Episode 23: We're a Couple of Misfits

Cambridge and Rashon is a weirdy way media podcast weird couple of What's the Matter with Me with That's very minim Hello and welcome to episode twenty three of Cambridgemashon, a podcast by two weirdos about weird stuff. My name is Mark Bigley and I'm the host of Wake Up Heavy, co host of the Chasing Chevy Chase podcast, and I am here with my friend Ronnie. That's right, I'm Ronnie. I'm also known as Skelevator on the YouTube's and on Instagram, and I'm excited. We're deep in the holiday season.

You are going to be talking Christmas stuff on this episode, so you'll get a double dose of Xmas fun this year. We will be recording at the same time our Holiday special number two, which will be released in three weeks from the date that you're listening to this one. Yeah, lots of goodies Christmas Eve. That one will will arrive on Christmas Eve. But this is our regular December episode and we, I guess, decided to make it Christmas themed as well.

That's right. Any updates or news or anything from the last couple episodes. Oh, I wanted to say, maybe you'll do this on the holiday episode. But I wanted to say, you made a big stink about the last episode being all about plastic things, but you didn't really talk about the Dick Tracy toys. Yeah, so guess what, folks, You're gonna have to wait for the Holiday episode to hear about the Dick Tracy to Actually, you know what, I'm planning to do a video on my YouTube channel, so that'll be popping up too pretty soon.

But I have three here and looking at him right now. Talk about him. On the Holiday episode. We talked a little bit about Steve, the pedophile. Toy that you were so interesting to get your hands on.

Oh it's complicated. Yeah, we did talk about him a little bit. You know. The Playmate's toys are. I feel like they're making a little bit of a comeback because I've been perusing eBay to try and get my hands on a flat top and they used to be like four bucks and now they're going up in price.

It's because everyone listens to our podcast. I think, yeah, well everything is going to be going up in price pretty soon. So if you're interested in toys, you might want to jump on the bandwagon now. And I'm not just talking about vintage toys. I'm talking about the crap you buy at Target and Super seven and elsewhere once those tariffs hit, folks, Yeah, everything's going to be twice as much.

So have fun. Yeah, do what Mark and I do and mainly shop for old stuff. Yeah, because the news stuff is it's looking pretty. I'm not looking forward to the way it's going. To be And the next we can get a little bit more into that in the next episode as well.

Yeah, Where's Christmas? Where's Christmas? What you got for your Christmas item? For episode twenty. Three, Well, I'm excited to finally get a chance to talk a little bit about Christmas specials.

I've always been picky about the things that I like. If it was a Christmas special, it had to be one of three Christmas specials. I really wasn't a huge fan of most of them, and in the early eighties there were a lot of them. I really wanted to talk about the one that I look forward to the most, that I feel like still gets a lot of love, which is good because it's awesome, and that is the Rankin and Bass Rootolph the Red Nose Reindeer stop motion Christmas special that was made in nineteen sixty four, and I feel still holds up today despite all the weirdness in it. Hey, what do you say they both be independent together?

Huh, you wouldn't mind my red notes, not if you don't mind me being a dentist. It's still good. Even our daughters love it. It does good things on the screen. I don't know how they accomplish this.

It's really quite good. That's what I really looked forward to the most. And I was sort of scanning my memories of looking forward to Christmas specials. And as I've mentioned in previous episodes, I come from a divided home, so I'd spend every other weekend down in Fresno and then most of the time up in the mountains with my mom. And my stepfather and little brother.

And so all of my memories of watching Off the Red Nose Reindeer, or How the Grinch Stole Christmas or the Charlie Brown Christmas Special were sitting in the living room of the mobile home on our Christmas tree farm up in dunlowp California. It's funny, it doesn't matter how many multiple memories I've had over the years of watching these holiday specials sitting on that brown carpet in that wood paneled mobile home and watching these on that Zenith or whatever it was. I treasure those memories. I remember those moments more than I remember opening presence. Isn't that weird?

