Episode 38: Matt and Lola

Cambridge, I'm with Sean. It's a Weirding Way Media Podcast. Hello and welcome to Cambridge and Washaun, a podcast by two weird guys where we talk about the weird things we like. My name is Ronnie, otherwise known as Skelevator over on the YouTubes. I'm here with my pal Mark, known as Wikipedia on YouTube, I guess.

Sure. Yeah. I have a handle over there. You've got a full on YouTube presence now. Yeah.

Love it. Speaking of which, and I know we're going to talk about it more in depth today, but I have been deeply enjoying your videos. You've got a good aesthetic going on. The builds are turning out great and I'm really enjoying them. Yeah, I'm struggling with the time lapse-iness of it all, but I don't really know how to not do that because I have tried a couple of real time.

Yeah. Things for stuff that i figure is not going to take very long and then you threw in. Some of that in the last one yeah and i liked. It something that takes 30 seconds on the video is 10 minutes long these things would be hours long if you do everything in real time. I'm a big fan of time lapse because i don't have like a crew when i'm making my videos the people that come in and like go around and shoot different angles while I'm doing that stuff in real time.

And when I'm working on builds, the only way to really show people the progress, I mean, I can be out there time-lapsing for an entire day. Right. The only way to show progress is to do that. And it makes sense to me. Yeah.

It's just like, I noticed after a while, everything's looking the same and then you don't really see any detail. My stuff's a lot smaller than your stuff. So yeah, I'm just, I'm, trying to mix it up a little bit but now you have a b camera so you can always have b camera roll for your builds because you bought the camera and you still have your iphone. It'll be good to try that out i haven't had a chance to really do that yet what i want to mention is that there's a Through limitations, we kind of create our own voice, which is interesting. And you've been able to do that.

In your last video, you popped in some real-time stuff. You did a little real-time zooming in, zooming out, and playing with angles and stuff like that. And that's awesome. And you're creating a kind of wake-up-heavy energy, a mark energy in the videos, which is better than trying to have it look like another person's videos. So I think you're already achieving that. a nice unique voice there.

The limitations are built mostly upon iMovies limitations. Yes. There's only, I mean, you can fiddle with the backgrounds or create your own or just pull colors off the internet or whatever you want to do. titles and the backgrounds are all very limited, especially on my version of iMovie. I'm working on a very old version of iMovie. There's not going to be any animation or like Dustin Cropsboy's videos where he's using the Adobe program for movies and you have a lot more options with that.

And of course, he's able to animate things and I wouldn't have the slightest clue how to do any of that to begin with. Yeah. Yeah, I realized early on, like, oh, I'm very limited with what I can do. of their backgrounds and sort of change the colors that way and whatever. I'm adding narration to the newest one. I've kind of shied away from that as far as for accessibility.

I think the title cards work because if you can't hear the video, you can at least see the explanations of what's going on. You don't even really need title cards. I mean, most of it's self-explanatory if you're watching and are hard of hearing or unable to hear. Yeah, I think that's smart, actually. Yeah, I like what's going on.

One thing that I've done occasionally, like a channel that I watch a lot is Hey Bricky. It's like a Disneyland designer guy. I've gone back to look at the earliest videos and it's really interesting to see how a person's style evolves as they accrue more technology and they accrue more abilities to use software and things like that. I haven't done that with Dustin Cropsboy's videos. I've gone back to his earliest stuff to see how it was at the beginning.

I have. I mean, ever since the beginning, he's been using these amazing animations and there's a really nice... Almost cinematic flow or documentary style flow to his videos and kitschiness, which is cool. Yeah. Almost like it could be between cartoons on Adult Swim or something.

And I really like that about his stuff, but I've never gone back to watch his earlier things to see if he started out rough around the edges like you and me. Yeah, not really, actually. It's just, you see more of the, and this is true for a lot of the other guys that I watch too, like Toy Ploy, where, okay, they finally clicked on this thing as their deal, and now they're using that. It's more style over... Maybe technology.

Because Dustin Crop's voice started with an animated bug as his narrator. And then it changed to an animated version of himself. And then he used to always end them a certain way. And that's completely changed and gone away. And you see that kind of stuff with everybody.

Then somebody gets a new camera and you notice the change at some point. Unless and until this Mac of mine gets upgraded, you probably won't see too many changes on mine. Yeah, it's just a matter of reasonable upgrades. I worry for the folks out there that are just getting started that are spending a shit ton of money on equipment. If you can do it, great, but work with what you have.

In a way, that's sort of the way to find your voice, the best way to find your voice. Well, and that's the nice thing about Macs. You know, when I started Wake Up Heavy, the podcast, I'm like, oh, I have GarageBand on this Mac. Yeah, okay, well, I'll try to figure out how to use that. And I still use it for certain parts of this.

I use Audacity for the recordings, for the editing. If you have a Mac, you've got iMovie and GarageBand on there. And if you don't, they're a free app anyway. So if you've got a phone of whatever kind, you've got a camera on there, you can record videos. So most of the stuff is on things you already have.

Yeah. There's really no reason not to do things. I don't know if you ever played around with this stuff when you were younger, but my mom and my stepfather had a VHS video camera. We talked about this in the last episode, the big ones that had to strap on the thing. And so when it evolved down to one piece that sits on your shoulder, that was fairly reasonable to move around.

They had one of those and I would go out with it and experiment. And then the editing process was really tedious, but I was determined to try and do it. You had to cut and splice from one videotape to another, which meant you had to record onto one. You had to have one generation of tape footage record onto the next generation of tape footage, record onto the next generation of tape footage. And it was so tedious to do that with home equipment.

And now it's just so much easier. And the youngsters today. We never had a video camera. It's evolved a lot. We're pretty lucky to have it the way it is.

Everybody's got a camera on their phone. Mm-hmm. So today's episode... It's been a while. Again, it's been a little bit of a break.

