Podcast: The Ride - Kongfrontation with Brett Davis

Episode Date: April 24, 2020

Brett Davis (The Podcast For Laundry, National Lampoon Radio Hour) joins us to talk New York Area newscasters and banana breath. Listen to Podcast: The Ride Ad-Free on Forever Dog Plus: http://foreverdogpodcasts.com/plus I Lost My M In Vegas episode up at The Second Gate. New episode coming April 29: Patreon.com/PodcastTheRide FOLLOW PODCAST: THE RIDE: https://twitter.com/PodcastTheRide https://www.instagram.com/podcasttheride BUY PODCAST: THE RIDE MERCH: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/podcast-the-ride PODCAST THE RIDE IS A FOREVER DOG PODCAST https://foreverdogpodcasts.com/podcasts/podcast-the-ride Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Forever, dog. Warning, the following podcast contains banana allergy experiments, the universe hopping abilities of Michigan J. Frog, and a mysterious question, who are the centaur children? Brett Davis joins us as we tackle Universal's Kongfrontation, today on Podcast The Ride. podcast the ride welcome to podcast the ride the podcast about theme parks where at least two of the hosts today have some major banana breath. I'm Scott Gardner, joined by Mike Carlson. Hell yeah, I'm one of the two.

Yeah, we were just literally just eating bananas before we recorded. Can you believe it? Not for show either. I just hadn't eaten anything today. Same for me. Obviously it's a quick meal, or not a meal, but a quick snack, I guess. Quick burst of energy. Yeah, either. I just hadn't eaten anything today. Same for me. Obviously, it's a quick meal, or not a meal, but a quick snack, I guess. Quick burst of energy. Yeah. Portable. We found out Jason Sheridan, who's here, does not have banana breath.

No. If I eat solely a banana first thing in the morning, I get a tummy ache. I can have it with cereal, or I can have it with... The most persnickety stomach in podcasting. Yeah. That's interesting. I think I have a mild banana allergy. Okay.

Because I have a little cough sometimes after I have a banana. Interesting. And past guest Marissa Strickland was like, maybe you have a really mild allergy to bananas. Yeah. I don't know. Can I test that? Is that an allergy test I can do?

Yeah. I think you can do an allergy test for most common items. But isn't it just like rub it on your back? I think they like prick something. test i can do yeah i think you can do an allergy test for most like common items but is it how to but isn't it just like rub it on your back i think they like prick something and then put a little banana into my blood test right but i think the prick test is they just put it like like whatever the item is in your on your skin and see if you're allergic basically yeah are you gonna freak out in this episode no i'm not i'm just saying like i can do this at home can't i just put a banana on my skin and see if i get a get a rash do you still have

one in the house or did you do i'll go you want me to go do it yeah maybe here while i introduce our guests why don't you go get a banana and rub it on your skin i'll rub it on my skin and see you at the end of 90 minutes if it's in fact if it's a rash wow we usually don't have such cliffhangers that That's exciting. All right. Well, Mike grabs a banana. We're happy to be joined by Forever Dog family member from the podcast for laundry and the National Lampoon Radio Hour,

Brett Davis is here. Hey. It's a true honor to be here. Oh, geez. Thanks for being here and for taking up some of your trip from New York to come over here. I'm a big fan of the show.

Oh, thank you. I'm happy to hear it. Very flattered to be asked. Oh, geez. Absolutely. Yes. And, well, so you're out from New York for a little bit. I know because I saw you before, a little bit of city walk time.

What did you think? Did it live up to your expectations? Has it been the best thing of the trip so far yeah it's i think it's been the best thing of the trip uh i i marveled at jurassic parking i oh yeah i sat and just like stared at that giant screen playing uh the worst music videos i've ever seen that's very true true. I know. And it's not like, it's not, it's not like it's like the top 10 hits of right now. And you're going like,

I guess I don't know what the kids are into. Like you don't know what any of it is. Yeah. Well, the one I, I did pay attention to a lot was Weezer's doing take on me now. Like they're just, Oh,

this is perfect. While Mike is off mike fantastic yes this weezer shit we all everyone on mike agrees that the new we the 80s weezer covers are the worst things that have ever happened and let's change topic before uh mike gets uh back to the microphone i'd argue they're not the worst things but it's it is pretty just shrug worthy it's mainly that i don't yeah you're right that like maybe not specifically terrible but like why they're just like it's like the the gus van zandt psycho why did this happen it's just we're just gonna do the exact same thing but with slightly less charisma they had finn wolf hard heart uh play uh like he was the lead They had Finn Wolfhardt play.

Like, he was the lead singer of this, like, 80s band. So, more Finn Wolfhardt 80s. That's, like, this is another iteration of that is his shtick, because he's just today's kid who's also an 80s guy. Yeah, born in, like, 1998 or 2003 or whatever he was born in. No idea how old this person is. The music video that I always saw a lot playing up there was the Coldplay music video with CGI apes that I did not realize was Coldplay. I've never seen those. CGI apes?

Yeah, like a whole crew of CGI apes dancing to a song. I forget whether it's from Milo Xyloto or another one is it from uh what's the song viva la vita i don't know the song viva la vita is from milo zyloto yes how are we managing to talk about anything but that you right now are rubbing little banana bits onto your palm well i'm just well my the back of my hand oh yes sorry that's the opposite of a palm well i was just because everyone was just you know know, I was just trying to figure out the best way to do it. I think this is good. I don't want it to be like getting

the couch dirty, but that's enough banana residue to see if there's a breakout. I think I thought this has been such a delicate process, and I think I thought you were just going to take a banana and just rub it whole really fast. Do you want me to go back and do that? No, no, no. I think this is fine, but you did it very medically. You it it's a little dab and then you uh if i start like

gesticulating wildly i don't want to rub banana on the couch so does it smell like banana on your hand now yeah my hand smells like banana right now so like you're engulfed in banana bread yeah this also like isn't going to like answer a few of digestion issues on bananas well but i don't think that day it's not it's not digestion issues it's like some sort of like my body rejects it a little bit because the cough would suggest not a digestion issue it would suggest there's something not incompatible am i wrong here kind of like i have no idea i don't have an upset stomach when i have a banana is is what I'm saying. So I don't think it's digestion. I think it's simply a mild allergy, if it indeed is an allergy.

But you might end up, in 90 minutes, where you might look and you have a big Donald Duck kind of bump on the back of your hand. It's very possible. Possibly you'll have to take me to the hospital. We don't know. I've never rubbed a banana on my hand before. Well, then if so so there may be there may be an edit at some point where we because we can't we have to get to 90 minutes minimum if not two hours if not two and a half hours yeah so we cannot cut it off short so there may be an edit

and that's where we will have taken you to the hospital brett you have to stay with us oh yeah i'm gonna be at the hospital talking about take the the... Well, it is like thematic for us, though, because the big hospital in Burbank is Providence St. Joe's, which is next to the Disney lot and is the hospital Walt Disney died in. Oh, wow. We have all... Yes, we haven't said this out loud, I think,

but we all have a sort of a wish to die at that hospital. That's sort of what we want. Would it be too much of a stretch to do an to die at that hospital that's sort of what we want would it be too much of a stretch to do an episode dedicated to that hospital oh not at all no no please absolutely next week let's do well yeah first things first we have to get in there which maybe will happen today yeah and then yeah let's find the bed we've been to the you know i don't know if while you've been out here this is restaurant the tam o'shanter uh which is where like he walt went there all the time he had a table there we've sat at the wall i actually have just passed by the walt table um but all right so there's the walt table we got to find the walt hospital bed oh my god you yeah

you think they have the same bed there and there's like a little tribute to them? Oh, yeah. And if you get brought in there in the ER and you're like dying, but you're like, oh, I got the Walt room. Got the Walt bed. The bed is really bad. It's an old bed. Or yeah, it's an old room.

You're walking through and there's like a brown room, weirdly. What is this? They haven't updated anything. Smells like cigarettes. Same dust. Very mixed feelings because it's like, oh, this is historic, but also like they didn't save him. So like that doesn't make me optimistic.

You're getting like out of the ambulance and people are like screaming at each other. What's wrong with you and what they need to check? Like your blood pressure. And you're like, excuse me it would it be possible i don't mean to it's okay if not but if it's not too crowded i'm gonna turn the front face and camera on on my phone they're like no sorry and you're like well did roy die here is the is roy's bed available to any disney's and then you get it and you're like well did roy die here is the roy's bed available any disney's and then you get it and you're filming a youtube video as you what up fam

dying this is dying like walt mike and i were at something lately and i said we started to do a video and I jokingly said, like, what up, fam? Like, sort of the, like, you know, fake YouTube-y reviewer stuff. And then someone on the other side of the table about five minutes later started doing it sincerely. And I immediately was like, oh, my God, I feel so bad that I'm clearly doing it as a bit. I don't think those people knew we were doing it with any irony. Okay. Okay, that's fine. And we were doing it with any irony. Okay. Okay, that's fine.

And we didn't do it after they did it. I think they were just like, oh, another YouTuber. Oh, okay. Yikes. And they probably were like, honestly, he could use some more energy. Yeah. He wasn't doing that. You've got to really dive into that what up, fam.

