Episode 19: Ghosts and the Creature

Cambrid Jamshan is a weird way media podcast. Hello and welcome to episode nineteen of Cambri Jamshon, a podcast by two weird guys about the weird things that they like. And we're getting back to normal topics, not a theme, not collecting, just things that we've been interested in for years. Any ruminations about the Eraserhead episode for you. It's funny the new album from David Lynch launched around the same time, I guess like around the time that we recorded.

Actually some of the images and some of the and definitely the music from the new album is certainly reminiscent of David Lynch of Eraserhead, to be more specific. And so I've been listening to some of those tracks and watching those videos, and I haven't had enough time to watch the movie, which is what I've been hungering to do watch it again. So those have been satiating my hunger. Now. I do want to also say, I want to make a little correction.

I did not when we were talking about Lynch and music, the David Lynch music, the style of David Lynch music, I did not give a shout out to Angelo batt Lamente, which because we did mention in the previous episode briefly, like how influential the music from his movies has been on my interest in music, And we talked about the creation of the normal background SYNTHI thing that's that we play behind our show. Oh right, I mentioned how it's influenced by David Lynch and Vangelis, and I really should have said Angelo batt Lamente and Vangelis so true. True, I want to give a proper credit to Angelo batt Lamente because that man is a powerhouse and it's sad he's gone, but his music's really phenomenal.

Yeah. I didn't watch the movie either, but I did for the episode. I wanted clips from the eraser Head stories, not knowing really where to look for particular things, I just watched it. I had Cleo watch it with me. I'm like, I need to watch this and pull some clips for the episode.

And it made me think of the way you talk, which is very reminiscent of the way David Lynch talks, which might not be apparent to people listening to this because I edited a lot of it. Yeah, there's a lot of pauses, pregnant pauses, yeah, et cetera. And I think I've mentioned to you in the past that there's a quality to your voice or there's something that reminds me of Harry Dean Stanton as well. Yeah, we talked maybe the timber of your voice or something, and so that's kind of a perfect combination because they were good pals. Yeah, it also made me think of you know, because I went off on all kinds of tangents last time and talked for the bulk of the episode.

It was so good, though, come on, that was like amazing. Watching that Erase your Head stories and that's that's what that is. He's talking about this cinematographer and sound man going on a driving trip somewhere and having a weird experience that has nothing to do with the eraserhead really, but it's in there and it's a great story and I love it. And then I had a realization about something that I talked about. I mentioned working at that wicker basket factory, yeah, and talking to the guy in the warehouse area, and I finally made a connection.

But I'm going to save it for when we do his movies from the eighties, which will be the next episode. Was like, wait a minute, why have I never thought of this before. The man in the warehouse. That's how we're going to refer to him. Yeah.

I almost remembered his name the other day, which I was kind of surprised about. Any who. The episode kind of reminded me of the eraser Head stories. So that movie is I hope that people when they listen to that, they could really get the impression of how embedded that film is in our lives and how we've made these associations over the years with each other and our experiences together through through the lens of that movie, which is just such a cool, such a cool thing to share with somebody. It's been such an important and what's the best way of saying this, It adds a it lends a particular light to our experiences.

That's a very nice way to put it. Okay, So let's dive into your When you mentioned it to me, I was like, this is a biggie. Yeah, what is your. Obsession for episode nineteen of Cambridge m W Shawn? If you watch the Skelevator YouTube channel in any capacity, you're already familiar with how obsessed I am with this particular character from this particular movie.

And I'm not going to talk about the sequels, because for me, it's all about the first film, Creature from the Black Lagoon. This is huge. Not only was it so influential on me as a kid, but it's continued to be an inspiring aspect of my life all these years. So yeah, I'm talking about Creature from the Black Lagoon today, and it actually there is a kind of a very slight link to my local locale that I'm going to bring up later on, which is interesting. But so the Creature from the Black Lagoon, obviously we're talking about the Universal Monster movie from nineteen fifty four.

It was like one of the later Monster films from that series in fact, if not the latest, aside from the remake of Phantom of the Opera with Claud Rains, which I think came out in the fifties as well. I want to say, I always read that it's the latest, but with an asterisk maybe. Yeah, exactly there. I mean, there are plenty that came after, but the Phantom of the Opera being the most significant that later one. But to me, when they released the recent Blu ray box set of Universal Monster movies and they included the nineteen gosh, I should have looked this up.

Is a fifties or sixties that Claude Rains found with the opera. When they included that, I was like, why would they use that if when they could have included the Silent film from nineteen twenty two whatever that was Lon Cheney. To me, it's my least favorite creature from the Black Lagoon is sort of the last one of an epic era starting in the twenties all the way through the early fifties for Universal Monsters. When I was a kid, this is when we've talked about this before. There was this thing on TV called Action Theater.

And I can't remember if it was the called something we talked about this before in a previous episode. If it was called something different for the Monster movies. Yeah, And I always just remember action theater me too. Me had been kung Fu Theater, Yeah, kung Fu Theater. So it was Action Theater and they would play those old Universal movies Monster movies along with the Hammer films, Hammer films, yeah, side by side stuff, all the weird stuff.

It was. Usually it usually would come on around eleven am or twelve noon in the middle of the day on Channel twenty six. It's in Fresno, and it was awesome. It was something that we I always look forward to. I say we, but really it was probably just me clamoring for the TV set at that time because we just had one little TV, and I think it was still gosh when I first watched Creature from the Black Lagoon during in Action theater mode, it was still I think we still had a small, little black and white TV at my dad's in stepmother's house.

But the big, the big exciting thing was that they promoted it like a week or two weeks ahead of time, and so you had to go over to thrifty and get your three D glasses because they were going to show the three D version. It was a huge deal. So I think it was like the weekend before we went to the thrifty that used to be or Long Drugs, whichever one it was used to be in Manchester Center on the sort of the East. Might have been a Longs, but yeah, I don't know, I don't know, not sure. Yeah, I can't remember when they.

Should have looked it up on Lost Fresno. Yeah, for sure, that's where we got our three D glasses. Again, I'm saying we when it was probably my dad just taking me there to get three D glasses from me, and then they played it on television in three D for all of us, and it was epic. I mean, I say this a lot. It changed my life in a lot of ways.

I became after that is when I was more drawn to the occasional rerun of Jacques Cousteau underwater adventure documentaries, and I became obsessed with the Jungle Cruise at Disneyland. By at this time in my life, I think I'd only been to Disneyland once and I hardly remembered anything about it except for through photographs. But I remembered the Jungle Cruise, and I knew about it, and I saw pictures of it. I became obsessed with that. And then right shortly after that, in elementary school, we were all doing our state reports or collages or whatever we did, and I chose Florida because of the swamp land, because of the semi tropical weirdness that Florida has going on down there, And all I can do is relate it back to the creature from the Black Lagoon.

