Haunted House Designer John Denley
Haunted House Designer John Denley knows what scares you. For more than 30 years he’s been designing and building Haunted Houses for Theme Parks, Casinos and major attractions all over the world. We talk the secret to a great Haunted House, the best Haunted Houses in the world and what scares people more than anything else. Then, we countdown the Top 5 Noodles Dishes.
John Denley: 01:24
Pointless: 21:02
Top 5 Noodle Dishes: 35:09
Interview with Haunted House Designer John Denley
Nick VinZant 0:11
Nick, welcome to profoundly pointless. My name is Nick VinZant Coming up in this episode haunted houses and noodle dishes and
John Denley 0:21
the entire haunt. Haunts were based on spirits, and I watched grown men so afraid of these particular spirits, throw their wives or girlfriends into the performer who was doing this, peeing themselves constantly. People come out the back door and go, Oh, my God, I beat myself. How much can they make? Will rely on their location, how much advertising they do, but there are some fonts out there making millions.
Nick VinZant 0:52
I want to thank you so much for joining us. If you get a chance subscribe, leave us a rating or a review. We really appreciate it. Really helps us out. If you're a new listener, welcome to the show. If you're a long time listener, thank you so much for all of your support. So I want to get right to our first guest, because he has designed haunted houses for some of the biggest names and scariest places in the world. This is haunted house designer John Denley, what makes a haunted house scary?
John Denley 1:26
What makes a haunted house scary is the fact that you can't predict what's going to happen next one. The environment is realistic, so you're able to suspend disbelief. I'm walking into Wow, this something could happen to me, and instead of walking past scenes like you would in a museum, where you're passing exhibits, I'm walking through that cave, I'm walking through that cemetery, so I feel vulnerable. It's the most important thing. And in the greatest haunted house, they make you feel like something's gone wrong, like you might get an elevator and it's gone wrong, or a fake ending where you go, thanks for coming. You get into the thing, and also in the elevator, you know, something wrong. Where's the great haunted houses, a combination of beautiful scenery, fantastic characters that keep you guessing, and they don't just scare one part of the group. If you go through in a group of 10, if they're properly designed, they'll scare the beginning, the middle and the end.
Nick VinZant 2:18
So I scare super easily. And like, I would not go into a haunted house. It is just personally, like, not my thing. I don't like to be scared. But when you kind of design one, like, how do you go about designing it? Like, where do you start? What's your philosophy? Those kind of
John Denley 2:38
things my philosophy is, is very simple. It comes from a lot a lot of experience. I've haunted everything from Madison Square Garden. I've done casinos. We've put the first haunted houses in Asia. We were the first people to bring haunted houses in Halloween to to Hong Kong. So a lot of it is locality, but locality in in Hong Kong, very different. It's all you know, Freddie, Jason, Michael Myers, that's that. That's nothing. What they are, very spiritual people. So we did our research, and the entire haunt. Haunts were based on spirits. And I watched grown men so afraid of these particular spirits, grow their wives or girlfriends into the performer who is doing this, and then, because it is so intertwined with their culture, they're terrified. And also, the theme you choose can be quite terrified. For instance, terror on the wharf. You know, the only thing scarier than the first half is the second. You know, these, these great little bylines like this. You know, a haunted house that the others can only scream about, you know, so, a super spectacle of hideous horrors. So you really got to kind of decide what you are, who are your audience. You got to win the crowd over right in the beginning. From the beginning, if you don't win the crowd, from the beginning, you're done. You're gonna go. That was no good. So in an indoor haunted house, it might go something like this. So I'll do I'll do it. If I was doing the first scene, I'd say, welcome. You've awakened the master. The rules are simple, touch nothing and no thing will touch you this way if you want to live what we call in the house like a firm handshake. We just won you over from the beginning. Another great one is, one of my favorites is you take what we call a plant, and not like a fern, but a plant somebody who works for us, right? But we take a plant and have them go in with the crowd on the hayride, and we'll just take we have these radiation scene. We had these guys come out of the fog with a fake Geiger counter, and they, they singled out this woman, and of course, they press the button and it's going off, and reach her. They grab her, pull her off the wagon, throw her into this decontamination. Under, hit this button, all the sirens go off, and body pot shoot out the top, and they slap each other five and walk back into the fog. The whole wagon is going, yeah, yeah, it's gonna rock. And the kids are going, mom, they just took that lady from the wagon, and now they feel vulnerable. And they're part of the show. They're not just a spectator. You're part of the show.
Nick VinZant 5:24
I remember when I had the courage to go into haunted houses, like, as I was a kid, I'm in my 30s, like they were it wasn't scary, like it wasn't a big deal. When did haunted houses, would you say, really turned a corner and became like things that now to me, look, oh my god, what is happening in here?
