that you're wasting food? The quote that I have in this article is says, What we say in Ivrea is that the only orange that's wasted is the one we didn't throw.
SPEAKER_00I love it.
SPEAKER_01So suck on that.
SPEAKER_00Yup.
SPEAKER_01So, but those people would be mad.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_01The food scarcity people. Then, of course, all the people worried about injuries and lawsuits here.
SPEAKER_00Yes, particularly of the people when there's people with babies.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, the baby head wounds.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_01Let me show you a picture of a dude. You might have already seen it. Check this guy out.
SPEAKER_00Oh, wow. Yeah. He has been bloodied by oranges.
SPEAKER_01He's got orange pulp all over his face. Look at these guys.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I mean, look at that. That's crazy.
SPEAKER_00This is amazing. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, they're just really like they're absolutely they're wearing their uniforms. They look, the uniforms look pretty cool. They do. I mean, they're elaborate.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And they are covered with orange pulp.
SPEAKER_00Oh, absolutely. They are physically orange.
SPEAKER_01People are happy about it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Like it's a badge of honor to show your face around.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And what you don't want to do is say you were in the fight and then have no bruises.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Because then people are like, oh, were you?
SPEAKER_00You were a coward home.
SPEAKER_01And then you're going to have to do that thing where you kneel down and your friends.
SPEAKER_00And you get pelted. Yeah, you don't want that. You don't want that.
SPEAKER_01People say they want to get bruised. People on their uniforms will have uh one of those little circles with a line through it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And what the thing is that you're not supposed to do is put your hand up to protect your face.
SPEAKER_00Oh my gosh, incredible.
SPEAKER_01That's not allowed. That's not raising your arm to shield your face is a bad thing tool. Now, out of the thousands of people, sure enough, there are almost 500 people who would need medical attention from the on-site paramedics. Like those weren't necessarily the most injured, they were just the people who were complaining the most. There were a lot more injuries. I think it's such a great thing. It's it's so delightful to me that it exists in the world today. Yeah. Where people in a community join together to do something absolutely nutbags. Yeah. They have a great time. Yeah. And even though they're in there, like just being as vicious as they can, after each phase, they are all together, they're applauding, they're cheering each other on. Because they all realize they're joining in this community community ritual, which is a bonding event. It's a it's a way to it's a cathartic event, it's a way to just deal with all your stress once a year.
SPEAKER_00I love it.
SPEAKER_01And it's fun as hell.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I just don't think we could ever do there's nothing like that here. You know what we do here is it on July 4th, we celebrate Independence Day and it's fireworks.
SPEAKER_00We get drunk and we blow shit up.
SPEAKER_01It's very passive though. We just watch.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01We don't do anything.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Well, a lot of people blow off their fingers trying to blow up their own fireworks, but that's about Yeah, but that's not a it's you're not supposed to do that.
SPEAKER_01You're not supposed to blow up their fire.
SPEAKER_00That's not part of the yeah.
SPEAKER_01I can't think of one thing that we do that the community does. I can think of individual groups, like in a mosh pit at a concert and they're, you know, at a punk concert and they're running into each other. Yeah, that's fine, but that's a very specific group. This is a community-wide event where everybody participates either by doing it or watching it.
SPEAKER_00Well, in America, we don't believe in community.
SPEAKER_01I mean, really like What do you mean we don't believe in community?
SPEAKER_00I know that sounds ridiculous, but I genuinely think there's an element of it. It's something that came out a lot in the early days of COVID is that there's this idea of the self-made person. I mean really the self-made man, but I'm not gonna go on a rant about that. Not yet. Not yet. There's this idea of the self-made person in America and the bootstraps mythology that we have, right? And the you look out for yourself and you pull yourself up. Um and that is directly in contrast to the idea of doing something just to help or support someone else. The idea of a community coming together to do something goes directly against this idea of American independence and individualism. And because of that, I genuinely think that we're we're predisposed to be less interested in those kinds of events because it it goes against our national mythology. But it was genuinely such a big problem at the beginning of COVID because it that's I genuinely think that's why it was so hard to convince so many people to mask, because you didn't mask to protect yourself, you masked to protect your community. And the idea of doing that was like, well, but what does it do for me?
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00So it's it's a it inconveniences me, but I don't get anything out of it.
SPEAKER_01This is un-American. There's a dichotomy there, as I say, between, you know, and a schism between this myth, the myth of the individual and the reality of how interdependent we all are.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. And we are.