I would draw him. The complicated, scaly body of this character was phenomenal to me the male characters in the movie, and I just rewatched it again too, just for you know, in preparation for this episode, just to make sure I could align my memories of this film with the truth of the film. And I've seen it probably a hundred times. But the guys are kind of forgettable, the male characters, But Julie Adams, I'm pretty confident she's probably my first crush, even though I didn't realize that that was happening, and in rewatching the film, that character that Julie Adams plays in the film is really the star of the movie, right next to the creature, which is kind of unusual. The male characters are embarrassingly dismissive and they're kind of side characters.

Several of them get killed off pretty early on. But Julie Adams is really the hero and the champion and the main character of this film, which I think is something that should be talked about more often, if it isn't already. I mean, I'm not obsessed with Creature from the Black Wagoon so much that I'm like on form and stuff, and I haven't read the Julie Adams biography. That's something that stuck with me as a kid that even though she's a victim, she's also a hero in a lot of ways. I mean, I'm about to mention something else that you're going to laugh about because you talked you mentioned it in the beginning of the Eraserhead episode.

But then Merman comes around, and Merman from Masters of the Universe is directly inspired by Creature from the Black Wagoon, especially the early mini comic versions of Merman and the version of the toy of Merman, because there if you're familiar with that character, there are basically three distinct versions. There's the filmation version of Merman. There's the action figure version of Merman. There's the mini comic version of Merman. They eventually became sort of used intermittently as the mini comics progressed, but the filmation version is usually what people picture or the action figure.

But the card back art on the back of the nineteen eighty three action figure was totally different from the action figure you got, but definitely inspired by Creature from the Black Wagon, And to this day, Merman is one of my top three favorite action figures from the he Man and the Masters of the Universe line and Creature from the Black Lagoon is by far my favorite Universal Monster. And I've gone through phases, so I gotta be I kind of be honest here. I've gone through phases where it's been Frankenstein's Monster, where it's been the Wolfman, and I have a deep love for Frankenstein's Monster, especially Boris Karlov's version, and a deep love for Lon Cheney Junior's Wolfman. It always comes back to Creature from the Black Wagon.

He is terrifying, but also you kind of feel sorry for him, which is, you know what makes us love Universal monsters in the first place. But the underwater photography, Yeah, it's beautiful. I mean, that movie is just beautiful to watch these scenes where you're getting a close up look of the monster's face and you see the gills moving and you see his mouth sort of gasping for air. The camera's focused on his face and the background is slightly blurry, and this is just like so well crafted. The music, I mean, come on, the music is probably that one sort of refrain that happens throughout the film is probably the most impactful of all the Universal Monster movie soundtracks.

It's iconic. In rewatching it this last week, my wife and I were both commenting on how incredible the set design is. You know, they're just on the Universal Studios back lot. All that foliage, the river, the underwater sequences, the cave, all of that is just spectacular. It's so well constructed, such an attention to detail, it's mind blowing.

Similarly, you see some of that in Frankenstein, especially Bright of Frankenstein, and a little bit in The Wolfman, though for some reason the Wolfman like forest scenes feel like sets, right. Yeah, they're very stage bound. Yeah, and even when you're in the cave in Creature from the Black Lagoon in the epic conclusion of the film, you know it's a set, but it feels so real. It's a masterful, masterful movie, and I could watch it over and over again. It's probably the only Universal Monster movie that our girls have watched and actually enjoyed because for some reason, it has a kind of pull to it.

It's the growing tension, and there's no hesitancy to reveal the monsters, so you're constantly just waya for those really fantastic shots of the monster. There's no mystery. Yeah, I haven't watched it yet. With Khleo, I think we've only watched Frankenstein movies. We watched a bunch of them a while back, three or four.

Oh yeah, that's great. Bride is the masterpiece. Yeah, and I like the one, is it Son of Frankenstein, the one with Basil Rathbone. Oh yeah, his very brutalist castle and he's got a son that has a Southern accent for. Some also, the Son of Frankenstein is the one with the beautiful fur vest.

Yes, and. I believe yeah, yeah, that's every one. That might be my favorite. Actually, I need to rewatch that one. It's been a long time since I've watched that one.

But the Frankenstein movies are interesting because they become more and more stylized as they progressed until after Son of Frankenstein when they become sort of redundant. Bride of Frankenstein is esthetically miraculous, and then the art designed first Son of Frankenstein is just so good, very good. Of the migos, the migo recent migos that have come out. I had the first release Frankenstein with the green skin that didn't really look like Boris Karloff. I actually got rid of him not too long ago, but I kept the Son of Frankenstein Boris Karloff Migo because he's got the fur vest and yeah, I can't remember which ones I have, and now I have two of the first one for some reason, but I don't remember if I got a.

Son of or not. The son of one is beautiful and he looks really great with the bride of Frankenstein. It looks like elsa Lancaster. Creature from the Black Lagoon is one of my favorites. I mean, I could even I could continue and talk about the toys that I've picked up, but I'm kind of anxious to hear what you've picked You.

Can get to that in a little bit. Well, yeah, to talk about those, Yeah, I think that at school, and I don't remember if it was elementary school or high school. They kind of makes more since it's elementary school, since I went to a private school in high school. But we watched a sixteen millimeter print of Creature from the Black Lagoon in three D. God, that's beautiful.

Who knows it may have been around the time that air Well, no, no, it wouldn't have been, because you would have barely been born yet. I just remember that it must have been elementary school, and you know, went to the cafeteria and sat there with a bunch of kids and watched three D version of the film. I remember that being kind of a big thing, though, really re releasing it in three D and all this stuff. I remember there was a hubbub around that, and probably the same kind of hubbub when they aired it on action theater. Oh yeah, I remember that the newspaper ad saying be sure to get your three D glasses and a sure of the creature's face and the beautiful font of the title and everything.

You're bringing up a really interesting thing that I think people our age got to experience, but younger folks have not had a chance to experience, and that is the sixteen millimeter or eight millimeter films projected on a screen in the cafeteria. That's how I saw Bambi. A classroom or in the classroom, that's how I saw Bambi for the first time. We took a field trip to Readley High School and watched it projected on a screen. It just a shitty sixteen millimeter print of it.