John Denley 5:42
Yeah, it really. People started upping the game in the mid 90s. The 90s, something very special happened. I had no competitors in the early 90s, and then all of a sudden, the trade shows three or four more. Now the trade shows up to 3000 companies that support the haunted house industry, but I think that it goes in line with the movies. To answer your question directly, you saw more people start incorporating things like, well, you know what? This really works. We're gonna we're gonna try some pyrotechnics in the show. We're gonna add animatronics to the show, things that some but people can't do giant dragons and things like this. And companies started providing them. And then, of course, now CGI is involved. So you're seeing, you're seeing, just like the movies people expect more and more. They expect movie quality, theme park, what I would say, entertainment out of the haunted houses. Today,
Nick VinZant 6:35
I want to get into the business aspects of it a little bit later, but in terms of like, all right, start to finish. How long does it take you to design a haunted house? Your average one?
John Denley 6:45
Normally, it might take a couple months to build a really good one. And it really depends on a lot of theme parks come to us and they want several. We put last three years. We put four of them in Ohio and four of those haunts took, I'm going to say, seven months to to build, and then we also had to go install it. So it took, it took about four weeks to install all four haunts, and then we had to go down after the season and take it down. They come down a lot faster than they go up.
Nick VinZant 7:26
When you look at kind of your than the business aspect of it, right? I mean, you look at kind of the average ass price, so to speak, how much does it cost to put one one of these up? How much can one of these make?
John Denley 7:37
How much can they make? Will rely on their location, how much advertising they do, but there are some fonts out there making millions, but they might be able to put something together that is fairly primitive or basic for $100,000 you know, and, and that is, that is, you know, really them doing all the work, you know, not adding a lot, like animatronics, or, you know, $5,000 $4,000 some of them are $20,000 all different scopes for these type of things. And they're, and then incredibly unique situations, like Eastern State, Eastern State Penitentiary, and we're getting a call from them, and he should say, penitentiary. It was very interesting. It was this terrifying building, and you read the history of it, it's even more terrifying. And it takes up, I don't know, four to six city blocks, biggest place I've ever seen. And they were like, So, how do we make this look more like a haunted house and respectively? I had to, like, try to keep a straight face and go, Why would you want this to look like anything else other than it is this building is terrifying. Make it a haunted penitentiary. I would treat people like prisoners. I would de louse them as they come through and spray fog on their feet, and de louse them and treat them like prisoners, and, you know, and lean into the building you have, you know, you don't want to change this. I could, I said it would take me, it would take me a year to make the the walls look like this. What's the most somebody's ever spent? Some good ones are one to spend, you know, $750,000 or million dollars like this, to to do several haunts. But people, the haunts are adding other things. Are finding different ways of adding revenue. And here's what I here was what I I came up with this one, and now other haunts have have added to their to their roster. These are some really funny ways of adding revenue to this as a business. So I came up with the monster protection necklace. So monster protection necklace is right, here's the here's the little ones coming in. So for $5 you can buy that monster protection necklace and the monsters won't focus on you. That's just
Nick VinZant 9:51
kind of crazy to me, right? It's like you can drop a million dollars on a haunted house. There's that many people that are coming through,
John Denley 9:57
yeah? Because, you know, and. And you might not make your investment back the first year alone on that. But, I mean, think about this. You also, you can get corporate sponsorship. You know, you get Monster energy drink to sponsor your event. You know, as a spot money, you can get tombstone pizza. You know, also, you know, like I said, concession food, everywhere this, you're in a queue line. Everywhere that there's you're at the end of a q line there's ready turn there should be another opportunity to sell you something or make more money.
Nick VinZant 10:27
Are you ready for some harder slash? Listener submitted questions, absolutely. What's the scariest one you've ever been to or created?
John Denley 10:35
Oh, easy. Easy. The scariest one I've been to and had the pleasure of working on was Tara on Church Street in Orlando. It was so terrifying. And what made it terrifying was they told you to put your hands on the shoulders in front of you. Everybody had put you the hand on the person's shoulder in front of them, and you had to shuffle through this traction. They said this was your lifeline. At any time, take, you know, break the lifeline, and you'll be asked to leave. So what happened is the person would scare the person's shoulders in the front, because they just get scared, and it'd be a chain. And it'll be a change. A whole audience is scaring everybody by squeezing everybody's shoulder. Everyone's scaring everybody. And the environment was amazing. The actors had movie quality makeup. And I probably went in 10 times in a row. I couldn't get enough of it.
Nick VinZant 11:16
Are there any other kind of like runners up that you look at?