It's always root off the red nose Reindeer for me. I know that. That is definitely the. Very first time I encountered stop motion animation, the second being Oh, you like that, here's King Kong. And so then I got to see King Kong, the nineteen thirty four King Kong thirty three thirty four.

That's where my obsession began with stop motion animation. That's where my obsession began with snow. Who has an obsession with snow? I guess a lot of people but. Like white things.

For a long time, when I was living in New York, I was going to this little bodega for some reason. This one bodega. Had white flocked plastic animals for like a dollar apiece, and I would scoop them up. None of the other colors appealed to me as much as the white flocked, and I'm pretty sure it's because of the way the snow looks in that Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer show. The first time I went to Disneyland as a kid and we rode the Matterhorn.

I saw that Abominable Snowman. He's white fur with blue skin, just like the Abominable Snowman and Rudolf the Red Nose Reindeer. He's a nasty and he hates everything. To do with Christmas. It did it for me.

I've been a crazy fan of Harold the Monster in the Matterhorn since then, and it's all because of Rudolphe Knows Reindeer. The Island of the Misfit Toys. I wanted to live there. Those were your people, those were my people. When I first started getting into the Masters of the Universe collecting community, I started doing these little guashed paintings of Masters characters and selling them to fans, and they were called MO two Misfits.

And that's a nod to the Island of the Misfit Toys. I mean. And what hero is a dentist or wants to be a dentist? Right? I love that character?

Yeah? What's his name again? Harmie her Heart, Harmony Ermie Hermie, Yeah, Harmy. Where'd I get that from? Because I wrote I wrote harmony here, I should have written Hermie, when you get to be our age, we trust what we see in front of us more than our memory.

I just wanted to bring this up because a lot of folks that I talked to around the holidays, they're always like, yeah, Frosty the Snowman and all the other ones, most of the ones that Brinkin and Bass put out too, they're good, but none of them appealed to me as much as Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer, how the Grinch Stole Christmas, and a Charlie Brown Christmas. Those three are spectacular. And then moving on to Charlie Brown. When the Royal Tenant Bombs came out and Wes Anderson chose to use some of those songs. Yeah, I remember that.

What a wise choice, because that's gonna push the nostalgia button for all of us, and it did. I love Royal Tenant Bombs harshly because of that. That scene in the ice cream shop. Yeah, yeah, totally remember what scene. That music comes on me thinking, oh yeah, and probably not too long after that, finally got the soundtrack after yeah, forty years.

Yeah, the first vinyl Christmas album that my family and I bought was a Charlie Brown Christmas Yeah, in Scaraldi trio. For me a kid growing up in the seventies, it was like The Wizard of Oz where you waited a year for it. What did that play? Was it Thanksgiving or Easter around one of the holiday times and you had to wait and you weren't going to be able to record it and watch it whenever you wanted for a while at least. And yes, these were just like that, maybe even more so than Wizard of Oz, I think for me and I always get them mixed up, but the two Santa ones are my favorites.

I love heat Miser, call me heat Miser whatever. Starting out clock too much. I could never remember which one that was in right. It's like if you missed it, you were screwed for a year. We tried to catch those every year.

Rudolph Santa Claus is coming to town Without a Santa Claus Frosty I never really enjoyed very much. And part of it was because it was just straight cell animation and not stop motion exactly. And part of it was that I don't recall any good songs or anything from that one either, And it was sort of annoying, which I didn't realize until we got, you know, a cheap o DVD set a while back when Kleo was little, because it's like, oh, well, we want to show her these too. We got Charlie Brown Christmas. I think we got all the Charlie Brown Holiday ones in a DVD set, and then a bunch of the Ranking and Bass ones, and the Rank and Bass ones also have some coofy ones in there, like the Cricket by the Fireplace, Yeah, the Donkey one, and some other ones that we never ever watch.

I think those things befuddled me, like how did they do this? How do they make these things move? And I don't know when I finally understood what stop motion animation was, and you just kind of amazed while you watch them as a little kid. The best thing I can equate it to watching stop motion as a kid is like watching someone make magic in front of you in slow motion, as if you're watching the trick unfold right in front of you. I love that, especially being able to see the fur move on the Abominable Snowman and on King Kong.