I have so many memories, and this is something that we can talk about in a later episode. Perhaps if I can never find it or find some of these, but there were some educational films that really marked me in significant ways and that were always projected on a little screen that the quality was always grainy, and the sound quality there's nothing quite like it. For Father's Day, the family and I went and walked around the antique stores and Clovis, which we do fairly regularly when we can. I came across some of those early Disney films that were on those for home viewing eight milimeter reel to reel and the little packages and the little projector, and some of my earliest memories of watching early Disney films were on a little projector that my ex step brother brought and we had a couple of those Disney films and we watched them on a sheet hung up on the wall.

There's nothing quite like that experience, the sound of the flipping film at the end, you know it's over. The teacher has to get up from whatever it is they were doing in the back of the classroom, stumble over to the projector and stop it. And oh man, I just I missed that era in a lot of ways. But you're lucky to have seen that movie in the cafeteria on sixteen milimeters with three D glasses. I really appreciate it at the time, but you didn't know.

That's interesting. I didn't care for it, to be with you. Yeah, that's so interesting. Tell me a little bit more about that. I have nothing more to tell.

I just remember not really liking it that much. That is so funny. Yeah, hey, respect because I pictured Little Mark totally enjoying it. Nope, nope, not really care for it. How about now, I haven't seen it in a long time, to be honest with you, Yeah, probably because of that.

But I caught it on TV, you know, when I was younger and stuff. Yeah. I have a question for you though, before we move on. If the movie did not appeal to you, does the design of the creature appeal to you? Yeah?

Yeah, yeah. We'll get to that when you talk about your toys. Ah yeah, cool. See underwater thrills never photographed before. See Titanic underwater battles never dreamed of before.

In this most terrifying of the science fiction adventure, let's hear what you got? So, I have another lost and found story, much like the one Plastic rock Ball infamous now infamous one Plastic rock Ball. We need like a little a chime that plays every time you mentioned rock Ball, and every time I mentioned Masters of the Universe come. In your Royal bub I just played the clip every time I mentioned them. Yeah, rock Ball and that Beatles book that I tracked down because of the one plastic rock Ball and your Hooskerdo song the SNL book.

So it's it's akin to those where I had really distinct memories of something and how do I find it? And so this is another one of those, and I found it in much the same manner as those as well, thanks to the almighty Internet. My mom was raised in Portland, Oregon. I think she was born in Salem but raised in Portland, and her whole family has always lived up there. We would travel there pretty much every summer when I was growing up, probably until we got into maybe junior high or high school.

Often we would stop to break the trip up because it is a roughly twelve hour drive from Fresno to Portland, and sometimes we would just stop at my uncle's house in Stockton, which really only cut a couple hours off the drive the next day, And every once in a while we would stop in some town near the border, and I can't remember where. I always think we're still in California. My mom said it was probably Ashland, Oregon. I don't remember. And the reason I'm saying all this is because one of my strong memories of this thing is from one of these trips where I remember reading this comic book in the car for as long as I could without getting carsick, and in a motel room on a trip up there.

So every once in a while we would stop somewhere up north overnight to split the trip up, and I distinctly remember sitting in the motel room and paging through this comic book and being really struck by the images in one of the stories. In particular, it was a horror comic, which was unusual for me. I mean, I like horror stuff, but I generally stuck with superhero comics. I was a Marvel kid. I would get Spider Man, Fantastic Four, Avengers, an Iron Man, and I think I had subscriptions to a couple of those at some point.

I also, at some point got a batch of comics from nextdoor neighbors. On both sides of us. Our neighbors had children that were quite a few years older than my sister and I. So on one side there were two sons who were I think quite a bit older, and then on the other side there was a son and daughter that were at least two or three years older than us. When one of them aged out of comics, I got them nice, and so it was a whole smatter.

Like I remember there being Richie rich and hot stuff and all these things that I had no interest in, but I took them and would page through them occasionally. So I don't know if this is something that I bought on this trip, if it was a hand me down from an next door neighbor, or what kind of makes sense that it was a hand me down, since I don't recall really buying horror stuff. That maybe I saw it on a rack and was struck by the cover of art. So other than that memory of it on that trip, I also remember as a kid, my comics were stored in my closet, and I just remember like standing in the closet and pulling that out just so I could look at these pictures. Yeah, I remembered a couple of things, so I'm kind of skipping ahead here, But years later, what I would remember from the comic was one story was about a vampire, and I thought one story was about grave robbing, like this couple steals these jewels from corpses from graves and then those corpses end up coming after them at the end.

So those were the two things I kind of remembered. There were two or three images from the vampire story that I could picture in my mind, like completely, and one in particular was of a vampire in a coffin with a steak in his heart. I think the reason it stuck out to me is because he didn't really look like movie vampires, didn't look like Bela Legosi or Christopher Lee, which I would have been familiar with because of action theater or really any other you know, in the seventies, there were a number of vampire movies, the Dracula with oh, what's his name, Frank Angella, Yeah, and that kind of stuff, so you know, this stuff was coming around again. But the image that I remembered of this vampire in this comic book was that he was really gaunt, had long, stringy white hair, and was wearing a blue suit, which I think really stuck out because you don't associate Dracula or a vampire as wearing a blue suit.

They're always in black, right, Uh, a black cape or black suit or whatever. It lived in my brain for years, as with all things from my childhood, all of my comics, they disappeared at some point, were given away by my mom or thrown away by me and moved on. But that would pop up in my head from time to time, at least every year. I would have a moment stop and think, oh, you know, what was that? What was that comic book?

Did it exist? Is it real? Having a dreamery again? You know, I had a dream of something and now it's become a memory or what that one image of that vampire laying in the coffin was burned into my brain and so years past, and I would think about it from time to time, and you know, what can you do about it? There are movies like that that I saw once on action theater and then, you know, and wouldn't remember the title or never knew the title if I just caught it on a Saturday afternoon and think, what was that?

What was that movie? What was that comic book? What was that Beatles book? What was that plastic rock ball? Did it really exist?

Am I making all this up? And so I would go on for years and years, you know, thinking about that and not having any clue as how to track something like that down. I love that. That's the first part of my story. So we'll take a break and we'll come back with Ronnie's second half.

I can wait to see that image of the vampire with white hair and blue suit. Oh yeah, there he is. I love seeing the so what but you can't see because you're listening to this as a podcast as Mark just showed his Revenge of the Creature Super seven action figure with him in his what do you call that prison outfit? Yeah, I love that. That's a good segue to part two of this, which is Creature from the Black Lagoon as an object I never really had.