SPEAKER_01But the other thing that makes this improbable, this kind of giant, beautiful food fight. Oh my gosh.
SPEAKER_00My God.
SPEAKER_01How great. Another thing that makes it improbable here is that we are so cautious. There are so many signs warning us all the time, and everyone's trying to like make sure that nobody ever gets hurt, nobody ever has a bruise, nobody ever feels slighted. It's overwhelming the amount of caution we take. And one of the things I've that I've enjoyed about my travel times is going to places where you can just walk off a cliff.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Or like when I was in Iceland.
SPEAKER_00That's your decision, and you did that. So we should be concerned, right?
SPEAKER_01Like that's the like Iceland, people die there all the time because they just walk off a cliff or they drown or they st or like in my case, I almost walked into a bubbling cauldron of goo. God. Because they got a lot of geothermal there. Yeah. And I was quickly warned that once you slip off the side, which you're about to do, you will not be able to get back out. Jesus Christ. You'll just be fried.
SPEAKER_00You're just done.
SPEAKER_01You're cooked.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, raw stew.
SPEAKER_01And they said it happens every year. And nobody, it's like nobody's nobody's wringing their hands about it.
SPEAKER_00Right. That's just a thing that happens.
SPEAKER_01It's Iceland.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01It's nature. Yeah. Nature's gonna kill you somehow. So this would never happen. But I think it's a great way to build community because it's clear when I read this article, and I'll I'll link it in the show notes. It's please do people, and and you can read it about on Wikipedia. I mean, it's a thing, it's a big thing, but you can tell that people feel like they Joining in a community activity, which instead of it sounds like it's a war, but it's actually a shared experience that makes people closer. Yeah. And it's also crazy. Yeah. And it's also exhilarating.
SPEAKER_00And it's also it sounds amazing.
SPEAKER_01It allows you to get out all that sausage casing stuff. Yeah. Because you can go nuts and you won't get in trouble.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_01So I lived in when I was a teenager, I was in Southern California, and people actually had orange trees in their yard.
SPEAKER_00Makes sense.
SPEAKER_01And so there would be oranges.
SPEAKER_00Just around.
SPEAKER_01They'd be, you'd find them, you could pick them, but you could also just find them on the road. They fall at the trees. Not everybody was picking and eating all of their oranges. I know that sounds crazy for people who don't live in places where there's citrus growing right there in your neighbor's yard. But yeah, there were oranges, always oranges. So we would one of the things that we did, being the young miscreants that we were, is that we would collect oranges and drive around in a car and throw oranges at other cars. Incredible. So one day we're riding along, and I know that sounds dumb, but that's what we did. So we're doing this and coming at us, we're going down this one street, and we see a Honda Civic coming our way. And this is back when a Honda Civic was a motorcycle with doors.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So when the Honda Civic first came out, it looked like a Tunican.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01But it was coming our way, and we decided to unload on it. And we had some nice, pretty direct hits, and we go screaming by, and the car goes that way. We're laughing like a like young, stupid men do.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01But when we hear this Civic screeching to a stop, turning around, pulling a UI. And we can hear it coming after us. And these cars were louder than because they were it was, it was like a washing.
SPEAKER_00So yeah, the noise all.
SPEAKER_01So it was like this you're hearing it coming at a really high rate of speed, and we're at first like he's never gonna catch us, but he's driving so fast he is gonna catch us.
SPEAKER_00Oh my god.
SPEAKER_01So at that moment, we don't want this guy named Dave, who we suspected was not cool behind the wheel, but he's the one driving. Right.
SPEAKER_00So now what you gonna do?
SPEAKER_01The other people in the car were more experienced with running away from trouble. Uh-huh. Or I shouldn't say trouble, consequences.
SPEAKER_00You have the air of someone who grew up learning how to run away from consequences.
SPEAKER_01I have some experience. So, so we're trying to coach him, right? But he's panicking because he is not a kid who has been in trouble.
SPEAKER_00Okay. So that would be me. That would be me in that situation.
SPEAKER_01That is the problem when you invite non-troublemakers into a troublemaker group, is they'll often screw things up somehow. Long story short, he ends up driving up my street where I lived and stopping in front of my house.
SPEAKER_00No, then they know where you live.
SPEAKER_01And the guy is right behind us.