We didn't record in August because stuff. Stuff. So today's kind of a catch-up episode... It's been kind of a rough month in a multitude of ways, a busy month for both of us. And we're talking about the weeks leading up to this.

So by the time you hear this, it'll be the beginning of October. So August and September have been a little bit roller coaster months for us. Life gets in the way sometimes, folks, and there's not a whole lot we can do about that. I had a great conversation with Sean Scavarna on my YouTube channel the other evening. He had sent me a Skeletor action figure.

And so we did an episode of Weekly Weirdo on a Tuesday night. He said a lot of really nice things about Cambridge and with Sean. And it made me think part of our effort here. which is to talk about how weird shit actually means something to us. It has actually resonated with a few people out there. And I know our audience is pretty small.

It really struck me in a profound way that When you think your world is small and you're talking about particular things, sometimes we talk about stuff pertaining to the central San Joaquin Valley, in particular Fresno and stuff we grew up with. But also we talk about pop culture, too. And you and I started this show to really just talk about the weird things that we like. It was really nice to hear how our personal perspectives aren't just ours. They actually have resonance for some of the people that listen.

That was nice. I guess to piggyback off of what you were just saying is this show is for us. When shit gets in the way, we can't do it. We're not going to force ourselves to do it. These last several weeks have been a bit interesting.

We're here to sort of catch you all up on stuff. It might be a little bit of a downer, folks, but that's just life. Yeah. The reason I do this, honestly, the reason I do anything is is number one for my own enjoyment to be selfish about it. Like I wouldn't be doing this or Wake Up Heavy or the YouTube channel if it wasn't fun.

Yeah. And I have slowed things down on Wake Up Heavy. I have slowed things down in the past with things. When they start to feel like work, I'm no longer interested. So if Cambridge and with Sean ever feels like work, It'll take another break.

This hasn't been the case so far. It's just been things come up, and the effort it would take to do it at a certain point might feel like work. It's like, we're not obligated to do this. We're not getting paid to do this. We're the bosses of this.

If it's simply a matter of, I don't feel like it this month, then that's just the way it will be. I got notified by Spotify that we had reviews, a current review, and I couldn't find a current review. They were old. So I don't know why it was notifying me. It said something to the effect of, I wish this show was weekly.

And I was like, my God, that would never happen. Unfortunately, sorry, but there's just no way that the two of us would be able to wrangle time to do this weekly. I know that. We both have 40 hour a week jobs. And sometimes those 40 hour a week jobs actually become more than 40 hours when we're particularly busy.

It's not realistic. And on top of that, of course, our families, which come first. Right. I've mentioned that a lot over on my YouTube channel. And I think that's an important thing to remember when we get attached to these venues that are entertainment-based is that we're in an era where people can do this.

They can make stuff and they can gain visibility. But it all has to be realistic. If it's not realistic within a personal parameter of some sort, I can see people just burning out. we've had to reduce the number of episodes on my Skelevator channel of the toy frenzy when we change it from toy frenzy to the frenzy. And it went from once every week to once every couple of weeks down to once a month. And then now it's like once whenever we can do it.

And that's real because all of us involved with that, we've got all kinds of stuff going on in our lives. These types of endeavors really need to be kept in check i think sometimes if it were our job that actually might be nice because then it would be a creative job it would have to eliminate other jobs in no way is that happening for us no which is fine no one's gonna pay us to do this shit no no Unless the world completely changes to a different mindset when it comes to this stuff. But yeah, that's not going to happen. I'll just add this. I probably said it before on the show.

I don't know. But I absolutely hate having to work for a living. I hate it. I hate it. Yeah.

My job is fine, but the fact that we have to do this to get money to pay $ 6 a gallon for gas and all these other things just drives me bananas. So anyway, no, we're not going to get started on that. Yeah, I will piggyback off that real quick and just say 100%. Yeah, you and I are both in that same mindset. Bye.

We'll start off with just catching people up with the things we've been doing. We're going to touch on some sensitive subjects. So if you're averse to talking about or hearing people talk about loss, maybe you can just skip this episode because we both have experienced a little bit of this recently. And that's definitely going to come up in conversation today because that's where we're coming from. And I think for both of us, the conversation is these particular losses are attached to stuff that means a lot to us.

And so it fits into the category of why we do this show in the first place. But if we want to start off with some fun things, we can do that. Or do you want to jump right into the heavy stuff? Maybe let's get the heavy stuff out of the way. Yeah, that's a good idea.

Maybe I'll throw in a timestamp here if you want to hear us talk about fun stuff. Go to this point. In the year. That's a really good idea. I'll have my robot voice tell you where to go if you want to skip the deaths and losses.

Cue robot voice. Skip to 5040 if you don't want to hear about death. Yeah, so we lost our dog, our family dog that we'd had for 12 years. When we got her, she was a rescue. When we got her, they estimated her age. at around two years old so she was roughly 14 which is particularly for her breed she was part lasso opso carlita looked it up this week after she passed and 14 is about the average which we didn't really know ahead of time but 12 years.

When I think about that, I realized like, oh my God, that was a really long time. And when we got her almost exactly 12 years ago, it was 12 years later. and a month that we had her. So when we got her, Cleo, my daughter, was six going on seven, and she's now 18 going on 19. And so that was two-thirds of her life. Even me, I'm 57, that was like 20% of my life, which when I start thinking about it that way, it starts to get kind of like, oh my gosh, only the second dog technically, quote unquote, the second dog that I have had.

I had a dog when we were kids. When I was young, our family had a dog. We'd had a dog prior to that who didn't last because she was a terror. And I think she bit me. I'm pretty sure that's the reason we got rid of her.

And then my cousin, their family had a dog who had puppies. We got one. My grandparents got one. And I believe My other uncle got one, so we all four families had dogs from this group. That was Barney, and he was with us for a pretty long time, I think until my late teens.