Even though I loved Creature from the Black Lagoon as a kid, I never had any of the I didn't get the Remco action figure beyond drawing him and trying to figure out a way to dress up like him for one Halloween and that totally failing because it was going to be a near impossible ever for me at that age. I've never really owned a plastic version of Creature from the Black Lagoon until I moved back to the Central Valley from Los Angeles in about twenty twelve, and Barnes and Noble was carrying the Reaction figures that used to be Super seven teamed up with Funco. So the first iteration of the Reaction figures that I'm aware of. My wife and I walked into Barnes and Noble saw the Universal Monsters.

This is after you had given me the Phantom of the Opera one. I think you were the one that told me Barnes and Noble has these figures. You gave me a fan of the opera. I believe this is the order in which just happened. But then I picked Creature from the Black Lagoon up from Barnes and Noble.

That started me. I started to investigate the Remco figures real fairly quickly that spending that kind of money on a toy was not something I was interested in doing, so I refrained, which I regret now because they're even more expensive now. There was a time where I probably could have gotten the creature for about ten bucks, and I don't know why I thought that that was something I wouldn't do. You know, here's another side note too, I didn't really discover the benefits of eBay. I mean I would cruise eBay visually, I'd like look at things on eBay, but I didn't really enjoy shopping on eBay until about thirteen twenty fourteen.

Then not too long ago, almost like the universe was doing me a favor. Neka started making these beautiful action figures based on universal monsters I'd seen Abndums creature from the Black Lagoon I had a write aid a few years back. I got it, but it didn't quite look like it looked more like the creature from Monster Squad, which has quite a different look. Meca releases these images. The action figures are like thirty five bucks.

You know. These Neca figures are not cheap. I was hesitant to get them, but I was fortunate that friend of the Skelevator channel sent me the black and white version and the color version, colorized version, and then of course MECA releases an announcement that they're doing the Remcos style cardback version of I believe it was San Diego Comic Con last year. Maybe it was Glowing the dark, this beautiful green, glowing the dark creature from the Black Lygun, which I didn't end up getting you're not a true fan. I know, well, Meca figures are expensive and honestly, like, I feel so lucky to have the ones that I have to be honest with you.

So but it is still on my my list of items to find eventually down the line, hoping to find a good deal, and I look it up on eBay every once in a while, but the REMCO version of the Creature from the Black Lagoon is certainly on my list. I have picked up the Little Glow in the Dark Super seven creature that looks a bit like the Remco version, And then they did release a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles version of what is it? It's Leonardo as the Creature from the Black Lagoon, which is actually I'm not a huge TMNT fan, but that is a beautiful action figure. I'm also leaving out the Remco I mean the Migo figures. Yeah, I'm waiting for you to get to it.

I'm sorry, I don't know how I skipped over that, but that's like that was the biggest thing. You and I are like, you know, have you found this? Did you see it? The recent Mego version of the Creature from the Black Lagoon is probably my favorite version of the creature in plastic. There's nothing quite like that suit, the suit, the costume that they put on the Migo figures, the cloth costume.

Yeah, and then it's got the felt spines on the back, which is just so cool. But the head sculpt on that Migo figure is just perfect. Yeah. I didn't get that because I had the Biff Bang Pound version, which is basically the same thing. M H.

I haven't looked at them next to each other, but their design is pretty much the same. Although I believe all of his protruding scales and fins are plastic. On the Biff Bang Poal version he had does have a cloth suit. You'd have to remove all of those things to get his cloth suit off because they kind of go over it. They're leased inside notches, I believe.

Oh yeah, Yeah, it's pretty amazing. So I didn't feel any need really to get the Mego one because they're almost identical. Yeah, speaking of like holding ourselves back from getting every version of something, because if you've got one that you love, why get multiple versions of it? I'm saying that, but I break that rule all the time. If it had been wildly different, I might have considered it, but to me, they looked like the concept was basically the same.

They did release a black and white version of the Mego one which I was tempted to get, which I refrained from getting. I don't really regret that, but it would be cool if I were to start over in collecting items and I wanted to do it in an eccentric way, I would be like, Oh, I'm just going to collect black and white versions of things and just have a black and white shelf. Yeah, because there's so many black and white versions of characters. I think I picked up a Donald Duck the other day from five below that was black and white, which is cool. He's something that I think about the creature a lot for some reason, and I think it's because I love the water, and I love swampland, and I love the way aquatic animals look.

If it's not the look of the anglerfish or the look of those old drawings of what leviathans or sea monsters used to look, where they would perceived to look like, Absolutely love that stuff, and I love, love love. One of my prized possessions is the collection of Jacques Cousteau documentaries on Blu ray one of my prize possessions in my collection is that I just love underwater footage. I did see that there was like a you know how, Migo was doing those larger versions of the figures too. I think they're like twelve inches tall or fourteen inches tall, And I did see an advertisement for that, which I was like super excited to try and find, but it just didn't work out. Oh my gosh, I totally forgot about this.

I do have a I believe it's Diamond select Or. No, it's Mezco. I do have a Mezco creature from the Black Lagoon. That was the first version of the creature that I actually bought when I moved back. It actually happened before I found the creature at Barnes and Noble.

The Mezco creature, I found it on clearance at Toys r US and it's one of my prize possessions. It's an absolutely beautiful toy. He's kind of exaggerated, got larger hands, smaller head, large feet, but it's a beautiful sculpt creature is always something that I'm going to be interested in adding to the collection and having versions of less so having multiple versions of the same exact sculpt more or so having different sculpts of him makes sense. Always interested in that. So do you know anything about Millicent Patrick?

No, why does that name sound from me? She's the woman that designed the hit. Sculpt that's right, that's right. Yeah, there's a book by Malory o'meira that came out. Oh gosh, probably six years ago now or so.

I remember seeing in a lot as I was starting wake up Heavy and I was on Twitter. It just kept popping up. And so she has a book about her her life. She was an actress and a sculptor, and she created the face of the creature. I am so glad you brought that up.

That had totally left my consciousness. But I remember hearing about that book when it came out. I'm totally going to get that. I think it was during the pandemic. She did her signing at Barnes and Noble up in near River Park.

Oh that's so cool. And I was not at the time, was not into crowds. So can I blame you? No, Yeah, it makes sense. I haven't gotten it.

So that's my goal for the last half of twenty twenty four or the early part of twenty Live to be reading that book. I might need to get that book just for like November readings, so I can distract myself from the chaos. Hey, they probably have it at the Frisno State Library. Oh yeah, exactly. Oh I bet they do.

I'm going to look that up tomorrow. No, this afternoon. It's Friday. I'm going to look it up this afternoon. Thanks Mark.

