About this episode
Transcript
Automatically generated, so expect the odd misheard name.
Cambridge and with Shawn is a weirding Way media podcast. Yes, I'd like to send this letter to the Pussian Consulate in Siam by aeromail. Am I too late for the four thirty oto Gyrol. Hello and welcome to Cambridge and with Shawn Episode twenty nine podcast by two weirdos. You know me and this other guy.
I'm Mark Bigley, and joining me as always. Is Ronnie Yay, otherwise known as e sclevator over on. The youtubesll nobody knows you as that. No, it's true. That's a falsity.
I look at the watches on my videos. I know very few people know. Trust me, they're more than we get over here. So yeah, all that we do our holiday episode live over on the Skelevator channel. Are negative numbers possible?
Yeah, it's going to go down. It's going to do the negative. And create a vortex on YouTube. I'm just gonna say that we create a vacuum in space. A Hey, you got any corrections or notes before we get into what we've gotten over the last month.
Note corrections, no notes. Although they're releasing a lot of footage from the new Toxic Avenger movie that's supposed to be coming out, and I keep getting a kick out of all of it. It looks like fun alrighty, Yeah, that's it. You mentioned on our talk because we were discussing happy Meal toys and stuff, that McDonald should have throwback stores. Yeah.
While I was editing it, I'm like, we have a throwback store. Well, we have a throwback store that goes back to the very beginning. I'm hoping for throwback stores of the way it looked in the seventies and eighties. That's ever, That's what I'm over for. That's ever.
The McDonald land playland era. Yeah, I mean, we have one of the first franchised McDonald's in Fresno, and it's they redesigned it but like twenty years ago to look like the original og McDonald's restaurant. It's still there and still looks great every time I drive by it. Yeah, by the old Arthur's toy spot, that's right. Yeah.
Yeah. And there's no playland or anything in that one either, But no, I just thought, yeah, we have one. Yeah, it predates the playland era. Oh yeah, yeah. I actually just not just but like last month watched the Michael Keaton McDonald's movie what is it called again, I can't remember what it's called.
It kind of was depressing, that's what I've heard. No, it's good. You know how some movies feel like a stage play, and I don't really like that that much. And it kind of had that energy. That doesn't sound like a story that should be like a stage play, like I can.
Understand Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf. Yeah, that's a remarkable movie, and it doesn't feel like a stage play, even though it's actually doesn't a house one. Other this is weird. I don't know why I'm bringing it up two years later, but this came across my view twice, so I thought I'm gonna make this correction for Ronnie. I listened to episode.
Six a while back, and that was our ad icon epic extravagant episode, and during that you were trying to think of local ad icons that we could talk about. Neither of us really could, but you mentioned the Wilkins drive in Eliselma that has kind of a rip off Bob's Big Boy figure. And shortly after the episode aired, actually, I ran across something on Instagram because you know, I look at this stuff, and I sent that to you. It came by me again. I don't know.
It wasn't on Instagram, it was somewhere else, but. That image of that quote unquote Wilkins figure came up again. It's not a Wilkins figure. It's an A and W figure. Oh interesting, Yeah.
I sent you that back then. I sent you my first time discovering that this was the Burger family for a, which they had up until nineteen seventy four when they changed it to Rudy the. Bear, right, Rudy the root Bear, Get it, root bear. Root bear, get it, get it, Want want. So that Wilkins thing is just it wasn't an old a in w and they had the standy and repainted it or whatever genius.
So it's not a local, localic on. I hate that. Well, it's forever going to be Wilkins for me. They're supposedly like nine feet tall. So I did a little dive into their history with that Burger family.
There were like five, you know, mom, dad, teenager, baby, grandma, and Grandpa was related to the menu paper Burger, Grandpa, Burger, et cetera, et cetera. And it has a kind of a following, not quite as big as Bob's big boy, but a lot of people have those Standyes, some of the stores still have them, and you know some other places that were A and W's. Still have them. And they mentioned Wilkins in Selma. That's cool.
Don't you kind of want that family in your backyard? Yeah, they'd be really massive. Apparently they're really big, so sure, why not? All right, that's the goal, folks. We're each gonna try and find a bunch of fiberglass stands.
By the way, A and W was started in Lodye, California, so a little. Bit hey, uh, you know, valley ish on. The cringe of the valley. Yeah, so that's cool. I didn't know that A W was started in Lodi.
That's cool. Yeah, yep. And I think they somebody there has like that whole Burger family set somewhere that might be on display in the town. Actually Cambridge and was Shawn road trip. So it sounds like to me.
No, I'm not driving there just to look at statues of A and W people. I'll buy you a burger. Sure you can drive it for the gas as well. Mm hmm. The budget family's back at aw that's excellent news.
They got great chasting burgers. Grandpa Burger with the three patties. Jif great, I don't know one. Oh that's the one baby Burger. Oh there he is.
Could you make it real? Can I get a bite out for a brother burger head, lettuce, tomato, bacon, cheese, just delicious, juicy and delicious. And tea burger tea burger. Yeah, looking, I think we're gotta go eat now. The Burger family's back at.
In w uh. So what have you picked up over the last month. Well, I sent you some pictures. I found three Migos at Ross. I was really excited.
The Fly and the Wolfman or were Wolf twopac are flocked and very cool. I'm really happy I got those. It was like fourteen bucks, which was about forty bucks new when I saw them at Walmart about two years ago. So I picked up those two Migo figures, and then I got a third one at. Ross as well.
So Ross, for. A short period of time there was getting some Migo figures. I got the Penguin, the vintage style Penguin. They're all three spectacular. They're still sitting on my desk right here.
They're very cool. I think that's all Walmart runoff. I believe all of that stuff was exclusive to Walmart. Yes, that penguin is part of the fiftieth anniversary set of the original DC Superheroes. Yeah, the penguin's sort of spandex full body suit is amazing.
Yeah. The flocking on the werewolf and the flocking on the fly. Looking through the package, I thought they were the same type of flocking, but the fly is more velvety. The wolfman or werewolf is more like prickly, like jad Johare. They're just really really cool and the face of the were wolf is like hilarious.
Yeah. I know I've said this before, but I am not a fan of flocked figures. I totally am. I totally am. Not a fan of flocked figures.
A lot of good alliteration. Thanks. I think I like flocked figures because of Panther from Masters of the Universe. The tactile quality of that as a kid really stuck with me. I'm always a fan of something flocked.
Yeah, and that werewolf that was before they were able to lock in the actual universal monster licenses, So that's a werewolf from a different movie, and I have that original one with the basically. Wearing what I'm wearing right now. Yeah, flannel shirt and cords or something. Yeah, I have that one too as part of our Halloween decor. So this guy is going to look great next to him?
What else? And I know how much you love Masters of the Universe, but I got to get into this because it was kind of a big deal for folks. You can't see this, but Mark's arduously Oh. On Mother's Day, the family and I went to Monterey and we were going to go to Point Lobos and go hiking around, but the place was absolutely insane and packed with people, and so we're like, fuck that, and so we drove back into Monterey proper and after lunch, we went to the antique store that we always go to. It's right on Cannery Row.
There's a corner similar to the Clovis antique store, where there's a corner, a toy corner that always has something cool. There's this one toy corner in this antique mall that always has something interesting. Usually the Star Wars stuff is more interesting than their Master's selection, but they're always switching things up, so you never know what you're going to find. And I was looking at the Master's stuff and right out in front was a grail piece for many Masters of the Universe collector. There was the original release of Stratos, a very brief run of these had a blue beard instead of a gray beard.
This is a coveted item for insane Masters of the Universe fans like me. And he was missing just one. If you're familiar with Stratos, he has arms that have these feathery wing things, and he was missing one of those. But he had all the other Everything else about him looked great. He had the blue beard, everything else was intact, and I couldn't see the price tags.
I started, my heart started pounding, and I started getting really excited. Went up to the front desk and I got the most uninterested, unexcited guy working at the antique store. He like literally rolled his eyes when I asked him to unlock this case. Got a kick out of him. He walked me over there.
I was trying to, you know, keep my composure. Yeah, my composure, thank you. Like you're doing right now. I was for sure going to see a price tag on there was like two hundred bucks or something. I was expecting nothing less than eighty dollars on this guy.
It was very clear they didn't know what they had because he brought it out of the case and it marked a twenty dollars. Oh wow. I ordered the extra Taiwan wing for his other arm, got that in the mail for eight dollars the other day. Now I have a complete blue Beard Stratus just to show you, Yay, this is exciting. It's I don't know one of us, it's exciting for one of us that this is a big deal.