And then I haven't had a dog since then. My little family, we briefly had a dog for maybe a week, a puppy that Carlita had picked out. And we drove, I can't remember how far we drove to pick it up, brought it home. And it was just a disaster and ended up giving that dog to one of her coworkers who still has it. So that worked out okay.

You know, we've had cats forever. I mean, since I've known Carlita, she came with a cat who we had for a long time. They were looking for a dog, you know, a rescue. We were looking for a rescue and we had one lined up and then it got taken out from under us. Everybody was really disappointed.

And then Lola had been picked up in Madera Ranchos. She had been on the loose for For a couple of months, whoever had rescued her, and I can't remember who it was, had been kind of trying to track her down and get her. So they did, and then we got her, and she was perfect for our family. She had obviously been trained to some extent. Cause she understood commands we figured out.

And other than escaping a few times, like she never really tore anything. She didn't tear up furniture. She wasn't a pillow eater or anything like she destroyed a couple of my toys, but whatever. very well trained and fit in really well with her family. And I was totally against having dogs because I had had cats for so long up to that point. And cats are very easy to deal with and you don't have to take them potty every couple hours and blah, blah, blah, all that stuff.

So other than a few health issues along the way, it wasn't really until the last couple of months where things started to go downhill and she's was going blind, which was, whatever old dog you know these things happen and then her left eye got really gnarly we were having that checked out and I can't remember what the diagnosis was for that but Basically, our vet said, well, you can take it out and have a one-eyed dog. It very well might pop on its own, which horrified all of us. We did not want that to happen here. If it does, it's no big deal. You don't have to rush her to the pet ER or anything like that.

Just get in here and we'll take out the rest of it. We're just like, oh, God, I hope that doesn't happen. And it got really bulgy at one point. And I'm like, oh man, she liked to rub her face on the floor. I'm like, man, if she pops that thing, I'm just going to freak out.

That didn't happen. She started to breathe really heavily a couple of weeks, like three or four weeks ago, was having labored breathing. And so We were trying to get that sort of fixed. Of course, all this stuff always happens on the weekends when your vet isn't available. So Carlita's constantly trying to get through via his service and did take her to the pet ER at some point, I think for the eye.

When it got really bad, and this was the weekend prior to Labor Day, so the weekend of Labor Day, basically... A Friday, couldn't get into our vet. There's a vet close to us on Shields. That's sort of their sister place, which we've taken all the animals to at some point when we can't get into the regular one. They were double booked.

Whoa. And they said, well, try Moroa Track. which is also really close. It's Moroa and the railroad tracks by where I used to live. And so Carlita took her there and the guy came in and he's like, oh, well, I can hear. He's like, this is congestive heart failure.

He's like, you can do this or you can put her down right now. And Carlita was like, well, I'm not doing that. You know, I at least want her to go home and be with her family. She was by herself and it was a Friday. Cleo's at school.

I'm working. So they did x-rays, which of course cost hundreds of dollars. And he's like, oh, well, her heart looks fine. Seriously? Yeah.

And we're like, great. So then she kept calling our regular vet. And of course, Monday was a holiday. I think we got her in on that Tuesday. He wanted to see the x-rays.

And he said, well, yeah, her heart looks fine, but her lungs look like garbage. put her on prednisone to help with the breathing. It helped for like a day, maybe, or two. And then it became really labored again. On Friday, again, we're kind of making calls and all that. Nothing's available.

And so that Saturday, the girls went and ran some errands or did some stuff. And I was like, her breathing's really heavy right now. They're like, yeah, we noticed. And then I checked on her again and it wasn't that she was sleeping. She'd been sleeping most of the time through all of this anyway.

I was like, oh, well, it's not so bad right now. My whole thing with this was I wanted you see, and this is sort of social media inspired. You see all these, I've seen numerous posts where, you know, sailors last day and we tried to do everything that they love and all that stuff. And it's like, well, what could we possibly do? I mean, she liked to go on walks.

We can't take her on a walk. Right. She hadn't been walking in or taking walks in quite a while. And I'm like a drive. give her her favorite treats, but she wasn't really eating. And so one day earlier that week, I tried to get her to go outside because she liked to lay outside and she wouldn't even go out back with me.

At some point, though, I think I took her to the bathroom and then we were on the front porch and she kind of just laid down. I was like, oh, we'll sit out here for a while. And she just laid there for about an hour and then it started getting warm. So I took her in. But that Saturday, yeah, I was like, They were out.

I was kind of watching the dog and then they got home and her breathing was really, really bad. And Carly tried to get through to our vet again. He was at a memorial service. So that was like really bad timing. Yeah.

But he said he'd call, you know, when he was able. And he called, I think later that afternoon, he said, well, try to give her. prednisone, try to give her another one. And she wouldn't take any of the food we were trying to hide it in. And so Carlita crushed it up and put it in a syringe with water and gave that to her and didn't do anything. And he was like, well, you know, give her another one at 11 o'clock.

And I'm thinking, geez, I don't even know if she's going to make it till 11. And so I had mentioned to Carlita, I said, we'll do that. pet ers do this you know about i don't know what she just i mean she was walking around and stuff and didn't seem to be in pain but at some point she got on the couch with cleo she actually jumped up on the couch which i was surprised but she laid by cleo and had her um head on her foot for a while and then she just started gasping for air i was like okay we need to go to the er yeah and have put down she yelped a couple of times kind of rolled over and then we like we're all three running to get dressed and get ready and i grabbed a cardboard box that we had and when carlita went to get her she was already gone oh man that's tough Yeah, on the couch in our house.

Yeah. So we took her to the pet ER, I don't even know what it's called, over on Blackstone, just south of Herndon. It wasn't packed, but there were quite a few people there on a Saturday night at 8.30 or whatever time it was that this happened. And they were really nice about everything. And the gal came out and put the stethoscope on her and was like, yeah, no, she's gone.

