Advent 2025 E11 - It Was the Worst of Times...

A micro-dose of smart-ass notes To listen while it snows.

December 11th And now, our resident Christmas hater Jen Pancake with her worst

Christmas gift Oh man, there were so many It's gotta be every one for you Well, so,

my grandma cooked So I had my granny,

who was the good granny just almost as

just almost as much of a mother to me as my own

mother it was my mom's mother um and then i also had my grandma cook um not

as much of a loving lady as um the other granny sounds similar to both of my

grandmothers so let's see um one year,

One year, I got a beautiful, it was beautiful, it was a blue robe,

it was silk, and it had lace all over. You remember robes?

I got a couple robes. It was totally polyester, like completely polyester, wildly flammable.

There's a whole, there's like 10 pages of robes in the- Scratchy.

Sears Wish book, by the way. Kids robes. But wait for it.

It smelled so bad of cigarettes that I could not possibly wear it.

She's hiding it in her house. No, she got it.

So the thing was. Did she cash in Marlboro points for it? They used to set up

shop or whatever they were doing. I don't even know now. I'd have to ask some

relatives at the flea market. Oh.

Smoking at the flea market. The smoky flea market. That's double bad.

But my most favorite, I don't know if it was my most hated, or worst because

I actually did really like it.

And this was a high school gift, too. So I wasn't... You got a robe in high

school. No, the robe was a young kid.

And I'm like, oh, this robe is beautiful, but it stinks so bad.

Does anyone do robes anymore? Scramble?

We bought a couple when we bought the hot tub just so when it's freezing cold

outside, like the Terry Cough white ones.

That's normal. Not a polyester-looking weird-ass kid robe. No,

no, no. Kid robe looks weird.

Like a pleated satin polyester with all those scratchy laces.

If you got me a robe, I'd be mad.

But as soon as I opened the package, I was like, oh, I can't.

And I'm in a house that's also a smoking house. So the house already smells

like smoke. But the robe itself was so smoky that I couldn't even, like...

I'm like, throw this away immediately. Burn this. Yeah, burn this.

Kind of how we feel when we come home from the flamingo. My favorite worst.

Oh, yeah. It was like someone left it at flamingo overnight and wrapped it up

in a pretty package and gave it to a child. Took it, put it in a zip lock to seal in all the flavor.

Imagine someone saying, oh, I think my kid would like a robe.

But my favorite weird worst.

Me and my brother had matching robes. The third gift was, she got me one year

a, like it was this, I wish I had a picture.

It was a, like a thing, like a, not really a statue, kind of like a...

I don't know, just a tchotchke about as big as your monkey.

For our listeners, there's an actual chiming monkey here. It's not Jerry's dick.

No, he's one of those symbol monkeys. We'll put it on the Instagram.

You need a lot of batteries for this. So once we put the batteries in,

you could turn it on, and it was a statue of an old man playing tennis,

and it just went, like it rotated halfway back and forth.

So like him with the racket, like his top half? Yep, yep.

He was like, yep. And I was a high school student and this was the gift that I got.

And it was because I played- Who the fuck got you there? My grandma cook.

It was because I played tennis. All right, well.

Creepy. Josh Scramble, do you want to weigh in on your worst gift?

It also smelled like smoke.

My worst? I feel bad saying this. It really wasn't for Christmas,

but Leslie Latte really shit the bed on a gift one time, and I yelled at her

for it. Oh, no, this is bad.

It had nothing to do with Christmas, but... So as most people know,

I'm a hardcore Chiefs fan.

In fact, I'm wearing Chiefs shit right now. Always Chiefs. Big shocker.

So before the Chiefs got good, I also followed the Steelers because I needed

someone to follow that didn't suck half the time.

So like my best friend in high school was also a Steeler fan and we kind of

followed each other's team.

So Leslie visited her sister in Pittsburgh and bought me a Troy Palomaro jersey,

who's one of my favorite players.

And rather than get just the regular black, white lettering jersey,

she gets this gray jersey.

And I open it and I'm like.

Thank you and she's like oh you

don't like it and i'm like so you don't even

try to like hide it you just like this gift sucks

just like i appreciate the effort

but i really don't care for this i'm not gonna ever wear this

and i'm like what prompted you to buy this one because

i've never seen one like she's like well there was this little kid in the

store i'm like oh there was your first mistake trusting a child trusting

a child to make a decision for me so she I guess there was this kid and she

didn't know which one to get she just knew the player and was like which one

would you get and he's like I'd want that one and I'm like yeah never do that

again like never talk to a child he probably doesn't even know who it is fuck so that was and

saying it's the worst but when I think of bad gifts that's the one that pops

out but then she did get it exchanged for a regular well I mean I have a like a.

The worst gift ever is it your carton of camels that I got as an adult Oh, as an adult.

Oh, boy. And then I have some of the worst gifts. Or I'll murder you in your sleep.

No. So, like, in the former life that I had with my other wife.

Ex-Pancake. Ex-Mrs. Pancake. Ex-Pancake.

We're, like, her family always did the Christmas.

It was, like, always, like, really nice, sweet.

And, like, we would get a bunch of gifts. But like

Her sister Like we Like it was in the days of Like everybody got a gift for

everybody Like those times When the economy was good You mean like now Which

is dumb No fuck that I've told everyone Like that 90s economy That was kicking

ass and taking names Things were growing great.

But like So I got A card Like with a gift card in it.

It was for Chi-Chi's, which had gone out of business entirely two years prior

to getting the gift card.

Oh, man. And so that was bad.

That's a re-gift extraordinaire. And then the other thing that I could think

of that was a really shitty gift when you were a kid were those puzzles that

was like a dinosaur made out of wood.

Oh, the balsa wood. Yeah, like some asshole was like, oh, I'm going to go to

the hobby shop and get a fucking $2.

Jerry's 13 years old. I want like a Motley Crue CD.

I don't want. I have no idea what you're talking about. Fucking stupid puzzle.

You used to find them at the museum gift shops. It was literally like the skeleton.

They would think they were educational.

You'd make a skeleton of a dinosaur. It was literally, so it was a balsa wood.

You would snap the bones out of like the wood. And I was like,

oh, well, I didn't want a Trans Am model.

I'd rather have a fucking T-Rex made out of wood. I did, too.

I'd rather have that or a train. Weird.

I mean, not really, I guess. They were very popular. Don't buy those for your kids.

Kids don't like educational stuff. I don't know what I wanted,

but it wasn't any of the shit I got. That's for sure. Kids don't like educational stuff, guys.

No. Maybe that's what I wanted. I don't know. What?

Encyclopedia Britannica? Oh, man. I would have loved a encyclopedia Britannica.

My grandparents had a set of encyclopedias, and I loved. They used to be like

two grand back in the day. Oh, yeah.

Do a payment plan. You had to put that shit on a firm.

Or whatever they did back in those days. We should bring that back. Encyclopedias? Yeah.

Honestly, you could probably buy a vintage set for like $10.

I don't think anyone can read anymore. We could put a set right here.

Remember how fancy they used to look? Oh, my God.

Gold inlays? You know someone came door to door and sold it to you. Oh, yeah.

That's how the only one you get them. And then somebody always lost one book.

And somebody jacked off to it. What?

Rose pancake Jesus.

In some sections. What section? The sex. Shouldn't.

You can go to socoolshirts.com and they have some weird ass shirts that you

might like for Christmas. And you can give them to people, too.

You can send them to people.

We have the ability to do that. So socoolshirts.com. visit them early and often.