And I mean I was looking up prices online and passed auction prices that are absolutely insane, you know, like thirteen hundred dollars, Oh my god. You know. Then eBay prices that had expired, you know, they were in the four to eight hundred dollars range. And I just I didn't realize how special this guy was. I knew he was a grail for a lot of folks.
Stratos has always been sort of like I like him, I don't like him, love hate relationship. And so yeah, twenty dollars and really made my weekend. You know, as I'm fawning over this and freaking out in the antique store, my wife and daughters are as far away as. We're going to go look at something else to go. There's these books over here.
We're just going to be hiding in that nook for the next half hour. We'll be at the aquarium exactly. I really appreciate them for their patients during that moment, because I, you know, as with most things that get me excited, I have a hard time keeping it in. Once we got in the car and we're driving home, I did sort of try to keep my excitement at a low level. But yeah, funny, that is funny.
Yeah, pretty cool, pretty cool, find honey in. Your royal blue, how about you. I hinted at this on the last episode because I hadn't shown up yet, so I didn't want to talk about something I didn't. Have in hand, so I threw in my hint, and. Then I used the amazing Devo song Too Much Paranoiase as my other hint.
That song has snippets of McDonald's jingle from the seventies and a Burger King jingle from the seventies, and I also included clips of those actual or of that actual jingle in the. Show for the ad breaks. I had stumbled on on Instagram, of course, an image of a little burger, which I love anthropomorphic burger, and I was like, what is that from? Had this real cartoony bulge eyed, big round nose face on this little, tiny, little burger, And I was like, that's amazing, that's right up my alley. And so I clicked on the.
Image, and I don't know, I can't remember now if it explicitly had the name of these or if it just had a hashtag for Burger King or something. So I knew it was from Burger King because I know I looked. That up on eBay. I went there and I just looked up Burger King, burger toy, right, and so all these different things come up. It didn't take long to find an image of one of these guys then realize it's a.
Kid's male thing. There was this whole set of them. I sent you a picture of it. Yeah, it looks like. The eyes remind me of, oh, what's the other cat?
Not Garfield, Heathcliff, Heathcliff. They're kind of like totally styled eyes, definitely so lickety split from Burger King in conjunction with Hallmark for some reason. They all have wheels on them. And now with every kid's meal you get one of these cool luckety switch. The new toy, boters, drink, and fries on wheels.
Totally a burger king. Now it's okay to play with your food. So I got there's seven I believe in the set. So I just got the burger and the little box of chicken tenders. Oh my gosh, there's fries, there's a drink.
There are breakfast items like the cressandwich, the French toast sticks that they do. There's a piece of pie, and maybe one or two others, and all for relatively cheap, and there's an abundance of them. On eBay. You can buy sets, you can buy bagged versions. None of them are very much.
I just picked that little set they came together. Put it on my watch. List because it was a dollar. It's either a dollar forty nine or a dollar ninety nine was the original price. Oh my gosh, incredible, and I got I got an offer to buy it for ninety nine cents.
Oh my god, that's amazing, so I instantly snatched it up. Of course, the shipping was, you know, five dollars or whatever. Well, yeah, speaking of almost everything I get on eBay, the shipping is four seventy one to like five nineteen. Yes, they figured it all out based on where you are and where the person is and stuff. But like everything is around that price except for big item stuff where they are actually like this needs to be twenty dollars or whatever.
Right, So half the stuff that I've gotten with this eBay gift card that I mentioned that I had half or more of the cost has been the shipping on everything. So I got that little guys, and I kind of got stuck on cereal and fast food premiums for a while, so that's what I was looking at. I've had one of these on my watch list for a while, a bagged version of the Changeables, which you mentioned getting before. When you buy McDonald's Happy Meal, you can become the master Changer because you'll get a food toy that changes into an amazing robot. And so I was like, I'm not going to get the bag version because I'm just going to open it.
It wasn't very much. It was like eight bucks or something. I got the Transformer kind the robot. Yeah, you got a different version. Yeah, there's a couple of different versions, and there's dino ones that pop up as dinosaurs.
You obviously can't see this. We are comparing our big mech changeable agibles. I think I found one that looked like it was in good shape for four dollars or something incredible plus shipping. Oh it might have even been less than that actually, And then, like I said, stuck on premium things. And I just keep going.
Back to Freaky's stuff. Yeah, Freakis, And I'm like, well, what can I get because I've got all the figures, I have. All of the cars. I mean, I got that set of cars years ago for super cheap, and I recently got the hamhose boat. And there's some other little items like the little patches and the magnets, and.
I'm like, you know those things. What am I going to do with those? What am I going to do with a bunch of magnets? And put the patches on your jean jacket, buddy. I mean you'd have to actually try and iron it on.
And I don't have a jean jacket. So the program, I was like, well, let me look at the boats, because those are a figural thing. Right. Everything on eBay right now is thirty dollars or more. And I'm like, I Am not buying a single boat for thirty dollars.
There's just no way, so I just kept him in and han and looking at other stuff. I ran into some cars that are from Captain Crunch, so they have very similar cars to the Freaky's ones, and you know count Chocola, and all of them had little cars racers too, the cars for the Captain Crunch, and I almost bit on these. They're like the little rocket cars from Freaky's, but they employ a balloon like the boats do, and so it was. This weird combination. So you had either Captain Crunch, John Lefoot or Smedley the Elephant character.
And I was like, ah, those are kind of cool. But I ended up adding a Boss Moss boat to my watch list. It was pricey. I didn't get an offer. I made an offer for quite a bit less than what they were asking.
For, and they took it. There they go. Here's a note to people if you have a gift card and you make an offer, because I made an offer, and it brought up the details and it said you made an offer for this amount, you have a gift card for this amount, it will cost you this much and I was like, oh, perfect, Well, when the dude accepted my offer, it didn't run my gift card through the thing. It just automatically took my money from PayPal. Ah, that's frustrating.
I may have needed to click on it to say add this to the order or something, although it had it on there. So it was confusing. So be careful if you do that people, and you have a gift card and you make an offer, because they just immediately take it off of PayPal. Yeah, whenever I make an offer and the seller accepts it, the money immediately gets taken out of the account. It is immediate.
It is immediate. And now I did not realize that though about the gift card thing, like, because I've never I've never had an eBay gift card before. That's good to know. Okay, well, I still have gift card money, so I'm going to talk about this last one even though I don't have it in hand, because we have discussed it before and everybody knows about this. I had also been looking at Fisher Price little People Sesame Street figures, and really the only one left that I want is Oscar.
Yeah, and I look for that every once in a while. They're always usually banged up and yep, in pretty sorry state. And found one for ten bucks. I think, ooh, not that, added it to my watch list and sat and waited, got an offer for twenty percent off. It was just going to leave me with a little.
Bit left of my gift cards, so I just went ahead and got it, and it's going to show up on Tuesday after the holidays. The one with the handle like yours. Yeah, I was just going to ask that. According to the pictures, it looks to be in really good shape. Okay, that's awesome, and that is the one I definitely remember having as a kid.
I thought, yeah, I need to get that one. I need to get that one. Yeah, that's all my stuff. That's good. Well, I think we got some pretty good things this last month.
Okay, well, after one of probably ten ad breaks. Sorry folks, Hey, if we get close to two hours on a recording, there are going to be about eight ad breaks during the show. There's nothing I can do about that. So here's one right now, and then we'll get back into our main. Topics for episode twenty nine.
Enjoy these lovely ads. Many people do not believe in Bigfoot, but a lot of Peter do. All right, we're back and Ronnie's going to talk about his topic for episode twenty nine. Of Camber, Jim Mashawn, the greatest podcast you have ever heard in your entire fucking life. That's right, we're making t shirts of that.
This one bleeds into many other topics that you and I both have brought up in the past. To use a phrase that covers all of the territory, it's Sasquatch. Bigfoot, legendary half man half eight is no longer a legion. He's very, very real. What you were about to see is unedited video footage taken earlier today in the hills three miles southwest of Tenderfoot Gorge.
For most of my life, I've been completely obsessed with the idea that there is a Bigfoot creature living in the woods, The idea of there being a yetti in the colder areas, the idea of there being a giant ape living in the mountains near where I used to live. The idea of a creature like that living out there that is so elusive, so strange, so enormous, has always fascinated me. My obsession with Bigfoot, or my obsession with Sasquatch, goes really deep because, as a kid, the first time I saw the abominable snowman in the Matterhorn ride. He struck such a chord with me that I begged my mom for a poster. I had him hanging on my wall for most of my elementary school years.