John Denley 11:20
Absolutely, absolutely run us up that are just amazing haunts that gone through, that I've that have been blown away. I would have to say there was a place called fright kingdom that was in that was in Florida, that was pretty terrifying in New England, there is a place called fright kingdom that's excellent. And it's in dual all he tries to endorse it. He has complete control of the light and lighting so, so basically the integrity, I guess that's word of it, of the lighting. So he he can control everything to you and and, you know, there might be something you'll do psychological tricks to you, like something like this, like, Oh, here's your balloon of protection. You know, when they get in the clown house, you know, nothing can happen to you, as long as you call the balloon a collection and protection. And then you go around the corner and another clown pops the balloon and goes, that doesn't work in here, kid. So they give you the security and they take it away, not
Nick VinZant 12:23
necessarily the entire haunt, but just the overall scariest part of one.
John Denley 12:31
Yeah, it was a haunt that was mine years ago, and I just tried something that I just had never seen anybody else do I still haven't seen anybody else do it. So you went up, up the ramp into this part of the upper cemetery, before he went down into the lower cemetery. And there's this old grave digger there with a bottle sitting on a tombstone. He's giving you this speech going, you went to the cemetery. Nothing much goes here anymore. Birds don't gather. Dogs don't go, you know. And again, he's giving you this whole speech that's kind of unsettling. And all of a sudden, underneath you, you're not standing on a floor, or I'll think of this the entire you're actually standing on like inch thick plexiglass, like lexan, that lights up, and the zombies right underneath onto the floor, scratching at you, and people just go, whoa. They feel like they're instantly gonna fall when, when they the floors become transparent, and nobody ever picture something gonna be underneath you. Yeah? So that really terrified people. Oh, I'm scared sitting and and the best part was I still had this great memory of this one guy who did that did this incredible Van Damme thing. His feet went up both side of the wall doing that split that Van Dam always does. And I'm thinking, like, wow, he actually would have made it.
Nick VinZant 13:52
That's one of our questions. Most interesting reactions you've ever seen from people
John Denley 13:57
peeing themselves constantly. People come out the back door and go, Oh my god, I beat myself. Other reactions are, you know, animation comes out of somebody, and somebody gives a beautiful right cross and, you know, punch the animation and or actor or actress, which that's why we have to design things really get in and out before they get hit, or put them in areas where they can't be in a corner. People have had all kinds of bodily fluids dispensed in every possible direction through the haunt. And I have also seen what I what I love is guys, if you look through through the infrared camera, guys, they they grab the girl, their girlfriend or wife, and they grab her by the shoulders like this, like they're protecting her, but they're really not. If you watch the tapes, they they push it in this way. They're doing this way, and they're using her as a human shield against everything that's in there, which is hilarious to me, because. You know, she's getting pivoted this way and this way and this way, getting used as a as a shield, and that, that really makes me laugh. Guys have a really strange fear. It seems way, much more than women do something coming towards their ankles. They absolutely flip out. So this tiny, little like clown balloon in a hot that we did years ago would come out of this hole, you know, you know, those long, thin clown balloons are no one any other, yeah,
Nick VinZant 15:23
yeah, yeah. They like, make them into animals, yeah, yeah.
John Denley 15:27
And they just, just gently touch the guy's ankle with that thing. And the guys would flip out and, like, throw their way. It was so funny to watch. And we have this thing called ankle tickle, which are compressed air that goes with little tubes, which they help. They actually tickle your ankles. And people flip out, you know? And so that is, that is a funny reaction. And one of the best reactions, or the comical reaction that I have seen, was we had or two of them, I say, was one of the haunts I haven't Salem they'd go through the front but when it exits into a mall where my museum is my monster Museum, and I saw a bunch of people that I I think were probably on certain products, and it might have come from a dispensary or two, and they came out the back door screaming, and they stopped, and when they looked around, they went, what? What just happened? We were in a mall, and they, they were, they were more astounded by the fact that they went in a haunt and they ended up in a mall than they were over the attraction, which I thought that that was very funny. And I I did laugh at another one was the they came, the New England Patriots came through, one of my old haunts come through. And these guys were
Nick VinZant 16:52
gigantic, huge guy. I
John Denley 16:54
mean, I'm six feet, you know, 200 pound, but you guys are massive. So they come through. And I was a tour guide up to a point, and I said, my powers can no longer protect you. You must go that way if you want to live. And they go, you ain't coming with us. And I said, I'm sorry. I said, Only mortals are allowed in there. I cannot mingle with mortals. And I just, boom, I disappeared in the Coronavirus gone, and they basically got in the huddle and, like, I'm not doing this. You go first. I'm not doing you go for it. No way you do. You know what? This was your idea. And it was funny that these guys that are twice the size of anybody in this place, and, you know, it took them, like, five minutes to decide who's and he's being pushed first, you know, so that it's a lot of fun. What I love is when they come out the back door feeling some sense of of as a group of camaraderie, like we survived that together. Because, to me, a perfect haunt would be like walking through your favorite horror movie or creepy story and coming out in your survive together.
