Peggy Sue Got Married: Part 3

Jamie Jirak and Ben Silverio are pop culture observers/content creators/excellent friends who are ready to make some references so dated that even the frame of reference turns 40 this year. Get ready to get your perspective on the 60s and the 80s colored all at once.

It’s time to wrap up our coverage of Peggy Sue Got Married with edutainment, and this is a good one. Get that giant inflatable infinity sign ready for a trip on the lazy river of information about Twinkies and time travel parties. There’s even a little bonus edutainment for you snuck in at the end. That’s the kind of value we’re bringing to the table.

Find us online!

Jamie Jirak @JamieJirak on Instagram and Letterboxd

Check out Love in the Time of Hydra and Phase Hero

Ben is @bsilverio20 on Instagram, and letterboxed among others.

Ansel Burch is @TheIndecisionist on IG, Facebook, Yowsa, Blusky, Reddit, and Threads.

Check out Ansel’s new TTRPG, Deck! https://the-indecisionist.itch.io/Deck

We’re going to be off for a week, then we’re back in February with a special surprise series with just Ben and Ansel hosting. So, make sure you’re subscribed because it’s always #Time2Party

Transcript

Ben Silverio 0:07

Hey, I'm Ben Silverio,

Jamie Jirak 0:08

and I'm Jamie Jirak

Ansel Burch 0:09

and I'm Ansel Burch,

Ben Silverio 0:10

and it's Time 2 Party! We're not doctors, and other stuff that Ansel usually says, Okay,

Ansel Burch 0:10

We are not doctors. We don't give medical advice. Please drink responsibly.

Ben Silverio 0:22

Episode was recorded on the day before Thanksgiving, 2025 I don't know dates anymore.

Jamie Jirak 0:29

November 26th

Ben Silverio 0:30

That's right,

Ben Silverio 0:31

right there.

Jamie Jirak 0:32

I'm looking right at it's not gonna I wouldn't have known it.

Ben Silverio 0:34

I'm glad that's not gonna end up in the thing.

Ansel Burch 0:38

That's what you think.

Ben Silverio 0:39

Welcome back party, people, we are time to party. Your one stop shop for time travel and nonsense. Mostly the nonsense, though, this month, we have been talking about Peggy Sue Got Married with the incredible Jamie Jirak, Hi, Jamie, hi.

Jamie Jirak 0:55

I'm having so much fun.

Ben Silverio 0:58

Oh, my God, this is so fun. I'm so glad that you're here talking about this movie that you clearly love a whole lot. Listeners, if you don't know anything about Peggy Sue Got Married, then Where were you for the past two episodes? But our friends at IMDb have this to say about it, which Jamie doesn't like very much when I get it. Now, if you want to find out why, go back to our second episode from last week anyway, Peggy Sue on the verge of a divorce, fans at her 25th high school reunion and wakes up to find herself back in 1960 leading her to try to spot and correct the mistakes that led to disappointments and an unhappy marriage. Ooh. Nick Cage, Kathleen Turner, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, awesome movie. We had a whole lot to talk about in episode two, but right now episode three, we're here for edutainment. That is where we pick something from the movie that we're discussing that month, and go a little bit deeper. But, you know, not too deep, because, you know, internet rabbit rabbit holes go on for days. So this month, with Peggy, she got married. There's not a ton of things to choose from. Jamie. How many different potential topics did you encounter while re watching the movie?

Jamie Jirak 2:19

I feel like the girl in drop dead gorgeous with the ball of twine in her head, who, like, didn't totally, fully understand the assignment. And I feel like, like, I don't know if I did this right, because, like, at first I was like, well, there's really nothing. I guess I was trying to pick something time travel related for the theme of the podcast, but there's really nothing in here. And then I'm like, I guess there's a lot of, like, 60s pop culture stuff that I could have picked. And then I just, like, fell down a rabbit hole that have something kind of unrelated. And I was like, Well, this is cool. But then it occurred to me that, like, because of what your pockets is, you've probably already talked about it, so I definitely will see what happens. Did you pick something? Do you pick something too, or is