Yeah, because they did it much more energetically. I think we're all right. it is totally okay if you don't have an answer to this question because this is a it's a very specific question and one i'd never consider until right now have you ever is there a dream hospital you would like to die in you know i i don't contemplate death that much let alone uh where specifically i'd like it to happen if it's a hospital situation yeah this is if we're lucky enough to be yeah to have some help uh yeah i always say i want to die in a tour bus crash i think it's the most smaller way to go oh sure and if i have my jitters 20th anniversary tourgasm bus crash but um that's a few years away is now is that because you've

been accepted into the dane cook tourgasm lineup or because uh you're just like hanging out with them uh i i you know i think i'd be part of the brotherhood i mean i hope i wish this for you absolutely when is the original tourgasm when was it so how many years are we away from 20 2006 or like that i think that's that was peak cook yeah so not far we're not far for clarification though his current tour i know for a fact is called the tell it like it is tour oh really-door. Oh, he's finally being honest? Mm-hmm. Okay, cool. I ate at the Boston Market behind him 10 years ago. I was eating alone, and someone was talking about Dane Cook,

and I turned around, and it was Dane Cook. He was like, yeah, man. Somebody was like, yeah, that's just Dane, man. That's just Dane Cook. And I turned around, and I was like, it is Dane Cook. And we were like, there were four people in there, three people including him at his table and me

at my table right behind him. Wow. Yeah. Wow. All right. I'm no longer impressed by Walt's table at the Tam O'Shanter.

You've seen Dane's table at the Burbank Boston Market. Dane's table at the Boston Market, which I believe is gone. It is closed. Yeah. No. We should have gone in there

and seen if we could preserve it beforehand, but we can't. Is there at least a plaque? You know, I don't think there was, I did have many meals in that Boston market 10 years ago, but I don't think anyone meals at the Boston market. I used to be a PA at the,

at the ranch. Oh, you were to the Warner ranch at the Warner ranch. Yeah. The Warner ranch for people who don't live here. i've never been lucky enough to work on these lots the warner ranch is where the friends opening sequence was the fountain real friends fountain yeah yeah um and much of the music man really there yeah is that right i didn't know that i believe so the movie version yeah from the 60s i walked around the lot and I found the old giant WB sign

that they used to use in those promos. You remember like Michigan J-Frog would be like animated in the corner and then you would see like this crazy lit WB sign that they would do like all these angles around for their like bumpers. It's a day, it was sitting, at least it was there 10 years ago, just sitting back there on the lot. Just decaying? Yes, just decaying.

Wow. I really recommend anyone that is at least piqued by this to go and watch all of those old Michigan J-Frog bumpers. They are insane. And it's like this weird shared universe where all of the actors and some of the cartoons know each other and like you'll get like superman interacting with like jackay and like yeah it's just this weird world like john witherspoon talking to like james vanderbeek it's very strange he would cameron and like marvin the martian yeah that sort of because when he he bridged the gap between like wb kids and the wb network when like the the michigan j frog

could walk in all worlds yeah yeah uh it's like the day walker will we do will we do an episode on just michigan j frog yes yes sure yes can you skype me in for that yeah yeah happy to keep you know this was I gotta see if it is it in my notes for uh I was trying to remember why we were this came up uh and I think it's because we just I don't know if it's out by now but we did an episode about about the roller coaster Kingda Ka with Dan Klein and for some reason I think that is why I found out that there was some song or was this because wait a minute this might be because

I was looking up the Six Flags song the Venga Boys I don't remember why but I discovered through all of this research that there was a commercial for the Sylvester Tweedy Mysteries which was in like kids w i remember that uh where um there was a just in the promo the wikipedia noted that in the promo

tweedy like raps to the venga boys song or something like that and he said the phrase he says is like gotta get that gotta get that putty give me that like, gotta get that putty. Give me that putty. Give me that putty. And if you're a podcast completist and you are aware of the work of our friend Bugmane, Buzz Buzz, Skittle Scattle, give me that putty sauce. I just really jumped out at me. The rapping about putty. I was meaning to mention this to you guys putty cat yes he calls him putty cat he would call yes sylvester

so that it is from tweety bird but did you have a clip of it i don't and i and i i after i discovered this i was looking up as many sylvester Tweedy Mysteries promos as I could find. I'm sure a listener knows exactly what it is and will tweet it at us right now as they're listening to this. We're going to the Paley Center right after this. We have to find these promos. Oh, here it is. Okay, yes. Well, it's because I was going to...

I'll do this now. I wanted on that episode to propose that we do... I don't know why this hasn't occurred to us yet when are we going to do a full second gate episode about mr six oh of course the old the six flags old man oh that is uh that is an epic yes yeah what an original name that's his name yeah mr could have been mr flags but instead it's Mr. Six. Mr. Six. So thinking about Mr. Six led me to the official Wikipedia for the Venga bus. And in the section in popular culture, which needs additional citations for verification, it says this song is used for promos on Sylvester and Trudy mysteries.

And I'm sorry, I was wrong. It's we like to putty. We like, we like to putty we like we like to putty why is he saying didn't they fight didn't Sylvester and Tweety fight I believe by the mysteries oh I guess they were teamed up

they were working together yes yeah and they had to put their differences they had a common enemy unsolved homicides had to get to the bottom of and then they caused all of america to have a common interest this potter's field we're getting to the bottom we're getting justice for everyone buried in this potter's field so yeah i'm just glad you you you unlocked all this in my brain. It's been buzzing around for the last month.

So if you're interested in putty, subscribe to Podcast Thride, The Second Gate. No one liked it. You both just got the most stern faces. Well, I'm thinking about Mr. Six now. It's always nice to be thinking about Mr. Six. Is there more than one Mr. Six? I think it was in the commercials always played by the same guy. Okay.

I had a hunch in Ronald changes. Yeah. Like, wait a minute. I felt like one year they had a separate Mr. Six. They might have, but I believe the original Mr. Six, and I don't want to say too much, because obviously we should save this for the episode. Yeah.

But what I discovered about Mr. Six is that Mr. Six is hot. Yes. The real man. Was I reading about him a week ago? Yes. How has this not gotten in the air before? I know. We briefly brought him up i think but

for whatever reason we haven't uh there is yeah there's only one he wasn't like an old man they had to replace basically that's all i'll say he didn't pass away he didn't pass away in which case he's a mr six room now there now you have an answer. You should die where Mr. Six died. He's a stud. I can't turn it all the way around. Jason just saw Mr. Six.

The real, yes. The little tease, the real Mr. Six actor was like a hunky dude. Okay, I believe that. Here, I'll show it from my phone. Can you see that? Oh, yeah. Ripped. Guns. monkey dude okay i believe that um here i'll show it from my phone can you see that oh yeah yeah ripped guns yeah that was mr six anyways we'll get on this six will come soon six will come six will come soon uh so anyways oh boy i'm delighted by all that but let's let's get down because we're hey we're covering a huge thing right now i'm so glad you wanted to talk about this kongfrontation uh and i love the specificity of you bringing this up because clearly confrontation equals the very specific ride in florida and not just all of

king kong in the parks which there is there is so much uh um why confrontation what's the what's the attachment there well it was my favorite ride um as a kid i would they'd have that scrolling universal studios ad uh where it's on the tapes it was on the tapes yes inside the letters one of my favorite things yeah yeah where you're haunting the the words universal studios and then you'd see you know king kong you'd see out of time car you know you'd see all these jumping out yeah yogi and boo boo yeah uh hitchcock walking into the silhouette you can ride the movies unbelievable yeah uh and i never got to go as like a little kid until i was like 12 so i i had this slightly adulter appreciation of it uh you know every every kid had gone to universal and all i wanted to do is ride this king kong ride because that's the one that stuck out in the ad for me i loved king kong as a kid

i remember renting like son son of kong and mighty joe young and like these movies they're not meant for like six-year-olds uh yeah some of those some of those movies have really violent king kong versus godzilla is very weird so like king kong was like that was that was the like i was going to Disney, I was going everywhere, but King Kong was the main attraction for this whole trip. Wow, sure. And probably at 12, you're, like, chasing thrills a little more. Yeah. You want something scary.

It's a little scary. But once I realized, like, I could deal with it, I rode the thing, like, three times. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. It's a good, this was a really epic attraction. And like, I mean,

it's not scary in the thrill ride way of scary. It's just like, it's not even just the ape necessarily. Like, I think the, just the general veneer of it, the fact that you're in this grimy subway station for so much of it. Yeah.

Terrifying. Real pyro. Yeah, 70s New York. The recreation of 70s New York. You're going through a queue. You may know from Joker. Yes, sure. No other films.

It's almost a character. The queue just filled with graffiti. Like they had actual graffiti artists graffiti the place. And then, of course, people just added their own graffiti over the years i remember seeing like a curse maybe on the wall yes which is insane to see it universal that's pretty cool that they like like almost encourage people to add to that tapestry but this could have been any this could have been like a you know dressed up well now they have a cleaned up version of new york with the jimmy fallon ride it's cool that they had like grimy shitty ed koch new york is that it does not appear on the ride right i

don't know reference to them they they have a real news anchor in it, like an actual New York news anchor doing like, evacuate, get out of here, like in the Rise video. You know, I went in 1998, and he was still on TV, so it was very kind of cool to see that. Oh, wow. Was he the news anchor you grew up watching? Yeah, he was on, I wouldn't say I grew up watching him. He taught you everything you knew? Yeah. Mr. Rogers. you everything you knew? Yeah. Mr. Rogers.