Can I say something about that? Yeah, you've talked about that on maybe here, but I know on your show, your YouTube channel you've talked about him. I kept thinking about it. I'm like, have I don't have much connection with that? And then I remembered I was looking at something about Disneyland about the matter Horn, and I was like, oh, yeah, there were two ways, Yes, you could write it, and I think on one of the ways you didn't see him.
And I think I always got stuck on that one way. That I don't know actually, but I feel like every time I went on the right I saw him. There was a better way to write it. I know that there was a better way. One of the ways was better.
Yeah, and actually still one way is better. One way is rougher, So if you're our age, you want to go on the other way, which is less rough. But both ways now definitely give you glimpses. It just could be that I never really paid it to It could be that, or it just didn't land with me. I don't know, yeah, I have no like.
Oh, there's a creature in there. Okay, I know there's a basketball court in there quote unquote. Help. By the way, they finally have shown images of the basketball court in a documentary on Disney Plus, so it actually exists. Okay.
It was during one of the I think it was one of the Imagineering docu series episodes, and Bob Gerr, who was one of the top designers for that ride, basically created the first tubular roller coaster, Tubular steel roller coaster. With that ride, he takes us up Tubular, so Tubular takes the camera crew up into the basketball court. It's not even a court. It's not even a half court. It's just like a hoop and there's a hoop.
Yeah, but it's you know, it's there, all right. So the cot before the Vominable Snowman entered into of my young life, I was familiar with the Abominable Snowman from Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer. I knew about bigfoot footprints that people had made plaster casts of. I don't know how I knew about this. Saw it in a book in the school library or something not even sure how I knew about this, but essentially Bigfoot has been a constant in my life as far back as I can remember, in some form or another.
As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster. To bridge two of our interests. One of the things that I continuously go back and price check on eBay is the six million dollar Man Bigfoot oction figure, which is yeah, I mean it never goes below nine hundred dollars. Yeah, yeah, it was short lived. Yeah, as a fan of things like that, like characters played by Richard Heel and or in this case it was Andre the Giant and who is the other guy?
Ted Cassidy? Ted Cassidy is a guy that the figure is more based on. Got It? So I guess Andre played in one of those episodes. He played him the first time it was a two episode or got It with him, and then after that it was Ted Cassidy.
That action figure is for people like us. I'm sure if we happened upon it, just like I happened upon the Bluebeard Stratos at a good price, either one of us would snag it. It's a beautiful piece of plastic. Just a suggestion if you ever find one. I would say you'd probably be more likely to find one like at that Moneray the antique thing without a chess plate, and it's a decent price by it, because there's a guy that makes a lot of the reproduction parts for Shogun warriors and he makes a bionic chess plate, nice big foot bionic chess plate, and it looks nice, and I think in this case there's no sense in holding out for an original, Yeah, because the chess plates go for ridiculous prices on eBay as well.
Right, Yeah, I mean, yeah, for sure, I've been looking at all that stuff. It's insane. There are a few items that just are priced at an insane level. That's one of those things that's like no one's ever gonna get. Yeah, he was not around for a very long time, and people know that.
I don't know how many were made, and how many have obviously survived in sin and how many have all of their parts. Biff Bang Poo, who dove in pretty heavy into the eight inch figure market ten or so years ago or maybe even longer now. They did six. Million dollar man figures and their Bigfoot is based on Andre the Giant, so I have him floating around somewhere in the house. It's pretty ridiculously funny.
It's stuffed. I don't even think they use like a fat body figure. They just stuffed suit full of stuffing. Yeah, I think I've seen that ross, you know, long hair, Yeah, he had at the time. It's pretty funny.
It's a hilarious design. Those episodes are great, by the way. Yeah, because I was thinking about this recently, I started watching one and it's just been an insane week and I planning going back and watching all of them that I can watch. In nineteen eighty seven, the movie Harry and the Hendersons came out right before Harry and the Henderson's entered the movie theaters, before the trailer came out. I mean, I was already actively reading star Log, was already a fan of Rick Baker's special effects, makeup and creatures.
I was already a huge fan. So Harry and Anderson's was one of those movies like Batman, where I was actively trying to seek out information way before it came out in theaters. And we know how difficult that was. At that time, the star Log and other magazines of that ilk were excited about it because the special effects makeup creature designed for this guy, and how advanced the animatronic style articulation the face paired with the actual person being under all of that makeup and those contraptions. And who, by the way, was Kevin Baker Hall who also played The Predator and Predator one and Predator two.
When I was talking about Kevin Baker Hall to my friends back when these movies were coming out, nobody knew what the hell I was talking about that I knew who Kevin Baker Hall was. Harry and the Henderson's came out and I was there. We had a little movie theater up in Oakhurst. I'm pretty sure that I was there the first weekend that it launched. Absolutely loved it.
It's still one of my favorite movies. Our daughters and us, like, we've watched that movie several times. They enjoy it, which is they enjoy Gremlins, they enjoy and the Henderson's and they enjoy Young Frankenstein. If that's you know, if that's it, that's good. Actually, also the original Star Wars trilogy too.
I feel pretty lucky in that regard. Harry and the Henderson's is actually a really good movie. It's a wonderful movie. And I love that they touch on all of the obsessive human aspects of Bigfoot. And there's even a character, oh what's his name, that elderly actor back in the eighties, Donamici Donimichi plays that Bigfoot obsessive and those people exist and when he.
Gets to meet him, man, wonderful scene. That is so touching. Yep, I'm gonna say this once. I'm gonna say it's simple, and I hope that God, for your sakes, you all listen. There are no abominable snowmen.
There are no sasquatches, there are no big feet. Am I missing something? Oh Lord, Lord God, doctor Wrightwood say hello to Harry. I mean I get choked up just thinking about it. I mean, the last scene, the last like half hour of that movie.
It's just so good. I haven't seen it in so many years, and it comes up every once in a while I'm like, oh, we need to watch that, and then it disappears and then I forget about it again. But like when we had cable, man, it was on all the time and we actually watched it as a family, Like when I was a kid with my family. Yeah, I was an older teenager by then, but we watched it whenever it came only. It's so good and cryptid, like Bigfoot deserves that.
You know, there are other movies about other cryptids, and usually there's too much of a There are a lot of Bigfoot movies out there. There's a lot of bad ones. They're all horror movies though. Yeah, most of them are horror movies. I've sat it through a lot of off Yeah, I've sat through a lot of those, a lot of really bad ones.
I still haven't seen the Sasquatch movie that came out recently with who's the kid who played Lex Luthor in the newer Superman movies, Jesse Helsenberg. Carlena and I caught like, I think the last twenty minutes or so of it. Yeah, it came up and we were so intrigued. I knew what it was about, or knew about it prior, but it's so fucking weird. Yeah, I'm amazingly weird.
I got to see that from the it's what is it called Sasquatch Sunset or something like that, Yeah, something like that. I would check it out. I'm excited to see it. I've been wanting to see it. Did you and I watched the found footage one Willow Creek that Bobcat Goldthwaite did.
I think we did. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was disappointing, as I recall, very very disappointing. I think that was one of our movie days. Yeah. Yeah, A lot of these movies are so schlocky, but there are a lot of fun.
Yeah, Legend of Boggy Creek. Yeah, there's a bunch from the seventies, in the early eighties. Yeah, there are some of the earlier ones too. I think Hammer did one. I can't remember the name of it.
I think it's just abominable Snowman. Oh, there's like a split second scene of seeing something like an abominable snowman, but it's more of like a murder mystery, which is super disappointing. Back in nineteen fifty one, the famous Himalayan explorer and mountaineer Eric Shipton came across some huge footprints in a high snowfield that look just if there'd be made by some kind of John d Ape ship guns. Sherpa companions had no doubt about what had made them a yetty an abominable snowman. Every once in a while when we're planning the next episode, I get a little scared.
Am I gonna be able to think of something? You should have a list? I do it. I do have a list at. Your refer to.
I do have a list that I have a hard time keeping up with, but I do. Every once in a while, something just pops up in the zeitgeist and it's just like, oh yeah, so right now, actually just launched is the seventieth anniversary of Disneyland. There's all this new merch popping up. A lot of the merch is based on more vintage Disneyland stuff, which is right up my alley. Anything after the eighties is not that interesting to me.