Ye See, folks, this is how we help each other out. Yeah, Like many things that I have already talked about and we'll be talking about on this show. Once the Internet rolls around, once eBay becomes a thing, once you have this broad search engine tool at your fingertips, you think, oh, I can start finding these things that I had as a kid, or even the things I didn't have as a kid, and tracking them down, like Migos, like the other comic books that I had, like the other toys that I remember. This was something that I would try and search for on eBay. But I think it was even harder than the plastic rock ball, or definitely harder than Migos, because those were easy to search and find.

I didn't know what to look for other than nineteen seventies horror comics nineteen seventies comics about vampires. So I'd kind of half asked look on eBay or just Google or whatever search engines were around back then. I don't remember what comic it was. I don't remember what the cover looked like, a title, anything, just to hope and pray that, I guess maybe that one image that was burned into my head would pop up somehow. I would do this off and on for a while, and then when I started wake up heavy back in twenty eighteen, I wanted to have a logo created.

I wasn't really sure what to use as a reference guide or as an example to give to the artist that I asked to do it. And my first thought was like horror novels, And so I was looking at Stephen King. I mean that's I didn't necessarily want to use the Stephen King font because that was being done by Stranger Things and everything else under the sun at that time. But I did look at his some of his Bachman book original covers and other things, just to see stylized fonts. And then I thought, well, I'll look at horror comics.

I looked up EC comics in particular because their titles were always really interestingly drawn. We went with something that approximates the Vault of horror title that got me thinking about this comic again. And by that time I had been using the Grand Comics Database, which is I think it's Comicbooks dot org is the actual domain name. When I would go to Heroes and buy comics, I would utilize that to kind of look at the ones before and after, or to see, you know, when it was released, and just to pull the images. And I had blogged that I kept track of all that stuff, and that was all Marvel stuff, superhero comics, and so then I thought, well, shoot, I should look through here and see if a cover strikes my eye rings a bell, and discovered just how many horror comics there were in the seventies, because in nineteen seventy one, the comic book code kind of changed and horror comics were allowed quote unquote allowed again because of ec comics in the fifties they got shut down.

And those were very graphic comic books that kids were just devouring. And if you go and look at some of those covers and some of the so you'll understand I mean it kind I kind of get it. They are more graphic than the movies coming out at the time. My older stepbrother had some of those, and I just remember seeing those images for the first time, knowing I should not be looking at this. They're pretty graphics.

They're pretty graphic, gory and sexy and just super super edgy. Yeah, horror comics were coming back in the seventies. I had Marvel stuck in my head, so I'm like tracking down the titles for Marvel horror comics and horror comics in general. And this is just a small sample of the horror comics that were available in the seventies. Eerie Creepy, The House of Secrets, Unexpected, The House of Mystery, Dead of Night, Beware, The Witching Hour, Vault of Evil, Vault of Horror.

Those are probably reprints of the Easy comics, The Tomb of Dark Barkness, The Tomb of Dracula, Chamber of Chills, et cetera, and so on ad infinitum, and so I would kind of scroll through those every once in a while. So I did that at the beginning of starting up Wake Up Heavy, and still couldn't find anything. The Tomb of Dracula sort of struck a chord with me and I thought, well, that kind of makes sense. I mean, the image I have in my head is a vampire and a coffin and an eBay search. An issue popped up of that comic title, issue number twelve, and the title of that issue was The Vampire's Coffin, and on the front cover there is an image of him.

Oh no, it's actually the Tomb of Darkness. I'm sorry, not the Tomb of Dracula. I'm going and looking at my blog right now and think I've been saying and writing that incorrectly all this time. So the Tomb of Darkness, and it was called the Vampire's Coffin. There's a vampire hopping up out of a coffin and a guy screaming or whatever.

I thought, Okay, well, maybe this is it. It's a Marvel title. It's from the seventies. Could have been a hand me down. I never ended up buying one because I just wasn't convinced and went on with my life forgot about it.

I was trying to use my age and my big comic book reading time, which would have been from like ten to twelve too. Madracula didn't fall in that time period, but again it could have been a hand me down from the neighbor. And so one day I was scrolling through Instagram like I do, looking at the search page or whatever. It's just you know, random images from whoever, and a little toy popped up, a custom made toy, which is fairly normal for me and would be for you too, if things that you search for or look at are going to show up in that search page because of the algorithm. It caught my eye because of the card back.

Whoever this person was had created a little skeleton figure with a cape, and it's based on the I guess mascot of this series from DC called Ghosts. So on every cover, this little skeleton is on there in some way or another, and he's in more of a it's not a cape really, it's more of a like a frock. The little toy just had a plastic skeleton. I think you can buy at the dollar store with a little Star Wars esque vinyl cape. Nice which caught my eye, but it was the card back and I'm like, gosh, that looks oddly familiar.

It has these three kids playing plane playing in a cemetery. They're knocking over gravestones and stealing wreaths and stuff, and so I clicked on it and it had two images. So I swiped to the right and there was a page from the comic in there, and that really struck a chord, and I'm like, oh, I had this as a kid. Now is it the comic I'm thinking of. I don't know, because this is a different story.

This is another story in this issue possibly, or another story in a completely different comic or whatever. But I definitely knew I had it as a kid. It's of those three boys and they're getting chased out of the cemetery by the ghosts in there, the ghosts from the dead people whose graves they were destroying. So it's obvious that this is issue number fifty of Ghosts, a comic by DC, and I was like, okay, well, if nothing else, this is a comic that I had back then, and it's given me a lead. Maybe the other one, the one I'm thinking of, was another issue of Ghosts, or possibly this issue.

I typed in DC Ghosts hashtag into the search function on Instagram and a bunch of images popped up. About halfway down the page, I saw a panel from another DC Ghosts issue. I could see in those two pictures from this panel a vampire in a blue suit with white stringy hair, Oh yeah, chasing a guy who's running away from him. So that person I asked, could you tell me what issue of Ghosts this is from? And he said issue fifty, so it was the same issue, and that was it.

I went to Heroes after work one day on a whim and thought, you know, maybe by chance they'll have it. They had a couple of issues of Ghosts, but they didn't have issue number fifty. So I went straight home, went on eBay, found multiple copies, found a decent looking one for as cheap as I could get, bought it, got it, opened it up and found the image that had really stuck in my head and was really accurate to what I remembered. That is such a good feeling the page or pages that this kind of scene is from when I got to them, it's just that weird recall and flood of memories, and it's like not a day has passed since reading it thirty five, possibly closer to forty years prior. It's miraculous.

And then the other story with the three boys and destroying the graves, all those images were very familiar to There was no story about grave robbing in it though, so possibly another issue, or that could possibly be one of those miss memories dreamries or who knows, it could have been from a movie. Here mixed together those two stories perhaps in your over the years, and they became one. Well not that that was in this story, but that in that issue. Because there's like four or five stories that one of them was about grave robbing, and I had a very distinct image of like a couple with their loot and then the vengeful ghosts coming to get their stuff back. So again I got a lot of hand me down comics.

