Advent 2025 E19 - Opening Gifts and that Vintage Smell...

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

december 19th did you ever hear the whole

like just pick a gift from under the tree in your whole life like

whether it be your grandma's house or you know some point your family's house

no we always we always had it like it was labeled like you have to do that yeah

oh yeah why i heard that oh did you get anything embarrassing no jesus jerry

it's just like i think of like maybe oh Oh, sorry.

The dildos for your father. Oh, like a lingerie.

Like a lingerie or something for your mother, and you picked it out.

Not that box. Not that box. Those are the crotchless panties.

A smoky pair of lingerie from a lingerie show.

Yeah, fashion show. Pretty sure it was still labeled my name on the gift that I grabbed.

Oh, I thought you would just pick a random gift. I thought it just says anything. Yeah.

It's like there's two gifts under the tree, and it's like, well,

why don't you just grab one of the gifts? You know? Oh, like they let you open

them before Christmas sometimes.

Yeah. We always, I've heard of that. Like you do one like Christmas Eve, but.

Unless you're Jewish. Well, you're just talking about they're under the tree.

I'm talking about for your birthday. I'm talking about for your birthday.

Someone just being like, oh, grab one from under the tree. Maybe it was for their other child. No.

I think they're both mine. They were just for Christmas. But one,

they're trying to make it. They didn't care.

They screwed you. Yeah, they're like, I don't remember which one's for his birthday.

We got you two things because we're nice that way.

But we're not going to tell you which one's for him. This is when,

like, you had to be careful about it, though, because my mom used to pull this move.

She would, like, organize the gifts so you had to open them in the right order.

And God forbid you picked the wrong. No, no, no, no, no, no.

You had to open that one last because it's like, it'd be like in your Nintendo

reference. Oh, I just opened Contra.

Well, obviously I'm getting a Nintendo or this is the worst gift on Earth.

Like here's a video game you can't play did any of your parents ever like fake you guys out.

I mean, like put something in a different box.

So you thought that you got like a blender, but it was like something cool. A blender?

Because like my parents would do that all the time and be like,

what the fuck? It's a toaster. And they'd be like, oh.

Don't ask me why. But when Jerry said it's a blender, all I could think is my

parents being assholes and playing Rupert Holmes the minute I open it.

If you like pina coladas.

No, because those cartridges for whatever, Nintendo, Atari.

Are predictable. They come in a very predictable box. It's like getting a CD.

Yeah, you would know what that is. For those children who don't know what a

CD is. Before MP3s, you actually had to play this disc.

And before that, you had cassettes. Do you have children that listen to the show? We hope not.

We always give warning in case. It's explicit. It's rated at that.

Um, yeah, they never, never really screwed with me, but I have screwed with people.

Oh, that's not surprising. Oh, you mean like you do a fake box yourself?

Um, so. With something in it that's maybe a blender?

Leslie's nephew, Colin, who I can't think of a good, oh, Colin Cronut. There we go.

Colin Cronut. Um, he used to be a little asshole.

And when I, I'm not exaggerating, I mean, he was a little fucking asshole.

Like I want to beat the shit out of this kid. Oh boy.

So one year... You're listening, Colin. Yeah. You know, I've told him...

He has beat the shit out of a couple kids as an adult, so...

The statute of limitations hasn't gone away, Jerry. With a Sears catalog.

With a Sears catalog. Ant service merchandise.

Joshua Scramble in the alley with the 1984 Sears catalog.

So I got like one year, I don't know how, but I think I like saved all the phone

books that were expiring.

And I just gave him books. But then I was a dick about it. And I taped like

gift cards in the last one.

So like he would actually have to look through it. and like he's like oh

another another phone book because we psycho it

was revenge jerry he was an asshole well

like my parents were mean but

they never did that like they never wrapped something that i wanted i and then

put like uh i don't know like books in there well it works out perfect because

i didn't want books nor did he which is why it worked out so he literally takes it and whips it.

And I'm like, you know, that isn't, that's a gateway to the world.

And so much valuable things are in there. I mean, access to businesses.

Josh just made a flinging motion like he was flinging a Frisbee.

I got Encyclopedia Britannica's one year.

Like the full set or just no i would get like

one a month i think one of my relatives that's

all you it's like remember well again kids don't

know this but that's a terrible guy oh my gosh we have

we have a cat causing chaos in here um all right did you well did you ever have

an encyclopedia at your house oh yeah we had like uh we're like because back

then people would go door to door and sell oh yeah media it's the only way you

got them i mean yeah so at my grandma's house we had a whole thing of encyclopedias

in the hallway on the shelf.

It was a thing. I loved them. I remember throwing them away.

They're never going to get updated.

Oh, really? You did? I don't even know what they did with them,

but they were everywhere, and they were in everyone's house.

I guarantee someone threw them away. It was amazing.

They made a good fire one night. They became completely out of date within one

year. Almost immediately.

Almost upon printing.

Because they would be, the information once you'd get them, the information

was already like two, three years old. Yeah, especially in 91.

91? You're so young. Mikhail Gorbachev is just like, fuck every textbook ever

made because they're just like, here's a new country. We're going to do this now.

Oh, man. I wonder what they'd look like now.

The encyclopedia? Or Mikhail Gorbachev?

He's got that little mark on his head on the skeleton. I don't know about it

your grandmas, but my grandma's encyclopedias smelled musty. Oh, yeah.

For sure. There was cigarettes going on. I don't know if it was smoke or just regular must.

Well, everything smelled like cigarettes. The pages weren't gold.

It was just the smoke. I think grandma's house in general, like,

had that weird old musty smell. Oh, yeah. All the books, for sure. Kind of like this place.

It reminds you of your childhood, though. You could walk in there and be like,

oh, yeah. Oh, God, I'm 13 again.

It smells like home. If you let your basement sit with nothing in it for a year,

it would definitely smell like a grandparent's house.

Well, maybe we can bottle that, sell it somehow. SoCoolShirts.com. Grandma by Fabergé.

Grandma and Grandpa's house. It's cigarettes and, I don't know,

the Flamingo cigarettes and regret.

Oh, God. Yeah, that just sounds, I don't even want to think about that.

Almost like a new book, but also a really, really old book at the same time

somehow. I don't even know.

One that's never been read or opened. Like you open it up, I go,

oh, wow. This is interesting.

The binding has its own smell. Yeah.

This smells like petrochemicals and old. It's weird the stuff you could look up in there too.

I mean, almost anything. You know what? Ours had, I don't know about yours,

but ours had an anatomy section.

I don't know if he went immediately to that, like I did, because I was.

Well, it's in the A, right? They went by letter.

I had to know everything I didn't need to know, as I said it before.

Snoop over here. And the pages were transparent. So the whole system,

you could just flip a page. Just ignore him.

Like flip a page over and like all of your organs are now in your body.

Flip another page over and all of your circulatory system is in there.

I forgot about the special section where it was.

And just a reminder to everybody that the December game of All In Just Trivia

is tonight at the Marshall J.

Gardner Center at 7 p.m. $10 at the door, cash bar will be available. Hope to see you there.