Everything between when Disneyland opened up in the late fifties all the way through the seventies and mid eighties is always going to be interesting to me. Because the Abominable Snowman was added to the matterhorn in seventy eight, I was sort of secretly hoping there would be some The Abominable Snowman's name is Harold, and that's what people have named him. I was hoping there'd be some herald merch, and lo and behold, they released a beverage container of Harold, and these popcorn buckets and beverage containers right now are insanely cool. They're just like big toys, often with an electronic feature of some sort. It's kind of crazy.
It is crazy. I mean, it's kind of crazy how much they are too to be yeast. Even if you just go to a local movie theater and get a popcorn bucket there, the prices are like, I saw this pop up and they updated hair Old in twenty fifteen. They updated Harold and put in a new animatronics, several new animatronics of him, which are far more advanced and really cool, but they took out the old ones, and so I thought, uh, oh, it's going to be a. Oh can you buy that?
Yeah, right, for ten thousand dollars. Actually, if you go to the Guardians of the Galaxy ride mission Breakout or whatever it's called over in California Adventure, the collector Benicio del Toro's character the whole like the line that you walk through to get to the main part of the ride. He's got all kinds of stuff in his collection, and in there is an original Harald. That makes sense. I haven't been to Disneyland in over twenty five years.
So was the last time you went? When we went, yep, man, that's a long time ago, yep. I was excited about. I was scared that it would be the newer version of Harold and ended up being the zipper Cup looks just like Harold. The vintage Harold even makes a roar just like the vintage Harold.
Coveting that from a distance has been my energy as of late. But it got me thinking about Bigfoot. One of the things that always shows up on my YouTube feed is found footage of Bigfoot. I'm constantly watching this stuff. At least once a week, I'll watch something that somebody's theorizing about or a new photograph evaluated.
And there are a lot of channels on YouTube where they are talking about this stuff and dismantling naysayers theories and evaluating the relevancy of the newest finding and I just love that shit so much. The whole thing with cryptids is like, this is when conspiracy theories were fun. Yeah, you know, amazing creature, not this other crap that everybody goes on about. I'd rather much rather watch a video debunking a man in a suit sitting on a log in the woods than some other insanity that we're having to constantly feel like we're having to debunk. Speaking of you haven't mentioned it, so I don't know if this was a part of your childhood experience with Bigfoot or many other unexplained phenomena.
But in Search of it's. Hard to imagine any corner of our crowded world where a giant manlike creature could roam free. Yet there's persuasive evidence that Bigfoot is real and that urban man may be close to his first meeting with this living legend. Oh yeah, come on. In Search of Unsolved Mysteries, even episodes of The X Files, anything pertaining to cryptids always gets my juices flowing.
I just heard an odd sound, and it's Bigfoot, if. I'm not mistaken. In the original opening for In Search of a he was one of the prominent figures show. Yeah, that famous footage of the striding Bigfoot. Actually Bigfoot is not featured in the opening credits of In Search of.
The Striding Bigfoot footage has been debunked, but new theories believe that the person debunking it was just trying to get attention or something apparently analyzing the muscle structure of that creature. That's impossible, that that's a person in a suit, all kinds of To be honest with you, I'm a skeptic. I get excited about ideas, but I'm basically a skeptic about everything unless I can see evidence of it right in front of me. I love watching the analysis of evidence. If Richard Attenborough believes in it, I have a hard time not believing in it.
Ronnie was referring to Sir David Attenborough. Famed naturalist. Richard probably believed in sasquatch too. He certainly believed in dinosaurs. I'm excited to see if anything happens in our lifetime, and I would love for that.
I would love for some discovery of Bigfoot or the Yetty. I think he's in my yard. I think, so you should better go. I see a big shadow. In your window hearing things, and I'm a little free because I'm the only one home at the moment.
I'm scaring Mark with my tales of terror. Bigfoot is I think of the cryptids or like of the big whatever three mockness monster? What would be the third one? Bigfoot? Yeah?
Aliens, I guess aliens. Those aren't really cryptids. I think Bigfoot is the most fascinating to me, and I'm a skeptic too. I don't necessarily believe that that footage is real. That most of the other things that have been found are real.
But stranger things have happened, and animals do get discovered, yeah, and or rediscovered, you know, things were once thought extinct come back sometimes. And I just don't necessarily buy it. Really, new species are being discovered all the time, as you said, and I think the part that's difficult for me to swallow as a skeptic is how everything is just either found footage like super sketchy trailcam videos or the same thing with UFOs too, Like everything has to be this shaky camera, low resolution footage of something that could easily have been made digitally, especially in today's day and age. And then the old footage of Bigfoot's always snapshot where it's blurry, or somebody's crappy video or eight milimeters footage.
It's surprising that there hasn't been any other evidence of this that's been more tangible. I'm always going to hope for it. In the meantime, I love diving into bigfoot stuff. I will watch Harry and Henderson's every year. I will watch those videos on YouTube.
Sometimes I'll just look up the sounds of the Madhorn Ride just to hear that original roar because it's slightly different. I get excited about Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer when it comes on, mainly because of the abominable Snowman. Bigfoot is a big part of my life as a kid obsessed with King Kong. It makes a lot of sense that a giant ape like humanoid creature would be living out in the woods. When I was living in the Oakhurst area, people talked about maybe thought they had seen one on a hunting trip and stuff.
Another thing that I go back to on occasion is that when I moved out to New York, I decided to take the trip with Amtrak. I didn't get a sleeper car or anything. I couldn't afford that, so I just took the three day trip on the train sitting in a chair, which was difficult in itself. But one of the things that stuck out to me was that there was one day where the entire day we were going through wilderness. That's an entire day of vast wilderness.
I saw this one scene where I saw an elk and above it was a hawk like. It was like, how do you see that? It was like a painting. It was like one of those T shirts you know, right right seriously, and so I was thinking like that you would never wear. Yeah, neither one of us would ever wear.
I was thinking, like, there's got to be stuff out there that we just haven't seen. When you think about the vastness of the oceans, you think about the vastness of the forests, my imagination just goes wild. I love anything like that that gets those wheels turning for me, and Bigfoot is certainly one of them. When you have these pop culture references to Bigfoot that are just so cool, YETI sasquatch Bigfoot, it's hard to just try and move on. I feel like Bigfoot will always be of interest to me.
That's that's my that's my item. Cool, very cool you got on your agenda, Mark, Well, we'll find out about that after this next break. Actually, before we start up again, did you try and watch the Harry and the Henderson's TV show that started in nineteen ninety one. I don't think so. I doubt it.
It was not good. I just wanted to throw that out there. It didn't last very long. It was not very good. You can watch episodes on YouTube, all right, check.
That out, folks to YouTube. Remember that always. Well, my people turn off the show at this point because it's going to be pretty boring from here on out, because my topic is not related. To an ip. It's not about a toy, it's not about.
Premiums from cereal boxes or fast food chains. It's not about comic books about it's not about movies or a fictional character or anything like that. But this came up, I think, shortly after we recorded our. Last episode, just because of me waiting for these lickety splits, and there was sort of a delay on them, and it always frustrates me, and I have brought this topic up in that regard on this show numerous times before in passing. I don't know if this is actually on my list of things to talk about or not, but I know in my head it is definitely something that I have been unhealthily obsessed with for decades.
And that is a service that the US government provides, the mail. Yeah. I have had a relationship with getting mail and sending mail. Yeah, or decades, Yeah, that's true, and it covers. So much of the stuff that we talk about, especially in this day and age, and other aspects that I'll get into here of my life.
It has played a pretty significant role in I don't know how old I was when this got started, but I would say pre teen probably still I'm going to say by ten years old. This was kind of an obsession, and that would have started with comic books. I mainly got comic books at Christiansen's Market in Sunnyside on the corner of King's Canyon and Clovis. When we would go to the library, we would go to Christiansen's et cetera, et cetera around there. In that Christensen's market, behind I say behind the registers were the comic book racks and the magazine rack, and you know, the spinners for the comics.
So I would always go over there while my mom was buying the stuff and look through the comics and occasionally get one. Would do that pretty frequently, and I'm sure there were some other places that I would pick up a comic. I think at that Country Boy market I talked about in regard to where that long Strugs was. I have memories of also getting them there, probably in seven eleven's and other grocery stores. But at some point I convinced my mom to let me get subscriptions to a couple of comics.
And I know, over the years, so probably between like me being I'm going to say nine and may maybe twelve, but probably stopped by the time I was twelve or before I was twelve. Pretty sure I had. Subscriptions to The Amazing Spa, Spider Man, The Invincible Iron Man, and The Avengers. So at that time, when I was a kid, comics were thirty five cents a piece, So if you're looking at I'm assuming twelve issues a year for most of them, that's what five. Bucks or something.