Right then you kind of get it, like, oh, someone's manipulating me exactly as a kid, you're like, oh, that's because somebody. Was holding that and moving it around. Well, for me, it took a while, and it wasn't when I was a kid. It just seemed weird a kid. My brain's a little weird that way.

As far back a second, remember, I'm always like trying to see how do they do that, trying to apply some sort of logic to that. And I'm not very smart person, but I definitely got the impression that someone was moving those things with their hands. And then I would check out books on stop motion from the library and even as a little kid, something that you touched on that I think is really important. Here is the waiting for these shows. Oh yeah.

We grew up in an era where Disney movies were not available. They would show up in movie theaters and on the Wonderful World of Disney. There was the Wonderful World of Disney. On TV was the only way you could see some of those shorts and clips and sometimes a full movie. That's where the movies ended up, all those dexter Riley movies, all.

That stuff so cool, but everything was an event. Everything on the television was an event. Waiting for the holiday movies, waiting for the Halloween specials, waiting for a Disney movie to be re released in the movie theater, or waiting for a Wonderful World of Disney on TV. Everything was an event. I do pine for that sometimes, and we try to do that a little bit in our house, like we hold on to our holiday films, whether it be Thanksgiving or Halloween or Christmas.

We hold on to them even though we could watch them at any time because they're right there in our DVD cabinet. A Christmas Story doesn't fit into that category because it came out in the theater and then didn't show up on television at least from that I can recall, until that one channel just decided to play it for twenty four hours straight. Now it played like normal, like every year it played on the channel before TBS or whoever started doing the twenty four hour thing, because that's how I discovered it. And we were like, because I remember when it came out, it didn't do well. I didn't go see in the theater, and then we took a chance on it one Christmas time and we're like, why didn't this do well?

This is amazing, It's so good and then a few years down the road and we get cable and it's like, well, yeah, you can watch it for twenty four hours. Now. Yeah. I remember when my mom and my stepdad got a VHS player. And it could record.

That was epic. I was so excited to record those television specials. But I have zero memory of watching them, Like I still held on to the event of waiting for it for some reason, like I maybe I watched them once or twice after like right after Christmas or something like that. I don't know, but I don't have any memory of that. All the memories are of waiting for that.

I wish I could imitate it, but that circular the word special with the rainbow behind it, that would like like it would it would time pop up anyways, whatever I'd have found on YouTube some of those somebody's recorded the specials along with the commercials, and that's fun to watch. Going back to Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer, that is a spectacular film. I love everything about it. It's influenced me in substantial ways, whether it be diorama, building or aesthetics, like general esthetics. The one thing that I didn't ever see until later on was.

There's two things that I never saw until I was an adult, and that's the Star Wars All of It Special. Yeah, I don't remember seeing that either. Gentlemen, I guess you would to hear what I said. The Empire has closed us down. I didn't even know about it until I was in my twenties, and then a friend of a roommate was like, oh my god, have you seen this?

And he had like a copy and watched it and it was like, oh my god, it's so bad. What The other thing that I was surprised that I hadn't seen was the he Man Sheira. Christmas Special, Come in You Royal bub And. I don't know if you've ever tried to get through that, but it's pretty difficult and no interest in that. You get to see a sentimental side diskeletor, which is pretty cool.

Oh that's lovely. The Holidays Christmas Specials for me, Rudolph is right up at the top, followed by Charlie Brown and Grinch tied Boris Karloff's voice is the Grinch. Nothing beats that. Yeah, you know, I got frustrated after a while. I mean for a long time, I didn't watch those part of that was even when Kleia was little.

And this is why we bought them is they're so chopped to pieces now because of course they were longer and didn't have as many commercial breaks when they first aired. So I remember we would watch The Grinch on TV, and then when we got it, it's like, oh, this song is so much longer. There are so many verses that they removed and the one that they're showing on TV now, Like, really, guys, you can't leave this kind of stuff alone and just have three commercial breaks like they did back in the day. That's why we have our own copies of them now. And that's right now.