This guy, Roland Smith. He looked a little like a Vulcan. Yes. Thick eyebrows. Yeah. Very like a stern presence. He was on the UPN affiliate.

I'm sure he was on like a major one and then got bumped down over the years to UPN. Most likely. But yeah, he was the 10 o major one and then got bumped down over the years to UPN. Most likely. But yeah, he was the 10 o'clock news guy. Wow. Wow. Was he New York or New Jersey? I think the UPN one might have been based out of Secaucus. Nice.

It could have been a big bump down. They would play weird like New Jersey, like shots of like New Jersey parks at like a weird times of the day when they just didn't have a commercial to play. But yeah, it was the New York area. Sure. Yeah. Affiliate. I'm very fond of Roland Smith also because he was, it's not the same video. So they got him twice because he also was the host of the tram tour attraction.

And if you don't know the full breakdown, King Kong was a stop on the Universal Tram Tour and a huge step up for them. They had done Jaws, and that was great. But the technological advance to have that King Kong robot just really like took the studio tour into the next into another gear then when Universal Studios Florida opened in 1990 they turned it into this full blown huge attraction in and of itself and Roland Smith

was on both and I was like let me look up some Roland Smith stuff Roland Smith has this odd like a part of of oddly star wars lore and a very specific star wars lore i'd never heard of any of this that the star wars holiday special um the the the tape that it was mainly distributed on because star wars holiday special lived as a you know people trading tapes like this bizarre

can you believe this thing taped off TV and the main tape that was distributed like that people traded around had a very brief clip of him at the very beginning doing a five second tease for what's on the news that night and his phrase was fighting the frizzies

at 11 which presumably fighting the frizzies at 11, which presumably fighting the frizzies. I don't think I don't know that anyone ever saw the actual story, but I think fighting the frizzies has something to do with hair care. I guess maybe we don't know unless there were creatures called the frizzies out. Yeah. Was this an in-universe news plug? Oh, it's some like deep Star Wars thing we don't know about. He's like wearing a robe.

Little Star Wars news teases is a very good idea. The Empire Strikes Back. George would have put the frizzies in his sequel trilogy. It was going to be all about the frizzies. It was going to be about the frizzies. They fight the force. They're little bad guys. They're smaller than Adams.

The frizzies are very small. But fighting the frizzies also has this odd, what kind of has sustained that phrase in pop culture is that one of the first episodes of South Park, Mr. Hankey's Christmas Classics, in 1999, because it's an old holiday special, they started it with a shot of their editor dressed up like Roland Smith saying, fighting the frizzies at 11. Really? Wow.

Yeah. Wow. The South Park guys tributed this very specific sliver of this news tease on VHS's taped-up TV. I can picture that as you're saying. Yeah, it does. I can picture that episode. And he looks like it. They gave him a mustache.

It's a wonderful little clip. Those are all on YouTube. So, I mean, most news anchors, I don't feel, have this amount of lore. No. This guy is the King Kong news anchor and fighting the frizzies. Pretty major stuff. And probably he's like a good journalist. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Whatever. Donated to causes or something. Sure. Who cares? I mean, now it would be Pat Kiernan, who's the New York One anchor and is just in everything. Oh, yeah. He's in every Marvel movie.

Like anytime you just need a New York anchor and don't want to shell out to NBC or CBS, you just get him and he'll say anything like vampires on the loose. It's just like, you know, that that's his bread and butter now as far as New York people go. Oh, wow. Okay.

I like those game news anchors. I think he also hosts like trivia at a bar somewhere. Wow. Nice. He's everywhere. We have a weatherman here in Los Angeles named Fritz Coleman. Okay. Who also considers himself a bit of a funny man like does stand up sometimes

does he fritz coleman yeah he had a one-man show running uh at the at the the gary marshall theater in burbank for a while yeah he's a burbank fixture because i have seen him several times at the bob's big boy starbucks which which is pretty much in the same block as the Gary Marshall Theater and the Boston Market. Yeah, that we were talking about earlier. I love how many locals we're talking about. Toluca Lake, Burbank, like really coming through today. Five minutes from the hospital, Walt died.

Walt died, yeah. Wow. So we could go see the Fritz table, the Dane table, and the Walt bed. Yep. It would take a half hour. Damn. Let's do it. This is dangerously off topic, but he's not the Mr. Wacky guy, right?

No. Okay. What's Mr. Wacky? It's a video where they're – it's like a morning news weekend, and they're like, well, what's going on at this parking lot and it's like well we've got a big inflatable slide and it's just a bunch of very tired volunteers first thing in the morning and they meet

this anchor's doing the worst possible job anyone's ever done in doing like a fun segment. And I've heard that he's bombed a few of these. Oh, okay. Oh, interesting. Wait, so why Mr. Wacky? Is it this video? It looks like that's San Diego.

Oh, okay. Never mind then. Yeah. But I do want to watch this. It's really... Because everyone looks very unhappy. Really great but I do want to watch this. It's really, really great. I really recommend everyone watch it. I was wondering why Mr. Wacky sounded familiar to me,

and I was like, that's not what Robin Williams calls his penis, is it? No, that's Mr. Happy. Oh, Mr. Wacky, who? You could imagine maybe once in a while he called him Mr. Wacky. He might have tried that out as an alternate name. Mr. Wacky is the best imagine maybe once in a while he called him Mr. Wacky. He might have tried that out as an alternate name. Mr. Wacky is the best comedy sketch that's ever happened in real life. I'll say that much. Wow.

Okay. Okay. I will. Yeah, we have to look at this. Okay. So back to Kong. Roland Smith. Great job.

Great work. Yeah. You know who else acts in this ride? There's a lot of VO and a lot of the SWAT team voices and everything. Ron Knight, who is also the voice of our favorite theme park character, Botanicus. He also has voices in Jaws, apparently. I've made an effort to try to get him on the show. Yeah, what happened with that again?

Or there's no response? He did respond in an interesting cryptic manner. It was like teasing stories that he has. And then he never responded again. So I don't know. I'd really like to talk to Ron Knight. We have to interview Kotzwinkle, too, who did respond to me.

Botanicus is his creator. Oh. Oh. The author. The author of The Green Planet. He created planet he created all the et ancillary characters and the characters from the ride this man william kotzwinkle did you make it are you fond of the et adventure as well that was from florida trips that's a close second sure i was excited about i didn't i didn't know that this was a sequel, but yeah, that was unbelievable.

Yeah, there's a book. He wrote a book in the 80s called The Green Planet, and that's where most of the lore from the ride comes about. We did a whole Patreon on Botanicus and all this lore, but I emailed him. And just as a little spoiler from that Patreon episode, he emailed back and I asked him if he created botanicus and he said dear mike thanks for your email except for et himself i created all the characters in the book of the green planet and that includes botanicus good luck with your podcasts best wishes from et and me

bill wow which is like does he also think i'm 12 i like that et also gave me a best wish but also it was i don't know that he had the authority that's questionable i could send this to amblin and spielberg would sue his ass like crazy we didn't et did not authorize this hello et does not wish you well on your podcasts 12 year old boy nonsense he loves us he said the last time i went on the ride he actually said my name um but i have i have kotzwinkle's email now wow if you can get if you can get the voice if we can get an interview with him combine it with an interview with kotzwinkle boy can we speak to botanicus

he's botanicus with you right now it's botanicus's favorite curse word and then he's like oh you could speak to et too it's like no no no shit from the movies we don't care about that. Okay. Kong, very popular. This ride, very popular. Yeah. Long lines, usually. Prone to breaking down.

A lot of moving pieces, helicopters, multiple Kongs. A very unique suspended ride. This is like a very much larger scale kind of Peter Pan. Yeah. like hanging from the ceiling to the point i found out this was replaced by revenge of the mummy in 2004 the tracks are still in the ceiling because they built the tracks for kong oh yeah yeah yeah and they it is too difficult to remove them so they just left them up there. So it's possible. I mean, bring them back. Or just put the Kong vehicles

and have it go with the coaster. Oh, sure. Could you do... Just concurrent rides. Intervals, just intervals. A Roosevelt Island tram ride. Yeah. Yeah.

Haunted Pyramid. It's like the Indiana Jones, what they were going to do with two rides at one remember they were going to have like go through like the people mover or something yeah i mean yeah well you say why not we don't have to look at the mat like the actual blueprints to see if that's impossible that'd work it would work fill those like you know roosevelt tram rides with like hard hats with crowbars going like you don't don't mess with us you don't mess with brandon frazier imhotep you mess with them you mess with all of us spider-man ending yeah actually well that's a good thing to say that this is like to make all of these because there's

universal florida open with three attractions that were all based on the tram tour. And thus, there had to be three separate rides that essentially had tram-esque ride vehicles. And they went a lot bigger. Yeah. They went big because they were competing on Disney's turf in Orlando. Uh-huh. But so it's boats and jaws. It's a subway car in Earthquake. And then in this, it's the Roosevelt Island Expressway.