SPEAKER_00Why?
SPEAKER_01People jump out of the convertible, start running different directions. I don't want to run into my house because then they know where you live. So I go to the neighbor's house and they have this gate for their side yard. Yeah. The gate's locked.
unknownOh, God.
SPEAKER_01But I'm at the gate. The guy jumps out of his car, he sees me, he goes running after me, and he's going to hurt me.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And I think, I gotta think of something. So in the last second, I I'm at the gate, I twip around, he's right there in my face, and I say, Sir, you are on private property. I'll have you arrested. Oh my god. And I'm like a 16-year-old kid, right? And you can see it flash across his face that maybe this is true.
SPEAKER_00Right. Like there's a there's an outside chance.
SPEAKER_01And this this could go badly for him.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_01So I see this moment where he goes from feeling you know, feeling bloody murder to wait a minute, maybe this is the wrong guy. And this kid seems he's convincing. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00You had mastered the art of bullshit even then. I was an actor. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01In that moment, I'm also afraid that he's not gonna buy it. But he says, Well, these kids they're around here somewhere, they threw an orange at my car and I'm gonna get them. And I said, Okay, here's what we'll do. I'll go this way, uh-huh, and you go that way, and we'll surround them. He goes, Okay, and he goes, running off. And I'm like, Okay, so I climbed the neighbor's fence, hopefully, you know, that their dog wasn't out. I climbed the neighbor's fence, run up, climb the other fence, and sneak into my house.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01In my house, somehow the other guys had gotten in without the guys seeing, because you had distracted him for long enough inadvertently. And we come in and we are laughing and falling over each other. And I notice my poor mother sitting in the kitchen reading a book, which was her favorite thing to do, and having tea at night. That's her little activity. And we're laughing and talking, you know, whatever, you know, well, manages all this stuff.
SPEAKER_00Can you believe that?
SPEAKER_01And she no reaction, she never looks up from her book. It's like, I don't need to know.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that was I don't I don't need to be, yeah, I don't need to be. It's better if I don't know.
SPEAKER_01It was so funny.
SPEAKER_00Well, didn't you have like a billion siblings, right?
SPEAKER_01Yes, one billion.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I feel like after the first hundred thousand, you're like, no, I don't need to know this shit.
SPEAKER_01I yeah, there was a I that was her MO, is she would prefer just not to know. Don't involve me. She knew stuff was going on all the time, and especially with me, since I sort of had a track record of getting involved and stuff, and so what you yeah, I know. I really was um I really was a good kid. I just had a I had a a really high motor. Yeah, and um I got bored really fast, so I wanted to always create some more interest. Right. Like what how can we make this more interesting?
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_01And you know, and all the improvisor gene. And all the mischief that we did, it's really it's yeah. We never hurt anybody really that I remember.
SPEAKER_00We didn't really the most damage you did was a Honda Civic.
SPEAKER_01I mean Well, we you know, we did it was all minor, goofy, not important stuff, although we did do a lot of it. You know, that when I think back on that time and when we'd go out and just be pelting something with oranges, there is a certain fun, exhilarating thing. And I think I would even today, I think I'd really like being in Evrea for this festival. If they would allow me, I don't know. I'm sure you have to go through quite a a bit of vetting before you're put on one of these teams. The fact that this there's a place in the world where this kind of lunacy is sanctioned, yeah, and where people are okay with the consequences of it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I love that.
SPEAKER_01There's gonna be some injuries.
SPEAKER_00Yes, but we're gonna there's something to be said for I think we have this idea sometimes that the two ways to the two healthy ways to deal with emotions, uh, and the first one is absolutely not healthy, is to either bury it down entirely, and it's like, no, and then you just then you just don't deal with that. Uh you just forget it happened, or to, you know, actually go go to the source and and deal with it directly, right? Like if I'm mad with my sister, I should go have a conversation with my sister. And sometimes that is the best solution. But I think we forget sometimes that it is it can be super healthy because even emotions that are coming from an interpersonal conflict, even if the the problem is shared, the emotions are yours, right? And so they're yours to deal with. Right. And so you can genuinely work through stuff and find so much relief by finding other ways to express them. And so shit like this is great, genuinely, for the human psyche. Like, let that out.
SPEAKER_01What I love about this to me is it feels like the quintessential expression of freedom and community.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_01It's like we are just going to run amok. We we have the history behind us, whether we invented it or not.