Ben Silverio 2:59

it just, I also pick something so, all right,

Jamie Jirak 3:01

maybe first, so I can kind of get an idea of what's oh sure I was

Ben Silverio 3:06

just about to say, Would you like me to go first? But, yeah, I also had a couple things that I thought about looking into, one of them being the Beatles song that Peggy Sue tries to pass off as her own to Charlie, because, you know, who hasn't had a Beatles phase, right? I also thought about talking about pantyhose, which might have been

Jamie Jirak 3:32

now that you say it, I kind of completely forgot it was an assignment I did fall down a bit of pantyhose rabbit hole, but that was just for my own interest.

Ben Silverio 3:43

Yeah, I thought about it because I'm just like, well, I've never worn them. I don't know really what they're for, other than adding to an ensemble. But, you know, I didn't go down that route. Instead, I decided to look up Twinkies. Oh, interesting. So we're not talking about the same thing, right? No, we're not okay. Cool. See, I told you it'd be okay.

Jamie Jirak 4:07

Maybe if you have discussed what I picked, I will fall back on pantyhose, because I did learn something.

Ben Silverio 4:15

Well, all right, so for my edutainment this month, I decided to dive in to the history of Twinkies. In the movie when Peggy Sue wakes up from fainting at her reunion, the nurse gives her a Twinkie as a little treat to raise her blood sugar. Yes, exactly. And so, you know, that kind of stuck in my head, and I was just like, Twinkies. I don't remember ever getting Twinkies when I donated blood, but I guess it does the same thing as getting a chocolate chip cookie. Anyway, Twinkies are the golden sponge cake filled with creamy filling from hostess. You probably have seen them around pop culture. Thanks to Ghostbusters and Zombieland and all those you know, other product placement places where it's popped up. But for me, Twinkies weren't necessarily a part of my childhood, because, as I'm sure I've mentioned a ton of times here on the podcast, I was born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and we had the pleasure of having Tasty Cakes in our vicinity, so I would just get a butterscotch crimp it instead of getting Twinkies. And I know that they're different, but I still prefer a butterscotch crimp it over a Twinkie. To me, growing up, Twinkie was just the racial slur for Asians, meaning yellow on the outside, white on the inside.

Jamie Jirak 5:50

I've never heard that. And that's like, definitely a privilege thing. I've never heard that slur before. That's awful.

Ben Silverio 5:59

Yeah, the the uh, the the a similar one is coconut, brown on the outside, white on the inside. But the kids in my high school didn't think about it that much and just went with the Twinkie. To me, that's like,

Jamie Jirak 6:15

it's, that's something you you like. I would think of it more of a gay thing. So yeah, there are lots of ways you can be mean with the word Twinkie. I guess it's very true.

Ben Silverio 6:29

But in my very shallow dive of Twinkie history, I learned that they were invented on April 6, 1930 by a baker named Jimmy Dewar who worked at the continental Baking Company, which was based in Schiller Park, Illinois, close to Chicago, where Jamie and I both have history. Shout out to Chicago. He realized that there were a number of machines in the bakery that just like sat dormant whenever strawberries weren't in season. So he used these cream or these machines that would put, like the cream filling in, like strawberry shortcakes and stuff. He used the machines to to create a banana cream to infuse into this like spongy cake that eventually became the Twinkie. He came up with a name, supposedly because he saw a billboard in St Louis that said twinkle toe shoes. Sure, I guess it's like eating a shoe. That's what you're going for market. The marketing team probably wasn't consulted for that. What did marketing teams in 1930 look like? I'm not going to fall down this rabbit hole. I'm sorry before Mad Men who can say, yeah, exactly. John ham invented marketing. That's a well confirmed fact. So the the Twinkie did have a bit of a tumultuous period, though, because during World War Two, bananas were rationed, and in the beginning, Twinkies were filled with banana cream, so during World War Two, they had to switch to vanilla cream. You know, the original flavor did make a comeback a few times throughout the company's history. But during a promotional campaign for the 2005 film King Kong, they brought back the banana cream as a more permanent thing, just to be like, hey, which one do you like better? And I guess sales went up a bunch. So they added the quote, unquote original Twinkie back to the lineup. And fun fact, there is only 2% banana puree in a Twinkie banana flavored version. Yeah, I guess that 2% is enough.