As a New Yorker, do you have any experience with the Roosevelt Island Expressway? Yeah, it's a great ride. It's just a swipe of the MetroCard. Okay. And you get to fly over the city. I think I liked it because I liked King Kong so much. Right. And then you go to a weird little island that

doesn't feel like it should exist. That's what's there on the other side? Roosevelt Island is like a very small, like you could walk across it lengthwise in like five minutes. If that. And then it's got

some restaurants and it's got some campuses for you know verizon and like uh i think college is there it's just a very it's a weird anomaly of no reason to go there unless you happen to work in these places or whatever but uh it's it's a fun ride some people live there are there there is some apartment buildings there which is also strange yeah it's it's it's just a big mystery why it exists and you could really only get to it well you could get to it by bridge i don't know i read an article like in the last 10 years like in the like the Times or BuzzFeed, like, big places where they were still like, we don't quite understand Roosevelt Island. Like, it was a feature on Roosevelt Island, but they're like, it's, even among New Yorkers, it's a conundrum.

It feels like you're in a different city. Yeah. There's, like, bridges very close by. It's just a strange place and then now that they've got all these like campuses that moved in it's there's like this kind of like astroturfy field and it's it's just got a strange vibe all around um could it work as an evacuation spot if a giant ape invaded new york well that's that's the big question i'm not really sure what he's doing over there it's as baffling as why any people would be or why you enter penn station you wind up

taking a roosevelt island tram which is about you know 30 blocks away oh I didn't think about that. This is also a little strange inconsistency. Yeah, yeah, right, right. Weird. I like that in putting in the mummy attraction that they didn't have to change the exterior too much. They put that kind of like gold museum type overlay. But the exterior is fantastic. Yes.

I'm really glad that didn't have to come down. And all of it in theory, because originally Universal, the idea was that you could use all of these as sets. Right. Like you could shoot movies here. But I don't think anyone ever did. No. Yeah.

What's the most prominent thing that was shot at Universal Florida? Is it the Jimmy Buffett? No, that was out here. There's a bigger music video. Fruitcake's here. No, florida yeah yeah jimmy buffett shot one of his most famous music videos fruitcakes the song fruitcakes uh famous is doing a lot of heavy lifting yeah one of his one of it well how would you dispute one of his most famous what is his music videos does he have i my statement stands one of his most famous. Also, how many music videos does he have? My statement stands. One of his most famous.

He wasn't really doing a ton in music video era. He didn't have his November rain. Five o'clock somewhere, but I think of that as more an Alan Jackson music video that he makes an appearance in. Yes, it is. I agree. But yeah, what is the most prominent thing shot at Universal Florida? I think there's a Creed music video where they filled the New York streets with water. Yes. Right?

With a robot? Yeah. Yeah. What is it? Is it My Sacrifice? Is it My Sacrifice? I think so. It's the one that's like...

That doesn't narrow it down. I think only ones like that. Okay. So, Riot that. Okay, so Riot itself. I really like that line. I like how there's real movie posters in there. Yes. For like Kramer versus Kramer. And Rocky, I believe.

I believe they would rotate those. I believe I came across something that said they would update those with current movies, even though the footage was always the 70s, because this is primarily based on the 76 King Kong, which starred Jeff Bridges, Jessica Lange, and Charles Grodin. And that's still, I do not, I have only seen clips of this movie. I've never sat and watched it i really like the clip that they show in the line for the ride where you're looking at the subway car's pov as it careens into king kong's palm yeah like he catches it essentially i think i know

you're yeah i've never seen the movie either i It does sound like people like it a lot. It was a big hit. Dino De Laurentiis produced. I feel like everybody hated this movie. I feel like I've only heard shit about this movie. Money-wise, it did well. Kind of notorious now, though, because Kong doesn't climb the Empire State Building. He climbed the world trade center uh and i guess dino de laurentis had the rights or had uh something they made a sequel called king kong lives in 86 yes now that i have seen

i was trying to remember the plot i believe it is a story about King Kong having to get, give a, he's involved in a heart transplant operation. He's performing the surgery? No. Or he needs one? I believe, if I'm remembering correctly, that a giant mechanical heart is built. And they have to take King Kong's heart out, replace it, and put it in like a huge tank it invited and then we end up somewhere with King Kong being in love what there's a love story this all again all these movies I saw when I was six years old barely

comprehending anything and it's like oh cool King Kong movie and then he's like sick for most of it for the rest of's in a coma. And in love for the rest of it. It seems like it starts with him. They're like, okay, so he fell off the World Trade Center. He's alive in a coma and scientists are studying him. Yeah. This movie was not a success. No.

None of the actors came back. Dino De Laurentiis and the director came back. John Gillerman, who apparently was a real hard ass. His Wikipedia basically was like, no matter what he was making, he was very strict. It was very intense, it seems like. I think this movie has a part where King Kong sees a giant crocodile, and they have a shot of a crocodile, and he kind of lights up,

and then it cuts to a wide of the guy in the suit picking up a lizard, what is clearly like they're trying to do a scale thing. Okay. And then that's supposed to be a crocodile, and he drops it into his mouth and then i i believe it cuts to just full crocodile bones just being tossed onto a pile of lots of crocodile bones so he's eating a normal size crocodile basically it's just large for us yeah but there's no question when it cuts to the guy in the suit it's like a little gecko or something right but it's really it's you're saying it's real they

found a real yeah and amphibian or a lizard or something yeah yeah i have to go into my tape of it there i know there's a couple parts of this movie that are funny as shit oh man uh uh and this oh sorry okay oh i was just gonna add uh to the movie. It's based on the King Kong from the 70s. 70s, right? Yeah, 76. There was a, what I remember is funny, but again, haven't watched it in years. Funny post 9-11 SNL sketch.

Yes, I know this. This particular film where they're showing a post 9-11 edited version. And it's like instead of going up the World Trade Center it's like oh no he's climbing up the Chrysler building and then it cuts to like a bunch of new scenes with the worst actors you've ever seen

and then they delay the information that the actors then they cut to a station break and the actors you've been watching are the news anchors for the station who now are improvising a new ending king kong and incorporating the other things the station owns like superman like they look out the window look superman he's heading for kong oh no he's gonna attack that bar cheers that's one of those like end of show unarchived sketches i'm glad you brought out because there's some of those things if nobody saved them it feels like a fever dream like it didn't happen i don't think yeah i don't think you've seen it i've only seen the kong sketch with the boner

oh that's a great sketch which is also a good sketch let's get it out of here oh yes yes where kong as an erection in the building which is so funny that they can cut to that and it's not a problem because they don't show the head or the balls right it's just a big furry thing and then you can show that on tv that's not a problem um boy good job snl great kong sketches great kong sketches uh um okay wait so uh what have we not said okay oh the well the ride vehicle i really like how the um yeah that suspended nature of it and how it's this weird like accordion kind if you watch video of it uh it's it's a big like zigzag x kind of pattern which allows for it to do dips and

and i guess the the crux of this right when they when uh not imagineers but universal ears whatever you call them we're talking about uh okay it was it's so huge on the tour we got to bring it to florida how do we make it bigger and better well what if king kong actually picked up your tram and and threw it and that's that's kind of what it leads to it's the climax yeah it's crazy i i'm is there anything else like this at the moment like anything that's a suspended ride it's like peter pan it's peter pan et technically yeah you're right et um 20 000 leagues in toky. That's true. Yeah.

But nothing like this aggressive. Yeah. No. And it's huge. Yeah. And it's big. Those are massive cars. And they're like two-story buildings, too, that like you're kind of.

Yeah. They're really big. Maybe three-story. Like, it's a very large ride. Yeah. Where I live in Brooklyn, I'm in Bushwick, and they have kind of like two-story high train platforms, and I like it because it reminds me a little bit of King Kong.

