A Mediocre Time with Tom and Dan

899 - Halloween with Sam

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A Mediocre Time with Tom & Dan: Episode Notes

Episode: "899 - Halloween with Sam"
Hosts: Tom Vann, Dan Dennis | Guest: Samantha (Sam) Haar

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Segment Rundown

  1. Cold open: Halloween costumes. Sam and Dan dressed up. Dan is David the Gnome with an inflatable Swift the Fox, and he thanked Ross McCoy for the fox idea. Tom grudgingly wore his purple "business Joker" jacket over a polo before a post-show meeting with Wild Fork, while drinking from a Grimace cup. Tom was loaded up on cold medicine.
  2. Events stress, prepper food. Sam and Dan teased Tom for never planning ahead and treating everything like the 2027 cruise. Tom asked about the viral "stock up on three days of food" trend.
  3. Business up top: cruise. The 2027 Tom & Dan Cruise is at about 250 people and still booking. About six people have birthdays on board, and they'll get the spotlight during the live podcast. "The Beast" is reportedly retired from partying and has a master's degree. That led to a callback about Tom's government lie detector test.
  4. New website and app. The new tomanddan.com is live and streamlined. They debated whether businesses still need websites, and Dan admitted he judges breweries that only have a Facebook page. Matthew has pushed three app updates this week to fix login problems. Email show@tomanddan.com with app issues.
  5. Trail of Terror, crude tangent. Dan plugged the last night of St. Cloud's Trail of Terror, which is in its 16th year at Peghorn Nature Park. Tom's mangling of the park name turned into an off-color tangent about a secondhand rumor involving someone Tom knows.
  6. Charity dodgeball disaster. Sam told the story of a Moe DeWitt-sponsored children's cancer charity dodgeball tournament. Bus recruited a last-minute team: Sam, her husband Trav, "Karate" Tommy G, and BDM Josh Gibbon. Sam named the team the Legal Eagles. Bus bought heavy wool eagle capes, but the theme turned out to be superheroes, which led to a debate about why there are no eagle superheroes. He also brought beers to a children's charity event. Sam described teens running the rules on a broken mic and over-competitive grown men. Bus hit a boy with Down syndrome in the face and kept saying he was aiming for the boy's mother. The team lasted about six hours and went deep in the bracket. Tommy broke his ribs on a pony wall, and Josh tore his Achilles, needed surgery, and was carried out by a St. Cloud sheriff while Bus smiled next to him. The team walked away near the end after a grown man from the "Dodge Fathers" threw a tantrum over a sudden-death round. They compared it to the right level of effort for Level 99 and Sofas and Suds.
  7. Professor Hoodoo call-in magic. The first call-in magic segment the show has done. Professor Hoodoo called from Daytona Beach, where the area was being locked down for a presidential visit, and Sam used the box of tricks he left in studio. He did a Marie Laveau dice numerology trick. Sam's total of 136 reduced to "1," meaning new beginnings. He guessed her secret number as 86 or 87, and it was 88, which the hosts counted as close enough. Next was a penny trick with liars and truth tellers. He got everyone's hand right, but Dan wasn't consistent with his lie and blew his part. Hoodoo promised tarot next time. Chat called it one of the best segments ever.
  8. Halloween special: Sunland Hospital. The ACT Halloween special visits the former site of Sunland Hospital in Pine Hills with Amy LaCour. They clarified it was a state hospital for people with disabilities, not a mental hospital. The special also visits Greenwood Cemetery, where about 160 patients are buried, with Don Price.
  9. Ghost call. A caller on a bad line couldn't be heard, and the hosts declared it a spirit trying to make contact.
  10. David the Gnome deep dive. Dan explained his costume. The show ran on Nick Jr. from 1988 to 1995, started in Spain, was dubbed with Tom Bosley's voice (they also noted his Hefty bag ads), and the hosts credited the Canadians for bringing it over. They played the theme song, then Dan's NSFW remix reimagining the gnome as a Rick Ross type. Gnome facts from the show: about six inches tall, seven times stronger than humans, a 19x sense of smell, 400-year lifespans, always same-sex twins, kids live at home until 100, trapdoor homes, and moles dig the septic systems. Dan recapped episode 4, where a troll swaps babies and a farmer throws the troll baby in a river until David rescues it. Other episodes: burying a hunter's gun, and trolls turning to stone in sunlight. The show was based on the book "Gnomes" by Wil Huygen and Rien Poortvliet, written like a real field guide. Dan is hunting for copies and shouted out Beehive. Side rant on bad modern TV themes and HBO's "mechanical puzzle" intros.
  11. Small-town shops debate. Tom stood by hating browsing quaint downtown shops on vacation, citing Helen, Georgia and a hot springs trip. Sam, Dan and chat disagreed.
  12. Playboy Man Baby. Sam recommended the band, which she saw at Fest.
  13. Jon Lovitz, AI clickbait. Crystal Hefner called Lovitz the Playboy Mansion's "number one customer" on the Lisa Guerrero Unleashed podcast, and Lovitz laughed it off. That led to a discussion of AI scraping podcast transcripts for clickbait, and of checking AI research before trusting it. Dan noted Claude gives citations you can trace back.
  14. Sam's plugs. Twitch (semanticsmedia).
  15. Red Baron GoFundMe debate. They played the viral video of a Red Baron pizza stocker losing his temper at a prankster running the fake Apple Pay sound prank ("it's not that deep"). The GoFundMe climbed from about $335K toward $500K during the segment. Tom argued it's way too much and questioned donating after it passed $250K. Sam and Dan said people can spend their money how they want and are rewarding an average worker over influencer culture. Other points: the prankster has only about 1,200 followers, GoFundMe money isn't taxed, Red Baron's corporate response, and a callback to Tom's $80 gold lizard coffin.
  16. Nevada soccer GoFundMe. They discussed the 3-year-old Winter Park soccer player whose GoFundMe is around $70K. Tom, a former youth ref and linesman, explained that rec leagues sub kids out for equal time and said the story was framed as racial when it wasn't. Dan joked about parents being upset when he was subbed in at basketball in DeLand.
  17. Rockville, Warped, Live Nation. Rockville Tom called in on a bad line. Tom plans to attend Rockville in May for Faith No More, and talked about asking his wife to email for Warped Tour media passes and possibly reaching out to Kevin Lyman. They criticized Live Nation buying up small venues, and mentioned the Crowbar Tampa owner's change.org petition.
  18. Halloween plans. Sam is handing out candy and watching old sitcom Halloween specials. Tom shared his move: an empty bowl with a "please take one" sign.
  19. Listener calls. Debary Joe told a Fest "feats of strength" story about out-racing two college guys at 1:30 a.m. in Gainesville, and plugged Five Star Pizza. Concrete Toad described his Leesburg Halloween setup: thousands of dollars in animatronics stored in a decked-out attic, fog, strobes, and a demon voice changer. The room voted werewolf over the burlap pig mask. BDM Bug Man Charles from Byrne Pest sided with Tom, saying his family raised about $600 on GoFundMe during his daughter's medical crisis and that Dan reached out to help them directly.
  20. "Voodoo Kudini" prank call. A fake mentalist started a number trick, and Tom hung up on him.
  21. Big Tim, kids and AI. Big Tim is presumably still in L.A. pursuing entertainment and may have changed his number. Tom said he struggles to suggest careers for his sons because AI will do everything, and the others roasted him for giving his kids a bleak bedtime outlook.
  22. Wrap: event plugs. See dates below.

Key Dates / Plugs Mentioned

Notable Guests/Callers