You can watch them uninterrupted, but you know it's not the same. We have to watch it during winter break. Can't watch them tomorrow. It just won't feel the same. I could start watching them tomorrow, it's close.

Can Oh yeah, it's close enough. That's good. That's good. Not me. I just doesn't for some reason, it doesn't click until I have a few days off.

In a row. That makes sense. Yeah, once Thanksgiving hits, you should be able to watch whatever you want. That's a good rule. I'm going to try and stick to that this year.

Once we decorate our house. That's pretty much like how so after Thanksgiving we decorate for Christmas and then I believe that's when the shift really happens. Cool. So yeah, that's my DELI. Oh how about you, Well.

You mentioned or I mentioned, and you reiterated the anticipation of watching these and the two items that I'm talking about also held much anticipation for me every year. Once Thanksgiving came and went, I knew that I was going to be able to play with these things again, regardless of what was on my Christmas list or what I was hoping to get. And like you, I don't particularly have specific memories of opening an item. I see people post this stuff on toy message boards and things, you know, Christmas. So seventy eight is when I got my micro not blah blah blah, And I'm like, I didn't no idea about most of that.

There's a few things I know of now just because I have a record of them. You know, I have photos, right, I never remembered any of that stuff. These two things, these weird things I would look forward to because I knew I would get to play with them, And there was a very limited time span because once I'm sure shortly after New Year's and the Christmas stuff got packed back up, they were going to be gone again for another year. YEP. I think like many families, I'm not going to say most, but many families, once Thanksgiving happens, you've got that extra day plus the weekend to start Christmas decorating.

I'm sure my mom did that. So she would bring out this plastic Santa Sleigh that was collapsible. You would squeeze it and it would fold up and then let it go and it would pop back out. It just fascinated me, and for the collapsing part of it was one thing because that was kind of playetic. You could play with it.

It was Nego sized, so I could fit action figures in it, which I don't actually recall doing. I'm sure I did because it was the right scale. But the thing that I remember playing together with it were little i don't want to say boxes, but little packages of Santa match that came in little tubes and had a Santa face on them and pull the cap off and you had your matches in there. So I would play with the collapsible Santa Sleigh and the Santa matches every year regardless of what I got for Christmas, which I don't remember, I would jones for it as the year started to come to a close and think, Okay, you know, I'm going to have about a month and a half or so to play with this thing. I didn't know what it was for.

I just figured it was some kind of random Santa decoration Christmas decoration. We had one of those ceramic trees that has all the little bulbs that light up. That was a constant. We had the little round Santa mugs that the adults would drink eggnog out of. All that seventies style decoration.

We had Actually a lot of those things really still appealed to me as well. And we might have had some kind of little felt Santa or something. Maybe I played with that too. I don't really remember. I remember the matches though, they kind of intrigued me their shape and stuff.

So, and I'll talk more about this on our holiday episode because I have acquired these items and finally realize what the Santa slay is for. So I'll get to that. Then ooh, the cliffhanger. Yeah, So every year looking forward to a collapsible, plastic, cheap o Maiden Hong Kong, Santa Slay and little that's amazing. At least a couple of the things of Santa matches.

And you can still find all that stuff out on the internet, especially those matches. They're everywhere and people sell them for ridiculous prices. Of course, I would always help my mom decorate the tree. Yeah, we did as kids. Yeah, at first it was like a chore.

About five minutes in, I'd be like, oh yeah that, oh yeah that. I'm sure everyone has this experience that celebrates Christmas or decorates Christmas trees or lux ornaments or whatever their experience might be. If they've done that their whole lives, there's one or two that really sticks out in their mind as being the one that they enjoyed the most. And there were two. For me.

One was a little bird house, a little white bird house with baby little red birds, plastic birdhouse with glittery snow on the top and these little tiny red not cardinals, just red, generic little birdies. I would just stare at that thing for hours. So I get it. I mean, what's a collapsible sleigh? What's a plastic birdhouse?

Like? Why does certain things that we were talking about last time. Why does a plastic baseball cap appeal to us in the tactile way? And to this day, I just. I can't shake the magic of that feeling of holding that little birdhouse in my hand.