Nick VinZant 17:59
You know, are there areas of the country in the United States, we're primarily listened to in the United States, are there areas of the country where, like, Oh, this is really big here. Yep,
John Denley 18:10
the Midwest, you'll find most of the largest haunts ever seen. It be, you know, 30,000 square feet, 20,000 square feet. You know, in Salem, you know, there would be three or 4000 square feet, something like that. It's what's available for people expect in New England, but in the Midwest, they're huge. And of course, there's in places like Pennsylvania to Pennsylvania, Eastern State Penitentiary, you know, Pennhurst penitentiary, Randy Bates, the Bates Motel. It just seems to be. There's so many gigantic names and haunts in Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, amazing haunts. But the Midwest has to be the king of haunts. Kansas City and St Louis probably have more Hans than I've ever seen. It's unbelievable in that whole area. And they're they're massive, massive.
Nick VinZant 19:12
What do you think the future is?
John Denley 19:14
I think the future of haunted houses is pretty solid. I don't think people are ever going to get sick of the live interaction. But I think what you're going to see is people integrating a lot of things like augmented reality, kind of a hologram type of presence, where there will be characters that will be able to come out of walls and, you know, engage with you, and then I think you're, we're not far away from that at all. And I also believe that there will be a ton. There will be a thing where the strong ones survive, in terms of you either catch on or you don't, and the people who treat it like a business and have a budget, you. And are not afraid to reinvest and plan it out. They'll succeed. You know, I could walk in, I could walk in a hot house in 10 seconds and tell you whether somebody's heart is in it or not, or they're just in it for the money.
Nick VinZant 20:15
If people want to contact you, they want to learn more. What's the best way that kind of stuff? Sure.
John Denley 20:19
Real simple. It's a boneyard productions.com and, you know, like I said, we've done haunted car washes. If you, if you've got it, we can
Nick VinZant 20:32
haunt it. I want to thank John so much for joining us. If you want to connect with him, we have linked to him on our social media sites. We're profoundly pointless on tick tock, Instagram and YouTube, and we've also included his information in the episode description. And if you want to see some of these haunted houses that we talk about, the YouTube version of this episode will be live on october 24 at 12:30pm Pacific. Okay, now let's bring in John Shaw and get to the pointless part of the show. Do you prefer a hard, medium or soft pillow?
John Shull 21:11
Oh, wow, that's a great question.
Nick VinZant 21:15
Have you never really thought about it before? Have you I
John Shull 21:19
haven't because I haven't had a new pillow in almost a decade,
Nick VinZant 21:25
you've been using the same pillow for 10 years.
John Shull 21:28
Yeah, before that, it was probably, let me put it this way, when I moved to Florida, I was mid 20s, and I was still sleeping with the pillow that I was sleeping with when I was in eighth grade.
Nick VinZant 21:39
Why do you keep a pillow that long? You just get attached to it. Is it your like, your Walmart, you gotta keep it.
John Shull 21:46
Well, she's still around, and it's been a decade. Um, yeah, I don't know. It's definitely a familiarity thing, right? It's a comfort thing. Um, like, I don't think that I keep very many things, um, but pillow, like my bed, is one of those things. Like, it needs to be a certain way. There needs to be a certain pillow, blanket, you know? It needs to be a certain kind of mattress. Like, I'm pretty stingy about my bed spreads.
Nick VinZant 22:10
What do you think is weirder as an adult, water bed or air mattress?
John Shull 22:19
Like somebody sleeping on an air mattress permanently,
Nick VinZant 22:22
regularly. This is your main mattress.
John Shull 22:25
Are you over the age of 35
Nick VinZant 22:29
you're over the age of what I would consider to be an adult, which is 27 I consider an adult to be a 27 year old.
John Shull 22:37
If you don't have a significant other than an air mattress is okay. If you do, then an air mattress is not okay, and a water bed just isn't okay after, like, I don't even think they should be for adults. Like, if anyone's ever had sexual relations on a on a water bed. I mean, I How does I mean, I don't even know how that's comfortable. You just sink in and like, how do you gain any like, how do you
John Denley 23:02
work?