SPEAKER_00Right, whether it's mythology or metaphorically, it's been hundreds of years, so it's real to us here and now.
SPEAKER_01At this point, it's our shroud of turn.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01We're calling this the thing that we're doing we do, and it's important to us.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_01And everybody's included. Nobody is excluded. The babies can come. The babies can come, and they might be dumber at the end of it because they've taken a couple of headshots.
SPEAKER_00You know what?
SPEAKER_01You know that fontanelle.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Well, I hopefully they're held so that that's kind of not protected, like you know, protected.
SPEAKER_01These parents are wearing them like shields. It's like breastplates in the old medieval days. Right. And the kid takes a couple oranges and it's like, well, the kid's gonna be dumb, but they're gonna be really lauded here.
SPEAKER_00Strong.
SPEAKER_01If they're gonna be strong and they're gonna be lauded here for taking an orange when they were three months old. Right. Right in the fontanelle.
SPEAKER_00Oh no.
SPEAKER_01I've got orange juice in my fontanelle. There's the title. Is that a song?
SPEAKER_00There's the episode title.
SPEAKER_01Um I think that is I gotta write that down. I've got orange juice in my fontanelle.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I like to think of like sentences or juxtapositions of words that have maybe never occurred in the English language. And I'm thinking that's gotta be up there. I know there have been billions and billions of people saying all kinds of things and twisting words and using language poetically, prosaically, and otherwise.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01But has anyone ever said, I've got orange juice in my fontanelle?
SPEAKER_00Probably not because Shakespeare?
SPEAKER_01No, I don't think so.
SPEAKER_00I mean, if anything, you'd say, Oh no, the baby has orange juice in their fontanelle. Sir Francis Bacon Fontanelle? Because babies can't talk. So the baby wouldn't say, Oh no, I've got orange juice in my fancy.
SPEAKER_01Aristotle, Plato, Cicero? None of them said it.
SPEAKER_00None of them.
SPEAKER_01Pliny the Elder?
SPEAKER_00No. He might have thought that was a medical cure for something, but I don't think he really said it.
SPEAKER_01So you wouldn't the you wouldn't say, I've got orange juice in my fontanelle, because that would be the baby talking about it. That's what I'm saying. I'll guarantee you a little baby has never said that.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. That's what I'm saying, Ross.
SPEAKER_01But maybe um the the sentence is the baby's got orange juice.
SPEAKER_00Oh no, the baby's got orange juice in his fontanelle.
SPEAKER_01The baby's got orange juice in their fontanelle. That is cool. I'm gonna I'm gonna marinate on, yeah. I'm gonna marinate that in orange juice.
SPEAKER_00There you go. Percolate it.
SPEAKER_01I'm gonna percolate that. Hey, this has been fun. I really I thought you were the perfect person to share this with.
SPEAKER_00I thought I was so overjoyed to hear.
SPEAKER_01Who of all the numerous guests on this show would enjoy this story? And I said, I think Madeline is.
SPEAKER_00Oh, I dig it, and I'm flattered that you knew how much I would dig it.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so here's the big ask. Yeah, will you go with me to do this?
SPEAKER_00Will you pay my plane ticket?
SPEAKER_01Okay, we'll have to we're gonna negotiate offline.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01Thank you, Madeline, and thank you to everyone for joining us for this episode. If you like what we're doing, then please help us. You can share our show, you can contribute to our financial plight on Patreon. The plight is that we're paying for this out of pocket, and we have no sponsors. So anything you can do that can afford to do comfortably without it cutting into your orange fund, please consider helping us that way. The other thing you can do is just reach out to us. We get a lot of people reaching out to us now, and we appreciate hearing from you. We love your comments, we love the support you give us, we love the fact that you listen every week and that this is something that brings you some smattering of joy. So that's great to hear from you. So reach out to us on Instagram, send us uh emails, the email address is in the show notes, you can connect with us that way.
SPEAKER_00Tell us what you want to hear us talk about.
SPEAKER_01Right. And if you can write us a sparkling five-star review on Apple Podcasts, we will read it on an upcoming show. We would love to do that. And we hope you will tune in to another episode because whether you are getting pummeled with an Italian orange right in the fonelle, or just someone stuffing your feelings into a sausage casing, it's important to remember that we all smell like humans. Goodbye, everybody.
SPEAKER_00Bye-bye.