Jamie Jirak 9:02

Maybe I don't like banana so, and I don't hate a Twinkie. So that makes sense, because you can't really taste the banana, I guess.

Ben Silverio 9:07

Yeah, well, the banana ones are separate from the the standard Twinkie, I don't know, because they still sell the vanilla one, and I think they just advertise it as like Twinkie banana, or whatever. They had a whole line of like, fruit filled ones too, but only bananas survived. I think

Jamie Jirak 9:25

I want to shout out Tony, my boyfriend and co host of Love in the Time of Hydra, he made Twinkies once, and like he went through the whole process because we were having, I've mentioned it before, love die hard. Have some Die Hard parties. And you know, John McClane eats an old Twinkie. And so that inspired Tony to make some Twinkies for a die hard party, and he crushed it. You can make your own Twinkie if you want to go through the process.

Ben Silverio 9:51

That's awesome. Have you ever had deep fried twinkies, like at the fair and stuff? I'm not a big

Jamie Jirak 9:57

deep fry person. My stomach gets to a. Set when I eat fried things, so I

Ben Silverio 10:04

that's a good reason to avoid them. Yeah, but you did mention John McClane, and it is worth noting that Twinkies have made appearances in several films and TV shows over the years, but it was 2009 zombie land that brought up an interesting question, how long did Twinkies last on the shelf. This came up because Woody harrelson's character Tallahassee is obsessed with finding one last pack of his favorite snack. According to a hostess executive in the year 2000 he told New York Times that they could only last for seven to 10 days, but the actual maximum shelf life reported back then was 26 days, and in 2012 the company added stronger preservatives to the snack so they could last for 45 days. I don't know about eating a baked good after a month. But sure, I guess in

Jamie Jirak 11:04

that rapper like, I don't really, I don't know. I feel like I you could get me to eat something like that. That's been around for a while. I would try it. I'm not afraid to admit it. I would be like, Oh, it's three months old. Let me try it.

Ben Silverio 11:18

Well, would you go so far as to try one after eight years,

Jamie Jirak 11:22

if I was living in a zombie apocalypse, absolutely. But, uh, otherwise, no, because I don't care about Twinkies that much.

Ben Silverio 11:29

Yeah, apparently they found a box pre preservatives that had been expired for eight years, and they looked at it and see what happened. And like, you know, there was mold, and like apparently the the filling had turned brown. Most troubling with the zombies. The most troubling part about it was the article that I read talked about what it tasted like, and I'm like, Who did you get to eat? This could not be me now,

Jamie Jirak 12:02

that's journalistic integrity right there. That's why I don't

Ben Silverio 12:08

have a staffing job anymore, because I won't eat Twinkies that are eight years old, apparently. Oh, but there you go, party, people. That is my very shallow dive into Twinkies. Hope that was a little enjoyable. Jamie, what did you look into?

Jamie Jirak 12:25

Okay, so if this has been covered before, I'm gonna switch to pantyhose, because I did learn, okay. But, um, okay. So what I was interested in is like, Okay, this like Lodge, like, it's like a Moose Lodge, VFW, kind of, like group of guys that, like, all believe in time travel. And I was like, Are there real things as, like, real time travel clubs, like, you know, like old men who get together. And I couldn't find anything about such thing I saw. I did find some Reddit posts of like, Do you believe in time travel? Let's talk, but nothing about, like, a classic lodge kind of a situation. But then I kind of stumbled upon Stephen Hawking's time traveler party. Have you talked about this in the podcast? This party that he threw, amazing, okay, this like, again, this is not really related to Peggy's, who got married, but I party groups of men time traveling. It led me to this time traveler party that Stephen Hawking, I love it through in on June 28 2009 so right around the Zombieland era. So apparently, at the University of Cambridge, Stephen Hawking decided to throw a party for time travelers, and he did the works. He had balloon champagne nibbles for the guests, but he did not send out the invitations until the day after the party. So because, you know, there's a true test for time travelers and and the thing was, nobody showed up. Nobody came. No time travelers came to Stephen Hawking. No, no. The interesting thing about this, to me is that, like Stephen Hawking is obviously one of the smartest human beings that have ever lived. So it's not like some jabroni was like time travel, like he was genuinely conducting an experiment to see if, if time travelers would come to his come to his party. And so apparently the invitations said that you're cordially invited to a reception for time travelers. No RSVP was required, and Hawking waited in the room for a few hours before leaving because no one showed up, just him sitting in a room myself, waiting for time