Wow. I love how it's like part of your New York self-mythology. It was very impactful for me. Do you ever imagine like you're walking along and you like kind of just like drift off and imagine kong climbing oh i see him yeah i see him yeah sure see him in your in your heart if a news copter if you see a copter in the sky it's like well they're gonna be a pain in the ass yeah yeah yeah i don't know if i've ever seen a news copter in new york to be fair

there's a there's a section of the 110 when you're going downtown to like towards the 10 and there's a lot of building high-rise buildings and i do admit i've probably said it to you and it's very embarrassing i oftentimes picture uh galactus from the fantastic four as if he was to scale with the buildings and i'm like you've never said that what would this like this is a common thing my brain does as we're going because like that's the that's the most like height you get in los angeles really is when you're going down the 110 so like i'm like what if he was real and galax by the way is a giant jack kirby designed man not man he's a god i guess sort of a god character he's the

eater of worlds and he comes down and he like eats planets. So anyway, I'm saying I do that bizarre thing I just made a comment about. The tunnels to Toontown in Roger Rabbit is like one of the worst exits like in LA. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, that's a fun thing to go like, oh, this is the tunnel they had to go through to get to Toontown. But like, it's like you have to pretty much slow your car down from like 60 miles an hour to like 20 miles an hour to make a 90 degree like exit and it's built into a hill yeah yeah it's like you're doing like a

race yeah yeah we could talk about bad weird freeway stuff later sure but that's really nice that you like you know because like sometimes you got to go downtown for uh i don't know you haven't gone to court i was gonna say like you have to go downtown for unpleasant things what am i talking about sure yeah have you yet well is that true i've never done jury duty i have a system i think i have to beat it oh um but uh that's in your checking wheelhouse it is yeah how to defeat i've only done it one i've only really been called once oh you know what i'll just say it here this is not some secret like everyone's listening if anyone is listening to this if anyone listens to every

podcast to try to find potential juries yeah and i'm not doing anything wrong jury duty there's nothing i'm doing that's wrong or would get me in trouble. My system is, they have at least in Los Angeles, you're supposed to call in. Once you get served or whatever, a notice, it says call in the night before and we'll tell you if we need you. So what I did was, it says call from whatever, 8 to midnight. I call it 1159. Theory-wise that they fill up the juries as the night goes on because it can't be truly random because you you would you know you would be filled up already like there's no way they

would just reject the first 10 people because how do they know for sure everybody's going to call in so they have to fill people up so you call in at the last possible second and i did it and i never got called could be a coincidence i don't know try it in los angeles if you've been uh given a letter that says you have jury duty i'm interested to see because i've had other people do it with success but i'm not declaring it a full victory yet i was as you were saying all that i was flashing to your plan of how to defeat the dreaded parking garages at city walk the like the canceling the movie tickets the moment oh yes yes arrive have you done that plan since uh no i haven't done that plan since i have

recommended it that would probably get me in trouble if there are universal people listening they will not like that the plan to buy a movie ticket get the discounted parking and then cancel your movie ticket so you're more afraid of the universal people than the the city yeah well honestly yes they're i'm sure they're more on top of things i'm sure they're policing more uh vigilantly you remember jason was afraid of them when we suggest recording at city walk you don't want to get arrested yes well yeah we were involving a hypothetical scenario a lot less events where like there's just i guess now at parks they just expect people to be vlogging and like carrying but we were describing a scenario where we stole the blues brothers car with the big megaphone

and did a bum rush live show and you were like mad about that idea of doing that i don't remember that no memory uh uh back to kong um to make this ride vehicle to have to test the like height dynamics and the idea that kong would drop you somehow this led to the we got to start we have to come up with an official name of what Universal Imagineers are called. It's Universal Creative. Okay, so talking about the ride mechanism itself, to test the idea that you would get dropped

somehow by Kong and how was that going to work in figuring out options for this, the Universal Creative person is it peter alexander peter alexander alexander and i think you have it in front of you too this this book we cite sometimes universal versus disney by sam ganaway uh uh this story is in this book where uh he i this this guy

they want to test some harness thing. And nobody volunteers. Nobody's willing to do it. So the main guy in charge of this ride says, I don't know, I'll give it a shot. So they go into a soundstage at Universal Hollywood. He gets up on wires. And they test the thing.

And it seems like it's going to work. But then a miscommunication causes the engineers to drop him at full free fall, then jerk him to a sudden stop about three feet from the cement stage floor, resulting in a double hernia operation some months later. Yeah. This is a guy who thought of the idea, what if Kong dropped you? Then he had to have a double hernia because he lived his dream. He flew like a tram. That was kind of how they scaled.

Okay, so less intense of a drop. Less of a drop. Because it wasn't that intense. I don't recall this part being super scary. It's not some Tower of Terror type drop. No, I don't remember a lot of restraints on this. I mean, it did a good job at simulating that, like, he picked you up and dropped you. And then a police helicopter, like, with a gatling gun scares them off.

Hit him. It's like, it seems to me like it reminds me of the, like, when they're talking about Indiana Jones, when they're like, we wanted to make a ride vehicle that was you know like was going to give you like shaking essentially so you would feel like much scared like in a much scarier situation yeah so it's like you're building like it's a normal thing they've done before where you're suspended but then they're like trying to figure out how to like jerk your brain around i guess so yeah but it wasn't i honestly i never went on this ride. Oh, we haven't talked about that. I never experienced. Oh, okay. Oh, geez. Did you skip it?

We didn't really go to Universal until I was like older. And was it gone by then? I believe it was gone by then. Because this was gone in like 2002? Yeah. That's like right when we went. Left in 2002, along with the fantastic world of Hanna-Barbera, also closed in 2002. Another fun ride.

That's a fun one. Yeah. That might have been my first closed in 2002 another fun ride that's a fun one yeah that might have been my first of the day oh that's a good one yeah you kind of hit a fork and you either go straight up towards where hannah barbara is or you go the right like towards lucy yeah that used to be the choice oh the lucy exhibit i it just came back to me that i spent an inordinate amount or inordinate amount of time there. As a kid, I was a big I Love Lucy fan. Me as well. Yeah.

So I was genuinely interested in the layout of the stage and stuff and the miniatures. But then also I remember walking outside and my grandma was deep in conversation with a man in a wheelchair in full kiss makeup. He's in a wheelchair? Like wearing a kiss shirt. And in a wheelchair shirt and in and like gene simmons like paint whoa and i don't know if like they ever like i don't think she knows what kiss is that seems he seems like if you were a grandma at that time you would have missed that part of culture and that wasn't an employee not an employee yeah yeah whoa um do you i wonder what they were talking about i know i couldn't imagine my grandma was like a pretty like conservative person can't imagine her just starting a conversation with a

man and like kiss makeup yeah was there a kiss based event I don't think so, because I remember thinking about that, and I'm like, well, there must be a concert here or something, and I don't think there was. Wow. Nor was it an ICP event. It was not an ICP event. I was down with the clown back then, so I would have been a little more excited.

But if anyone knows what was going on around spring 98... Let a ninja know. Yeah. Well, I don't think the ICP was there. I think it's safe to say that there wasn't an ICP concert. You're too interested in 1998 Lucille Ball and Shaggy Too Dope. Yeah. This guy who I brought up, Peter Alexander,

I kept going down the rabbit hole with because when I was, like, he's an interesting figure and seemed involved in the Jaws attraction and the E.T. adventures, definitely factored into things we've talked about before. And in Googling him, just like, oh, like oh yeah okay so king kong and he has his own company now okay and scientologist okay oh what whoa uh he is an escaped uh scientologist he made it out and speaks at events uh frequently about he he basically this guy was like royalty

in florida because like one of the best jobs in in Florida you could have is building all the main universal rides. And when he was doing it in the early 90s, he was still full-fledged Scientologist and still lives in Florida. He's the king of Tampa. Wow. Clear water is down there. Him and

Bubba the Love Sponge. They tried for years to get Bubba the Love Sponge. I tried for years to get Bubba the Love Sponge. I'm fine, man. My head's great. Is this what you were alluding to last night? Yes. Having about him?

The oddity about this guy, yeah. I had something else about this guy. What's your thing? So he went on to form a company called... Totally Fun. Yeah, Totally Fun. And one of his jobs after making all these Universal rides, Totally Fun made a pilot for Nickelodeon that did not go.

And then he wrote the treatment and drew concept sketches for one that did go. Nickelodeon Guts. Guts. Wow. Do you have it? Yeah. Yeah um this yeah crazy guy's a legend this guy thought of all these right the thought of the drop in the king kong ride was injured himself trying it then invented guts then escaped scientology uh which by his own quote he said like

he made it all the way. He made it up to all the levels. He made it up to OT7 or whatever. Wow. And then he climbed the Scientology aggro crag. He got to the very top. He got the final crystal off the top. And he gave an interview where he said,

once I figured out it was all about aliens and stuff, then I'm looking around the world and going, well, I'm not seeing any aliens. What am I doing? And by that point in time, he had given a million dollars of his own money to the Church of Scientology. Whoa.

Dear God. And just had the sudden, like, what was any of this? He got into it in that very slow way that people get into it where it's very self-helpy, and these classes, and they're helping me, and then just realized this? He got into it, you know, in that very slow way that people get into it, where it's very self-helpy. And these classes, and they're helping me. And then just realized, oh, I didn't. It crept up on me. This is a cult.

What was I doing? And he decided to do something about it. He's going to share his story and not just go talk at events, which he does, he's going to, in a narrative form, tell his story, which he did in a film in 2001 called The Prophet, the name of the CNBC show that we enjoy very much. And it is also a 2001 anti-Scientology film made by the guy who did the King Kong ride. In this film, an author who's kind of gone off his rocker named L. Conrad Powers

has become the leader of an organization called the Church of Scientific Spiritualism, which lures people in with the promise of self-help and these tests that they perform involving mind meters okay and this film is so you may as well call it schmai and schmology why did why did paul thomas anderson even bother with the master yeah it's been done dude and the shamwell guy did the same

thing what really yeah he took his like shamwell money and like i don't know if he made a movie i know he took money and made a movie and then also used the money to like fight scientology wow wait a minute the guy because this is the shamwell guy the guy who made the underground comedy movie yes vince offer vince offer yes that thing that also the slap shop guys like on cable yeah the underground comedy that's how he got involved in the sham wow and the slap chop is that he was he so successfully sold this weird little movie via infomercials that infomercial people approached him and were like you got something why don't we put you on camera and before you know it, he's the Slap Shop guy. And he was a Scientologist?