It could have been another issue of ghosts. I don't really have the energy to like try and track that down, but I have thought about, well, maybe it was, you know, one of the ones before or after, and I should just buy them and see which I might still do. Yeah, the images of that vampire and the coffin, and so what it is is the guy discovers this coffin in a basement or something, and you know there's this huge steak in this vampire. Well he pulls the steak out and by doing that, it revives the vampire. And it's supposedly a true story about what happened to Bram Stoker and was the inspiration for him writing Drack.

Oh wow, that's awesome. The true story of Dracula. Yeah, this actually and I'll link this on the show notes for this episode, But the whole story is is on Wake Up Heavy and you can see the images that I found, and it's a gaunt vampire with long, stringy white hair, wearing a blue suit and a red comber bun. He does have a cape. When I say.

Blue, it's probably you know, like the highlight blue. Right, like Superman hair blue. In a lot of shots, it's like the whole suit is blue. It's not just the edges or anything. But in some images it does look at that, you know, so who knows.

In my mind it was blue. Those older comics would sometimes just use blue as black sometimes. Now I'm really stuck on this idea of somebody doing an origin story of Bram Stoker coming up with the idea for Dracula and having it be this supernatural experience. God, that would be so funny. Yeah, a llah Young Einstein or something vidiculous like I remember Young Einstein.

Holy crap, I can't believe him thinking about that right now, what a horrible movie. The stories and that they have the titles, which of course are on that card back for that little skeleton toy didn't really click with me because the one that's about the vampire is called most Fearful Villain of the Supernatural, so there's like no hint that there is a vampire story contained within the issue. I guess the vampire is the most Fearful Villain of the Supernatural. Nice. The other stories are the Trapped Phantom and Home Is Where the Grave Is Nice.

I kind of want to make one of those skeleton figures with the Darth Vader cape. Now. When I stumbled on that he was he would do short little runs, and I, again, like you with the Creature and other things, I should have bought one. I didn't have the comic yet, and I think by the time I got the comic he wasn't doing them anymore, and that little dollar store vampire skeleton wasn't being made anymore. I have thought over the years, you know, I should have him make one for me, and maybe even supply the skeleton or something.

I found something similar on Amazon that's three and three quarter inch scale, which is what they were doing, So that was retrogemmic toys that does those Oh yeah, I. Love retro gimmick. I discovered them through the algorithm, just like you. And then R. M.

Renfield was the person that had scans of the comic because they're a fan of vampires in Dracula. So it's like the plastic rock ball the other books. It's like finding out that Peter Strickland I saw I erase her head in the same theater. It's just weird how this thing unlocks these by chance. I mean I wasn't looking for at the time I found that toy.

I wasn't actively looking for this comic. Yeah, I mean I had been, but the toy popped up because I look at toys on Instagram or follow people who make toys or collect toys or sell toys or whatever. That's the reason that popped up. The fact that it was the exact comic I've been trying to remember for thirty five years is complete happenstance. Yeah.

I love those moments. It's funny because when you're pursuing the This is kind of how I went with the Hohoscer Dow song for me, Like when you're actively pursuing it. That information you sometimes have to let go a little bit so that it can rive. I'm currently struggling with that right now, with this stupid real that I saw about a month ago. Two months ago.

Maybe that made me laugh out loud, And now every time I search it up, try to find this thing, Yeah, I can't find it for the life of me. It's driving me crazy. The moment I stopped being driven crazy by it, it'll probably just pop up. Yeah, that's been the case for a lot of these things. Yeah, although one plas rockball, that'll coalesced, you know, in a matter of weeks, because I had been talking about it exactly for it.

But the finding of these things, the Beatles book, it's a tweak also of like your perception or perspective and like, okay, I need a new angle. Yeah, that's how I found those books. Why should look at the spines of these things instead of covers or whatever. So sometimes it just takes a left turn to get you back to where you were trying to go. So true, so true.

As you were talking about it, I was remembering back to when you had mentioned that before, and when you had I think you would just you had messaged it to me via text message before you put it in your blog something like that. So I'm definitely going back to look at those images. So cool. Maybe I'll use one for the for this episode. Definitely change it last time.

Yep. All right, we'll take a quick break and then we'll come back with some local locals. Oh all right, Ronnie, what is your local locale this time? Sticking with the aquatic theme of Creature from the Black Lagoon, something that piggybacking off of my interest in the underwater realm that probably stemmed from Creature from the Black Lagoon, certainly Jacques Cousteau following up, following that, I have always been really interested in aquariums. The Monterey Bay Aquarium for a good period of time for me as a kid, was like the destination.

It was the place that I wanted to go to the most, I'd say for a good four or five years. I probably bugged my family about going there more than anywhere. Else that's not local. So I'm not talking about the money Baker, my friend, I'm Gettarie angry. I am talking about here we go back in January of the year two thousand, a group announced, the group being the Aquarius Aquarium Institute.

Clever I know, right, announce that there would be a Fresno aquarium project. Remember that two thousand? I remember those signs. Yeah, the sign's still up. Yeah.

By the way, we just came back from a trip to San Jose and there it was. There are apparently ten acres of unused land right off the Highway ninety nine, right near where you see that sign. It's right near the river. That sign has never gone down. It's the same.

I mean, they've refreshed it a couple of times, but it's the same sign that's been up since two thousand. There has been some action. Oh, I guess they're having better luck lately raising money. Every once in a while I will go to their website and see how things are going. This group of people, this institute, has been trying to create an aquarium in drought ridden Fresno for twenty four twenty three years, coming up on twenty four years.

They are still at It. Is Max Fisher behind this, I think so? Is he trying to impress a teacher. I never asked anyone to build me an aquarium. I'm not quite sure how that rumor got started.

I think it is a romantic gesture. My interest in this project has not waned a bit since the year two thousand, mainly because that sign is still up. So every time we drive by the family and I we all laugh about it, but also please make this happen. I'm going to be there on opening day. I'm so excited.

Also, if you look at the website, you'll see that it's not just the typical aquarium experience. It's really based on freshwater research that takes place in the Central Valley a lot around river basins and stuff, so it more likely than not be sort of a fresh water explore to. Maybe they'll divert part of the river to flow through the building. God, that would be so cool. We can see all this trash and stuff, all the trash and some inner tubes and detritis keystone light beer cans, probably a body every once in a while.