Yeah, that sounds about right. Let me calculate that real quick. Actually, and I'm sure for twenty so not even five dollars. May have gotten a deal. It may have only been like three point fifty.
You get a subscription for a year, and I may. Have had them all. I don't know if I had them all at the same time, but anyway, so that was sort of my first like, oh, something should be showing up soon. They just came in the little Manila envelope mailers. That's where it started, that anticipation of getting something that I really wanted.
And I'm sure there were times when I would go to Christensen's and see, oh, there's a new Spider Man. Why don't I have it, and then get that anxiety of like did it get lost. In the mail? So this would be the recurring theme for me for the rest of my life. So the other things like ordering, which I've mentioned at some point, ordering from the little ads in the comic books, the novelty things X Ray Respects.
I'm pretty sure. I mentioned this story on there. What I wanted was the bald cap. I was fascinated by the bald cap and I wanted one of those and tried to order one with I think a couple other things and didn't get the bald cap. So that was one of those like, oh, this can be disappointing.
Yeah. The other aspect about ordering from that stuff in those either in comic books or magazines or catalogs, was you had no idea when you were going to get the fucking thing right, and it would always say, you know, wow, four to six weeks for delivery. I mean it could take literally two or three months before you got what you. Ordered sometimes half a year. Yeah, if your order made it to them, you know, if et cetera, et cetera.
So I ordered something some novelty items out of a comic book at at one point, didn't get the bald cap and they were like, sorry, out of stock, and they either gave. Me a joy buzzer or the snakes in a can the page can. But I don't know which one of those. I actually ordered in which one they swapped out because I was interested in the snakes in a can thing. I can tell you that.
So that waiting extended waiting was a part of life as a kid back then. If you ordered something. The other thing I remember ordering, which I have talked about because I've talked about this band as one of my obsessions, was from the Devo catalogs that they included in their albums on their inner sleeves, and once again ordered multiple items off of that. And don't think I got everything I ordered. And also it took forever to get it.
That was the conundrum back then, like yeah, when is it even going to show up? Go on to the mail every day you're like, okay, it's been As I look at my wrist that doesn't even have a watch on it to track months. Okay, it's been a month, you know. Maybe something will show up. Constantly going out to the mailbox to get it, I mean literally an obsession with getting these things.
Yeah, and I think part of it is like a validation of yourself, like. I'm receiving something. It's special, getting something in the mails, like getting a present. Right, even if you ordered it for yourself. You can identify with this, I'm sure.
But every day when the mail shows up, I'm curious what's in it. Is it going to be a bill or is it going to be a cool surprise? Yeah, oh yeah, even if I have complete knowledge that nothing is on its way to me, right right, I know nothing's on its way, So why would I be interested? But I rush right to the area where the male comes through the slot every single day to see what's there. If it's a coupon, if it's a bill, It doesn't lessen the anxiousness or excitement I'll have the next day.
Oh yeah, same, I mean exact same. And that has been going on for decades. Maybe that is a problem, Yes it is not. Maybe it's a Generation X thing. Well, let me rephrase that maybe it's a every generation up until and after generation X, because I don't think that our kids get that excited about the mail.
They hardly even. Check, especially since me thinking of Cleo. If it's something that her mom is ordered for her, like clothes wise or something, you know you're tracking it and blah blah blah. But that plays a part in this still with me too, the modern era, but I'm not quite there yet. I think the subscription idea became really popular in my mind because it's like, oh, well, I know I and get something every month, I'll have something.
Yeah, And so after I got rid of comic books and that sorted being a big draw for me. I had quite a few magazine subscriptions over the years, Rolling Stones, Spin Magazine, different surfing magazines, and you could always count on at least once a month. Sometimes some of those things came. Out bi monthly and you might get something twice a month or oh yeah, special issue of Rolling Stone or whatever, the five hundred greatest albums of all time. I did subscribe to a number of magazines over especially in my twenties.
I don't have a subscription subscription to any magazines these days. No. You know that was another thing that fueled that, like, oh there's something, go to the mailbox. Oh there's a large package. Oh it has my name on it.
Oh yeah, I'm worth something. I'm a value, I got a present. I'm special. And now we do that for ourselves, right, It's like I am special enough to order something, and now it comes, it shows up, and now I feel that validation. I mean, I'll get into the modern stuff in a minute here, but even I would say as a college student, ordering what came next was like damn it, dog.
Was ordering stuff. And this didn't necessarily come to you to your house, but ordering stuff through Tower Records or one of the bookstores in town. So I would do that as well if they didn't have something in stock. You know, I'm sure I got a couple of Charles Pakowski books that way. I know that I ordered things from Tower Records Music and Video wise.
Yeah, and then you get a call and you go down there and pay for it. So that plays a part in it as well. Ordering weird stuff out of weird catalogs was always interesting to me, and you know there was something weird video catalogs. I don't think I ordered anything from them, But there were some odd things that I was getting into, like the incredibly strange films, books and other weird stuff like that that I might try and order something from, or Film Threat or something like that, which I also had a subscription to. At some point, I'm going to send ride down and write myself a letter.
And the other aspect was and I haven't done it in a while either, I haven't really had any reason to. Were personal letters. I mean, those were a big deal. You'd like a girl. I don't know how many thousands of.
Letters I've written to girls over the years, mailed and handed to persons you know in high school. Yeah, swop letters and stuff. But of course I wrote Carly had tons of letters even when she moved here before she did that six month period or so, even though we had email and phone calls, I wrote her constantly yeah, and always anticipated getting letters back. I corresponded with a younger cousin of mine for a number of years who lives up in the Portland area, and wrote her letters all the time. We wrote to each other about what was going on in our lives and stuff, and it was always fun to go to the mailbox and get a letter from somebody.
I think that is so cool and definitely something that we're missing from our culture right now. Yeah. I mean when I was in London, that was my connection to home. I made a weekly phone called Man. I was getting letters from my sister, from my.
Mom, from friends. Occasionally I got something from a couple of my high school friends. It was great when that happened. Cool. I loved it and I would send so many out fishing for more back, right, And that's why I would do it so much.
And I would have to say that the mail getting. And reranscending mail and packages and things played. I have to admit to this played a major role in my own writing and my own publishing. Yeah, getting an acceptance letter from a some rinky dink small press magazine was always a kick. Sending the poems out, All that stuff evolved around the mail.
That's why I got the po box. Well, I got the po box because the mail at Normandy Village where I lived was really, really shaky. They wouldn't pick up mail if there was nothing to deliver. They wouldn't stop and see if there was. Something to go out, and that was frustrating.
I was doing the magazine at that point, and I was sending out poems at that point, and so I eventually got a PO box, which is such a wonderful thing because for one thing, people, if you don't know this, you don't get junk mail in a PO box, So all those mailers you get, they don't bother with that. So I had a PO box for years, which also. Made sense moving around to apartments so much. I need a steady address, so I'm not constantly changing this. It made getting.
Packages easier because they just leave a little slip in your box and you go right to the front and you pick it up, et cetera. Don't have to worry about people stealing from your front stoop right right. So the other thing, when I was in my twenties, the whole Bokowski thing, and I had discovered this guy creating this small press magazine called Shore, which was all. Devoted to Bikowski. And the guy had a bookstore in Ohi, and so I ordered some books from him, and one of them is that really oversized photo book called horse Meat.
Horse Meat, Yeah, And so it was shipped to me and I believe this is one of the first things that like I had to drive to the post office to pick up because it wouldn't fit obviously wouldn't fit in the mailbox right, probably had been insured. By him because it was not cheap. No one was home when it was delivered, so or when they attempted delivery, so got a slip it. Well, what's this. I had to go down to the post office that served us when we lived over in Sunnyside, and that was on to Larry and Clovis Avenue, and I always hated that post office.
That whole thing of picking up packages became a deal. And when we moved over by Bullard High School, our branch became the one that was across from Shanghai over there. On Yeah Griffith, No, not Griffith. I can't remember what street that's on. For some reason, that was our branch, which isn't even close to where we lived, but you know, at that point getting all kinds of stuff, magazine stuff and whatever, that's where I.
Would have to go to pick it up. The reason I bring up the one on Terilarry and Clovis. I don't know what it was about that place that I disliked so much, but I would have anxiety dreams about having to go pick up packages there, I mean, And this was when I didn't even live in that area anymore, and I would have these dreams where I would have to go in and like the parking lot was like a whr, Like you couldn't find a parking It was just every step was like this quest and it was always hard. And like you'd get in there and then the. Door would be locked, but I could see people working, so I'd ring the buzzer, like I need this pack, you know.