Nick VinZant 23:03
I mean, I had an air mattress and I was able to satisfy. I don't know how you satisfy on a I didn't say another person I, you know, I may have just been me. I'm pretty sure if you're, if you have a water bed. You're not getting anything like, it's just not happening. Like,
John Shull 23:25
I wonder, I wonder, what the origin were of water beds and what made them famous, like, what, what rich person was like, I'm no, I want a bed of water. And then that was it. You know what? I
Nick VinZant 23:36
mean. Okay, let's go into shout outs, where I look up the origin of water bed. Water
John Shull 23:41
Betty, alright. Shout outs here. Appreciate all of you per usual, so pick out a couple of you here. Will Reyes, Flynn Walter, Charlie Carter, Joe, Amanda Sprouse, Tony bussy, let's see here. Aaron Garza, Jordan, Crampton, Arby, Villanueva, Cathy mag, booty, Peter Jones and Chris McCoo. Appreciate you all this week,
Nick VinZant 24:11
I looked up the history of water bed, and about three seconds into it, realized, oh, I don't really want to read this whole thing. So the modern water the modern water bed, was patented in 1971 okay, it was popular in the 1980s 20% of the mattress market was a water bed, and 22% in 1987 is now become not very popular, and by 2013 only accounted for 5% of new bed sales. So the water bed was a big deal in the 1980s
John Shull 24:49
Did you say 27% in 87 22%
Nick VinZant 24:51
in 1987 which is like so that's one in five. One in five people had water bed, which is crazy popular for something that. Not practical in any way. Fascinated by that, alright,
John Shull 25:03
well, I feel like I would be remiss if I didn't talk about this, this episode, okay, since we are about, we are less than two weeks out from the election. Oh, I know. I don't, I don't want, I don't care who you're voting for. I'm not bringing this up because of that. I just thought it was funny, and that was Donald Trump going to work at a McDonald's, however, and it makes sense logistically and from like, a news point of view, it makes sense why the restaurant was closed, and all that stuff and everything was kind of fabricated. But it I don't know, does it count? I guess that's my question. Doesn't count that he actually worked at a McDonald's. If everything was made up and fabricated, it does No, right,
Nick VinZant 25:44
like no, it doesn't count. It doesn't like, if you did, you didn't really work at the McDonald's. You were just, it was a campaign event. You weren't really doing anything. And look left or right. This applies to whoever the person that you like is. If you go to something and it's supposed to be you working there, but the entire thing is staged, and the business is actually closed, then you didn't really work there. Like, it's entirely fake. It's entirely fake. So like, that doesn't count, and it's kind of whichever side was gonna do something like that. It was ridiculous. But I can say that I really can't wait for November to be over, and I think that everybody would agree with that.
John Shull 26:28
I will say that I think the sentiment now is from from everybody in America, whether you like one person or the other, is that you almost hope it's a landslide, one way or the other, that way it's just over. Like, yeah,
Nick VinZant 26:42
I do hope that. I do hope it's just a whooping for whoever wins. Uh,
John Shull 26:46
let's see we have, we have one rip to give this week, and that is to Liam Payne.
Nick VinZant 26:52
Oh, that's sad.
John Shull 26:53
Former star of or, I guess he still has a star, or was a star, but former founder of One Direction, which, if you're not familiar with them, they were kind of like the 2000 and 10s British version of maybe the Backstreet Boys or NSYNC back in the boy band era days.
Nick VinZant 27:10
It's crazy to me that we don't really have bands anymore. What's the biggest band of the last 10 years?
John Shull 27:21
Oh, I mean, whereas before, don't ask me, yeah,
Nick VinZant 27:24
there's not big bands anymore. Like when I was growing up, everything was a band, and there wasn't a lot of solo acts. Now it's basically all solo acts. You
John Shull 27:35
know, what's kind of nuts is the the and this is just a total rant of mine, and it kind of goes back to what you said about bands when we were growing up. Ticket prices for anybody are insane. Like I don't want to pay 150 bucks to go watch the offspring. Though I love the offspring,
Nick VinZant 27:54
I don't think I would pay $10 to go see the offspring.
John Shull 27:58
Oh, well, that's your own fault. They're fantastic,
Nick VinZant 28:01
but I'm sure they are. But I wouldn't pay $10 to go see the amp the offspring.
John Shull 28:07
Are there any musicians or bands that you would pay $200 or more to go see live?
Nick VinZant 28:14
No dead mouth for an experience if it was in a city that I wanted to go
John Shull 28:18
see? Okay? All right, that's true, dropping knowledge,
Nick VinZant 28:23
I or a similar act like that. I kind of thing where there's like a lot of energy in the room. I would go, I would pay a decent amount of money to go see something like that. The only person that I really regret not going to see is Tom Petty. I wish I would have seen Tom Petty before he passed away.
John Shull 28:39
I was, I'm right there with you. I had the chance and and squandered it, and here we are. Yeah,
Nick VinZant 28:47
that's a regret. That's a musical regret of mine.
John Shull 28:52
This is completely random, but I saw a video on Facebook and it made me think of I should ask you this question, would you voluntarily get into a shark cage in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean by yourself. And if, if no would there be amounts of money that you would do it for?
Nick VinZant 29:11
I mean, honestly, like 100 bucks I would do it well, because I don't know, like the sharks not getting through metal. I mean, this is the kind of thing that was now, a homemade shark cage,
John Shull 29:22
like, if I built it, I I'm building the shark cage.
Nick VinZant 29:26
No, I'm not getting in it. 100 grand. I would probably do it for but I mean, it's like a safe thing. It To Me a shark cage is like a roller coaster. It's dangerous, but it's not really dangerous. Has there ever been a shark that got through a shark cage or somebody who died because they went on a shark cage adventure? To me, it's like a roller coaster, like it's dangerous, it's this, but it's not really. It's actually pretty much perfectly safe.