That just reminded me of a couple of ornaments that really sucked it to me back then. And I think they were felt. I don't think they were homemade. There may have been, you know, the old old timey clothes pins. Yes, it had kind of like almost legs, and people would make ornaments out of them.

I remember like a toy soldier yep, possibly a nutcracker made out of those or something made out of those, and then and maybe these other things. The toy soldier were just felt guys. And I wanted to play with them. I didn't want them to be ornaments. I wanted to and it probably did, you know, like sneak them down off the tree every once in a while and play with them.

You know. They had little legs, stiff little legs, and it was fun to just hold them and yeah, walk them around. I think I had a reindeer one, just a two legged roof, the little grew up nose and little antlers that was on our tree and where are those? Yeah, I wonder if my mom had has any of those. That's cool serious, while we're on the subject.

I don't know about you, but for me, it's all about the big bulbs. If it were up. To me, I would buy the nineteen eighties style big bulbs for the Christmas tree. But my wife loves the small ones. It makes more sense to get the small ones too, but I would just love to get the big ones.

I'm trying to think if we ever did a year here with Carlida and Clear, if we've used bigger bulbs or not. We have them around the house. I like them too, Yeah, but for our tree, it's the little tiny bulbs for the most part, and they've been multiple different colors throughout the years. I think we're doing clear this year, but I know we've had colored bulbs. Maybe my mom and my stepdad just chose those.

But I prefer the bigger bulbs, and as a kid, I just thought that was the only option. You see those on the house, and you see them on the tree on the inside. Yeah, and if you're like the Dad and a Christmas story, you're going to blow the fuses. Oh yeah, did you have any other any other items that bring back the memories for you. No, that just thinking about those ornaments though.

Now I'm kind of curious to see because I'm trying to think how long it's been since my mom moved into their place, because I know she doesn't put a big tree up anymore, but I should ask her if I can look through whatever ornaments she has left to see if any of those old things are in there. I know there's stuff from a while ago, but we're talking like almost fifty years ago for some of these things that I'm thinking of. Yeah, we'll take another break. You know what, Just let me mention this spreaker is being really stupid about AD breaks now. They want more AD breaks, not more ads, just more AD breaks or you're being non compliant.

So in a normal episode ode that we put out, that means like five to six AD breaks, and I'm struggling to find spots for them, folks, So I really try not to have them interrupt us mid speech, so I'm trying to be mindful of inserting them in dead space. But it's really stupid. We can do all of them right now. Let's take an AD break right now. You can't put them all in the same spot.

You can't do it. I've tried any who will be right back. Okay, we are back from one of twenty ad breaks that'll be in this episode. And Ronnie, what special Christmas memory are you going to talk about? I'm on a holiday special tangent.

These are movies, traditional films. There's two that I always argue with folks around me, Not so much with the family because they accept me. For other folks out there in the world. I feel like when the subject of Christmas movies come up and I bring up these two movies, I feel like I have to defend myself. The two holiday movies that I look forward to every year, Elf and A Christmas Vacation.

Those are a given right a Christmas story as well. We watch this, but Gremlins and the Empire Strikes Back. I am the father. Both of those are, and I will defend this to the end of my days that those are essential Christmas films. And it's not just because of the snow for Empire strikes Back.

For some reason, Empire Strikes Back also carries for me a kind of melancholic holiday energy. It's weird. I don't know how or why, but it does, and plus there's snow in there. Gremlins, there's a lot of references to the Holidays, and Gremlins should be obvious both of those movies. I consider it's a Christmas movie.

So when I say that that folks and they're like, what, I just feel like they haven't really spent a lot of time with it. It's centered around Christmas time exactly came out in the summer, but it's a Christmas movie. Corey Feldman is wearing a Christmas tree costume. Yeah, there's snow everywhere. It takes place during Christmas.

That's why he gets the grimlin. It's a Christmas gift. So thank you so much. What's the disagreement over? Honestly, I think it just comes from folks not spending time with it.