So I'd have those dreams. I don't know why, identify that's funny. And then the other dreams I had, which were the nice dreams. And this again, even though I wasn't living at this house anymore. I think I dreamt about the house on Madison for most of my life, until maybe within the last ten years.
I have a dream about being in a house. It was always my childhood house. So I used to have these dreams where I would go out the front door, walk down the sidewalk and along the street because we didn't have sidewalks along the curb where we lived out there, or walk across the grass to the mailbox and it would be stuffed with all this writing. And publishing stuff. There would be these big, massive envelopes from Black Sparrow Press with this stuff that no one else knew about, like these undiscovered Pokowski poems that he was going to let me publish, or magazines that I was being published in.
I'd have those dreams and then I'd wake up and go off, Fuck, man, that wasn't real. Oh man. I would literally. Dream about mail and I would dream about the post office. So if that isn't an unhealthy obsession, I don't.
Know what is. I actually think it's a healthy obsession, and it's an obsession of almost a bygone era. People our age are perhaps the last generation that understands what it was like to submit to journals through the physical mail. Yeah, I guess that doesn't happen anymore, huh. To get physical rejection letters in the mail, or acceptance letters in the mail, to have subscriptions to physical magazines, all that brought me such joy too.
Now everything that I submit to journals is done predominantly through an online platform called Submittable. It's not the same. Yeah. The cool thing, you know, for an obsessive like me, the cool thing is you can like check the status of it like you can check the status of a of a shipment now, you know, right tracking into that and stuff. Oh my god.
And while you were talking, I just checked on the status of something that ordered for my wife, just to see, like, is it on its way yet? Has it been checked out yet? You know, I can totally identify with this obsession because I feel the same thing as a kid. I would have. Dreams of things showing up in the mail too, and it's exciting.
I remember there was like a back of the Ghostbusters cereal box mail away thing, like you could mail away and get like a cardboard replica of the Ghostbusters Proton pack or something like that. I gave my mom my allowance or a few bucks that I gotten for my bridge there or something, and said, hey, can you order this for me? And that thing never showed up. I don't know if it was even ordered. But you know, there's that that waiting and that anticipation.
It lives in a weird place. It's like torturous but also pleasurable. Yeah, yeah, it's strange. I do still like to order things and anticipate the arrival of the thing. That's most of how any of this stuff works, especially with eBay, So to bring it up to current day or even I would say the last twenty five years, ordering stuff on eBay or even just regular online stores brings.
With it that tracking. Yeah. I don't know when they started doing that or when I discovered it, but I know it probably more likely than not had to do with getting something on eBay and they're like, oh, here's the tracking number. What. Yeah, where do I look that at?
Oh? Yeah, the USPS has website, Okay. And of course it's gotten much more advanced over the years, when before it was just like I don't even know if it would tell you something had shipped it would It just might tell you like, oh, well it's in your town now or some whatever. I don't know. I don't really remember.
But it's a blessing and a curse because looking at your phone, or back then I was looking on my phone, I was just looking online. But it's like, oh, well, it's supposed to be here, why isn't it here. Yeah. I more recently have had encounters with carriers because something has been marked as delivered and it's not on my porch or. In my mailbox.
So that's frustrating. Over the years, I have done this. I have chased down carriers on my street because they go up one way and then they go back down the other. So if they've passed our house and I see that notification and I step outside and I don't see the item, I know I can catch the mail carrier. So I have I have done this.
It's a one gallum like, excuse me, this shows marked as delivered, but there's nothing on my box. Did you leave it on the wrong stoop? Because they have to walk in my neighborhood, they have to walk and deliver to mailboxes. Most of the houses have mailboxes, either slots like I think you do, or a mailbox on the house. They do not get to drive through our blocks here.
She's like, oh, well, I scan it when it's still on the truck and then I go back and deliver them. I'm like, you know what, you might not want to do. That because people like me are because I am every mist. With my mail and I am going to and if it shows that it's been delivered, I'm going to assume that it got delivered in correctly. So that happened.
I think I've talked about the story with the little McDonald like Hamburger that I ordered from Japan. They got sent back to Japan because they had miss labeled it. So I've told that story that got all sorted out. Like you, I can't specifically think of things that like never got delivered. I'm sure that's happened at some point.
This never showed up, and back then it's like, what the hell do you do about it? You know? These days you contact the store, you contact Amazon, you contact whoever. So I can't remember what this was. But pretty recently with I would say within the last five years, something didn't get delivered.
I don't know if I was tracking it, was able to track it or not, if it had been sent by just an individual. Sometimes they don't send you to tracking information. And I'm trying to think, like, did I know that it didn't get delivered or what? But something didn't get delivered. And then one night there was a knock on the door, which I hate.
Yeah, of course, and it was. An odd time, and I thought, well, okay, I'll check and see it was somebody bringing this item to my house. It had been delivered to their house. Wow. Yeah, But I was like, oh, thank you know great?
Yeah, I thought I was lost I was like, I don't think I would ever do that what I generally do or what I would do when I had the PO box, because I would get other people's mail in the PO box m h, and I would just put it back in the mail slot. You need to redeliver this. Because I was usually there before the lobby was actually open, I was like, well that was nice. We got delivered some mail, some packages for the girl across the street, but it had our address on it. We didn't know.
I was like, is this yours, Carla? She's like no. So the girl across street came over and I was like, I think I had something delivered to you because she transposed the numbers of our addresses. The guy kind of stood there like I don't know if he was expecting me to give him some cash or something for the trouble he went through. But I was just like, well, you did the right thing, thanks, yeah, and I closed the door.
What does he expect? I don't know. It seemed like there was a pause there, like, yeah, he was expecting more than the thank you that he got. Aren't you going to invite me in for dinner? Because, like I say, I probably would have taken it to the post off and say this was misdelivered to my house.
I wouldn't tracked it. I wouldn't go to somebody's house to try and deliver it for my own safety reasons. To be honest with you, that was nice of him. That odd the tracking thing, Like you said, it's a blessing and a curse. Like the other day, I was expecting something to show up in the mail.
It was the stratos wing. It was in Fresno, so I can always tell when it's at the Fresno distribution center. It shows up on tracking, It's like, oh good, that means it'll be here tomorrow. Or it's usually the next day when it's at the President distribution center. And then I checked the next day and it's in Vicelia.
Yeah, no, I've had those two. How did that happen? Yeah, but I'm sure that happens all the time. We can watch it now, you can almost watch the tracking in real time. Now, that's what I mean.
By blessing and a curse, because I've had the same thing happen. And also you see these stupid paths that they take. Yeah, when they go from La to San Francisco. You flew over me. Fucking idiots.
Are you trained buy me? Or what are truck buy me? Or vice versa or this boss moss boat. I'm not sure what happened with the tracking, Like it went from this person has created a label to all of a sudden being in Colorado and there was nothing in between. Yeah, so it skipped a bunch of steps.
And then it didn't have an estimated delivery date either, and I was like, well, when the fuck is it going to show up? The lickety splits were late and for why I don't know, Like is there a holiday on Monday? Because they were supposed to arrive on Saturday and didn't, and then it said they were going to arrive on Tuesday, and I'm like, well, what's wrong with Monday? They're here, They were here in Fresno, they just didn't go from the distribution center to my branch. If we sound like crazy people, folks that are, it's because we are.
This drives me crazy. We paid close attention to the details. And when you pay this much attention to the details, you're going to find yourself disappointed. And frustrated and frustratious. And it's not a healthy thing.
I'm definitely not saying it is. This is not a healthy situation, and some people order something and they just fucking forget about it. I mean, this is how carly Da is like, no, something showed up and I'm like, well, you weren't expecting it. You didn't know it was going to show up today. What are you talking about?
Crazy? Woman? Every fifteen minutes on your phone. I'll walk in with the j CRU package and she's like, what is that and I'm like, don't ask me, it's for you. Oh, that finally showed up.
I'm like, what do you mean that finally showed up? Aren't you tracking? It's every move you didn't know it was going to be here today. Woman, that's crazy. It's good to know we're not alone, right, Mark.
Yeah, and I know it's not just the two of us. When that first popped into my head after we last recorded, I was like, well, this is sort of great because it is one of the more unhealthy obsessions that I have. Yeah, it has led me, like I said, to chase down mail carriers. It has led me to go to branches and go where is this fucking package? When the tracking wasn't so spot on it's like it's here somewhere.