And They gave you a little room to sit and say goodbye and fill out some paperwork. You can take them back home and bury them, I guess. And I'm like, I am not interested in doing that. Just dispose of them or have them cremated and get the remains. And Cleo's like, I want her back.

So we did that and they do a little paw print in some kind of, foam thing and then you can get a lock of their hair so we did all that and we'll get her remains back at some point and yeah yeah it was rough it was rough having her be here at home and i know that that really disturbed. Cleo yeah that's hard at the same time when our dog when it's time for flower to go part of me almost wished that she could have passed here at home you know Yeah. Rather than having to go through the euthanasia process, which is, you know, we don't know what they're experiencing. That's the thing. You can't ask and you don't know how much pain.

I mean, she didn't seem to be in pain, but she let out those yelps and then that was pretty much it. Yeah. It happened quickly. That's hard to watch. Yeah.

From my perspective, at least, she was at home and with you all. Right. When that happened, as opposed to with strangers. I think we would have all been in the room with her, but. Yeah, that's true.

I had asked Cleo, because I think we were thinking about that Friday night, like, Saturday morning. I said, do you want to go? And she just, like, kind of freaked out. And I said, you don't have to. I just...

I remember when... Carlita's cat Luna was put down and I wasn't there and she wasn't my cat to begin with, but I was actually with you. We were having one of our movie days and she was texting me and we took Luna in and they're going to put her down. And I was like, I didn't get to say goodbye to her. And it kind of bothered me.

And so I was sort of determined to however people wanted to do it. That's why I took her out that Wednesday to at least do something that she enjoyed. Yeah. And have a little bit of time with her myself. Of course, my cheap ass was thinking, well, I guess this saved us some money on having them do it.

I don't know. It was still kind of costly. But, you know, I mean, yeah, it was it was rough. It was hard. But she gave us a lot of wonderful years and in return us her.

Yeah. She was such a character. Yeah. She loved you, man. Whenever I'd come over to visit, she was just all over me and I love that.

I feel like I have a pretty good relationship with animals, but every once in a while you come across one that just seems to get you. She was a delight. I really feel for you. When we were all talking about Lola after we heard the news, we just couldn't help keep looking over at Otis and be like, oh my gosh, that means like, okay, so if we're thinking about time, that means we have to think carefully about the next few years for him. But...

She made a huge impression on me as well. Yeah. I felt hit when I got that message from you when I saw that. When Ronnie would come over for our movie days back in the day, she pretty much always laid on your lap, at least for a while. And then she hated it when you left.

Yeah. Yeah. She really liked guys and old women. She did the same kind of stuff with my mom. That's sweet.

She liked being by her and she liked laying with my uncle. I mean, my uncle, my brother-in-law, her uncle, I guess. And then my niece's husband as well. She was very personable. Anytime we had the AC guys over or whatever, she would always buddy up to them and stuff.

Yeah, it was rough, but. Such a sweetheart. And she, folks, if you listen back to episodes of Cambridge and Wishon, there's little cameo appearances in the background every once in a while. Yep. And on Wake Up Heavy, yeah.

Barking. She had a really, for a small dog, she had a really loud bark. She had an attentive bark. Yeah. That last day she got to bark at the mailman and another delivery.

So another one of her favorite things to do she got to do. Just like her dad, she did not like solicitors. Nope. She had enough energy to... muster that. Good.

That's good. Yeah. I'm sorry. I feel for you. The adjustment period after losing a pet, too, is no...

Easy feat. It's been weird. Yeah. I mainly took her to the bathroom. And so I'm like, oh, I got to take Lola out.

Nope. Nope. We were out for a while yesterday. Went and saw my grandniece play soccer and then strolled around Old Town Clovis. In the past, I would have been thinking, oh, we need to get home pretty soon.

We have three cats, but they're fine on their own and they can go to the bathroom on their own and all that. So don't really worry about them so much. Yeah, it's an adjustment for sure. Can you tell if your cats are feeling the loss? I don't know.

They're not. It's hard to tell. I think we were expecting maybe more clear cuts like Jinx, who's a lot like me. I don't think she gives a shit. She's a loner.

I mean, she might. We kind of thought Cersei and the new kitten might. I don't know. I don't know what you would look for. Just like sniffing around and where is she?

But I haven't really noticed much. Yeah. That's the thing about cats. They're hard to read sometimes. Yeah.

Dogs, they make all their emotions very clear, at least for the most part in my experience. I feel for you and I feel for your family too. It's hard. Yeah, it's been rough. Whenever somebody says some bullshit like they're just a dog or they're just a...

I can never get on board with that way of thinking. Our pets are our family members. Oh, yeah. That matters. That matters.

Yeah. Well, let's move on to your... Yeah. Just to give a little background information. When we first started Cambridge and Wishon, part of the Fresno focus was in consideration of our relationship to Fresno and relationship to different things that mattered in the Fresno realm.

And one thing that we talked about early on was a band I was in called IG-88. We played IG-88 music for the first several episodes. What was it, four episodes? No. Something like that.

Something like that. I'm not sure how far we made it, but yeah, it was the intro music for first handful of episodes. And rightly so. I feel like, for me at least... The band IG-88, I feel lucky to have been a part of it.

I don't know if I've already, I'm sure I already talked about this, but it was only a two-person band. So I was 50% part of it. But I also understand what that band meant for a lot of people because they've told me things in the past about how it made an impact on them, which means a lot to me. But also, Star Wars has been an intense part of our conversations lately. Since we started Cambridge and with Sean and Mark and I have a very strong attachment to the three original trilogy films and the Kenner toys.

I know I talked about this a little bit, but part of the reason why Matt, the other member of IG-88, and I came up with the name IG-88 was because we both bonded over the fact that the IG-88 action figure was one of our favorites. Our primary favorite, actually, as youngsters. To make a long story short, over the last 15, 20 years, I suppose, whenever I would run into Matt out there in the world, I could tell he was really struggling. It's hard to identify his situation as struggle because I know that it was his choosing to be in the situation he was in. And I don't want this to sound preachy, and I don't want this to sound judgy.