It takes place during Christmas, therefore it is a Christmas movie. Diehard takes place during Christmas. It is a Christmas movie. I'm glad you and I are on the same page with this. Empire Strikes Back takes place during Christmas, therefore it is a Christmas movie.

Did you just say Empire Strikes Back takes place during Christmas? Proved to me that it doesn't. I can't rant. What better gift on Christmas morning than to find out that your father is a Darth Vader. No, I can tell.

When you said that, I'm like, oh, that totally makes sense to me. I get a hanker to watch that movie around this time. All of them, really, but that one makes the most sense because of the locales, or at least at the beginning of the film. Yeah, for sure. I feel like, maybe this is strange, but I feel like the first movie, Star Wars is like a summer film.

Yeah, it evokes summer to me for some reason. Dween is hot, Yeah, and Return of the Jedi evokes spring. It's weird. I for the entire strikes Back is always winter, especially the holiday seasons. Now.

I think also Gremlins two could be considered a holiday film. But we'll get into Gremlins two later at. Some point, can't wait. Yeah, Gremlins two and Nothing but Trouble. I know that you're looking forward to those discussions.

Yeah, sure, Nothing but Trouble could be a Christmas movie as well. Sure? Why not? What's your favorite holiday film or films? Smart?

Well, that's not what I'm talking about today. Well, I'm interested to know though. Oh, you're just asking, Yeah, just asking favorite holiday films. Boy, you should have prepared me for this. I tend to gravitate towards horror movies, so Black Christmas is a favorite.

Crampis we usually watch, or have been watching, almost every year. As far as just regular old Christmas movies, I think there are kind of like Empire Strikes Back, although that's not one of my choices. There are movies that I like to watch at that time of year that evoke either the snowy atmosphere or whatever. I honestly, I don't know. I'll have to come back and think about that, right, trying to think of what we have to watch every year, and we watch ELF.

I'm getting a little it's starting to wear a little thin on me. But we've watched ELF almost every year since it came out. It's more the Christmas specials stuff that I tend to lean toward. But like die Hard, I like to watch die Hard. Yeah during this time year two.

I think this year we're going to do die Hard. We haven't done a holiday die Hard yet. How about Misery m Yeah, Yeah, that's a good one, more so misery than the Shining for some reason. Yeah, I'm stumped at the moment, so sorry, Sorry, folks, I like it. I never get a chance to stump you.

So what's next on your list? I'm going to talk about a memorable quote unquote Christmas because I don't really remember it distinctly, but I have a record of it. I have a number of pictures from this Christmas. If I'm not mistaken. It was the start of a pretty deep obsession that I still have yet to get to on the show.

But the Christmas of nineteen seventy four, I was five going on so I would be six in March. That was always kind of the sucky thing. And you're in the same boat as I am, just on different sides of the calendar. And I know that there are people who have a birthday on Christmas and that's kind of suck to There would be Christmas and then in March would be my birthday, and then it's like, God, I get nine months for I can get more presents. So anyway, five going on six, it is the Christmas that I got the Mego Batman, Mego Robin and the Mego Batmobile.

Nice, it's the penguin. I'm the joker, And what might be up to. Oh no, are they going to steal a batmobile? Can it be? Can they get away with it?

Don't have a lot of pictures of Christmas past I can think of off the top of my head, like maybe three or four of me with a toy from a Christmas that's year I can pinpoint, but I know that it's had to have been Christmas seventy four. For one thing, I believe it's on the back of the pictures. Back then there's always a date, so it was probably developed sometime in January of seventy five. Also the fact that the Matmobile from a Mego didn't come out until nineteen seventy four, so it couldn't have been earlier. It's possible it was later, but I doubt it.

As far as I know, those were my first Mego figures first, probably action figures. Prior to that, it was probably just almost said village people should price little people and adventure people stuff like that that you find at the daycares and all that crap. Who knows what kind of goofy peanuts toys or other things we would get, But that was I think the turning point for me and wanting that stuff for every birthday in Christmas for at least the next five or six years. That's a good memory. That Nego mobile is beautiful.