John Shull 29:55
I mean, I'm sure that a shark has gotten through at some point. It. I mean, yeah,
Nick VinZant 30:01
I mean, I'm sure it's, it has it has happened.
John Shull 30:06
It's, it's kind of like when you know, the people go exotic game hunting and the lion kill turns on them and kills them. Like, what do you think is going to happen? Oh, I like, you're trying to hunt them. Um, I know you're not the biggest fan of barbecue, but I felt the need to tell all of our Midwest listeners this that there is a barbecue museum opening next month in Kansas City, Missouri, if you want to go check it out,
Nick VinZant 30:33
I wonder if there's, is there an uproar about the fact that the barbecue Museum is in Kansas City, Kansas City. I'm a native Kansan. Kansas City is famous for barbecue, but I don't think that it should be in Kansas City. I think it should probably be in Memphis.
John Shull 30:53
Man, see, that's tough. I've, I mean, I've had barbecue in Memphis. I've never had it in, you know, in in Kansas City, so I don't know. Yeah, I'm the wrong person to ask. I'm sure somebody from the deep south would tell you it should be somewhere in the deep south. It should be in
Nick VinZant 31:09
the Deep South. I would consider Memphis. Well, I don't know if Memphis is or not, but I think that the barbecue museum belongs in the South. I don't think the barbecue museum belongs in Kansas City.
John Shull 31:20
Um, I mean, Michigan has the best barbecue. So, okay, that's a joke, just about it. To get a reaction out of you.
Nick VinZant 31:28
Somebody commented about your Detroit style pizza, and they were like, I live in Detroit, and that's not a real thing.
John Shull 31:34
I'm okay. Well, I don't know who that person is, but they're wrong.
Nick VinZant 31:38
Okay. Well, they live in Detroit. You don't live in Detroit, you live in Madison, heights.
John Shull 31:46
Way to put it out there. Um, nobody's gonna
Nick VinZant 31:48
find you. I'm always obsessed about don't put my address out there. Like, if somebody wants to find you, they can find you pretty easily.
John Shull 31:57
Yeah, and anybody. You can look up celebrities. You could look up a random person. I mean, addresses are everywhere. Unfortunately, I don't. I actually don't think that should be the case, but it is so whatever is alright on to Elon Musk, and it's not his view related, but I thought it was interesting that he is giving out, you know, every event he does which and we if, if you follow politics, you know what side he's on, whatever. I don't care about that, but he's giving out a million dollars to a random person. He says that comes to a rally that he's at. So it got me thinking, if somebody were to go, Hey, if you go to Elon Musk's rally, you're going to get a million dollars. Like, I would have to be guaranteed to get that money, I think. But I'd probably go for a million dollars.
Nick VinZant 32:44
Oh, I would go, even if I wasn't guaranteed, just for the chance at it, like a million dollars. There's not a lot of things I wouldn't do for a million dollars. I don't know if that sentence makes grammatical structure sentence, but you know what I'm talking about, like, the list of things I wouldn't do for a million dollars is not a long one.
John Shull 33:07
I guess the just the problem of it all for me, is like, you know, a million dollars is a lot of money and but it's not like life changing money anymore for most Oh, I
Nick VinZant 33:17
think it is. I think a million dollars you can't retire and live the wealthy lifestyle off of a million dollars anymore, but imagine if you could pay off your house. Man, that. Oh, that would right. So a million dollars is, I think that any, I think 100,000 anything over 100,000 is life changing money. Even 50,000 you could say, is life changing money? Yeah. I mean, laid it all at one time, yeah.
John Shull 33:43
Well, I'm hoping to hit the lottery soon, and then you'll never see me again. I couldn't
Nick VinZant 33:49
even imagine that. I couldn't even imagine the feeling of like hitting the lottery and being like, you just won $500 million what?
John Shull 34:00
So when it gets above, like, 750 I usually play, but I never stay up, usually for the drawing or, like, I never pay attention to it. And I always, like, every the next morning, I'm like, a kid at Christmas, because I'm like, Oh, my God, no one's won it. Do I have the ticket? Oh, wait, the first number was 15. Well, it's a 47 so
Nick VinZant 34:20
yeah, I guess I never I do, like, buy a ticket. I'll buy a ticket every once in a while, and then forget about it. That's usually how I do it, too.
John Shull 34:29
Also, I wonder, and this is going to be an ignorant question, but I don't know the answer off the top of my head. I hope you do, do other countries have the lottery?
Nick VinZant 34:39
I don't know. I don't live in other countries. I
John Shull 34:41
was wondering, like, do they have? I know that the power I don't know, because you're, you're a history major from what does that have to do with history though, Kansas State, Missouri,
Nick VinZant 34:50
first of all, it's Kansas City, Kansas. Oh, the lottery exists in at least 100 other countries. Wow. See. Be, I don't know more than I thought that it was going to be. It's a lot of more, lot more.