And I don't want this to sound like I claim to understand his situation. So it's really hard to talk about it. He passed away just this past Thursday night, I guess is when he passed in his sleep. Apparently, I don't know all the details, but he passed away in his sleep I'm fairly confident, though I could be wrong. I heard from a reliable source that it was alcohol related.

Rather than focusing on that, I think I'd like to really sort of honor him. Wow, I don't know if I've ever really talked about it this much. I do want to focus on sort of the magic that he carried. He was an amazing musician. I don't say that in a romantic way.

There was an ability that he had You hear these types of statements about musicians who have passed all the time. Oh, he was so good at what he did. Oh, man, he was so amazing. Well, I think he had a profound connection to his art. One that I don't want to deem as genius.

I think I would rather deem it as like a connection to the universe. Like it was weird. I mean, it was genuinely like supernatural at times. We would get together in his mom's living room and practice. I've never been good at memorizing.

I've never been proficient at anything. I've always been the person that makes a valiant effort. And I try hard. I really am. I try hard.

I never felt like I had a natural ability to do something. I always was driven by a need to try something. Learning the bass was something that I really wanted to do as a fan of Sonic Youth and the Velvet Underground and Primus as a youngster. I really wanted to do something new with the bass guitar. So I approached it in a very informal way and just trying to get messy with it.

That worked for a while. Matt and I connected and I don't even know how. I know that we met because he was in a band called Red 5, another Star Wars reference. And Red 5 was amazing. He and his fellow band member, Taylor Ryan.

Taylor was another epic, amazingly talented musician. I don't know if you ever got to see Red 5, Mark, did you? I don't think so. I met them through Jules and so Jules goes way back to those early days and I was just blown away by them. And somehow Matt and I started talking and then somehow one day I was in his living room with my bass.

We started to jam and jam is not in any way, shape or form intended to remind anybody of like jam sessions. It was like fully intentional right from the beginning to be loud and and fast, and intentional. No jam band aesthetic happening there. No fish? No fish, no Grateful Dead, no noodley things.

I wasn't good. I just wasn't good. So like, it had to be intentional. He is a natural. So Matt was the singer and drummer, and I was the bass player, and that was it.

And he, from the very first day that we practiced in that living room, He would come up with lyrics on the spot. He never, and I might be misremembering this, but I'm 99% sure he never put pen to paper. I never saw him look at a sheet of paper when recalling lyrics or coming up with lyrics. He played the drums. He knew the songs almost before we started playing them.

Not that he pre-planned them, because I know he didn't do that. And I would come up with melody. I guess we could call it melody. The portion of the song that would be played by a string instrument. And then he would come up with these lyrics.

I swear, the next time I got together, he knew what the songs were. He had to remind me what my bass parts were. And he would patiently just jump right in and allow me the time to learn them again. I came up with them on the spot, but he remembered them for me. He remembered the lyrics.

He remembered the drum parts. It was just there. That was remarkable. When I found out that he had passed the other day, I wasn't ready. This is hard to say.

I never thought that it would happen, but I knew it would happen. I don't know how to say this any other way. You know that when you're close with somebody, because he, for a very short period of time, because our band only lasted for about a year and a half, for a very short period of time, he became a brother. And every time I would see him, we didn't even have to talk. Sometimes it was weird.

Sometimes it was fine. Most of the time, it was like, he did this thing. He did this side eye thing. When I'd see him across the room, he'd like side eye me. And it's like, I know you.

It was genuinely hard, hard to be around him. And it was genuinely hard to feel like we could have those moments again. We even did a reunion show in 97, where we got back together again, and we practiced and we got ready for a reunion show. There's no footage of these things at all. Like I know that there are a few photographs in the garage that of, of he and I playing early shows at like Java cafe and stuff, but we played mostly like people's houses.

There are a couple of remarkable shows that we played. Like one time I, I think we opened up for Guttermouth. I think that was the punk band we opened up for at a skate park here in town. They let me borrow their amps because... Something was wrong with my amp and they were really nice.

This is before he and I were 21. So we opened up at the Fulton Bar. We opened up for a band called Melt Banana, which is like this phenomenal experimental band from Japan. If you look up Melt Banana, they are one of the most respected experimental punk bands. We got to open up for them, though we couldn't stay for their show because we weren't 21 yet.

Yeah. But most of the time we played just people's houses. And there was one show where we got to do where we invited our friends to play with us. So Willie Greer from Plague Mosaic and Jules and Dan Davis. Both Jules and Dan Davis have been on our Cambridge with Sean.

They formed the Bothan Spy Orchestra. We used what we called it and we played it intermezzo and it's this big thing. And we were always willing to sort of take experimental chances. I think that was mostly me just trying to like blow the thing up into weird arenas. Every step of the way, Matt was always like the foundation.

I was always wanting to put on makeup and be weird. And he was always just like, I'm just going to play the fucking music. Anyways, I've kind of been in shock all weekend. I don't know why. I also talk about it, except through the lens of the band, because we went our separate ways.

But he made a particular impact. In watching people's posts on social media and stuff, I know it was just a nice reminder of how his singular talent, talent almost like lessens his abilities. His singular talent made such a strong impression on people who are interested in music. in the local Fresno area. He never made it past the borders of Fresno. His work could have been appreciated on multiple levels internationally, I'm sure.

I know that Josh Ganshorn recorded a record of his beats, and I have it somewhere, for DJs to use. And I know that that has gotten some mileage in the DJ arena. I'm not sure if he ever really garnered any financial stability from anything like that. It's hard to talk about it. I've had my difficult relationship with alcohol and it's been like a big part of my life because I've never been good at socializing without it.

It took me a long time to figure out that, oh, I'm not really a social person naturally. And so I thought that I was and I needed that as a way to be out there. And I always felt like I needed to be out there. And that was an illusion that I lived with for a long time. And for some people, it really becomes part of them.

And that's scary to me. If there's mental illness involved, it's very hard for people to break free. And if they can, then it's a miracle. If they can't, that's so hard. And so many people, you know, have passed away early because of this stuff.

But anyways, I don't want to make it. I said I wouldn't make it about that. I just can't really not mention it because I know he struggled with that stuff. I do want to say one last thing about this is that, boy, he and I had some really scary moments. There were times where I was really uncomfortable.

There were times where I had a blast with him. When someone passes, I guess here's the thesis statement. When someone passes and you reconcile those difficult moments and you forgive at that point, that's too late. And I think human beings do this all the time. They're like, what an asshole or what a jerk or what a...

I wish that things were different or any feelings that we may have like about friends that we've had or people that we have been close to in the past, exes or whatever, like all those situations that cause us to have strong feelings about a person. Why are we so willing and interested in forgiveness? Once they passed, and I don't want to sound preachy, but try and fucking do that before they're gone. The more people that carry around hate or regret or sadness because they've been affected by another person, family, friends, whatever. I think that it's possible.

Death shows that it's possible to reconcile and maybe it shouldn't be at that stage. Maybe we need to try harder as people to be okay with other people, not meeting our expectations, not being what we would hope that they would be, that people are flawed. People are having a hard time and we spend a lot of energy trying trying hard to not understand. I'm at a stage in my life where I'm like, let's try harder. Let's try harder to appreciate or just forgive and forget type of mindset.

I have a hard time forgiving myself for things. And it's like this self-talk I have to go through almost on a daily basis. Like, I'm okay. I'm doing a good job today. And I think a lot of people have those feelings.

I don't want to just say that it's me. And so I think that if we can have those talks, we can self-talk about ourselves. We can also self-talk about others too. But man, geez, like, uh... Yeah, I don't want to get caught up in thinking like, oh, it would be great if I could have had another conversation with him.

That's your own guilt, though, about the situation. Yeah, exactly. It doesn't do you any good, really, because there's no way that happens. Yeah, it's true. And he made, like you said, he made some choices in his life that was, back in those days, that's, I think he had a reputation for.

I mean, I know personally I saw him and his girlfriend at Cafe Intermezzo numerous times in not good condition. And that was mid-90s. That was 30-something years ago. And you can't make people get the help that you wish for them, unfortunately. That's true.

I mean, I like what you're saying because you can't make people get the help that they need. The parallel statement that I think needs to be in... that kind of observation is that we may not be able to do much, but we can try to maybe understand, I think. And that's the part that I have the hardest time with. So I think most importantly, I feel lucky or fortunate to have been a part of a really exciting era in Fresno's music scene. and history, the mid nineties were a really very cool time. And I know it's, there's still cool shit happening.

I'm not like part of it. It was a magical time and there were some severely talented people. Something that I'm going to talk about in the next episode is sometimes there are eras in art, whether it be music or visual arts or film or whatever, where There's very little evidence of it having existed, except for people talking about it and people sharing the stories and sharing what they have, the evidence of that, of those things. I know that his, if we want to use the word legacy, his legacy will maintain in a variety of ways. It's just stuff that happened in the 70s, 80s, 90s.

If it wasn't recorded on a tape player, like a handheld tape recorder, or wasn't recorded on somebody's gigantic VHS recorder thing, there's a good chance that some stuff won't exist in time. The oral recollections or the occasional rolls of film that people develop and unearth and things like that become kind of gold. Anyways, that's my contribution to today's stuff. I'll say this about IG-88. The intermezzo shows were some of my favorites.

Yeah. And I went to a lot of stuff back in the mid-90s, mid to late 90s. Yeah. I would always request my favorite song. I don't know if you remember which song that was.

Was it Half Dome? Nope. Gooseboxer? Nope. It was about a person, a famous Armenian.

Blanking out. Who helped kill people, or helped them die, I should say. Oh, Kevorkian. The Kevorkian. Oh God, what was the name of that song?

Kevorkian 2000 or something like that. Kevorkian 99 or something like that. Yeah. Oh my God. There were a lot of songs that in listening back to... the CD that you helped me digitize and put on the SoundCloud, I'm realizing there were about 10 other songs that we used to play that never made it to the recording.

And I know that somewhere... There is a cassette tape that I recorded of us practicing for the 1997 reunion show. We went and we borrowed the Circus Bogus practice space to get ready for those shows, which, by the way, was so cool because they had a disintegrating... Chuck E. Cheese animatronic in that space.

It was just so cool to see up close. Yeah, I know that there are some of those songs like Kevorkian 99. I think it was Kevorkian 99. I'm pretty sure it was Kevorkian 2000. There's a bunch of songs that I just don't remember because they weren't recorded.

I mean, speaking of things that were not recorded that happened, gathering evidence of these things can be hard, especially if they happened during an era where people just weren't recording everything. Yeah, those are fun shows. Yeah. It was a really, really exciting time for experimental punk music. Fresno bands are doing all kinds of weird shit.

It was fun. Right. So if you're rejoining us at this point, talking about less sad stuff. Yeah. I had a little discovery.

Gosh, I don't know when that happened now because we haven't recorded in a while. The Munch Bunch versus Cutie Fruities saga escalated when I, on my own, through my Instagram feed, saw... familiar face and just was blown away and was bugging this guy for information and I did a little update so if you also watch my stuff on YouTube you've already heard this story I don't know what the crossover is here I just thought I'd mention it since we've talked about these things so much that those are Six particular characters that are pencil toppers and wind-up toys were also turned into kind of large bendy figures, like five or so inch tall bendy figures. So the arms and legs were bendy like Gumby or whatever.

The exact same designs were used for these by a company called Emakita, which is nearly impossible to search for because Makita tools. Oh my gosh, yeah. Keeps getting forced down my throat. Yeah. But also since, I mean, who knows what, I can't find any information about these things.

In Akita, I found a little bit of information about Japanese toy maker products. mostly tin toys, though. So this was some weird offshoot. Other than that picture from this Instagram user, I have found nothing else about these. So it was the banana figure, exactly the same design as the pencil topper. I mean, pretty much exactly.

And then on the back of the sides of the box, it's a weird triangular box. The other six characters are there. Mr. Grape, Mr. Apple, Miss Pear, Mr.

Pineapple. I always forget a couple. And Miss Orange. The designs are exactly the same on the back of that box. So question about the materials used, because the bendy figures are usually rubber.

Yeah. It's the harder rubber that can still be malleable. Is there some weight to them? Because those bodies... How the fuck would I know?

I mean. Did you not get one? The Bendy figure? Yeah. No.

Oh, okay. Yeah, I haven't even been able to track down any other information about him. I thought maybe you found one that you were able to buy. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, I would have told you that.

I think that they must be heavy. If they're five inches tall, their bodies must be solid rubber. If it's solid, yeah. I don't know. I can't tell from the pictures that this guy's sent or has whether he's taken it out of the box.

I mean, I could bug him again and say, hey, can you take it out and take more pictures? Can you weigh him for us? Yeah, I was already bugging this guy with tons of questions, and he was kind enough to send some extra pictures. Yeah, that's awesome. Really.

Guy's got a huge collection. Someday, someday you'll get them. Probably the main reason I'm talking about it here is because we tend to unearth these things when we talk about them. The zeitgeist. Yeah, I've been looking online and on eBay, and then I found out about this website by watching Toy Palloy called JP Fans, where It's like a proxy service where you can order stuff from Japanese sites that don't normally ship to the U.S.

So somebody buys them for you in Japan or they buy them for you from the seller there and then they inspect it and repackage it and send it to you here. I thought, oh, well, maybe I could find something there and nope. Interesting. Don't even find any of their tin toys by using that in Makita on JP fans. So I have no idea how I'll stumble across anything again, if not just by chance.

That's probably a good way to get those little blind box things that they have, like those Gremlins blind boxes you could get from the Gachapon. Yeah. That's right. That's probably how you can get that stuff. Yeah.

Toy Palloy is buying mostly like Micronauts and things like that and stuff that you can't get outside of Japan. I've actually looked at some Microman stuff on there, too, and the prices really aren't that bad. I don't know. We'll see what happens. It was a trip, though, seeing that.

And actually, that to me is more interesting than the wind up figures because they are So exact, and it's basically the same kind of material as the pencil topper's rubber. It's Gumby material. Bendy figures are made out of that dense rubber. It makes me think those things will last forever. Yeah, I don't know if there's a hole in the bottom of them like there would be on the pencil topper or not.

If they're solid, they would probably be pretty substantial. Because I have a Mr. Bill that's five inches, and it's fairly heavy. It's not just one big lump of rubber. material like the banana is. I'd really like to see the other ones, though, other than just the pictures on the box.

Well, now that we've talked about it, those images will just pop up in your feed. Zeitgeist gods, do your magic. Yeah, make it happen. Your recent build video of your version of this character, the banana one, is so good. I love that you're doing this.

He turned out pretty good. I was happy with that. That and Mr. Grape and probably our original burger are the ones that feel like, okay, I got pretty close here. Yeah.

I have the burger that I made when we made our burgers on display at my antique store booth that I'm going to talk about here. Not for sale. Yeah. It's been getting a lot of attention. Every time I'm in there and I happen to be in the space and somebody comes through, they are like, whoa, I remember those.

And I'm like, you know what? My friend and I made some of these. They're nearly impossible to find the fiberglass version of these things. So Well, that's a good transition, I guess, to talking about something else. Staying in the positive vein, I guess.

Yeah, that's what people are here for. I had this interest and I wasn't sure... if it would actually happen. Over the past year or so, I've been really looking at my collection critically. It started off when I moved my little office into the spare bedroom. And then when I moved it out, back out into the dining room area where I have been all these years, I've been thinking critically about the stuff that I want to genuinely hold on to and the stuff I could probably let go of.

I've done the eBay thing. It's so annoying to do eBay. It's tedious. Plus, sometimes you think something's going to gain some traction on there, but it never does. It gets hardly any views or whatever.

And then sometimes it works out. I've set up a couple of outdoor booths here locally in our town here. And that's always been fun to put your stuff out on a table and sell your wares, so to speak. But I've always loved antique stores. And I've always fantasized about having a booth at an antique store.

I reached out to a couple of different places. Someone said, okay, like fairly recently in August, an antique store in Old Town Clovis, you just mentioned that you were down there and you sent me a picture from my booth, which is cool. Yep. We saw it. So this Clovis Old Town Trading Company said yes to my proposal.

And my proposal was like, look, I have some contemporary collectibles. I have a few vintage things. I have some oddball art stuff, too, that, you know, I'd be tempted to show in there. And I thought for sure an antique store would be like, not enough antiques or we're not really interested in showing Castle Grayskull or a hamburger or But they were really excited, actually. So they reached out to me and they said, yeah, come on over.

We'll have a look at the space. It's a cool little back room. So you walk through the entire sort of traditional antique store and you make your way to the back room. And so I've got a lot of Masters of the Universe stuff in there that over the years, I've thought being super excited about contemporary Masters of the Universe toys, I've slowly realized like, oh, the reason why I love this stuff is because I am in love with the vintage stuff. So So I'm paring down that collection.

There's some Black Series Star Wars stuff, but then I've got some interesting odds and ends over there too. The sentimental stuff, like gifts, stuff that I had as a kid, stuff that I didn't have as a kid that I really wanted, things like that I've kept behind me here. I still have three drawers over there of things that I can slowly move over to the antique store booth. Also, another thing that's exciting about this venture is that Like I've been having a lot of fun looking at Facebook marketplace, looking for people who are selling off odd things, trying to see what I can find and get a good deal on and put in the booth. And so it's a way to sort of continuously stay involved with the collecting bug or the collecting drive while knowing I can showcase it in a space that serves as kind of like an art gallery approach and allow people to purchase them too.