Yeah, can you go check the back for me? That kind of crowd, that's idiotic stuff. They hate you for it for me. I'm yeah. I had I had it out when I had my PO box at the Tower branch.
I had it out with those guys a couple. Of times about oh, Mark Begley's back. No. Well what they did was and this was something for Carlita. They left the slip in the wrong box.
Oh, and that person went up and accepted the package, oh and left with it. And I was like, well that was real fucking bright guys. That's to make sure it's the right person. Yeah. The dude got pissed at me.
I was not happy. I was like, this is something for my wife. Yeah. Anyway, that's frustrating. It's not cool.
It's not a good way to be folks. So don't follow our lead. In this automated society we're living in. It's so AI driven now that it's hard to differentiate between what is and isn't. There's still people working jobs and there's always room for human error.
That is the way it works. And if they start delivering the mail via AI, you can kiss getting good information, goodbye, not good. It could be delivered to god knows where and be like, well, that's what the address said. It's like, no, it fucking didn't. All right, we'll take five more breaks and come back with Ronnie's I think Ronnie is doing a local locale this quote unquote local locale's episode.
So we'll see what the hell that's all about. When I don't know, I don't know what kind of ads you guys hear dildo's or THHC stuff. I have no idea. Both. If you get political ads, I'm sorry because those.
Yeah, we'll be back. So take a letter Maria addressing see I will be coming home. Shut us out on the line, take Aria. Address, got us up there? All right, we're back after god knows what, and Ronnie hit us with your local location.
All right, so my local locale for today. I gathered all the information for this right from that AI entry on the first page at my Google stage. Just kidding. Actually, there's a book about this crazy endeavor. It's associated loosely with my Bigfoot and Disney obsession.
It blends the two a little bit only because this is a local locale that does not exist. It could have existed. Sixty miles outside of the Fresno area. Up in the mountains is a place called Mineral King. In the sixties, Walt Disney was going to create a a ski resort up there.
It failed. What I think about this often, actually, because as a kid we used to go to Mineral King quite a bit. I don't know if I've ever been. I know the name. It's a beautiful place.
I'm sure there's lots of beautiful places around here. I've never been. I've lived here my whole fucking life. Isn't that the way it is? Though?
Like you live in a place and yeah, anyway, there's a book called Disneyland on the Mountain written by Greg Glasgow and Catherine Mayer, and it's all about this failed attempt for Walt Disney to create a resort, a ski resort up in Mineral King that was going to be like themed ski resort and featuring to types of things that you might find at Disneyland. They hadn't gotten to the point where they were considering rides or anything like that. It wasn't going to be like an amusement park. It was going to be a resort that featured Disneyland like experiences. Damn, we could have had a movie about Mineral King at some point, can you imagine?
Because they had the rides in the movies now the fucking Jungle Cruise movie for God's sake. Oh man, I keep waiting for that Matterhorn movie, by the way, which I hope happens. But they did make a movie about the country Bear Jamboree. I don't know if you saw Country Bears the movie, but it's got Christopher Walking in it, and you can't really go wrong with that. Wow, although it's pretty bad, but the country bears are all like animatronic suits essentially.
It's crazy. The reason I bring that up is because the country bear Jamboree concept began with this animatronics show that he was planning to feature at this Mineral King's ski resort of country bears who came down from the mountain and would perform country songs to the people sipping on their ski resort cocktails and hot cocoa waiting for their steak dinner and yeah, hot cocoa, and this is something really cool. He apparently met this guy named Willie Schaefer, who designed ski slopes and was associated with the Winter Olympics that took place in nineteen sixty in California. Walt Disney befriended him. Whalt Disney was on the team that helped design and set up the Winter Olympics in California, and they picked Mineral King right here in central California as a location for this.
Isn't that weird since you know a big bear, isn't I mean there are skiing bears right there exactly. Like it's right. It's actually closer to Anaheim than it is to Los Angeles. Maybe not, it's triangulated, but yeah, it's amazing that he must have been up here and gone skiing. He was a skiing enthusiast.
I mean, we do have good skiing around here, but there are places closer to La. Yes, and like you said, big Bear is one of them. But maybe he chose Mineral King. Mineral King does get more snow than Big Bear, so that's probably why. But he had begun designing this place.
I believe they'd even purchased land, and they were set to do it, and it just everything fell through. It didn't work out. That makes me wonder now how different Fresno might have been if that had happened, this whole area might have been well, completely different place. Growing up, It would have been a completely different place, and it would have been interesting. I grew up in the mountains.
I've always felt like there could be so many cool, environmentally friendly resort type experiences that people could have up there. I used to live at Hume Lake for two years, and Hume Lake is like a Christian camp and Christian run resort area up in King's Canyon National Forest. Those types of experiences are cool. A Walt Disney run experience like that would have been me. I mean, people go through here, I think of I always want to say Yellowstone in city Yosemite, but that's not as close as Mineral King is.
To hear, Yosemite is an almost two hour drive from here. Mineral Kings an hour from here. Ye less than yeah. I mean Anya Taylor Joy went to the Whole Foods here in town on her way to Yosemite, and I didn't go about it. So excuse me on Taylor Rush, I have your autograph.
Place. People do pass through Fresno quite a bit because they are traveling up to Yosemite, but imagine they would have been They would have gotten to Fresno. They would have been like, Okay, do we go north to Yosemite or do we go east to Mineral King, And that would have been the choice. People come here to ski as well. Yeah, we have very nice ski areas around the mountains in this area, so it's not an unusual thing for people from other places to come here just to ski.
But that is not a Disney branded ski resort. That's curious that. It really makes me think it might have been a little different here. Not that it would have been better, but who knows. Yeah, it would have been more expensive to live here.
Yeah, that's what right. For a long time, Fresno is a very affordable place to live, and now it is not but. Amore while and it's only getting worse, folks. Yay, Yeah, that's one of Disney's failures. Happened right here in central California.
Now that makes sense. Yeah, I got good luck. We're the Anus of California. Uh the armpit, the armpit, I'm feeding into that misconception here. There are much worse places.
Trust me, I've been there. Yeah we have. And if you drive through the Fresno area on Highway ninety nine, you can genuinely be convinced that this is not an attractive area to live. It is not a pretty drive. But if you get off there, you drive up to the foothills, you go to an interesting place in town.
You visit Clovis Lakes or what is that wild water Adventures over deep in Clovis, or go to antique stores or the underground gardens. Like we've talked about before, there's always something interesting here. But if you drive on Highway ninety nine, it looks like, yeah, post apocalyptic wasteland. That is the outskirts of town. It goes by the outskirts of town.
Yeah, that's my local locale. And I haven't read the book yet, but it's on my list of books to read. Cool. That's interesting. Yeah, I don't know that I have any knowledge of that.
I mean, it may have passed through my brain at some point in my life, but this feels like the first time I'm hearing about this. It's pretty neat. Yeah, it is. If it come to the Central Valley, folks, definitely visit Mineral King. It is beautiful up there.
It would be a different place if it were disnified. So I'm kind of appreciative that it's not because it's absolutely gorgeous. Definitely visit that location. All right. I'm sure we'll have another break in here at some point, and then I'll come back with my little item for this episode.
See on the other side, it's a country bare musical tempourie. I am not doing a local locale this time. I'm doing another childhood treat quote unquote. But this is not a manufactured treat. It is not candy, it is not hostess.
It is not produced by human beings at all. Much like the male popped into my head, this popped into my head because I have one in my backyard and it is the time of year for them to produce fruit. Yes, I know where you're going with this. When I grew up in the Sunnyside area in my house on Madison Avenue, I have mentioned this before, maybe not on this show, but I know I talked about my dad on Wake Up Heavy and him being a master gardener before he ever technically got that nomenclature by going through that program. My whole life, that was his thing.
He worked as a teacher, but his main interest was growing things. At that house, we had a very large backyard that allowed for two greenhouses. And a garden. It was a massive, massive backyard. But I believe something that existed when they moved in before I was born and was there the whole time we lived.
There was a low quat tree. I love that you're talking about this. You know, over the years, like I. Said, we had gardens. I got in armed, didn't get in trouble, but he grew carrots.
We would go out and pick the carrots and wash them off on the hose and eat a carrot. So I was looking for carrots. One time when I was a little kid and pulled up all the tomato plants looking for carrots. You know, I'm sure we had peach trees because those grow locally very well. And yeah, there was a BlackBerry bramble that wasn't ours, but grew over our backyard.