Ben Silverio 14:32

travelers to show up. Oh my god.

Jamie Jirak 14:35

And then he regarded the event as, quote, experimental evidence that time travel is not possible. And my favorite part of this, I'm like just reading the Wikipedia page right and the Wikipedia page possible. Proposed explanations for no attendees include so this is why maybe nobody showed up to his party. One time travel 2009 is impossible or never achieved by humanity. Reasonable explanation for why no one showed up to the party. Two, going back in time creates a parallel timeline that has no impact on the original I'm sure you've talked about that kind of thing a million times on your podcast. Makes sense. Number three, records of the party are lost. So the party happened. There's just no record of it. And four, this is my favorite reasoning for why Stephen Hawking's time travel party was not a success. It's time travelers received the invitation and decided not to attend. Oh, so funny. Oh, we don't want to give up our position, or like what we do, or like, maybe we just don't think Stephen Hawking is cool enough, and we don't want to go to his party. So that's pretty funny. I don't know. Apparently, when Stephen Hawking passed away in 2018 at his funeral, his estate allowed people with dates of birth as late as December 31 2038 to register for tickets saying, quote, they cannot exclude the possibility of time travel. So, oh, my god, travelers were also invited to Stephen Hawking's funeral. What a fun experiment. I love the idea that he took it seriously enough that he did not invite send out invitations until the day after party. But just like, so sad to think of Stephen Hawking sitting there in the middle of a room by himself. But like, I love the idea that, you know, maybe they just didn't want to go to

Ben Silverio 16:20

the party, you know, oh, that Hawking guy. What a bum. No, I have I now, okay, I didn't know this was a thing until you brought it up. But now I have a theory someone had to clear the party away, right? Like he didn't do it himself. My theory is that the time travelers came after they knew he left, and then just ate all his snacks and cleaned up, and then we came back the next day,

Jamie Jirak 16:49

like the borrowers, like they don't want to be seen,

Ben Silverio 16:54

absolutely, like somebody had to have been like, maybe this is a trap. And then they're like, waiting outside. They're like, we'll just wait till he leaves, because he was only there for a few hours, right? So, yeah, just wait a little bit longer, and there's free pizza.

Jamie Jirak 17:10

I also just want to say that I feel like your audience is probably dying to know and and I did find out that stockings and pantyhose are different, because that's what I had to google our stockings. Of it, because when, when Peggy Sue goes into the lingerie store, she looked their stockings, and I'm like, well, aren't stocking and pantyhose the same thing? Because in my lifetime, we call them. We call pantyhose stockings. I always have, but no stockings connect to your to your business, with, like a with, like a belt thing, you know, and then pantyhose goes all the way up, like, like, pants. I hated them as a kid. I hate them now. You couldn't pay me any amount of money to wear pantyhose. But, um, I thought that I should still bring it up, because I think that your listeners, I didn't want to leave them hanging

Ben Silverio 17:54

on the pantyhose. Thank you. I appreciate that. Like, I did not realize that stockings were just really long socks.

Jamie Jirak 18:00

Basically, yeah, pretty much.

Ben Silverio 18:03

See, look at that. You even got a bonus edutainment from Jamie Durak, the gift that keeps on giving, honestly, but yeah, that does it for our edutainment section this month, inspired by Peggy Sue Got Married. Go watch the movie, play our drinking game. Listen to our review, where you can hear all of our thoughts on this movie. You know, I did have a thought at the end of the last episode that I forgot to include in our discussion. We're of the age where reunions are coming up. Are you a high school reunion person? Do you attend those things?