It's been fun. I'm excited to be doing this and excited to take this on, especially when I'm in between. I don't even know if I can use the word in between since I'm not taking on any commissions right now. I'm not out there building something. It's a good way to stay creative.

So that's been occupying my creative brain lately, which has been nice. I love reorganizing my collection and moving stuff around. doing that at home is fun, but now I can do it in this other space too. So selfishly, it's kind of like a storage unit that I get to curate, but I can also, you know, make a few bucks here and there off of that stuff to make back some of the money I've put into that collection. So I was a little surprised. I'm like, wait a minute.

All this stuff is the crap we talk about on this show. What are you doing? Yeah. What's really exciting about that is that, well, first of all, I don't have the real estate at home to keep a lot of stuff around. But second of all, everything that we've talked about in the show is represented in some way or another behind me here.

It's been like really exciting to pare down the collection to the things that really matter, that really like carry emotional and sentimental resonance. An example of this might be like if Mattel suddenly decides to make a bunch of rock balls that look exactly like the versions of your vintage ones, right? And then you might be excited. You might think, oh shit, well, I got to get those too. I'm going to go out there and find those.

And for the first couple of years, it might be like amazing to have a thousand rock balls that are newer, that are honoring the vintage version. But then when it comes down to it, five years later, you might be like, that's a lot of rock balls. Now, what do I want to hold onto these newer ones? Or do I want to maintain the nostalgic value and just keep the ones around that I fell in love with at the beginning? Probably won't ever happen with rock balls, but you never know.

I don't think I would buy new versions to begin with. Maybe a bad example to use. Well, you're a lot more disciplined than I am. I get really excited about something and I have a hard time holding back. That's live and learn, I guess.

Even the little things like the yellow dinosaurs that you gave me, I'm never going to get rid of those. I'm sorry to my daughters that'll have to like sift through this stuff. Yeah. That has sentimental value to me. I've got them right here.

I'm looking at them. They're sitting right here on my grandparents' Armenian Bible. It's a process. I'm garnering some joy from this process. Well, that's good.

My selectiveness is born out of what I mentioned earlier, and I'm a cheapskate, and I just can't buy everything. I mean, I've been looking. We probably won't do a Christmas episode this year like we've done in the past because I don't think either of us have bought a whole lot. Yeah. Yeah.

The only thing that I've bought fairly recently was that Mr. Bubble vintage collection box thing. So cool. That was really because it was under $ 20. Heck yeah.

He's been sitting on my little work bench since I got it. But anyway, yeah, that's like the only thing I can think of having bought in I don't know how many months. I got something on eBay. But anyway. Yeah, we probably won't do an episode like that again this year because there's not much to talk about.

Yeah, I've been kind of hankering for something to get and I keep looking at stuff. Everything's 40 bucks or more and I'm just not willing to spend 40 bucks on something. And I'm looking for stuff that, yeah, might be fun to have, but it's not a rock ball or a freakies thing or a McDonald's thing that really hits a very nostalgic part of me. And so it's like, well, what's the point? Why buy this thing for $ 40?

You're absolutely right. The thing that's been nagging at me lately is the PlaySchool McDonald's restaurant play set. Yeah. And that used to be a lot more affordable to try and get. But now they're ridiculous.

They're ridiculous. And the ones that are affordable, the peeling stickers, all that stuff. So, yeah, I'm with you on that, too. It's hard. And so we'll see.

We'll see how that goes. Sometimes something will pop up and it'll be a really good deal and you get really lucky. A good example of this is we brought up Jules earlier. Jules got me a birthday gift that I'm really excited to reveal. And now is just not the time.

He got me a gift. And this is an example of how sometimes something shows up if you're keeping an eye out and you set those notifications on eBay or whatever, and you're perusing Facebook Marketplace or whatever you do, that sometimes something might pop up that's a really good deal or something. And I hate to say this, maybe the person selling it doesn't know what they have. Or a friend of mine just posted that he found a vintage Snake Mountain playset at a thrift store in Fresno for $ 3. He was missing a couple of pieces, but that means that the staff didn't know.

That means that the person who donated it didn't know. I don't think the staff get involved with what people are selling their stuff for, though. I've seen videos of people who work at Goodwill who are like, look what I found. And, you know, it's like, well, yeah, that's a different. Sometimes cool feels cool. to show up.

So I keep looking for the PlaySchool McDonald's restaurant play set. I'm not going to stop looking. I did get the banana Franconia wind-up. That's the one thing I ordered off. Ah, yeah.

That's cool. eBay and that. Prior to that, the last one I had gotten in April was the Miss Pear Walker. That's kind of it for the year. I splurged. I haven't talked about it at all on the channel or anything, but I used some birthday... season pull to get the NECA big bird that showed up at target the big ass NECA ultimates big bird it's pretty amazing it's hard everything's so damn expensive now it's tough it's really tough yep there's a variety of reasons why and there's a variety of reasons why everything's making me angry too but that's a whole other conversation which you and I seem to get around to having That's it, I guess.

If you all went on this emotional journey with us, thank you so much for hanging out with us and doing the thing with us. I know that the next episode will be back in the swing of things, so to speak. No promises. I keep saying that at the end of these episodes. We'll see how it goes.

We'll see how it plays out. Any last thoughts before we sign off, Mark? Nope. All right. Remember, folks, until we meet again, have fun, stay weird, and keep collecting.

Talk it out! Talk it out! Talk it out! Good night. Good night.

Good night. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. Down to the middle.

Josh, I'm going to have to tell them about my weirdness. I'm sorry, Josh. Cambridge and Michon is a Weirding Way Media Podcast.