John Shull 35:06
Wow. All right. Well, okay, anyways,
Nick VinZant 35:08
okay, so our top five is top five noodle dishes. There's a lot of different kinds of noodle dishes. So what's your number five?
John Shull 35:18
So I have to ask you a question before I get going, it's going to dictate a lot about how our I'm not our lists are going to go here. Um, do you have like individual I'm not answering
Nick VinZant 35:32
any of your questions about it. You need to have confidence in your list and say the list as you want to say it. I'm not answering any questions or divulging any information about my own list, if you accidentally look the fool, then that's your own problem.
John Shull 35:47
I'm not going to bail you out ahead of time. Fine. Then my number five, the the only one that I think you have to put on here on your top five list, because it is the granddad of all noodle dishes, and that is spaghetti. Spaghetti
Nick VinZant 36:01
is not a noodle. Spaghetti is pasta.
John Shull 36:08
I mean, what's the difference pasta or noodles? Yeah,
Nick VinZant 36:12
but noodles are made with egg. Pasta is made with egg.
John Shull 36:16
That's not true. Yes, it is pasta.
Nick VinZant 36:18
I looked this up because I was gonna put spaghetti on my list as well. And I looked it up and it said that spaghetti is not a noodle. It is a pasta. So do
John Shull 36:29
you use eggs to make pasta?
Nick VinZant 36:35
No, you use eggs to make noodles?
John Shull 36:36
Yes, pasta can be made with eggs can be look at
Nick VinZant 36:41
are we going to argue with me? The internet says that there is a specific statement for some some governing body, the International pasta Association, says that spaghetti is not a noodle, it is a pasta. Well,
John Shull 36:53
you know what? Then, I guess we're just gonna have to agree to disagree on our list, because there is
Nick VinZant 36:58
no way to agree to disagree. You're just wrong.
John Shull 36:59
Noodles and pasta are the same freaking things. I don't care. Apparently,
Nick VinZant 37:04
they're not, apparently sensitive subject international
John Shull 37:07
pasta association or whatever. I don't care. Spaghetti is my number five a noodle dish, okay,
Nick VinZant 37:15
well, just so you know that having spaghetti is your number five is wrong, because spaghetti is not a noodle. It is a pasta. My number five is ramen. I love ramen. And I'll be honest with you, I still like the cheap ramen that you got in college, that when I was in college, was like 50 cents. I like that stuff. Man,
John Shull 37:41
I've only had ramen a handful of times, and it's just, it's just meh, just meh. Oh, it's
Nick VinZant 37:46
good. I like it. I like I probably think, really, I just like the salt and the fact that it costs 50 cents, or used to cost 50 cents.
John Shull 37:53
I I mean, my list is gonna seem irrelevant now, but I don't know what else to do with it? Because, well, you've
Nick VinZant 38:01
ruined it because you didn't do any research and probably put all pasta when you should have put noodles.
John Shull 38:05
I guarantee you that it's a very fine line. Some, most pasta is made with eggs. Oh,
Nick VinZant 38:12
yeah, somebody just decided this. It's not like a real thing. Just one person, one day decided that, you know what, spaghetti, not a noodle. It's a pasta. Now and then. Got all uppity about it whenever somebody brought it up, it's
John Shull 38:27
stupid. Um, all right, well, my number four are garlic butter noodles.
Nick VinZant 38:33
I don't know if I've ever had that, but it sounds like a mix of noodles, garlic and butter. It's
John Shull 38:37
amazing. It is, and it can go with basically any any side, any dish that you make.
Nick VinZant 38:43
I looked up a lot of noodle dishes because I was also confused by the whole noodle pasta thing. And I didn't see garlic butter anywhere. I feel like, you just made that up and just went fat kids. And was like, You know what? I like garlic and butter. Put it on these noodles.
John Shull 39:00
You're hurting mama. Show us feelings. All right? You're hurting her feelings.
Nick VinZant 39:03
Oh, it's a hustle. Your mom made it. Your mom, you made me your homemade dish. Did you used to ask her, did you What was your birthday dish? When your mom said, John, what do you want for your birthday? What did you tell her? Like, Mom, I want
John Denley 39:15
this for my birthday.
John Shull 39:19
Fried chicken.
Nick VinZant 39:23
Yeah, mine was true. Mine was cream tacos, which is basically nachos. Okay,
John Shull 39:28
yeah, man, my man, fried chicken is good. Anyways, what's your number four?
Nick VinZant 39:33
I do love some fried chicken. Chicken Noodle. The only, purely, I think, American noodle that I would put on the list of best noodles is chicken noodle.
John Shull 39:44
I don't like chicken noodle soup. Chicken noodle soup.