Mm-hmm. I've never heard any of this. Yeah. Wow. And he declared war. Whoa. And we have to figure out the machinations of that war. But he's done something.

Right. That's amazing. Wow. Good for Vince Offer. A flawed hero. It's not a full endorsement. Yeah, doesn't he get it? he was in some trouble, right? Yeah.

There were some messes he could not clean up. Also, mentioning Nickelodeon Guts, I was like, that must be the most popular thing filmed at Universal Orlando. Maybe so. But then I looked it up. We've got Family Feud with Steve Harvey. Whoa. We've got Family Feud with Steve Harvey. Oh, yeah. Certain episodes of Deal or No Deal on CNBC.

Right. Good. And then Total Nonstop Action Wrestling. Oh, yeah. NWCW Monday Nitro. Yep. Portions of Fear Factor and major scenes of the movie Parenthood. That's right.

That was the arbitrary one they chose. They were like, something has to come filmed here so we can say something filmed here. Right. And it was that because that was in the early 90s. They don't even have Jimmy Buffett's fruitcakes on that list. Yeah, no, I didn't see it on there. Oh, and The Tonight Show. The Tonight Show, yes, they did some weeks there.

Yeah, most studio-based NBC Comcast-owned properties will do a few days in Universal a year. I think Ellen does. Oh, that's Warner Brothers. Every one of those shows does a few days at Universal every year. Today's show, that sort of thing. Sure, sure. Really quick, but just before I move on from The Prophet,

The Prophet is available entirely on YouTube. This is a film that Scientology fought into the ground. They aired it and they showed it at theaters in Clearwater, Florida to fuck with Scientology in their own backyard. And they called it, well, we call this thing the lack of profit. That's what we say it is. And they disparaged the film and they said, you know, like it was you know shot on somebody's home video camera and I gotta go with Scientology on this one and there is a

part I didn't watch the full film I barely found out about this but I did put on there's a part where it zooms into a dying El Conrad Powers oh my god and this is like Halloween store makeup this is like they they like slap a gray

wig on him a couple all right how do we show that he's old uh lines let's like put a line on his face um do you think this is on par with the uh slightly teased lance burton movie that we talked about on the david copperfield patreon billy top it the very cheap looking lance burton movie about a magician named billy top it look it up we haven't done billy top it yet we haven't we gotta do a film series billy top that's what i'm getting at profit and uh the underground comedy available for three unrated version three dollars on amazon right now so when i order my copy of um what's the tv show what's the dreamworks tv show father of the pride yeah we got an amazon cart with father of the pride and underground comedy movie and then the fbi will be at my house very

quickly billy toppett master magician oh my god you've never shown us that yeah you've watched the trailer before garbage it's no burt wonderstone uh peter alexander also has the spielberg connection oh yeah like i came across a few different things. One is saying that the Universal vs. Disney book says that Spielberg hired Alexander after all the rides were open. One video online was saying he was so impressed by Kong on the studio tour that he tasked Peter Alexander with, like, all right, think of some Back to the Future ideas for a ride. Oh, uh-huh. But while we're talking Spielberg, there's that famous story that Spielberg did not want to do the big drop on Jurassic Park because he's scared of heights. And that was not the first time he pulled that because he came to Universal Orlando before it opened and apparently they say in the book Spielberg was not fond of heights and suggested

that he wait for his guests at the exit of confrontation. What a killjoy. Yeah. Yeah, geez. He wouldn't even do confrontation. Wow. That's... Feels on par with me though not long ago. I feel like a kindred spirit

with him if he did the if he was on the podcast regularly he would have worked up to it yeah and now he could do it it's not being conditioned like i am yeah the book also makes uh a point to point out uh you know they were having a lot of troubles with jaws and kong when it first opened um there was no way to be certain that kong would not malfunction and stick his hand into the tram car and nail somebody in the third row. Or that the tram car would not break off Kong's hand in the process. Wow. Jesus.

What? It might have just reached in. Wow. So probably for the best, Stephen sat it out. Yikes. Yeah, I read that on opening day that all of the mechanized stuff broke, and they were just operating it practically. So like all day on opening day,

there were just people in the control room just doing it live. Fuck it, we'll do it live. Fuck it, we'll do it live. That's like if there were like 100 people doing Pirates of the Caribbean, and they just had to be there all day like puppeting the mouths essentially making the woman chase the man with the rolling pin. Jeez. I'm bored. I'm going to make him do a jerk off gesture.

Who cares? All right. Now I'm feeling good. I'm going to make him do the hang 10 sign. Hang loose. Could you make him talk? If they could manually do it, you could make him talk and play it over the loudspeaker.

Yeah, probably. He thanks everybody by name. Oh, my God. That would be the greatest. Goodbye, Brett. This is going to have to be quick. The vehicle is much bigger. If you're struggling with your life,

you may have what are called thetans trapped in your body. What? These are buildings? I thought they were Kong-sized E-meters. I'm just trying to get my head straight. We got to find out if that's possible to manually, I guess it has to be, manually program all these robots. Sure, but they're all gone now.

I'm just saying all robots in general on these rides. I'm saying that opens up the potential. Could you do Lincoln and truly have somebody just making the mouth move as they talk? And you have him do a totally different show at Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln. Where he like responds to people and roasts them? Yeah, he does crowd work. Hmm.

Look at this guy in the front row. What a chowderhead. Is this your wife? What happened, lady? You look as thick-headed as the morally corrupt leaders of the Confederate Army. Well, I think you've made a good case right now

for you being the voice. Yeah. All right, I have to do live ground work. Someone let us know. We have listeners who work at disneyland is this possible obviously we can't do it unless we do something very against the rules but is it possible i just like to know your hat looks silly and not at all like a stovepipe that'd be honestly people would love that if he was like it was like turtle talk with crush but

lincoln yeah and he just lightly made fun of you with uh only references he would be would it be available to him at the time he was alive so he couldn't do a rickles roast he couldn't call somebody a nazi in the front row because he didn't know what that was yet he comes from a more a more innocent time before Nazi. I guess he could say, I'm jealous of Lincoln. I guess he'd be like, what are you, a confederate?

What is this guy? Confederate? Logs for brains? In which case, I'm a fan of you. I love logs. A big fan of logs. Quickly scanning all the things i know about lincoln in my head and i might be out uh he was good sullen sullen say he was depressed it was a sad sad man um a couple real quick uh kong. I always liked the logo.

I thought the logo was real fun. All the art associated with it is so great. And the photo op. You would come down this big ramp at the end, and there was, I don't think my family ever did the photo op, but there was a giant Kong, and you could get in his hand as if he was picking you up and get your official Kodak photo op memory.

And it was so, I mean, nowadays, people would be lining up for something like that. I mean, they wouldn't make any money off it because everyone would just use their phones. There is a similar thing, at least in New York, but probably elsewhere, at Madame Tussauds. Similar photo op. Oh, great. And I know this because I was going to see knives out a few weeks ago

went to times square and some guys like hey you uh want to get into madame tussauds for free did he say it like that yeah like quietly like to me and my friend we kind of looked at each other we're like yes it's like you come in you walk around the end, there's a survey. You put my name down. My name's Tyler. You do that, get in for free. Wow. And then we were like, yeah, deal. And then he gave the guy the nod, and then they waved us in.

Wow. We got to explore a mostly empty Adam's Cube. Yeah, what's on the more recent end of celebrities in there? Who did you see? We got a whole Marvel exhibit now. So, Captain Marvel. It was pretty new. Kardashians.

Greta Gerwig. Is there a Greta Gerwig? Is there a Florence... I don't know how to say it. Florence Poo? Poo? Poo? Poo?

Poo? Poo? I don't know. I think it's Poo it poo florence poe the cast of parasite poe i was gonna say poe poe dameron sure yeah the thing with greta though it's like it's francis ha yeah it's francis it's almost a few years behind like i you know i want to take a picture of greta gerwig not francis ha right yeah they have the safties but it's Francis. It's almost a few years behind. Like, you know, I want to take a picture of Greta Gerwig, not Francis. Right.

Yeah. They have the Safdies, but it's him in good time. Which, in retrospect, it's a little weird. He was playing kind of the handicapped guy. I don't want a picture with that. Yeah, the A24 section was really funny. That was packed. That section was packed.