I believe I have three pictures from that Christmas of me with them, three or four, like one opening them and a couple of me playing with them, and then one I'm dressed up, and the rest I'm in my pajamas, my little Onesie pajamas, and in one I'm kind of dressed up playing with them in the corner of the dining room by myself, which was probably the next day or something. We're going to post on Instagram for this episode. Oh, I have all these pictures. Holiday images of little Markie and little Ronnie. Yep.

I believe that they probably took a ride in the Santa Slie that we had as well. That makes sense. Oh man, Yeah, so that's Christmas of nineteen seventy four when I was a little five year old. Dude. That's awesome.

Did you all go out and get a real Christmas tree? Was that part of your family tradition? Yeah? We I'm trying to think if we ever did, they might have done fake when I was little little, but I believe for most of my childhood we did, and then when I was older, in my teens, and even later than that, like when my sister was married and they were going to have a tree for their house. There was a Christmas tree farm out by where we used to live, near Peach and Belmont live Christmas trees that we would go and cut down.

I think Carlita and I even were able to go one year and do that, so early two thousands, I believe, for the most part, we used to go get them, or my dad would go get them. Probably haven't you got a big tree? Yeah, well, I say, no treat. But nowadays we do fake. We do a fake one too.

We did. We did real ones for a while when we first moved into this house. We've gone back and forth. We've had real ones and fake ones over the year since Kurlyda and I've been together. It's a fucking mess, it really is.

It's a mess, and I don't know how environmentally great it is. Yeah, both are probably bad. Plastic and metal trees versus growing a bunch of trees and then killing them and then. You know, it's like I'm not sure what it's a throwing them out on the street. That's the part that always bugs me is seeing those dead trees in the out on the curb and Fresno in April, Yeah, in April, exactly, fire hazards.

Just sitting out there by the curb. It was always an active time for our household because people would come to our home to get their tree, and they were live trees that you would cut down, and it's always a pretty neat time. And sometimes we'd. Get snow up there and that was that just made it feel even more so like it was like the holidays were real events. That's a pretty special.

Yeah. My fondest memories of that period of time was being in the wilderness number one, number two, having a bunch of Christmas trees around, which made it feel like Endoor in the fall. Would plant them early spring, late winter, early spring, and then we'd have endoor. In the fall and then hath in the winter. Sometimes pretty cool.

Yeah, that snow is not part of the Fresno thing. So did you all ever go up into the mountains and hang out? Not that often? A few times I can remember doing that as a kid. No, we would go up to Shaver every once in a while.

Yeah, and that was about it. And I don't know maybe my parents felt this way back then. It's fun, but it's also kind of miserable. Lay around in the snow, you're freezing, it's wet. Driving up there can be a giant pain.

Yep, that's exactly it, exactly right. You know, in my lifetime since I've lived here, I think it's snowed in Fresno maybe five times mm hmm, maybe more. But I think it probably happens a little more frequently up near around where my sister lives, because they're much closer to the foothills than we are in the center of town. Not that it's happened that off and over there, but you know, they get more rain than we do, and we're twelve miles away now. Yeah, and we talk about it almost every year.

We should go to you know, drive up to Shaver, it's like forty five minutes away, and you just never fucking do it. Well, it's a lot in the winter, it's a lot. Like you said, you get out there, it's fun for five minutes and then before you know what, everybody's just okay, let's go get lunch. I remember sledding one time up at Shaver and like crashing into something or having an abrupt stop and having the sled hit me in the throat. Oh, I'll never fucking doing that again.

Yikes. It's not a good feeling. No, that's not a good feeling at all. All right, don't forget to enjoy us in just three weeks on Christmas Eve for our holiday special number two. Uh Ronnie, any closing thoughts during the special holiday season.

Keep your chin up, folks. Yeah, good luck everybody. All right, Well, sign us off with our famous sign off that I don't remember. Here's our famous sign off. Everybody remember until we meet again, have fun, stay weird and keep collecting.

And we'll see you again in three weeks. What's the Matter with Independent Cambridge or Sean is a weirding Way media podcast