Podcast: The Ride - Madame Tussauds with Lamar Woods

Episode Date: July 30, 2021

Lamar Woods (Single Parents, Grand Crew) joins us to discuss his time managing the Hollywood location of the historic wax museum. And we discuss our own recent visits to Madame Tussauds! Mad T Party episode up at The Second Gate: Patreon.com/PodcastTheRide Listen to Podcast: The Ride Ad-Free on Forever Dog Plus: http://foreverdogpodcasts.com/plus 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 may feature your favorite stars shattering into pieces, your favorite ogres dripping green in the Hollywood heat, and shocking secrets of tourism industry middle management, courtesy of special guest Lamar Woods. It's Madame Tussauds on Podcast The Ride.

Welcome to Podcast The Ride, the theme park podcast hosted by three men who are so polite they asked permission to take a photo with a wax figure. My name is Mike Carlson. I choked a little bit on the intro. Jason Sheridan joining me as always. Yeah. Yeah. I was asking anyone I saw, which turned out to be more wax figures, because some of the rooms are a little dark.

Oh, you're saying you couldn't tell the difference between a human i couldn't tell i see how late night shows get away with like arnold schwarzenegger pretends to be the wax figure and then jumps out oh i see what you're saying yeah when they prank there was an ozzy osbourne prank uh where he was pranking people and i will say we'll get to this but yeah i did go to uh madam to sods is how i believe it's pronounced. And we have somebody who will tell us exactly what the right answer is. Probably one thing he can tell us. Yeah, I think. But I very much felt like these are coming to life.

Like I had this body reaction to them. But we'll get to that. Scott Gairdner here joining us. Hi. Yeah. No. And you got to ask for selfie permission. Just because they're fake doesn't mean consent's not in the picture. Right. Wax. Yeah. W. And you got to ask for selfie permission. Just yeah. Just because they're fake doesn't mean. Yeah. Consent's not in the picture.

Right. Wax. Yeah. Wax figures. And I would I would like they felt like a mental agreement. Like they like kind of give me a yes. Elton John would say, yes, you are allowed. Yes, you are allowed. They're human shaped. Feels weird. But I honestly I will say this. I was not expecting to have a ton to talk about today i have so much to talk about after going yesterday oh yeah like so i'm very very excited i went to this place thinking i'm gonna probably make some jokes about it who gives a shit i'll say this i came away i love wax museums i am a wax well don't hang on don't go pluralizing that because madame madame tussauds is like the champagne brand all right that's fair there's some other wax museums that are a little iffier although you might like those more i think maybe i like them more i like the creditor ones more i just i think i like i'm in it i'm into it now and i didn't realize i was a guy like a wax

guy but i am a wax guy now let's bring our guest in uh to really give us the expertise uh he he's a writer an improviser and a musician he's writing on the upcoming show grand crew improvising with the group white women and he's got an album coming out very soon he's doing a lot lamar woods is here hey what's up y'all what's happening thanks for having me we're excited to talk about uh wax i guess oh man it was so great to hear. I didn't realize y'all went, like, two yesterday. So that's great. And it's always the same thing where people are like, Wax Museum, whatever.

They go and they fucking love it after. It's like, it's just like, you don't know until you've done it, for sure. It's like a beautiful experience. Yeah, really. I came out, like, grinning, I think. And I was so tired going in. I was like, yeah, I got to get this done for this for work. I'm from a theme park journal. This is for work. And I came up going, I'm going to every one of these in any city I'm in, I think. actually curious how it is like i've i worked there for seven years but i stopped i quit probably about six years ago so i haven't really been since so i'm curious what y'all experience i'm curious what figures are still there well we have photos oh really oh great yes um we should i mean i want

to talk about our experience we should just say this all at the top your situation with madame tussauds are we right about that first oh no i mean i've always said tussauds but i don't know anymore the way y'all saying it sounds like because i was always like never really have respect for the the old guard you know so i was i was out there butchering the name you know i was like fuck madame muselle whatever but nah she's she's cool but it was like so i could be saying it wrong but what would make y's cool but it was like uh so i could be saying it wrong but what would make y'all think it was too soft well the reason i think it's too soft is because spider-man said it in the 4d movie at the end of the whole tour yesterday really now did you