Jamie Jirak 18:42

I went to my 10th and I was so excited for it, and I don't know who set it up, because my friend was class president, like I was in the in the zone of people who be planning these things. I don't know who, who made this choice, but our 10th reunion was in a dirt patch behind a bar, and that was, like it was, that part was so lame. But in high school, we spent every weekend at my friend Ashley's parents house. Parents house because they had a huge house. And after the reunion, all of the old crew went back to her parents house and partied. So that was incredible. But I'm, let's see, I'm 2028. Will be my 20th, so I'm a couple years away from that, and I like, I really hope someone gives me the gymnasium classic reunion that I've been watching in movies my whole life, because I was disappointed in what I got for the 10th and I even made, I made all my friends that night what like we put on. I think it was the night before the reunion. I made some of my friends watch Romeo and Michelle, because I was like, We got to get a spirit just like on graduation day. I made them watch, can't really wait, like I I'm always amazing in a theme, so I better get a better 20th, but if there is one, I will absolutely attend. My mom still lives in my hometown. Tony's parents happen to live in my hometown, just a coincidence. They retired there. So, um, we go there all the time. So any excuse to

Ben Silverio 19:56

go nice? What about you? Oh, man, I. I, part of me has, like, I'm trying to get over this, like I'm never going back, like, you know, like Michael in the movie, you know, I didn't want to leave and then look back, because I was just like, Yeah, this is in my rear view. But now, you know, I've become a bit more nostalgic and, you know, curious about where everyone's been and all this stuff. But like, I think I have the same thing of, like, Dr Frasier Crane, where I don't want to show up and have nothing

Jamie Jirak 20:31

you need gene smart. You got to get gene smart Exactly.

Ben Silverio 20:34

If I went, went to my reunion with Gene smart, then like that would be fine. But if I, if I go back and, like, you know, like a Ted Mosby, you know, where he only shows up at weddings when, like, bad things have happened to him, like getting left at the altar and stuff like, like, I don't want to go and be like, I got laid off because of AI. But got a few years to go until then. So maybe something cool will happen before the 20th what year did you graduate high school? 2007 Okay, so yeah, we're not that far off, yeah, but, oh, man, I just there was a long period of time where I was just like, I don't even want to think about high school, but which, it's hard, because I love these high school teen movies, yep. Well, party people that does it for time to party this month, tune in next month where we talk about another awesome time travel movie. Jamie Jurak, thank you so much for joining us. This has been a blast.

Jamie Jirak 21:32

Thank you. This is so much fun. I say this a lot whenever I get to do a podcast, but it's so much fun to like not talk about Marvel. Sometimes I'm constantly on podcasts talking about Marvel, and it's, it's enjoyable to like the fact that you let me pick. It was really exciting for me. And I got as for like, you know, I could have picked Avengers end game. No, thank you. I'm going as far away from that as I can, so I really appreciate it. This was a lot of

Ben Silverio 21:57

fun, yeah. And this is especially great since, you know, we don't live in the same vicinity anymore, so it's great to hang out virtually at least 100% you can find us on the internet. I'm at B Silverio 20 on all the social media platforms I care to be on.

Jamie Jirak 22:10

I'm at Jamie girach on Instagram and letterbox. I'm working towards my 600th movie of the year. So get on that. See what I'm watching. And then at Lido pod, where I talk about Agents of SHIELD and phase zero, where I talk about all the other reasons.

Ben Silverio 22:24

Yes, and if you're still on a platform that uses hashtags, you can use the hashtag time to party. That's time the number two party

Ansel Burch 22:33

as well as time the number two party. All spelled out. Thanks to Warwick, this has been an indecisionist production. Special. Thanks to April more Alba for our podcast art, and to Marlon longit of Marlon and the shakes for our amazing theme song. You can find me at the indecisionist on all of the social media platforms I can be bothered to be on Join

Ben Silverio 22:53

us next time when we come back with another exciting installment of time to party. Be excellent to each other. Party on dude air guitar, you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai