Passenger Seat Radio Episode 2023-12-23

Hello everybody. This is Shane R Monroe. You’re in the passenger seat with me. It’s passenger seat radio. It is December 23rd, 2023. And we are in vacation mode in my hot tub in the backyard. How’s everybody doing? And Merry Christmas, happy holidays, blah, blah, blah. So this will be our, uh this will be our Christmas edition of Passenger C Radio for 2023. How is everybody doing? Hopefully everybody’s got some good holiday stuff figured out the uh presents are wrapped and placed under the tree and you got the stockings, uh hung by the chimney with care and all that good stuff. So I thought it might be fun to uh, talk about some of the, uh my Christmas past. Always good stories here. And I think I may have told these on the show at least once, probably twice in the, in the past. But, you know, we have viewers that come and go or listeners, I should say that come and go. And so it’s always fun to reminisce about these things. And plus it might be fun to go back and see if any of the details change as I tell these stories, you know, the older I get long COVID, uh slower brain fog, that sort of thing, you know, it might be fun to go back and compare. But anyway, yes, I am still sick. You can tell in my voice. I just did a video yesterday about uh surviving the steam winter sale. And uh, several of you wrote in and said, hey, you, you sound uh, you sick. You sound kind of funny. It’s like, yeah, yeah, I can’t get rid of this head cold. And, um, honestly, my wife, my wife’s been sick, excuse me for a week, let me grab some drink here. My wife’s been sick for well over a week and it looked like hers was going away for a day or two and then it just slammed her right back in the head and in her case, the chest too. So she’s still not doing well. My son is doing fine. He’s got a tad bit of the cough, but nothing big. I’m, uh, I’m still dealing with a cough and congestion and stuff. So, yeah, that’s why I sound weird. Hey, Flare, what’s up? So I woke up this morning and, uh, we’re watching my mother in law’s dogs again and so I got up with the dogs this morning so that my wife could sleep in. Get some extra rest. Sorry, this is going to be a bad episode, isn’t it? I’m gonna keep drinking. I’ll do my best not to clear my throat too often, but I make no promises. So I got up with the dogs and I rolled over and crawled on the couch and snoozed a little bit. Then I got up and checked my email and, uh, I absolutely love this time of year actually, you know, it’s every holiday, but Christmas is a little bit better. Right. So, all of these vendors that you’ve ever done business with and maybe have your email address on hand. It’s like every one of them want you to buy their stuff as a gift for somebody else. And the email, the the email subject is always, is always a ST still need something for a gift or still need a Christmas gift sss. It always starts with like they’re gonna tell you the the big dark secret of the ages, right? And then usually you can tell by the sender that it’s something completely ridiculous, right? Um You know, it’s like, uh you know, a news bucket. I think I used them for two minutes, one time. A use net provider. I use them for like two seconds every holiday. You still need a last minute Christmas gift and you open it up and it’s like give the gift of use net. I’m like, well, shit, I was gonna send my mom a fruit basket but goddamn it 60% off of use net per month. Goddamn it. Mom’s getting use net for Christmas. Ok. So great. Some of the, you know, it’s not like, it’s not like Amazon or, or Target or Walmart send you these things. It’s these little esoteric type things, you know, it’s, uh, like X Arcade, I haven’t seen theirs yet this year, but it’ll come. X Arcade makes these, uh, big giant arcade control panels for your PC, for those of you who don’t know. And, uh, it’s, uh, you know, it’s literally like as narrow of a field as humanly possible. Like who, first off, first off these, none of these things are cheap, right? They’re 100 bucks or more. So the last minute Christmas gift, hopefully you’re not looking to spend $300 on a control panel with a roller ball, you know what I’m saying? But in case you are, there’s a little something over here for you and then after Christmas it will be the whole, didn’t get what you wanted for Christmas. Yeah. Yeah, it’s like, you know, these X arcade control panels, you know, I don’t even have any of these around anymore. I used to, I used to have like one of all of them, you know, I had, well, you know what, I think I still have the hot rod but, you know, I used to have an X arcade. I used to have that custom arcade. I had all that shit, you know, and it’s like, now it’s like I need a little something for uncle Joe. Yeah. Don’t you remember Uncle Joe used to take care of you when you were a baby. Why not treat him to the ultimate Christmas gift of a X arcade tank controller with roller ball and spinner? So awesome. Anyway, yeah, so I, I love, I love emails around the holidays because you know, your box gets filled with these things. Ok. Yeah, winter steam sales started. You know, it’s funny, the longer you go as a steam user and the more seasons you’ve seen the less useful steam sales become right? Because you start to be able to see the, you start to see the patterns in the code. It’s like your cipher staring at the matrix sprawl and you see the blonde, the redhead, the brunette. Yeah, I mean, you can pretty much like, load up any steam sale event. It’s like, oh, gee, there’s Skyrim for 15 bucks. Shocker. Hey, there’s the witcher for nine bucks. Shocker. Oh, my God. Tropico Six is on sale. Goddamn it. I’ve already passed on it. The last 900 sales, I guess I’m gonna get it this time. Uh, um, but so I shared, uh, I did a little video talking about how to survive the steam sales and, you know, it’s funny I wasn’t gonna do it. I just wanted to put a little something out over the weekend. Um, next week I’m gonna get back into my normal, uh, my normal cadence and crapping out videos every two seconds. But, you know, I thought I’d just calm down a little bit, take a few days off, but I wanted to put something out, you know, keep the algorithm alive. And so I was, I thought, you know what I’ve already done, like the, you know, best games you don’t know about in the Steam, steam summer sale, you know. So I pick up the, you know, I pick out like 10 games that nobody’s played or even heard about and I, I feature them and I thought I might do that again for the winter sale. It’s like God, you know, I’ve done that. What about, what about I share the secrets of how I find things to buy. Like every single sale I have a wish list, right? And every time that, um, every time that I won a game and I, and I put it on my wish list, I sort of have an idea. What’s the most I’m gonna pay for this game, right. So, it’s not, when does this game go on sale? But it’s more a matter of when does this game hit the price threshold? I’m willing to pay for it. But the, but it’s like you have to hop through these hoops, right? So you go to steam, you know, you go to your wish list. Uh There’s Spiderman, it’s on sale because of course it is. It’s like, no, it’s only 35. It’s 3599. Not my threshold, not my threshold, not my threshold. So, you know, and steam will send you, you know, email after email. Hey, something on your wish list is on sale, get it for you or for a friend. I know dad’s been wanting, you know, the tropical collection far Cry six. So anyway, so um and I thought, you know, maybe some people don’t know about, you know, steam info dot DB and you know how you might be able to utilize that to help you make intelligent decisions on your steam buying needs around these holiday specials. And uh you know, basic sales throughout the year. And so I thought about it. I said, God, no one’s gonna watch this. This is gonna be boring. There’s probably 100 of these out there, thousands of these out there. It is youtube after all. And I’d like. And what would I even use, what would I even use for a thumbnail? You know, what would you use for a thumbnail for that? A big picture of the steam winter sale header. And then it hit me. Holy shit. Get old Jack Torrance from the shining frozen with his eyes rolled up and his little teeth sticking out. That would be the greatest thumbnail ever for surviving the winter sale. And so once I had, once I knew the thumbnail, this is so funny. I wasn’t going to do the video until I had the thumbnail figured out once I had the thumbnail. It’s like, oh fuck it. I’m doing it. And it’s funny because I recorded it like four or five different times cause I highlighted different things and I got a little too, into the weeds a couple of times and I did a video on um choice paralysis, right? How do you, how do you know what to buy or how to break the cycle of, you know, there’s too much shit to own too much shit to buy. How do I get around that? Uh And I ended up recovering some of that stuff and it’s like, no, no, no, I gotta keep this short. I gotta keep this short. So I reshot it a bunch of times and then finally I threw my hands up and said, I’m not gonna do it. I’m not gonna release it. And then the thumbnail idea came to me. It’s funny how a thumbnail idea can like pressure you into doing a video too funny. But yeah, yeah. Not much in the steam sail for me this time around. Um, a couple of the games are getting closer. Like, uh the Life Is Strange series. I’ve been wanting to pick a couple of those up. The Remaster and True Colors. I’m ashamed to admit that I played True Colors Pirated the entire uh way through. And so, uh I wanted to pick that up, but it’s not something I would pay more than about $15 for. Right. So I got a threshold on what I’m willing to pay and now it’s like 1799. You go, oh, what’s a couple of bucks? No sticking to my guns. Not gonna buy it until I can get it for 1499. And it’ll come, it’ll happen. It’ll happen. So, just biding my time waiting for the right deals. I really would like to have Spiderman. I really would. But 2499 is what I want to pay for it and it simply will not drop to that price. Not at least yet. So we’ll hold out, it’ll get there. It’s almost there on great uh key shops, right? Like if you go to CD D, uh uh um what’s it? Was it cheap digital downloads? You go there and you can have it for like $27 right after, you know, tax tipping gratuity to the key shops. So it’s like, wow, that’s close. But nope, nope, nope, nope. When, if I could get to the key shops for $25 delivered, including the fees and all that other stupid shit. Yeah. Yeah, I’d probably pick that up but holding out, I’m holding out game that a longtime friend of the show Chris Hensel recommended. It’s called The Tiny Rogues Rogues like R ogu E Tiny Rogues. And it’s one of those, you know, eight bit pixelated, you know, roguelike type games and most of the time I give them a pass. Right? Iii I there’s too many of those, you know, I was looking at, um, I was looking at a couple of websites that offer Steam sale, uh, ideas and these are the best things you can get for the Steam sale. And like the entire freaking list is littered with games. You’ve never heard of that are eight bit chunky pixel side scroll or whatever. I mean, it’s the same, it’s the same formula. I mean, they just, they must be able to kick these out quick. Maybe there’s a uh maybe there’s like a game maker or a point and click creator that lets people put these games out really fast cause there’s so many of them. So when uh when Chris was talking about it, he would, you know, and he’s like, this has all got me sucked down. I’ve been playing it every night. It’s like, uh I don’t know. And then he mentioned something about, he was gonna buy it for all of our close circle of friends for Christmas. But you know, the sale ended and you know, he didn’t want to pay retail for it and I’m like, goddamn it. If he’s, if he was gonna give it away for Christmas, maybe I better take a look. So I went to, you know, cheap digital downloads. I managed to get a copy for like $3.20 something crazy like that. And that’s been my sort of night time uh my evening uh chill fest, right? And so this game, uh it, it has no real end to it, right? So you gotta, you gotta come to terms with, this is a game you’ll never quote finish. Apparently they just released a big Christmas update. And so this information, but I’m gonna tell you about does not include that information because I haven’t played it since the update. But essentially the concept is, is you pick a class and each class has some sort of different skill set or different weapon. You start off with blah, blah, blah and you go room by room kind kind of like a little Zelda almost. So you enter a bio, which is ridiculous because the biomes don’t mean anything other than you’ll see these types of creatures in this biome, but you won’t see the other creatures until you see, get to this bio. Right? I mean, it all listen, this is the most rudimentary graphic game I’ve ever seen. I’m relatively sure the Commodore 64 could produce this game with no problem and still have like 14,000 KB remaining, you know. But, uh, so the idea is, is it’s a, it’s twin stick style, right? So you fire with the, with the right analog stick and you move with the left analog stick. So, you know, I’m a sucker for those. Anyway, I’ll, I’ll give a pass to almost anything that has that control mechanism if it’s even remotely fun. And so every room you have two possible exits. Once you clear out all the bad guys and they tell you what’s behind each exit. Some exits will require a key, some will require a bomb that you blow up the rubble that’s covering it. And when I say rubble, I’m talking about a grayish mixture of like 20 pixels. I’m not kidding about this whole pixel art thing. And then you go to the next room and typically speaking what it promised you above the doorway you get when you clear the room. So it’s like, you know, refill one heart container. So you go to that room, you kill everybody and then whatever gets dropped at the end is the refill one heart container. Sometimes though it will be a shop or a bar or a buyback facility, right? So you gather a whole bunch of shitty weapons you’re not going to use over time and you sell them off, get the gold, buy shit. You do want there’s places to upgrade your, you know, weaponry, there’s events, they call them events and you don’t know what it’s going to be until you get in there. But normally it’s something good sometimes it will, you know, take a heart from you or something, but normally you go and it’s like there’s a tree here. Would you like to examine the bark? Yes. Weapon plus one, you know, I mean, that’s really what it is. I wish I were kidding. Um So the events are, you know, pallet swaps sometimes and you’re seeing to yourself. God, how could this even remotely be interesting? Well, honestly, I don’t know, but it is. And so you move from room to room, each room has more different new bad guys and in some cases it can become like a bullet hell scenario, right? So there’s, there’s not even 20 but maybe 10 bad guys on the screen. Each one of them are throwing tons and tons of missiles, area effects, lobbing area effect grenades, that sort of thing. And so, you know, the higher up you get, there’s 10 floors to conquer. 10 Biomes to conquer with a boss at the end of each one. And each bio has, I think like two or three different bosses and you actually get achievements for defeating all of the bosses for a given bio, for example. And, you know, again, there’s, there’s no real creative writing going on here, like uh remember that game Un Epic, you know, Un Epic was sort of well un epic in terms of, you know, the game play and the mechanics, but the writing was really good. And so you kind of stuck around just to see what sort of quips and shit you might say that that’s not this one. You know, there’s, there’s really no writing involved. So it’s really a pickup throw down 1015, 20 minutes and then put it away and, you know, you can feel the feel you can feel fulfilled, man. I have trouble saying that when I’m not sick uh just to sit down and knock out, excuse me, give me, give me a drink here. Um So you can feel, feel fulfilled by just sitting down with a quick session. So that’s kind of nice. Uh But the game is like super cheap, I mean, like right now it’s under $5 I believe on steam and you can get it cheaper if you go digging around. And so sort of the, the long term progress of the game is as you’re playing, you, you, you get souls, right? You rescue these little souls and then at the end of the, of the the session, you feed the souls into this fire and the fire will um grant you the ability to purchase uh you know, Perma Perma upgrades, right? Uh get five, you know, just get 5% discount in the store and um deal x more damage. So essentially you, you’re playing for the purpose of getting better to play again, right? Uh Standard formula. I mean, I shouldn’t be explaining anything new here, but it’s, it’s well done. I mean, it’s, it’s addictive and you know, I figured I better talk about it here on the channel. I’ve been uh augmenting my four K collection. Um Javier Friend of the show has been getting more into uh purchasing four K and Blu Ray. The, the physical media trend is coming back. Thank God. The streaming shit is for the fucking birds. Um I’ll be curious to see if uh Best Buy continues there. Uh No more physical media next year, we’re gonna close them out. We’re not gonna do them anymore. But I have a weird feeling that, you know, because right now if you go to, to Walmart, there’s a bigger vinyl section than there is movie section and you’re like, what the fuck did that happen? Right. I mean, that’s, that’s great. You know, I’ve been getting a little more interested in vinyl myself, you know. Um speaking of Javier, he just sent me um El Os El Dorado vinyl, which I just bought on CD recently because I didn’t own it for some reason. Um And that has a great, that has a great warm fuzzy memory, right? My, uh my dad collects vinyl or he used to collect vinyl and he still has a huge collection of them and, you know, the really expensive Kenwood turn tape, I mean, expensive for the time. God only knows. But um he, you know, he had all the good stereo equipment and he treated vinyl like they were made of gold, you know, uh there were rules for handling it. You couldn’t get into the record yourself. You had to have him help you. He had the, you know, he had the expensive record cleaner and Polisher, he had the whole ba I mean, he was, he was in he was in for vinyl. Uh Not, not so much anything after that, which I thought was interesting. He, he started and ended with vinyl and, you know, now he’ll buy the occasional CD and rip it using audio grabber. Yeah. And if you, if you don’t get the joke, I talked about this last episode. But, um yeah, and I remember panning through his record library, you know, Steely Dan and Creedence Clearwater revival and, and uh you know, I came across this album cover. That was The Wizard of Oz. Anyway. Well, that’s cool. And so the album cover, if you’ve never seen it or you’re too lazy to Google it essentially as a close up of the Ruby slippers and the Wicked Witch of the West um hands pointed at it like she’s gonna like try to, you know, try to get him and there’s like electricity coming out like in the movie, right? She tried to get the slippers off and it like shocked her. And so they, they, they, they grab, I don’t think they grabbed the frame. I think they remade it. I don’t think they would have gotten away with grabbing a frame. But, you know, can you copyright Ruby Slippers and Green Hands? I don’t think so. That’s probably how they got away with it. They didn’t use a still from the movie. They, they just made their own. But I remember looking at that going, this is so fucking cool. And that, that was my first click in vinyl, right? So it’s kind of come full circle. But the first time I saw that it’s like, suddenly I’m interested in vinyl. I’m suddenly I’m interested in what my dad’s listening to. And so I asked him if we could put it on, you know, he had those, you know, $300 realistic heads, you know, headphones with those big giant, massive padded earpieces, you know, and you can, I’ll tell you what, say, whatever you want about that old shit. God, that was comfortable. You could sit with those headphones on for hours and I’m pretty soon you’d even forget you were wearing them. That’s how great they were. Total sound isolation, right? You don’t need, you don’t need them. You know, you don’t need a PX and, and, you know, Bluetooth seven and all this other shit, you just put these things on and you were completely cut off from the outside world. It was perfect. It was c wired, of course. But the wire was like comically long on these headphones, right? Yeah. Like if you buy a pair of headphones now it comes with like a 3 ft 4 ft 6 ft cable. No, no, no, no, no. This thing, this thing was like 17 ft long and that’s before he stretched it out. You know, I could almost plug the headphones in, in the living room where the stereo was and, like, go all the way back to my bedroom because that’s how long that goddamn cord was. It was quality too, you know, and he didn’t have to replace that shit every six months anyway. So I asked him to put this on and uh it was, it was um, I don’t know, listen, nobody’s ever heard the overture of El Dorado except for like two people. Me, my dad and maybe Javier now because he bought the vinyl too. But it’s really, really cool if you like Elo, of course, but it’s got this, it’s got this really great degree of separation between the earpieces, you know, the left and right. It was really the first time I’d experienced um serious stereo separation, right? And, and, and even in the car, most cars, even though they had two speakers were like mono. So it was the same shit coming out of both or worse yet, both speakers played one channel, which was even worse because if you listen to like Tommy James and the Shan Dells, they were one of the, the early groups that really explored stereo sound. There’s um a, a song of theirs. I know I’m, I’m going all over the place, but I wanna get it all out. There’s a song of theirs called 12, three great song. Um But like all of the uh uh verses are in one channel while the chorus is in both channels. So you, you listen to this on a car that only has one speaker or a mono speaker that is only playing the right side or whatever. Um I hear you. We’re not going in yet soon, soon, let me finish my show. Um And like you’re sitting here listening to the song, it’s like where the fuck are the lyrics at? It’s like I can kind of hear him just a little bit but what the hell and all of a sudden the chorus kicks in and you’re like, what, what the fuck’s going on? Why is this broken? But yeah, you know, so, you know that El Dorado was really the first time I kinda got that. It was a lot of firsts right there, right? I mean, the first time I sort of got my parents’ music, the first time I was introduced and fell in love with Elo the first time I heard and could really appreciate, you know, true audio separation and channel separation, right? And it was just, it was a, it was just a, it was a magical moment and, you know, I think about that album frequently, you know, I think about it when I see my parents and I look at their, his vinyl collection that, that’s the one that sticks out that El Dorado with that fucking ruby slippers on the cover. And uh yeah, so anyway, I mean, I’ve had a rip of it forever but, you know, I finally broke down. I bought the CD and Javier just sent me the vinyl. Thank you, Javier. Uh Nice little Christmas gift there. Um And this is, and it reminded me, this whole thing reminded me because when I played it on the turntable that Javier also sent me, God bless him. Um One of the channels isn’t playing right now, whether or not the, the so it’s kind of sounded like it was in the car with that one speaker that was only tied to one channel, right? So when you listen to um this overture for uh for uh the El Dorado album from Elo, there’s a, a spot like right in the, within the first minute where they go El Dorado, El Dorado. And it’s got this echo like it’s echoing through a canyon but it echoes in your head. It echoes between your ears, El Dora, El Dora, El Dora, El Dora, El Dora and it, and it echoes between your earpieces and it was really, really cool. I was like God, I was just blown away, you know, but I noticed that, um, that with this overture on this turntable that it’s, it’s missing a channel. So, but anyway, I love it. I have the, I have the uh the record cover front center, I have the album sitting right there where I can see it every day, every day that I come in. So it’s kind of a, it’s kind of like I said, a full circle type scenario. Bye that these studios leak them because they know, listen, they know that people like me are gonna buy these fucking disks. It doesn’t matter if I could get it for free I wanna own. So, what’s the, I mean, obviously it kind of makes silly sense that they would release their entire product for free. Um But yeah, I mean, what a great, I mean, you know, these people are buying them anyway, so I ran, stop it. So I ran across, um, I ran across cats side, the old Stephen King movie, the, the trilogy wrap around story movie. And it’s like, well, shit, I didn’t know this was out on four K. How did I not know this? This is like one of my favorite movies. And so, you know, a little bit of Googling, a little research later it turns out that it came out in the UK, but it’s never been here and it’s like, ok, well, II I would import a Cat’s Eye. That’s one of my favorite movies. So, um I was gonna import it like, well, let me grab it. You know, the copy that’s there looks like it’s the full deal. It’s like 50 gigabytes. You know what I’m saying? Knock it off you two. Um Maybe I should go let him in and then I could, uh just come back here. Hang on, let me go, let them in. All right, let’s go. You two. Come on, get the house. Come on, Macy, Macy. Oh, you’re there you are. It’s like Russ, get in there. All right. Now that the, uh, dogs are no longer whining in my ear, get back in the tub, finish the show. So I grabbed the, uh, the four K Ultra HD and I watched it last night and you know, the problem with four K. So the catalog titles are usually the better movies that are on four K, right? I mean, we could go into a little discussion of this but typically speaking, um shot on film, right? Cause film has no real resolution. I mean, there’s a a proposed resolution based on the emulsion of the film and all this other stuff, but it’s like 32 K or something like if you have good quality film that was shot, right? You know, you could, you could upscale that to 32 K. So the studios have plenty of opportunity to make money in the future, right? Um So a lot of these catalog titles also have like no special effects. There’s I mean, they’re all opticals or composited which of course makes it a pain in the ass to clean them and and get them out. But for the most part, the catalog titles often look very, very good while your newer movies that are shot on digital sometimes shot in like not four K resolution. So weird like uh I can’t remember which ones, the early, the the prequels of Star Wars, all the effect shots were done at 1080 P or something. I don’t remember what it was. I’d have to go look again, but essentially it’s bullshit. Right. I mean, it’s, it, you know, you Star Wars and Four K gotta have it. It’s like, well then you find out it’s really just an upscale from 1080 P because of all the shitty effect shots that Lucas had to add later. Uh in some cases, like with Star Trek the next generation, which you know, I know there’s a huge following for the next generation. Never really worked for me. Uh My wife loved it though and they did, they really went back to, I mean, it cost them millions of dollars, but they went back to the, the negatives, the studio negatives and did all the effect shots again, right? Imagine that. Imagine like every effect shot in Star Trek the next generation. Every season, every episode they had, they redid them all and rec composited them all to make sure that it didn’t look like shit. Now, Voyager, which is one of my favorite, you know, for me, it’s, you know, the original series Voyager and then from there, I can’t make up my mind what my next third one might be. Um But uh Voyager was like shot on tape. We’re totally fucked. The there’s no way that we’re going to get any sort of a decent copy of Voyager ever, right? It’s so crazy. Um But anyway, um So a lot of these catalog movies look really good. The problem is, is with the um with the scanning process, sometimes the film grain of the film also gets enhanced. So it’s actually kind of grainier than the original, which I’m, I’m OK with film grain. I don’t like that, that cold artificial antiseptic look of films that are out today cause nothing looks real because it’s so clean. The film grain lends a little some kind of some sort of reality check to the video. Um But you can take that too far. I mean grain can be shit. But if you clean the grain up, right, sometimes it fucks with the fi the picture. So anyway, I didn’t want to get in a big film thing. But so cats, I looked good uh a little grainier than I would like, but it will definitely be something I’ll pick up. I probably won’t import it. I’ll wait for a US release because I’m sure Arrow or scream or shall, will pick it up and bring it over here. Um But I was watching it. This was a really long story to get around to this concept. So it’s funny, I think I talked about this on the show. I’m sorry if it’s a close repeat, I need to keep a catalog index of all the shit that I’ve talked about. Um But you know, we got a, we had a cat named Tofer who passed away a couple of years back and it was really devastating. He was the family favorite. Um, especially my son, my son was hit really hard because Tofer was kind of his cat first time, you know, his cat, his animal died and he was pretty broken up about it. We got a little shrine for him on the wall, blah, blah, blah. Um, and Tofer was a tabby, you know, and we picked up my, my, my wife and son picked up a kitten that kind of looked like him. Another tabby. Uh, his name’s biscuit for stupid, obvious reasons. Um, but my wife was showing pictures of the cat at work of, of, uh, biscuit and her, her uh contemporary said, um, oh, a good, cute basic cat. And my wife was like, didn’t say anything but she’s like, why would somebody call Tofu or not tofu? A biscuit, a basic cat? Well, Tofu was a basic cat too. She’s like, what does that mean? I’m like, I don’t know. He, he said it like it meant something I’m like, I don’t know. So I started doing a little bit of research. Turns out there is an entire thing on Reddit and probably elsewhere about something called the Standard issue C A or basic cat. S IC standard issue cat. And it’s because like all of these cats look exactly the same and there’s actually a guide if you do nothing else, just go to the, go to the, the Standard issue c A subreddit and read their um, brochure, they got a brochure about what is a standard issue cat. And I thought that was the funniest shit ever that the, there’s like this whole community and you know, there’s pictures saying, you know, are these all the same cat or are they all different cats? And they have ones that were specifically like photoshopped of the same cat and they have ones that are like all the, all different cats, but they all look like they’re all Photoshop cats because they’re all standard issue cats, they all look the same and then they, they go into the deviations of the standard issue cat, you know, standard issue cat, uh uh racing edition that has the racing stripe along the belly. Listen, I’m, I’m telling you, I, I was fascinated, I got dug into this whole goddamn subculture of standard issue cat. Well, they probably figured out how this roundabout shit is coming around to the cats. I four K uh because yes, the cat general or whatever his name is in which segment Sebastian. Um, he’s a standard issue cat. And so I’m like, well, shit now, I it, it just, it just made cat’s eye even better, you know, for me now that we know that and I know that’s a standard issue cat and I don’t know, it’s funny. But yeah, so this is the sort of shit that goes through my head, folks. This is what you’re, uh, not paying me to, uh, to spew out to you. All right. I promise Christmas stories and it’s, uh, 35 minutes into the show, tell you about. We’ll try to keep them relatively short because I know I’ve told these before. But again, a lot of people knew the show probably haven’t heard them. My parents ruined Christmas for me. My parents, uh, you know, uh, Santa Claus. Right. So, the magic of Santa Claus, first of all, Santa Claus always seemed kind of freaky to me the concept that somebody was in your home, you know, entered without knocking that sort of thing. I know a lot of people bring that up now, but I, I don’t know, it was early days. I’m kind of like, so like, how does he get in the house? Well, magic, well, shit, I mean, what else could he be doing while he’s in here? You know, second. But anyway, um so one year, one year, um I wrote a letter to Santa Claus cause that’s what, that’s what we did back in the day. Um There, there, I don’t even know if there were mall Santas back then. If that was a thing back then. II, I don’t know, I’d have to go back and look at the timelines but you know, remember we lived in the boonies. I lived in Carry Wood, Idaho, not even in Carry Wood, you know, we’re talking a suburb of Carry Wood and carry wood, wood didn’t even earn sub, you know, uh you know, suburban uh status itself. But, uh anyway, so, you know, the chances of us seeing a mall, Santa was probably pretty fucking sparse. Anyway, so, however, a book of stamps, uh a little piece of paper and ink pen and an envelope and you could tell Santa exactly what you wanted for Christmas. Right? And usually depending on if you were naughty or nice and your parents, uh, hooked you up, then you would probably get one or many of the things you asked for for Christmas when you send a letter off to, uh Santa Claus. And it, it makes a lot of sense now why my parents wanted to actually put it in the envelope and address it for me. They made some sort of excuse, like they have to get Santa’s address, but they’ll take the letter now and, uh, they’ll mail it for you. Now. Did they ever actually mail these things? Well, I’m gonna tell you this is, this is Christmas secrets. 101 here. Yes. My parents actually mailed my letters to Santa Claus and, you know, as, as I got older I realized of course, that the post office actually has a Christmas cheer thing where, um, they intercept letters to Santa Claus, right? And, uh, they, they had people volunteer, they might have even actually paid people at one point to, uh, answer Santa’s letters. Right. I’m sure a lot of them were form letters or whatever, but somebody has to open that thing, read it, fill in the template, print it and put it back in it or write it out. I mean, I was printing it because why would Santa have a printer? But, you know, there was a whole, there was a big hole of abo about that. But anyway, so one year I wrote this letter to Santa and uh, and my parents took it, of course, they, they mailed it and I happen to be the one who would pick up the mail on the way home from school. Right? Because the mailbox, this is in a place where everybody like in a 20 mile radius has their, their mailbox in one location that’s off the, the, the quote main road that’s, that actually happens to have gravel on it. It’s not dirt. So when I would get off the bus, um providing, I wasn’t being chased by bullies. Um I would stop and grab the mail out of the mailbox and there was a return letter, right? No such address. Return to sender, blah, blah, blah. And all of a sudden I got the Elvis in my return to sender anyway. Um And it’s like, oh shit, Santa didn’t get my letter. Well, that sucks. Right. And I showed my mom and my mom’s like, oh, I’m sure he knows, you know magic San, he knows blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. All right. Whatever. No, he doesn’t know. Shit. He didn’t get the letter, he doesn’t know what I want. So, come Christmas morning, I had opened up all my presents, right. Blah, blah, blah. I got pretty much what I asked for. Yada, yada ya. And in the corner in the corner behind the Christmas tree was a sled. I’m talking like one of those Delux sleds. I’m not talking about a piece of plastic wrapped into an uh a concave saucer. I’m talking like, what was the company that made sleds? Uh Back then there was some famous name. It was like, it was like the red wagon of sleds. And uh you know, this must have, this must have set my parents back some decent change cause it was like top of the line. I’m surprised it didn’t have a fucking engine on it anyway. And I’m like, so I’m like, what the hell is that? And they’re like, oh, there’s a note attached. Why don’t you go look wink, wink, nudge, nudge. And they’re like smiling at each other behind your back, you know how this goes. So I went over there and there was a note attached to it that said, you know, dear Shane. Uh Here’s a little something extra because I couldn’t get your letter this year and I’m looking at this going, how the fuck I probably didn’t say fuck. But how the fuck do you know that I sent you a letter and you didn’t get it. And that’s when, that’s when it hit. Right. That’s when the Santa Claus was. Santa Claus was dispelled. And I don’t re, I know I confronted my parents with it and I don’t remember if they set me straight, but I knew I was like, ok, goddamn it. If I was smart, I would have compared handwriting samples and it would have been my mom’s. But point being is that, uh that was uh that was the year that Santa Claus, the, the myth of Santa Claus was dispelled for me. And it’s just mom and dad intercepting Santa Claus letters. So that was one that was story, one of three next story, the Merlin, the Parker brothers, Merlin now being uh an eighties kid or late seventies, early eighties uh kid. Uh I watched a lot of TV and with TV, comes a lot of commercials. This is probably why I don’t watch commercials. Now. I, I’ll do anything to avoid watching commercials. Um And you know, I think that dates back to the fact that for the 1st 15 years of my life, 80% of what I consumed on television was advertising, right? And they had this red super futuristic looking phone like a handset of a phone that played games and recorded music and played tic tac toe with you. I was an only child. I was not popular. In fact, I was scum of the earth and uh you know, not having any friends to play with. You know, this seemed like a, a unique solo one player experience and you know, that shit was not cheap. My friends that was like $60 in 1977 money or whatever it was the year that it came out, it was pricey, it was pricey. So who do you go to when you want the pricey gift? Right? You go to grandma, grandma loves her grandson and when the grandson comes with the ridiculous request for Christmas, grandma almost always delivers and my grandma bless her soul. Rest her heart, rest in peace, grandma. Um, she, she put out when it came to Christmas with the grandkids. Uh, well, she put out with a lot of other things too, but that’s a whole another story wild one. My grandma anyway. So, um the presents came in the mail, right? My grandmother sent presents for, you know, my stepdad and my mom and me and uh you know, the box, the box. Now listen, you know how it is. We went into town like once a month and these ads, these ads for the Merlin had been going on for months and months. And so I, I, I’ve been to a store that was selling Merlin’s right. And I knew what the box looked like. I knew what the box looked like. I picked it up off the shelf. I, you know, I waited unceremoniously in my hand. I, I knew I knew what a Merlin was like inside or outside a wrapping paper. And so when grandma’s gifts came, the box opened up and there was one with little Shane’s name on it. That was a Merlin box. Oh yeah, Guaran fucking t it was a Merlin box. But you know, I had, I had to be sure I had to be sure. So I shook it, I squeezed it. You know, I did everything and it’s like God, this has to be a Merlin. This has to be a Merlin. This has to be a Merlin. But I still didn’t know 100%. I had to know. I had to know it was keep me up at night. So one night parents went to bed, I snuck out of my room, went down to the presence and I tore one little tiny corner of the gift, just a little tiny corner and it was an, it was small enough to look like an accidental rip through normal wear and tear and handling. But it was enough for me to see the glowing white letters that appeared in the corner of the side of the box. I was in there like swimwear. I went to bed, happiest camper ever. So the ritual when you’re a kid, if you’ve forgotten by now, you probably have as a kid was pretty much every day. You went down to the Christmas tree to see if one, if any presents magically appeared overnight. Not just for Santa. But, you know, sometimes, you know, the relatives sent in presents and parents opened them and they put them under the tree late at night or whatever, after you’ve gone to bed. So you go down there, you shake them all, you touch them all. You know, you start ordering them in the uh uh you start putting them in the order that you’re gonna open them. You know, that sort of shit. You know, kids stop the Merlin box. The gift box suddenly felt wrong. I mean, I had to put on the presumption that I didn’t know what it was right. So I was gonna shake it and squeeze it like I’ve done every day. And, uh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, one day it might have been the next day, but it could have been a day later or something like that, that Merlin Box didn’t feel like a Merlin Box anymore. It was lighter and it compressed. Now, if you’ve ever owned a Merlin or any toy that came in a box at that period of time, it was always wrapped in Styrofoam. So the box would stay rigid during shipping. This box was no longer rigid, but I couldn’t say shit because I knew there was something wrong. But if I asked about it, I would be proving myself guilty of peaking. So I had to wait day after day after day until Christmas morning to figure out what happened. Now, one thing that I should have noticed was uh actually, you know what? I don’t, I think it, it was a Santa Claus thing. Yeah. Ok. I know. Ok. Don’t, don’t let me fuck up the story. So I came down and of course, Santa quote quote had come and there were Santa gifts for everybody. My parents each got a Santa gift. I think they bought stuff for each other and they wrapped it under the guise of Santa. And then there was, of course Santa Claus gifts for me. Um But, but my dad had like this big box and usually my mom and I would talk, you know, because we were home alone. He worked nights, blah, blah, blah, and she would tell me what he, she got him for Christmas. Well, a magic box appeared under the tree. I had no idea what the fuck it was. So I needed a drink there. Um And my mom was really cagey about it. So I open up all my presents and uh I saved Merlin for the end. That was gonna be the present and I knew it wasn’t a Merlin anymore, whatever it was before it isn’t now. So I opened it up and it’s a Merlin box. And my parents are watching me like hawks. I open up the Merlin box and out drops a pair of pajamas and I don’t remember exactly what took place between the time I opened the pajamas and the time that my dad finally opened his mystery present, which of course, by the way was the Merlin. So to teach me a lesson, of course, they took the, they unwrapped the gift, they took the Merlin out, they shoved pajamas in there, rewrapped it and then gave my dad the Merlin for Christmas. Yes. Eventually I got it. Uh Yes, I learned my lesson. But uh I remember that being, I mean, obviously if I remember it like 43 fucking years later, right? Obviously, it made a pretty good impression, but this isn’t the first time that my dad ended up getting shit that I wanted. So the third and final story, I’m gonna get the hell out of this tub before I turn into a pru um deals with sort of the way that we had to execute Christmas. Some years now. My dad was a like a four star chef at a place called the Intrepid. It’s not here anymore. You can look it up and it, it, it’s so funny that that place like disappeared. This was like the place in Cola Ido to eat. And if you search for it, you may find a little news clipping about a changing ownership or something. That’s the only thing I could ever find about it. I can’t find any pictures, can’t find shit. You know that it’s like that place never existed. And if you drive by where it is because I used Google Maps to find it and drive by. There’s still a marina there because it was a dining and marina type scenario. But there’s no, there’s not even a building there anymore where the Intrepid was. But my dad was this like four star chef. And, uh, uh, so he, he made some decent scratch. Honestly. II, I mean, for Quarterlane Idaho, four star Chevy made decent scratch. And, uh, the problem was though, is sometimes his paycheck. Right? So I’m, I’m guessing I just based on my own life, I’m guessing that the first of the first two week paycheck of the month went to bills from my dad, my stepdad and, um, the last two were, you know, where the disposable inca uh, income came from if there was any left, right? And so if it turned out that we got paid at the right time, then Christmas would go on as normal. But if the timing was not right, I should ask my mom about this. She would know if the timing was not right. We used to do like post Christmas celebration, right? So there’d be tube socks and a record or something small under the tree at Christmas time with the promises that, um, we would go shopping for real Christmas after the fact, usually after the new year, which honestly wasn’t a bad plan because there’s a lot of Christmas discounts, right? And you could probably get more shit. Your parents would, would flag higher ticketed items if they were on sale. So it, it kind of worked out well, something in, in, in quarter Lane. Was it quarter Lane or Sand Point? We were like midway in between the two. If you look up Kerry Wood, Idaho, you’ll see. It’s right between Sand Point and Quarter Lane. But co dla my dad knew right because he worked there in Sand Point. Well, it was a little bit closer. I don’t think we spent a ton of time there. We went there a couple of times. But anyway, so we would go into Quarter Lane and this was like on January 2nd or some shit. It was after Christmas and I think it was after New Year’s. But get this, this