Yeah. that was packed that section was packed um yeah uh oh souvenir this was a big souvenir i feel stuffed gorilla i believe i went to this with my grandparents i went we went took them to florida once and i believe my for my cousins who were not there i believe my grandfather bought a stuffed kong but i i remember that was a big like merchandise when universal first opened was was stuffed sharks and stuffed gorillas you know what i really like are those uh in in surrounding stuff and artwork like you said i really like when uh the the billboards that were outside if you guys have seen pictures of the billboards uh in florida promote it and because they had texture it's like a weird like too many details like plastic kong they didn't just do flat billboards yeah they were they were you know sort of odd and scaly and creepy um i don't know why i immediately thought of the board game life with the weird the mountains that were

like three-dimensional that's not the best example of what you're talking about but that's what popped into my head i know what you're talking i know what i mean inserting those into the yes that was very satisfying with the we're on the wheel um this in general i'm very sad that i didn't get to do this because it feels like the ultimate universal ride of the time it's like got all the different things that differentiate it from disney it's a little scarier it's it's different tonally than anything i guess like mgm studios was opening up and they were going to have like a gangster hijack your car which is the closest i don't know feeling of terror you'd get in danger both of these parks had like a lot of real fire which is fun real fire host hosts in the car like jaws like cast members in the car which probably contributed to both those rides downfall because that's expensive

to have people in every car although both like real people eaters too like they could get a lot of people throughout uh there were anecdotes about like cast members on jaws cast members on king kong were trying to like it was competitive to see like how many guests they could get through per hour yeah also on jaws they were armed yeah they were armed which would have been helpful on kong yeah but they weren't expected this is a random this is an evacuation yeah that's true they don't expect to be taking it past kong but it's like it feels like the rise of the resistance of the time where all of Universal's tricks are in there. It's the best of everything they can do. It's possible at the moment.

Yeah. Yeah, I think it really did push the limits. Because it broke down all the time. Broke down a lot, yeah. But I love that it was big on the tram tour, and then they go, how do we top one kong two kongs yeah we haven't talked about that there's you get to see two robots that's really neat um i was so i remember seeing these commercials and i was so scared of the idea of it like i wonder if i was

six if i would have refused to do it i might have because because it was scary and when i'm watching these videos i go oh my god i would have been, like, terrified. Because we've talked before about – when did you go on this? How old were you, Scott? It might have been down when I was there in the 90s. I might not have done this until, like, 99. Would you have been freaked out with your big things in a smaller space fear? Probably, yes.

That's what my question is because I have – It's huge. smaller space fear probably yes that's my question because i have huge i've talked about before my fear of giant like uh car dealership balloons out front as a child to the point you talked about that yeah have you no i don't know if you have you might just hear it so much in your head that in galactus i'm thinking about galactus defeat the car dealership balloons? I'm thinking about Galactus all the time. I've never mentioned that. I really have not mentioned that I was afraid of big, giant balloons before on the show. No.

Wow. No. Really? Afraid of those? They're all so silly and friendly. Well, because they were just so big. They were abnormally... You don't see a giant inflatable ape in front of a car dealership.

I would look away away i would look away in the car when we'd be driving by it wow much less in giant sunglasses and giant swim trunks yeah there was right by the uh right by the rosemont horizon which is now the all-state arena uh i remember there was something they were promoting and there were like seven of them in a row along the like the expressway and god i was scared even though they were far away it wasn't like they were coming up to the car um but then my dad once there was one there was a giant balloon just it was balloon shaped next to the toys r us on golf road and he made me go up and touch it he like he forced me to like yeah get over like get over it i

it it mostly worked i think i was still a little uncomfortable but i it did like this is a facing fears moment yeah touch the balloon yeah i remember it very very vividly i assume i was like six seven wow walked up to it and touched it i don't know that it wasn't like i don't know if that's really the best way to do it. Cause it wasn't like I was thinking it was actually going to eat me or that it wasn't real or something. So I don't know why touching it was. It's just tackling your fears.

Yeah. Putting your hands on your fears. He should have just like sat me, like made me sit there for an hour and stare at it. Desensitize me to it. For every tear I deduct a thousand dollars from your inheritance he should have i mean maybe maybe it was a bribe maybe i got bribed that day because i got bribed for other things like scoring a goal in soccer like my dad told me that's successful i was bad at all sports i didn't want to play i was on defense and then i one day well i don't know if he like Talked to the coach they put me in on offense

For soccer and my dad Came up to me before I was about to go in and said I will buy you a toy if you score a goal And I fucking scored a goal so Fast It's unbelievable how fast I scored It and I got a ninja turtle Vehicle out of it and I was thrilled

So I wonder if there was some sort Of bribe I have to ask my dad He and I will say all of our dads should be bribing us in this way uh i'll get you a toy if you sell a tv show oh my god i just did it yeah honestly i need the motivation right now sure uh so i i'm i'm jealous of not going on it but i wonder if i would have been too scared as a kid well he wasn't inflatable i was a little scared now i'm thinking i was about 10 so it was like 98 yeah and i i think i was still a little i mean maybe like we were in the vicinity and i was like maybe we check out another ride first like let me build up my that's's a good move. Let's go back to Lucy. Playing it cool. For a minute. Oh, man.

If they can drive across country, I can face God. That's the thing my wife, Erin, is extremely fond of. The game where you drove them across country by answering trivia questions. Oh, my gosh. Trivia questions were hard. Very specific questions. They still had it like seven years ago. And Lindsay took a picture of me excitedly playing the i love lucy game wow uh um we haven't talked about the biggest selling point oh yeah you know

i remember it maybe it was even like in the pamphlet or something or on like the beetle juice hosted infomercial that just played on repeat at the hotel um wait i don't maybe i don't know there was that oh yeah that i kept watching and it annoyed my family because he hosted it it was a like yeah the beetlejuice actor at the park being like you want scares get on jaws like whoa wait a minute he was sort of i don't know that i've never seen this have you seen which hotels are we talking well there used to be hotels, not like partner hotels, across the highway, right? I'm going to say this was at a Days Inn somewhere. Whoa.

So they gave all of these hotels Beelge's videos? An in-hotel chat when I got, like, stuck in Vegas once. Like, this no-name hotel had, like, the Vegas channel, which was very much, like, a theme park channel. So, I think, like, these can exist. There can be, like, the Disney

channel and the Universal info channel. Okay, okay. It's just, like, for tourism. Oh, man. So, Beetlejuice told you about everything yeah i want to see this really bad he set the ground groundwork for uh my excitement wow he was kind of the master of the ceremonies yeah original universal i feel like so he would he'd tell he'd tell you about kong though so he's at kong and i remember this was a big selling point was the banana breath.

Oh, wait, that was the opening joke, and then we haven't talked about it. Yeah. Smell that banana breath, which the one here did, too, and I smelled it on the daily when I worked there. It's great. That is a lot of fun. It's a really smart idea. They didn't have to think of it.

They could have missed that. But it's really funny. I mean, yeah. There was no banana smell anywhere before this, right? They really innovated with banana breath? I think so. There may not have been a ton of theme park smells up until this point. Did this innovate the theme park smell? I think they had to go to a fragrance distributor.

Like, they had to go to someone who sold scents to, like, get this scent. Interesting. And then get it in bulk. Like, it's artificial banana smell. Yeah. Yeah. Which is odd.

Because bananas don't really smell like anything. Right. But did you ever have the Nesquik banana flavor? Like I did as a child? Yeah. You'd have those little, they came in a very satisfying metal or tin, and you'd scoop out a scoop of it. We had it in strawberry and banana, and you put it in your milk,

and it was the most artificial banana smell possible. Yeah, it's like fake watermelon, that kind of flavor. Yeah. There's fake banana i guess a lot of bananas together have a smell but not like one um speaking of which how's your hand doing my hand is there is no sign of anything going on in the banana spot does it smell like bananas yes wow oh so they do have a smell they do have they do but it's not the it's not like the runts candy version of banana it's more of a it's a subtle it's a more subtle smell yeah so i'm not an idiot but why would kong's breath smell like bananas? Yeah. Yeah.

Well, it's not like motor oil requires a lot. Ripping apart crocodiles or something. You said, right? So, well, where in the timeline is it?

Has he been made to perform in the show? Right. As when he was backstage at the show, uh, did they, was there crafty was there like a big yeah yeah bananas blue almonds they put out a lot of things for him you know they had they had barbecue potato chips and the trail mix but aspirin just in case yeah i don't like yeah with somebody on p Like the amount of bananas He'd have to have

To feel satiated Would be insane You'd have to have somebody Peeling the bananas Or does he eat them With the peel I guess his digestive system Can handle the peel

Probably Probably He can just eat a crocodile Jason's Jason's digestive system Can't handle A regular banana Well I just need

A little toast Or a little cereal first To prime the pump Prime the pump Prime Prime the pump? Prime the tummy pump. You can't have just a banana in there in the morning. It's so much sugar immediately, I feel like. Could you have like a strawberry first thing?

I think that'd be fine. What else is on your list? What can't you have? What's on the no-no list? I don't know. No, no, no, no. I don't have bananas no more. Hmm. I'm't have bananas no more. Hmm.

I'm trying to think. I mean, some mornings it's like I wake up and something savory sounds disgusting to me. But some mornings something sweet sounds disgusting to me. But that's more like a taste thing than like a this will fuck me up sort of thing. But a banana would fuck you up. But it sounds like a banana is the one rule you have no bananas first no bananas first yeah but anything else is on the table you would eat like a pancake or a chocolate chip pancake uh sure cold well as long as i have caffeine to balance it out i think the sugar i think too much sugar early in the morning

do you put a lot of sugar and cream in a coffee? No. Not at all? Maybe I'll get a vanilla latte, but only one pump. Would you eat a piece of cake first thing? Yes. But that's incredibly sugar. But again, I need a cup of coffee to balance out the sugar. So balance out the banana with coffee. Yeah. Yeah, that would probably work, but I would need to have some

of the coffee first. No question about the cake. The cake is the flaw in this. Up until that, I think I was with you. But if it's the cake... I think, well, I think the wonders of sugar processing, probably. So the raw sugar... Yeah, the fiber, the stuff from the earth. I need it a little more.