did any of us do that i didn't do that jason and i did it okay all right all right that's probably what it is dan because they would have they would have quality check that for sure that's why i thought it but if you look at you jason said this too and if you look at the youtube videos even the stuff that's like official company video stuff will say different like pronunciation so i don't know if there's even some some are saying two so's and there's like youtube videos of like how do you pronounce this french name yeah they're saying two so's somebody said two sar and i went what the that doesn't even are there i wonder if it's yeah i bet there's a story there i bet it's probably shamed over time like but i i feel like two so's is uh is the way we all said it like madame two so's is how i've always said it that's how i've always said it yeah yeah until i felt

like i was being like smarty pants yesterday like i, I know the real wit. Yeah. I know. I'm going to go back to Tussauds just for my own relaxation. Every time I say Tussauds. Tussauds feels a little like elegant, like a little too like bougie. Like, that's probably what they called it back in the... Did y'all watch the little, the history of Madame Tussauds? Like, where, like how it all started? It was like, I saw some British made thing. It was like very dry yeah like it's

in the behind the scenes there's like a section out there before you oh yeah yes oh wait no in the museum no i didn't see it in the museum okay it's in there's like a there's like a segment in a museum called behind the scenes and there's like a documentary that shows like how she started and stuff oh and uh but we could get into that but i guess i should explain my relationship to you because you used to work for this organization so yeah it's totally random there's no i had no like i had no awareness of wax museums or anything before i moved to la but i was just i just moved to la like every other person who wants to be in in the hollywood industry and then i i needed a job so i worked like i was working like three different jobs at the time i was working like at in the Hollywood industry. And then I needed a job.

So I worked like, I was working like three different jobs at the time. I was working like at the movie theater, at the, shout out the Pacific theaters, rest in peace. And then also I was working at Hollywood Video,

rest in peace. Damn, everywhere I worked, it was like, God, at least not Madame Tussauds though. So Madame Tussauds was just a part-time job I had.

And I worked inside, you know, like when I first went to L.A., just trying to survive. And we did like these, you know, when you walk in, you probably experienced this. You walk in, there's like these employees that are trying to take pictures of you with the wax figures. And then they sell it to you at the end. So I was one of those guys just like, hey, come on, get a pic with Shrek or whatever. And so I did that for like a year and i was pretty good at it you know i'm like good at making people like smile and then uh and then also magic so it's very big on like they're part of just to give you context they're part of a corporation called uh um uh

i'm blanking on it right now. Their current owner is, or manager, they sold, there's a weird... Did they sell it somewhere else? Yeah. Merlin Entertainment is who runs them, but they did a, they sold it to someone and then leased it back. It's one of those sorts of things. Oh, that I didn't know about, but Merlin

is always the thing, which is like, I didn't realize it was like a huge, in the UK, like a huge theme park business. They have like a bunch of stuff, like the London Eye and all that. So it's like a pretty intense corporation, but they're very big on like promoting people like within, right? So I'm just doing good. Like I'm a young employee. Then they asked me to be like a little supervisor of the photo people.

So I was still working on the floor, but I was also like doing schedules and stuff. And I was like, you know, doing my thing. And then I just got like, I just all of a sudden, I had this like idea that like revolutionized the entire business. Because first of all, when they first moved to Hollywood, they were not doing that good. It was like we, they opened up. And I think, you know, it's kind of funny because I think people don't realize Hollywood Boulevard is so shitty. Yes. Yeah, God.

I think they like, we're coming. They did this huge grand open. Garcetti, before he was mayor, for some reason, I remember his image. Because we had the wax figure of the other mayor before him. But they were like, you know, it was a full grand opening. And we opened and it's just like two people a day. Like just like no one coming. So we're like really in the, I don't know if I should be putting all the business out there like that.