Yeah, I don't mean to laugh, so enthusias. That is hilarious, little morbid joke. You know, Fresno has like interesting places, and we've talked about some of them. The zoo kind of keeps getting better every year. Yeah, the underground Gardens, Underground Gardens, storybook Land, fascinating places.

It would be so exciting if this project could eventually get off the ground. This is sort of a piggyback off of that. There was this place that we would go to on field trips called the Discovery Center when I was a kid. Do you remember that? Yeah, that's on my list of places to talk about eventually.

We're not going to talk about it a lot today because I want to talk about it too, but because I Anyways, I drove by there recently. That was phenomenal to us as kids, and when you drive by it, you're like, oh, there's not much going on. Yeah, looks a little sketchy. In fact, the Fresno Aquarium Project would be amazing. Aquarius Aquarium, that's yeah.

Aquarius Aquarium Institute is the compos off the tongue, the organized that's trying to fund this, and it's the Fresno Aquarium Project. You can go to their website today, folks and donate and I'm sure they'll be happy. It looks like there's about five people on their team still try and get this off the ground, and they have raised quite a bit of money. There is a blueprint or a diagram of what the institute or what the aquarium will look like when it's eventually built. It looks kind of cool, and that's a really interesting area north of Fresno off the Highway ninety nine, right where the river is.

It's kind of a cool area. And there's they've been trying to build that high speed rail and there's looks like there might be like a station around there, so it might end up being like a hub, a new hub for interesting stuff out there at the edge of town. Well, sir, there's nothing on earth like a genuine, bona fide electrified six car monorail. I've talked to other people who live here about that, and pretty much everybody's given up on the idea. I haven't.

I am excited about it still for the past twenty three years, have been excited and still nothing. Fingers crossed for you, Ronnie. That's right, that's right. Well, we're revisiting this in another twenty years. Afgohn Podcast.

They finally built the aquarium. I'm so happy. So what's your local locale, my friend? Well, I've mentioned this place a number of times, and I wish I had looked at this resource before we recorded our last episode, because it relates to that I mentioned this place on that episode as to where I would see or saw and rented Eraserhead from MMM, and I mentioned it in the past. It's always been kind of confusing, and I think I even mentioned that I had read this maybe off podcast just to you, but possibly on one of the episodes.

The video store that I used to go to to rent movies almost exclusively until probably I was in college and started going to Tower Video in Sunnyside on King's Canyon, Clovis, and I could never remember the name of it, knew it wasn't this one, but this one, et cetera. If I hadn't mentioned before. On that Lost Fresno message board, I had seen somebody had asked the exact same question I had in my head about this place, and I'm like, okay, it's not just me. I was sort of anxiously awaiting a reply and would forget to check and stuff. But I was on Lost Fresno recently because I was trying to find pictures of the toys Arress that had been in Fashion Fair because I thought I was going to be doing something else today and it relates to that toys r us in there couldn't find any pictures, and I thought, well, okay, let me go look and see if there's been an answer to this query about the video store, and there was.

There were updates. It was at the top of the message board. I'm just going to read the messages that were left on there. Nice. So this was from formerly Fresnen on December sixth, twenty nineteen.

I am wondering if anybody remembers the name of the video rental place that used to be in the original Vonn's shopping center on King's Canyon and Clovis in the eighties. Vonn's is now on the other side of the street. That's why he said original it would have been in the strip of stores between what was probably Lumberjack and eventually Osh and Von's. They had all their titles on the wall and you had to bring the little tab hanging underneath to the counter to rent, which he's talking about the place they had the little key ring things with a little metal loop around and whatever. And I think I would just have the number of the tape on there and you tick that up and get the tape.

If I remember correctly, there were three stores in the area. Sunnyside Video was across Clovis on the other side of the shopping center. That's the one that I mentioned was by jbviers Nice and Valley Video moved around a few times, but was always near those cross streets. And I have no recollection of this place. I can't remember the name of the one in between the hardware store in Bonds though, and it's bugging me, haha.

Any help or insight? It was bugging me too, dude. So I'm totally there with your formerly Fresenan so apparently perennial millennial on January eleventh, twenty twenty four, replied it wouldn't have been all that video question mark and formerly Fresman on June sixth, twenty twenty four, so right before we recorded in all caps that's it. Two exclamation points, thank you. And so I was reading it and I was like, that rings zero bells.

Interesting that name. I have no recollection of that name. All that video Valley Video does, but I don't remember a third shop Value video kind of rings true to me. But I'm gonna go with these guys, And I guess it was called all that Video. Have you looked up have you done like an image search to all.

You can't find anything with those You can't find anything. You say, I can't find them, But now we'll do it anyway. Go ahead, I know you're going to and you're not going to find anything. Yeah, well that's isn't that the case? Though?

Sometimes I know that's what's going to happen when we try to look up images of the Discovery Center. I suppose you could go I don't know, maybe to the downtown Library if they have like resources of photos through the years of certain intersections. I mean King's Canyon and Clovis Avenue was a major intersection, tons of shopping. There was an arcade in that shopping center. There was a warehouse records I believe, I think it was warehouse, and then on the other side there was Christensen's Market and the library, and there were things on every corner of that.

It was the main shopping area for Sunnyside, that part of Fresno. It was a hop in place. I remember. It's possible that there are photos of these popping centers or of the streets and you could see maybe a storefront or something, but you're not going to find anything looking for all that video. Fresno California nineteen eighties, or all that video Kings Canyon and Clovis.

You're just not I've done it, trust me, knock yourself out, but you ain't finding shit. I'm gonna try. I'm gonna try. I'm sure I won't. I do want to mention that when you said all that video and when you said Valley video, the one that sounded most familiar to me was all that video.

Like that actually sounds a little bit familiar to me. Interesting. I remember going down there, cruising down there with my ex step father and my mom and sitting in the back of the pickup truck and cruising Kings Canyon and just looking at how looking at that area of the city getting fast food fast is back when you could do that and you could sit in the back of a pickup truck and nobody. I for some reason, that sounds all that video sound very familiar to me. Curious if I have I should look through some of my old well they're not that old, but my movie books and see if I have a receipt that I used as a bookmark.

Oh, I could see that happening, because. I know I kept receipts every once in a while from there, when I would rint stuff just because I would take it out of the thing before I returned the movies. You know. Side note was one of my favorite surprises in buying used books from bookstores is when someone had left their shopping receipt as. A bookmark in that book.

I do that all the time. You just suddenly looking at a receipt from nineteen sixty five in this book that you picked up. They bought bubble gum and whatever else, cores and your cost. Maybe I'm going to the store to get some coos and little gun. You want to use more receipt as your bookmark later.