We need a listener to weigh in on this is there scientific evidence what jason's saying that uh banana sugar would be raw and more um uh more tumultuous inside jason's stomach it's the morning i can't have all that real sugar shit give me cake give me a sheet cake i i have one real little thing breakfast sheet cake um i went looking for so here's a thing for our you know theoretical movie series the magic of the movies souvenir vhs cassette okay which they would sell at universal florida and i believe universal hollywood too do you know about the hosted by john forsyth oh yes well i love this is my favorite tape it it was back when there was a very short window where theme parks would be like here's a souvenir

of the hs to remember your trip it is 40 dollars now it is free on youtube i scrolled through to find when does he talk about kong and how does he talk about Kong? So, of course, the Kong footage is that, like, very stylized, like, Kong squatting at you in the tram and the helicopters. But John Forsythe setting it up is just him talking about, like, you know, the thrills of Kong while he is on a slowly drifting boat. He's on a boat in the middle of the water in universal florida and it's like a two-tier boat like he is in like the galley like he's in the living room area of this boat that is either like on a rope at the dock or just in the middle of it and it's just kind of drift like you see

the background just drifting who is old at this point, is just like setting up Kong, but there's no context. He's just on a slowly drifting boat. When you're thinking about the movies, you don't notice where you are, why you're drifting, where to. If the boat was sinking,

I wouldn't even give it a thought. But I mean, that Vs i i truly am wondering like was this directed for children to remember their trip or was it more for like the era of like the last remnants of people making slides and giving like here's you got to look at the slides from my trip was the john for Forsythe VHS for very old people who are used to seeing slides of friends and loved ones' journeys? I think the John Forsythe involvement is maybe a hint. I think so. Like I maybe would have chosen Beetlejuice

if given the choice of MCs. Far too crass. But I definitely have watched that and probably wanted the VHS as a kid. Yeah. Yeah, I definitely. I might not have known it was there. I was a big fan of the movie side of Universal Studios.

Like, I love the Hitchcock exhibit. I was really into that. I obviously loved the Lucy thing. You know, all of those kind of attractions really appealed to me. It's like a nerdy tenure. What that led to was just a generation of people who are weirdos in the entertainment industry who are comedians like yeah yeah it spoke to us uh murder she wrote you see the murder she wrote show or was it hercules and

xena by the time it was hercules and xena oh i was not even i didn't just watch the show as it was part of it damn whoa we haven't talked about this at all i was a centaur child i was the centaur child okay the centaur children have found each other a late reveal in the episode whoa i also at this time i loved like it was my favorite thing on tv the action pack of hercules and xena wow Wow. I loved it so much. It was such a thrill to be part of that world. Wow. The

centaur children. The two centaur children. From across the country, they managed to find each other. Wait, what are this? I've never seen the show though. What did the centaur children do? I think we just celebrated. I remember going well like someone was attacking hercules and xena and then there's footage of centaur shooting crossbows

yeah and so and then it cut to like two adult centaurs and his centaur child and like hercules and xena are like thanks and then it cuts to us in front of green screen like yes we killed that man oh my god oh both of you wow i mean these hercules and xena crossovers they didn't come you know there was once in a blue moon yeah it's a big deal when they were they meet again yeah and you got to to be part one. I got to be part of it. You're part of the universe now. Wow. That's amazing. What if you had just been in it and you didn't know what the context was going to be? It's going to cut to you

and then you wave and celebrate. And then if what that ended up being is like Hercules and Xena got slaughtered, just wrecked and their bodies are dead and then the villain gives you a thumbs up and you're supposed to like, yay. Their blood is on our hands. And right before it cuts to you, they throw a thumbs up and you're supposed to like, yay. Their blood is on our hands. And right before it cuts to you, they like throw a little blood on you.

No, no. Thank you, centaur children. You finally banished those bastards to hell where they belong. Take me back to Mel's drive-in. I need a milkshake to calm down. But not a banana if it's the morning they should have sold videos of that that's a big thing they didn't do they didn't give us like anything like i thought i'd get a video at the end yeah at least the option studios version when they would have you been like being the soap opera and stuff they didn't sell a video to that either i don't think it seemed like such a missed opportunity someone be inserted into home improvement episode oh

maybe disney world yeah it was a disney there was a disney world thing yeah yeah yeah um what did you what did you guys wear to be sent to our children there was some armor yeah i'm sure i was also wearing maybe like a bugle boy sleeveless shirt a wig that was my style yeah like a long haired wig maybe yeah guys both of you Halloween idea for this year

oh yeah tweet pictures at each other the boys are back in town the centaur boys are back in town forever The centaur boys are back in town. Forever Dogs Halloween promotion. It's two different hosts on two different coasts. That's the centaurs. Should really change the name of the podcast network to Forever Centaur.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Forever Centaur. Any final thoughts about Kong about anything while you have the mic it was the most exciting week of my life until I was

maybe 18 and like had a car and was like kissing people and like graduating school it was like such a big trip for me because it had been built up and other kids got to do it. By the time I was 10 and doing it, it was huge and King Kong was the

centerpiece of it. There's entire years of my life missing. I don't remember a day. I don't remember what school was like. I remember every second of the Disney or Universal trips. I took like free thing like uh oh yeah i i had and i would just look over again reminiscing yeah yeah it was such a fun time to be yeah and it was pre-islands

of adventure you know they're still using that neon sign logo. It's just like aesthetically really still in the head. Man, hell yeah. Absolutely. Well, Centaur Child, Brett Davis, you survived Podcast The Ride. What a blast. Thanks so much. And let's exit through the gift shop with the King Kong photo op.

Is there anything you'd like to plug? Check out the podcast for laundry on Forever Dog, the National Lampoon Radio Hour on Forever Dog. Did a weird TV show for a while called The Special Without Brett Davis. That's still up there. And that's on YouTube and such. You can watch moments from that. Wonderful.

Brett Davis RIP on social media. Cool, cool. All right. And as for us, for more Podcast the Ride, follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. And three bonus episodes every month if you sign up for Podcast the Ride. The second gate at patreon.com slash podcasttheride.

Mr. Six episode certainly coming coming soon Lucy immediately coming soon yeah this one's really looming now the Lucy one I think we've promised a two and a half hour episode I'm not sure that

we have but you clearly did just now we might have to do a retreat to prepare for that we don't have to go to like Big Bear or something yes I ran out of house we got a we got country from new york to la oh yeah we have to like find like william fawley's relatives we have to like we found like how we found katsuwinkle and the guy

who did botanicus we need to find like the great great grandson of bill frawley you want to ask about who bill yeah forget about bill that old son of a bitch. No way he had any kids, right? I don't think so. I don't think so. Not on purpose. Yeah, no, not on purpose. Damn it, it happened again. He seemed like he'd be put out by it accidentally.

Like, he seemed to be put out by the act. He doesn't seem like a guy who would love the act of lovemaking. No. Also presumably dead before either of these Lucy exhibits. Oh, yeah.

He died a couple years. He was on My Three Sons for a couple seasons and then he got replaced because he was ailing and then he was dead pretty soon. And he was 25 years older than the rest of them.

Like walked outside of his apartment building and died on the sidewalk. Yeah, he lives in a one-bedroom apartment still the same yeah efficiency apartment for years and years i forget which one i used to know which we need to find it we gotta find the apartment we gotta find the hospital bed he died in yes as well i want to die and now or Or the sidewalk he died on. Depending on where it actually happened, where the expiring happened. It depends on what part of town I'm in.

Is this LA we're talking? It's by the boulevard. It's by Paramount, I think. I think his apartment was right around there. Oh, really? You're staying around there, right? Yeah, go find it. So that we know in advance that if we're on one side of the hill

take me to the walt bed if i'm on the other side of the hill the frolly sidewalk i want to die on the frolly sidewalk which which which piece of cement did bill frolly die on excuse oh yeah policeman walk officer hey um do you know where's that um hi where's that famous sidewalk in hollywood with the stars no no no no hell no i don't want to see that shit take me to one of the bill frawley collapsed that would be the one the tour i would start in hollywood i would drive people around in a van and it would be mostly about bill frawley things so you'd start at the apartment building then drive up the sidewalk slightly all right

tours over also if kiss makeup guys out there uh please reach me yeah you kind of look like harry knolls if that helps i don't know how much that narrows it down Harry Knowles with the little

Gene Simmons makeup This has been a great mystery in my life Wow, an old family friend Yes, let's make the reunion happen Just like the St. Churchill reunion Thanks for listening everybody Fighting the frizzies at 11 Forever

Dog This has been. Forever Dog. This has been a Forever Dog production. Executive produced by Mike Carlson, Jason Sheridan, Scott Gairdner, Brett Boehm, Joe Cilio, and Alex Ramsey. For more original podcasts, please visit

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