was pretty smart. It was almost like the local businesses pulled all their shit in their leftover Christmas shit into a giant warehouse. Think of it as like a commercial flea market, right? Where um where you would go and like hundreds of of stores had their Overstock in this one location. How fucking cool is that right? I mean, that’s like, that’s like the uh the, the, the, the Amazon of retail shopping, you know what I’m saying? Very, very cool. So I gotta move here. My uh the sun’s coming over my house and it’s fucking with my eyeline. Um Any hope so. Uh So this is where we would go and so you had your pick of everything. It wasn’t just toys, it wasn’t just housewares. It wasn’t just electronics, it was everything. It was a literal one stop shop. And I don’t remember what this warehouse was called. I’m sure it’s got a proper name, but this warehouse was so fucking huge. Then again, I was like nine or some shit. Right. So, you know, it probably wasn’t as big as I remember. But right now it’s like, you know, five football fields is how big it was and you would shop around and, uh, you get your shit and then when you rang up at the front, I, I assume they had tags or something. I don’t know, that would track which store got the money. But it was, it was genius. I mean, to me, I mean, that’s one of the most, that’s one of the most genius retail things I’ve ever seen in my life and I still remember it today. But, uh, so of course, um, this year’s hot toy that I wanted, that was too expensive and grandma hadn’t come through, right. Um, the toy Du Jour, if you will was again another Parker Brothers toy, a handheld electronic toy called Wildfire Pinball. This was to give you the pinball experience at home without sticking quarters in, right. And it was, uh, I listen, you can look it up. I think I did an UN, I did some unboxing of it in one of my videos, uh, Chris Henschel, right? Uh Wamp Rats. If you go to his youtube channel. He did a nice, uh, look at it, I believe. Uh, there’s people, lots of people have done great looks at Wildfire Pitbull. But, um, there’s some interesting stuff in there from a technological standpoint. Uh, I can’t remember, I think, um, uh, who was it? Gary Kitchen had something to do with that if I remember. Right. And I learned that from Chris’s video. Um, anyway, did some sort of programming logic or something for it. But anyway, so that was the hot toy and the hot toy wasn’t cheap. Much like the Merlin, the wildfire pinball. It’s gonna set you back again. I think it was 60 bucks and that’s in 1978 money or whatever it was that year. And uh so, you know, I ran my mom over and I said this is what I want. This is the only thing that I want. This is it nothing else. One item. I know it’s expensive and it was like, it was like $10 cheaper, I think after Christmas. Uh maybe it might have been the same price I don’t remember. Um But it was expensive. I mean, fucking expensive. And as thinking about it as an adult, I had a lot of balls asking my parents for what was probably like a $300 item in today’s money. Um But that’s all I wanted. That was it. You could spare me any other purchases, but that’s it. And my mom kind of gives me that look like, yeah, it’s not gonna, we’re not gonna be able to get it. We just, we just can’t afford it, we can’t afford it. Right. And so of course, I probably became a moody little shit after that. And we walked around the store, my mom suggested some cheaper uh sometimes more productive items. I was probably a little dick about it. I’m sure I was, in fact, um, and uh, you know, whatever, whatever, I guess. So, whatever, you know, and so I had this nice little, uh, basket full of shit that I was gonna get for Christmas, but not the wildfire pinball, which is, you know what I wanted. So, my mom and I met my dad back up front now, this is before cell phones. I don’t know how we coordinate this shit. Maybe it was by time. Um, we were all supposed to meet up front to check out at some point in time. I think that’s what she did before cell phones. And, uh, my dad was already in line. He had a basket full of shit. And, uh, I’m looking down at the basket and inside the basket is wildfire pinball. And I’m like, ok, first off, I’ve been a little shit for the last hour and a half. I have no business getting that wildfire because I was a dick. But that’s for me. Right. Right. I mean, who’s it for? Who else is it for? And I said um hey, so uh so you have wildfire pinball in there? My dad looks down. He’s like, yeah, yeah, I do. I’m like, uh uh, you, you, you, you, you like pinball? He’s like, certainly like, so uh that uh that wildfires for you, he was like, certainly and of course he’s shooting my mom these fucking dirty looks or not dirty looks but, you know, parental exchanges and uh so I had to sit through the whole line, you know, listen, I don’t know, maybe he did buy it for himself. Who the fuck knows? But II I was, I was pretty let down and of course, again, the end of the story is my little shithead self still got the wildfire pinball, but I had to go through a trial by fire to get it, you know, and God bless my parents for, you know, not just making me a spoiled little shit. I mean, I obviously was a spoiled little shit but to give me um these memories, right? Who, who remembers, you know, eight year old fucking going to some store and buying a toy, right? I mean, these things really sat in my head and, and uh yeah, yeah, I’ve, I’ve done similar shit to my kids over time and I think it uh it, it builds a little bit of character, you know, especially the whole swapping out of the present that, that wrapping job was really fucking good. I don’t know how they did it, but I was fooled. That wrapping job looked great. I mean, it was the original paper. It never looked like it had been opened. You know how it is. If you ever tried to rewrap something, it never works out. Right. It never looks right. But they got me fooled. All right. Listen, you bastards got a whole hour show. I wasn’t planning on being out here for an hour. But, uh, the hot tub’s nice. It’s cold outside. The steam is pouring off of the water. It’s been a, it’s been a nice morning out here and thank you for spending it with me. I doubt there’ll be another show before Christmas. Uh So by all means everybody have happy holidays. Merry Christmas. Um Be sure to change out some of your kids’ toys to teach them a lesson this year and of course, provide them with a sled if, uh they didn’t get Santa Claus’s letter. All right. That’s it for me. I’m Shane R Monroe. Thanks so much for watching or listening. Uh Wait, damn it. I’m confusing my closeouts. This is Shane Arm Monroe passenger seat radio. We’ll see you next time. Take care.