Nick VinZant 39:47
You got a problem with that? Fixes everything. Read a book.
John Shull 39:53
What does that even mean? Read a book.
Nick VinZant 39:56
No, there's all kinds of stuff. They're always saying chicken noodle for this chicken. Noodle for that, read a book, whatever. I don't know what it actually does, isn't it
John Shull 40:04
with, like, chicken noodle soup for the teenage soul or something, something like that. But chicken
Nick VinZant 40:08
noodle is supposed to fix everything. Imagine if you come in there with a broken arm, and the doctor's just like, I have some chicken noodle soup. Oh, that's gonna fix it. That's what's gonna make it better. Okay, buddy.
John Shull 40:20
Uh, all right. My number three are Drunken Noodles.
Nick VinZant 40:23
Okay, okay, my number three is spaghetti. Let's move on to your number two.
John Shull 40:36
I swear to God, man, I You frustrate me. Sometimes
Nick VinZant 40:42
it's not a noodle, but it can still be a noodle to me.
John Shull 40:45
I mean, you're gonna, I mean, my number two and one aren't gonna be you're gonna have issues with them. My number two is lasagna.
Nick VinZant 40:53
Yeah, dude, that's definitely not a noodle. That's definitely a positive. I
John Shull 40:56
mean, it's a positive but, but don't you call once again. I and I apologize for not knowing this, I suppose, but I always, always thought pasta were noodles. You're
Nick VinZant 41:07
really pushing the bet. No, things have different names for different reasons, right? First off, you have no credibility called a dog because it is not a cat. You have no credibility because
John Shull 41:17
you chastise me about spaghetti, and then you put spaghetti higher on your list than I did, but
Nick VinZant 41:23
I didn't. Would not put lasagna on there. Lasagna clearly not a noodle. In no way is lasagna a noodle that's pushing it too far. You might be able to get away with spaghetti, but you pushed it too far. My number two is mac and cheese. But I don't know if this is a great
John Shull 41:47
so, just so everyone knows.
Nick VinZant 41:50
Oh, I put the completely the wrong thing, description in the in the edit, in our live stream too. It's totally wrong. It's about transformers and sports Nick's names. Sorry about that, noodles.
John Shull 42:03
You know what the what the worst part of everything is about this whole list, my number one's mac and cheese. Your number one is mac
Nick VinZant 42:11
and cheese. But okay, here was the thing is, I looked it up. Is that macaroni is apparently not a noodle either, and is a pasta, but Wikipedia has mac and cheese listed on their list of noodle dishes. So there's some debate. There's no debate about spaghetti, but there seems to be some debate about mac and cheese.
John Shull 42:34
I get the difference, I guess, between pasta and noodles, and that's that eggs are used in some and not others. But I feel like nobody knows the difference, unless you're well equipped in the culinary arts of noodle isms.
Nick VinZant 42:48
It is amazing to me, and we have it on this podcast for people who may be just new listeners. We have interviewed a lot of scientific minds, a lot of people who are, in some cases, the preeminent scientific mind in their field. And the thing that they will tell you is, the more you know about something, the less you actually know about something. Like, if you can get down to the definition of anything, it makes no sense. Like, what's the ultimate definition between a noodle and a pasta? And the farther you get down, the less the definition makes any sense. Nothing in life really makes any sense if you get right down to it?
John Shull 43:24
No, it's all interpretation of what you think of something. You
Nick VinZant 43:28
decide. You create your own reality. Um, I do not have mac and cheese as my number two. I have a real noodle at my number one, which is Pad Thai.
John Shull 43:39
That's a good one. That's all my honor, put it on my honor. I mentioned, um, it's probably one of my favorite Thai, you know, dishes, for sure,
Nick VinZant 43:48
I would say that pad thai is something that completely exposed me to other cuisines as a kid in Kansas, like growing up, like, wait, you can have this, what's this? And it was amazing. And then you try other things.
John Shull 44:04
Yeah, sure. I mean, in Detroit, we were just eating pizza. So would
Nick VinZant 44:08
you say you're an adventurous eater? You're obviously a big eater.
John Shull 44:19
Yeah, I'm gonna, yeah, I'm an adventure cedar. I won't turn something down for sure. Um, you know, I might not eat it again, but I won't turn it down. And, like you said, it kind of shows. But
Nick VinZant 44:30
listen, I know lot of people who know you well, and they all would say that John shell will shove anything in his mouth. Oh, okay, that's gonna go ahead and do it for this episode of profoundly pointless I want to thank you so much for joining us. If you get a chance, leave us a quick review. We really appreciate it. Really does help out the show and let us know what you think are the best noodle dishes. Obviously, the definition of noodle was pretty loose. Juice. So as long as it's not like lasagna, level noodle and it's more spaghetti, level noodle, let us know what you think are some of the best noodle dishes.