Then I would go climb on all this crap to get to But the low quat tree was kind of like my tree for the house. And so every May or June they come to fruit. I've always loved the taste of low quat, not kum quat two okay, so not kum quats, which is the most horrible name for fruit on the planet. Low quats are these little. They look like miniature apricots or tangerines maybe, or peaches look like apricots, I mean, and people describe the flavor as that, but I don't see that at all.
I've never tasted a fruit that tastes like low clots. It's almost like sugar water, is the best. Way to describe it. I've heard that comparison like peach or across from peach and apricot, and I'm like, you know, that's like the saying is ki we taste like a strawberry, which is actually even more accurate than a low quot tasting like either of those things. It's like a miniature apricot, miniature peach.
They're native to China and have been cultivated there for thousands and thousands of years. They're popular in Japan. They grow well here. You'll see them all over the place. The reason we have one is my neighbor, my direct neighbor, her neighbor, so two houses down from me.
They have a low quat tree in their front yard and it butts up right against her driveway and it's pretty large. I mean, it is a tall low quat tree. Cool, and she was like kind of planning to me one time about it because the fruit drops in her driveway and I'm like, well, have your garden guys cut it back, you know. And so I was like, told her, I love them and I've always loved them since I was a kid. She's like, well, take as many as you want.
And so I took some, shired some with Cleo and then I'm like. Oh, we have the seeds. So we planted one nice grew it on our patio. The tree must be like fifteen years old now, So grew it on our patio until it outgrew the pot. I planted it in the backyard.
I think it started giving fruit maybe five or so years ago, maybe. It's been longer. So every year I'm like, I start looking out after the blooms and then I start seeing little groups of green and then they turned yellow and kind of a little maybe deeper orange. And so I saw some this year and I. Was like, oh, let me go check and see if they're ripe enough yet, because I like underwripe fruit, especially tree fruit like that, like plums.
I prefer under ripe, even though they hurt my guts. So I went out there and there were only three bunches on the tree. You know, we've had quite a few before, We've had like more. Than we could eat, and I'll always go and pick a few. And one year I don't think we had any at all, and then one year we had quite a few, but they all got decimated by birds, squirrels and bugs, which is fine.
I don't mind things eating them. But I went out there this year and I was like, oh my god, I can only see three groupings of low quats. One of the groupings it wasn't green anymore at all. So I picked about four of them ate them. It is a very low yield fruit because they have massive, massive seeds in them, and there's usually at least three.
Yeah, there's usually about four for sure. Yeah, there is a very low reward. And I don't know about you, but I always peel them. I'm not big on the skin. You can eat the skin, but I always peel them.
They're fairly easy to peel, and it's just an amazing, amazing taste. It's such a delicate fruit. Yeah, you can't buy low quots because they don't survive the shipping, is my assumption, because they're so soft. I'm drooling now. Just thinking about it actually, And there's a guy that lives down the street that has a lowcu aud tree.
I steal from his tree that hangs over to the sidewalk. I'm pretty sure that the reason why you can't find them in stores is because they just would not survive the boxing up and shipping of them. They are so soft, the skin is barely protective. It's a tough skin, but it doesn't really do much and you can eat it. I think they don't sell them because people would get at home and go, this is nothing but seeds.
That's probably right too. It's literally like three nibbles on each fruit. You can get very little meat out of them, but people do make preserves with them, the pies, and I mean, I can't imagine how many you would have to harvest to make a jar, just one jar of jam. It's just one of those very unique flavors that not a lot of people get to experience. And I'm sure it's one of those.
It's sort of like the ornamental. Plums, which I always mistook for cherries when I was growing up, so I would try and eat them and I'm like, this is the worst fucking cherry I've ever eaten in my life. The sourst the chartist cherry ever, right, Yeah, and that's not even what they were. I think people sort of look at them like that because they are on the small side. But I mean, there's no comparison in flavor to those awful ornamental plums, you know.
I don't think a lot of people realize that they're edible and that you can pick them and eat them and they're delicious. They really are delicious. They're one of my favorite fruits and I look forward to this time of year always. Yeah, me too, now well, and I mean it did when I was a kid, but there was a good chunk of once we moved out of that house. I don't think we had a low quat tree at the other house near Bullard when we moved out of that house in the early nineties.
I probably didn't have one until we moved here, Yeah, a good twenty something years. There's two types of fruits that do really well in this climate that I'm always tempted to plant in our backyard and haven't done it yet. One is low quats and the other is pomegranates. Mm hm. They are two of my favorite fruits and they're very central valley centric fruits.
I'm glad you have one. I'll be over tomorrow. By the way, there isn't anything to give you. Unfortunately, go buy that guy. Save a couple seeds the next time.
We snag one from that guy's tree, because I mean, if I can do it, trust me, they're easy to grow. It's still pretty small. I don't do much to it other than water it. Yeah, it's kind of left to its own device. I mean, our backyard is a hell escape.
I've seen your backyard, and I've seen worse backyards. Thanks. Yeah, if I can get it to survive in that backyard, you guys will have no problem growing one back there. Yeah, I think I might do that. Actually, it'll take a while before do you see any fruit from it?
Well, we'll be here a while. Yeah. They're pretty easy to manage, so that's my deal. I love low clots. I'm so excited that you talked about low clots.
Yeah. Interesting, I don't That definitely was not on my list, so I'm gonna have to add it to it and cross it off. Now. Well, I might have to talk about pine nuts next time then, wow, yummy. I don't know if I have much to say except that they're delicious.
That's sort of an acquired taste, it is. And I didn't really understand pine nuts until twenty twelve, late twenty twelve, when I discovered the truth of how pine nuts are harvested and why they are so expensive. Look it up, folks, it's really interesting. Or maybe I'll talk about it. Yeah, educate them people.
Yeah. Well, let's end this by saying that next month will be our return to the land of Lynch. Last year, our July episode was the first iteration. Of this series, this loose series, and so next time we'll be diving into Lynch in. The eighties, and if you can believe it, that might get kind of lengthy.
So I'm sort of pitching to you now that we don't talk about things that we got, or local locales or child coouries or anything like that. It'll just strictly be Lynch. I'm definitely okay with that. I have a lot to say. Save all that stuff for the next episode, and I'll try to remember that because I might have to make an actual list of anything that I get between now and then.
Two months of small eBay purchases. Us might really add up to something substantial for the episode after Yeah, yeah, yeah. It could be a mistake, but we'll deal with that when the time comes. So, Ronnie, where can people find your crap on the internet or whatever. Well, you can go over to YouTube and type in two words s k E l E Scala and VA d E r E Skelevator and find my YouTube channel.
Definitely go over there and subscribe and comment and watch my crazy videos. That's where you can find stuff about me. How about you? Mark very articulate. You can find my stuff at Wordingwaymedia dot com or wakeupeavy dot com.
I do. I'm not really doing much there other than adding these episodes to my blog. I'm on all social media as at wake Up Heavy, so you can check that out. We have a cambridge and with sean Instagram, you can check that out. You see images of the things that we.
Talk about before we do our big end of the year YouTube extravaganza. Oh, I don't think we've talked about that yet, so people aren't going to know what I'm referencing. Or maybe we did. I don't know. I can't remember.
I may have been I may have been brain addled at the time we talked about that. We hinted strongly at something I think. We did mention actually the change that we were going to make. Yeah, I'm excited about gathering images for today's episode because there's some interesting visual treats that we discussed today. I'll send you pictures of all the mailboxes I've ever had at you got pictures of the no that would require me driving down to my old of which it wouldn't even be the same mailbox anymore.
I'm sure, Oh my gosh, you have to do that. Now you have to go to all your old mailboxes. We have to do one post where it's like four or five mailboxes, including your post office mailboxes. That's silly, that's silly business. It is silly, all right.
So come back in a month and join us for our second David Lynch episode. And thanks for listening, remember. Folks, Oh yeah, till until we meet again, have funs, stay weird and keep collecting or not and. Do whatever the hell you want. Well, well, what do we care.
I'm not going to come to your house and try and find this stuff out. We're gonna come check check in on you. Don't obsess about your mail though. That's unhealthy. Keep your obsessions in check, people.
Good luck with that. Yeah, don't embarrass your family. Squirrel and the sparrow and the mouse and the bee, y'all have a party in the low quat tree, eating all the yellow fruit they can see. It's a wild of party in the low quat trees. Cambridge or Sean is a weirding Way media podcast