Cores bubble gum cigarettes. Yeah, and you get to see the prices of back then. And yeah, I love that. I use receipts as bookmarks all the time. That's practically where I use Actually it's usually for the book that I bought.

But you're creating a historiography by doing that. Yeah, I've got a brief episode this time. So I wanted to mention something. Yeah, it has to has to do with local locales. Is the fucking miserable heat we have been having for the last two weeks.

God, so folks, this maybe you're cue to tune us out right now. But it has been ridiculous. And so I was curious because I'm always stunned when they show the averages for the summer here. Yeah, there is no day during the summer here that has an average temperature of one hundred degrees or more. It's always in the nineties.

And I have lived here all of my life, yep. And I'm like, how can that be true? How can that be true when I remember, even when I was growing up in the seventies and eighties, stretches of twenty days or more of one hundred degree or more heat? Yeah? Is this just some bullshit that you guys tell us so that we don't hate ourselves and want to kill everybody every summer or what.

So I got curious. I'm like, Okay, I want to look at these records or look up stuff about Fresno. And I believe it's all available on the city website because I looked up hottest temperatures in Fresno or whatever, and it led me there, and there's a bunch of different You can look up the biggest differential in a day, or the coldest days on record, and the hottest days, and I'll give you a list, And so the hottest days according to what I looked up, the records go back to eighteen eighty seven, so one and thirty seven years of records. There have only been in that one hundred and thirty seven years sixteen days of temperatures over or at one thirteen or above. We have had at least six days in the past two weeks of one hundred and thirteen or above.

So now this summer we have seen a quarter of the total from the last one hundred and thirty seven years. So prior to this it was about every eight and a half years. Obviously, some of them probably happened the same year, as like two of the hottest could have been the same week of twenty twelve or whatever. This year, in the last two weeks we have a quarter of the total since records have been kept. When do you hear this, folks, When people say, ah, there's no such thing as climate change, the world's not.

This is all just everything's cyclical. Sorry, it is changing, and it's really scary. My friend who lives in Vegas is one hundred and twenty degrees the other day. Well, Carlyas sent me before this heat wave started. She sent me an image she snapped from her phone.

They were showing a one hundred and twenty one degree day. It was supposed to happen last Saturday. It quickly switched to like one hundred and twelve. I remember that. We were all yeah, and then it popped back up, and I'm like, oh my god, our AC is going to go out.

I mean, we'll be lucky if the power stays on. It never got that hot. I know it got to at least one hundred and sixteen one maybe two days. Yeah, and you know hotter in other places. Carlydas family's from reading.

They always get a couple degrees hotter than us. Of course, you know, death vallion pump springs are just going to be absolutely ridiculous. But yeah, it's been horrible. Yeah, I hate it. Our bill is going to be so high and there's nothing.

I have it at eighty three. I won't have it any lower during the day. If I was here by myself, I would have it at eighty four. It doesn't matter though, because it's still running all day it you can't fight one hundred and fifteen degree heat with your AC. No, we are going out of town tomorrow and I can say this freely on here because this won't come out until weeks after we've already been back.

Yeah, so I'm not worried about anybody breaking in. But we're going to the Central Coast. It's going to be smart, wonderful relief. And I'm looking because you can't not have your AC on when you're gone. If you have pets, maybe you could probably be pretty stupid when you leave during the winter.

You don't have to have you don't want to have your heter on because it could blow out your house. So that's fine. We still have to have it on something so that the cats don't die, so that the plants don't die, so that things just don't go to shit in your house. It keeps kind of fluctuating. I'm hoping for low low, low hundreds or nineties, and it just keeps changing and it doesn't really cool off until Monday.

Yeah, even when we're gone, our AC is going to be running for most of the day. It's insane. It's speaking a Central Coast. I was speaking to a coworker who's from sort of Northernentral Coast area, and he's like, do folks buy different kinds of tires in the Central Valley and I was like, no, tire technology is pretty amazing, actually, because I every summer I worry that tires are going to melt. Yeah, I haven't worried that much before until this summer.

It does happen. It happens in Texas. I've seen people. Yes, it hasn't happened here yet, but it might this summer, and I'm scared of that. I'm hoping this is it as far as well consistently over one hundred and five.

I hate to say this, but I always fear August the most. Yeah, that month still has to come by. Yeah, No, I know, it's July and August. And it's interesting when I was looking at that stuff, like seeing when the earliest one hundred degree or more day would happen, and it's generally not until June. There were a lot of years where it was May.

There were some years where it was April. And you could tell the nice years when the first one hundred plus day was late in June and the last one was early September, and you go, oh, yeah, that was a mild summer. Yeah. The same coworker friend was saying, hey, and I'm also I've got friends visiting from out of town. Where do we take them?

And you know, usually I would say, oh, you know, underground gardens or roading park, the zoo. Underground gardens would be cool. That's a constant. It'd be cool while you're there. But the hardest part about underground gardens is the very very short walk from Shaw Avenue to the entryway entry barn area of the underground gardens.

And sometimes there's a line, so depending on the busyness of the day, and that just that short little jaunt is torture if it's under degrees or higher. But this is another reason why it would be awesome if we had an aquarium, because I could recommend that, and that would have been perfect, because you can't really tell folks to go up to the foothills because oh, yes, well you don't. It's just as hot up there, and it's some days it feels hotter up there. If you're having somebody come during the summer to visit in Fresno, movie theater is your best option. Sorry, you're not going to see anything outside.

I didn't even go to fashion Fair. I ran through Fashion Fair not too long ago, and it was like warm there Fashion Fair Mall, folks, one of the last remaining indoor malls in the Fresno area. Alrighty, well, if you stuck around to hear are ramped about our weather. Thank you and thanks for listening as always, and we will see you next month. I think, unless we decide to take a heat break, well, I mean, I can't get hotter than this.

No, I'm hoping it gets better. And well, no, unless we take our beginning of school break like we did last year. Oh yeah, we'll see, we'll see how it goes. Maybe we won't do that this year. That's right, we did that.

That's right. It's always a busy time for us. It's a busy time the month before school starts with when you have kids, it's busy. So maybe we will, maybe we won't. Maybe we won't.

You'll just have to wait and see. Yeah, do you have the exit? No, I'm not doing the exit. It's always you are. You got it, buddy.

Remember until we meet again, have fun, stay weird, stay cool, and keep collecting. Yeah, if you can. If you live on the coast of California, probably fine. Yeah, it's going to be in the sixties, so I'm excited. Yeah, you like forty degrees cooler on that note, goodbye.

Yes, Okay. Cambridge or Sean is a weirding Way media podcast. Yeah.