Selects: Chopsticks > Forks

**Chuck Bryant** (0:00)
Hey, everybody, Chuck here. We are moving forward through time in the year 2020, the year of COVID. And I think we're at sort of ground zero here, everybody, because the date for this episode is March 17th.
And I know that that was right around the time that things shut down, because my birthday is March 15th, and one of my very good friends' birthday is March 12th. And every year we go out on a birthday dinner with our wives and family.
And I remember being out, it might have been like the 16th or 17th of that year to dinner, and us being like, should we be out, you guys? Like, they're starting to say things are getting weird, and we're all washing our hands and saying the ABCs and stuff. But this feels like maybe the last dinner we're going to have for a while. And it was. That was the last dinner out I had for a very long time. But this episode from March 17th, 2020, right when it all shut down, is pretty great. It's all about chopsticks, and it's called Chopsticks Greater Than Forks.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:05)
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.

**Josh Clark** (1:15)
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. There's Jerry over there. And this is Stuff You Should Know, all about the song Chopsticks.

**Chuck Bryant** (1:27)
I wondered if you were going to make a joke about that.

**Josh Clark** (1:29)
Jerry beat me to it. When she was like, what are we recording today? And I told her, she's like, the song?

**Chuck Bryant** (1:35)
Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun.

**Josh Clark** (1:37)
No, it's dun, dun, dun, dun, dun.

**Chuck Bryant** (1:40)
Oh, is that Chopsticks? Are there two Chopsticks?

**Josh Clark** (1:43)
No, I'm just teasing. It's Heart and Soul.

**Chuck Bryant** (1:45)
Oh, okay. So what I said from Big, that was Chopsticks, right?

**Josh Clark** (1:49)
Totally, yeah. Robert Lohsia?

**Chuck Bryant** (1:53)
Yeah, man.

**Josh Clark** (1:54)
I should have continued trolling and said James Cahn.

**Chuck Bryant** (1:57)
Oh, wow, that is a very James Cahn-like role, though, isn't it?

**Josh Clark** (2:00)
Totally. I think he played that role in in Bottle Rocket.
Well, he was a crime boss in Bottle Rocket.

**Chuck Bryant** (2:08)
Yeah, sort of. Well, not sort of.

**Josh Clark** (2:09)
He was a good movie.

**Chuck Bryant** (2:10)
Truly.

**Josh Clark** (2:11)
We watched Misery the other day. It still holds up.

**Chuck Bryant** (2:14)
Oh, man. I remember seeing that for the first time in Athens when I was in college.
So great. Kathy Bates can do no wrong.

**Josh Clark** (2:24)
She did great. But if you watch James Cahn, he did really well too.

**Chuck Bryant** (2:29)
Sure.

**Josh Clark** (2:29)
His whole trepidatious manner toward her was really well done and not overdone at all. He did a great job as well.

**Chuck Bryant** (2:38)
And he had to lay there in a bed for weeks and weeks and act.

**Josh Clark** (2:42)
Yeah.

**Chuck Bryant** (2:42)
Sounds like a dream.

**Josh Clark** (2:43)
Yeah. And if he balked at it, they would attach a catheter to him and make him pee in his own mouth as punishment.

**Chuck Bryant** (2:50)
Oh my God.

**Josh Clark** (2:51)
Little known fact about that movie.

**Chuck Bryant** (2:53)
Oh. So Chopsticks.

**Josh Clark** (2:55)
Right.

**Chuck Bryant** (2:56)
We should point out here that in researching this, Chopsticks and Customs and Etiquette, if we covered all the countries and all that stuff that use Chopsticks, we'd be here all day.

**Josh Clark** (3:08)
Yeah.

**Chuck Bryant** (3:09)
So there's kind of a focus here on Japan.

**Josh Clark** (3:12)
Well, Japan, they seem to be a little, the most sensitive to transgressions with Chopsticks out of all of the Asian cultures, I think.

**Chuck Bryant** (3:22)
Perhaps.

**Josh Clark** (3:23)
They have the most rules against them at the very least.

**Chuck Bryant** (3:26)
Yeah. But when you read them, they could all be summed up as just don't be a dumb American.

**Josh Clark** (3:31)
Yeah. Or don't have any fun whatsoever with your Chopsticks is another way to put it.

**Chuck Bryant** (3:36)
You're like, what's wrong with making them antennas in a restaurant and going, meep, meep, meep?

**Josh Clark** (3:41)
Right. I'm a walrus now. Why can't I be a walrus?

**Chuck Bryant** (3:44)
Right.

**Josh Clark** (3:45)
But we are talking Chopsticks, not the song. Sorry to disappoint you, everybody. But I saw that that song is actually called Chopsticks because it was originally called The Celebrated Chop Waltz. Written by a 16-year-old schoolgirl from England.