But we were like really like not doing well. So the photo department, I would put in charge of. So, you know, it's a lot of this. We had this new boss come in because he's coming in to shape things up from the UK. Right. doing well so the photo department i would put in charge of so you know it's a lot of this uh we had this new boss come in because he's coming in to shape things up from the uk right he's like this short guy and then colin he was like really uh you know really business-minded like doesn't play around like he's like it i don't care where's the money like that's kind of how he is and then he's like so he puts me in charge he's like we need to figure out how to like make some money here so i came up with this whole price structure for the photos and it was

so smooth too because it was like i don't want to break it all down to put the secrets out there but basically what i did was like i had this there we had this usb thing that if you that's our most expensive thing right it was like 35 bucks so what i would do is like it was such a simple thing they were taking the people were taking pictures of like say you go in there right they take a picture of you and you do one pose and then they take another one and then they let you go but what i was doing i was like i was come up with like three different poses that are fucking awesome and they'll want all of them and then what happened is they always would buy the usb because they couldn't make a decision on which one they like so they would

take all of them so it was like every transaction was like almost 35 transactions it was like boom this shit just like skyrocketed right so then i'm like all of a sudden we got the most the number one photo department in the country like so like because you know we got maps all over the all over the world all over the world or whatever so tons of them dozens of them yeah so um so then i got promoted again and i'm now like the i'm like the i'm like the guest experience manager and i'm running the that inside and then i get i get no i got promoted to something else it was like something between which is all bullshit it was just like different ways of like paying me the same amount of money but like then i like got promoted guest experience manager and i was like fully like in a suit and i'm like running this place and i'm like

it's like a like this is like my career at this point so i have a huge relationship with that museum and i did that for seven years and then and then um i and then i you know started my writing career but i'll never forget it because it taught me everything I know about life. I literally, like, I could point to every aspect of my career, my life right now, and say that I learned something, some of it at Madame Tussauds Hollywood, for sure. Wow. That's wild. It sounds like you saved the Hollywood location.

That seems accurate i mean i i'm not gonna toot my own horn but you know now i would say between colin that guy colin came in like he i think he saw something in me and he was like this guy's gonna help me turn around because i think i would i would give the credit to him i'm just assuming he's listening sure yeah he's like thank you colin but i think you know he he was kind of like a little bit of a mentor in a way where he he just taught me a lot about business and stuff and like how that shit works but um but yeah no we took that shit from like struggling to like actually making money for sure it was it was cool but yeah and i had like people knew about me it was like i was getting

awards and stuff it was crazy i was like a wax man i was the wax man i had it i had it going on like man i was doing it man my girlfriend worked in i was dating this girl she worked in events so me and her were like a power couple wow yeah it was wild man it was like a life it was a life for sure would you go to like uh here's this like company-wide banquet where then you got a trophy or something yeah we had those we would do some at the at the music at the rooftop on the uh and one in hollywood and we would go to vegas because there's one in vegas and we would go there a lot and then it got to the point where they were sending me around to teach all the other ones this price

and structure and all the things we were doing so even going to like leg i went to legoland and like because that's also part of merlin and like all these other places. And yeah, it was like, I was like a full on corporate like amusement park guy. It was very, it was very rewarding. Getting flown around. So you're in Vegas on other people's diamonds. So this is amazing. Yeah.

Yeah. Like they're giving me like a stipend and stuff, you know, being in hotels. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, so that's my relationship. So, you know, I mean, it but you know so that's my relationship so you know i mean it was not an easy job because middle man when you're doing middle management which was mostly what i was doing was um that's always just a nightmare because people don't ever want

to listen to you and stuff but yeah that's that's that's my relationship with wow that's wild was there any consideration were you ever like i could take over merlin entertainment if i kept going like i could be the head of this whole company i definitely i mean definitely it was a possibility because that's what they want they want they want they don't even they they like if you look at all their um ceos even the guy colin or like all the people who run it they've you could pretty much everyone will tell you they started at the bottom and like that's like part of the story so it definitely seemed like a realistic out i mean i know i'd never wanted to do that like i was like i want to be a i want to be a rapper slash comedian that i want to be donald glover when i grow up

but yeah it's like a very funny thing though because you don't i don't know how like i was like how would i have really survived out here if i never got the promotion because i was only making like it seems like so little money now but it was like ten dollars an hour right you know doing that and then living in la so then the promotion getting like bumped up to like 12 or like 15 was enough for me to feel like okay i could actually live here oh yeah in this city you know but um but yeah not uh not i never liked it it's terrible it was terrible yeah and then running like seminars you have to go into a city and then like teach people how to do a system that is that is kind of yeah it's sort of dry i'll tell you what's cool like the cool stuff was like the like the behind

the scenes like seeing how they work like how they they like the one of the funnest times i ever had was like we had the tupac wax figure cup so every time they they do a release of a new figure it's like a party right so they get the red carpet out and it's like as if the wax figure is gonna walk down it but like they had basically you know it was on the radio they got I think they partnered with um uh have my memories like gone but the radio station in LA that plays

like basically 90s hip hop I forgot what it's called but they partnered with them and they uh had this party on the roof for the release and then like Bone Thugs and Harmony came and DJ Quick was there and I like basically got to party had this party on the roof for the release, and then Bone Thugs-N-Harmony came, and DJ Quick was there, and I basically got to party with them all night

because we went out after, and I got to hang out with them, and I was like, that was fucking dope. That was so cool. Bone Thugs, did you connect with one of them in particular more than the other? I connect with Busy Bone. Busy is like, hey, I'm a busy guy too i'm a manager you know

i got a lot of things going on so i understand what you're going through busy but it's hard man you get overwhelmed you know but uh but no it wasn't like we weren't like really like talking like that but it was cool to just like kick it like be in the same vicinity as him for sure oh my god that's great i mean they really go like said, they go all out when they unveil a new one. I imagine partly because of what they invent. Like, it takes hundreds and hundreds of hours to sculpt a wax figure, and

the average number that they kept throwing around was like one wax figure cost over $300,000 to make. Yeah, they're so expensive. And it is like, you made a good point, Jason, of like, or no, I think you made the point that was like, it ain't just no regular wax museum.

Like those other wax museums ain't doing this. So they're like really taking their time and getting the celebrity involved and the celebrity approves the outfits, like the piano. I don't know if you saw the piano that Elton John was sitting at, or he has a piano behind him. He's standing now. There's no piano, i don't know if you saw the piano that elton john was sitting at or he has a piano behind him he's standing now there's no piano i don't think i was like there's no big red piano with him i didn't see the big red piano but that's like his piano like that's like his actual one so it's like they have like a lot of buy-in with all the you know um thing which is cool but yeah like speaking of it's funny though because i would i will say

you know if you want some real you know tea i'll give y'all some real wax figure if you want to hear some wax figure war a little wax tea with some honey but that so one of our biggest challenges was the other wax museum so there was another one that was there before us called hollywood wax museum that's like not because it's more us called hollywood wax museum that's like not because it's more like by hollywood and highland next to the chinese theater and the other one's like over like across highland by the ripley's yeah yeah yeah they're all like part of that kind of it was like it was almost like the blessed it was like two different worlds like we don't even fuck with them so they so the irony was interesting i didn't realize we thought they were taking

business from us but what they really were doing was actually hurting our brand so it would be like what was happening was people were going to the wax museum the hollywood one and then being like i was at madame tussauds and like the wax figures weren't that great right so they were so we had this whole thing where we were getting in like a lot of trouble with the corporate side the uk guys over there because they're like man what the fuck's going on why is this wax museum even exists you should be the only wax museum on the whole block right they're like wait i want that shit gone shut it down right and then uh so i'm like uh so we're so here this is was one of the most difficult things for me as a manager right

because so all the employees are cool as hell they're like they're not they're like a lot of them are like la natives like they're like from la and they like just working or whatever and like young you know young kids or whatever so they're friends with a lot of people that work at the wax museum right so because they're all like kind of know each other then so now there's a whole new director where he's like we need to shut this place down right so i'm like whatever okay and then it's like so stressful right so then i go so he's like so i'll never forget i hope kyle don't hear this he should not don't let him hear this i don't know if you can control that but the one filter tag him in there just one phone doesn't get to hear it call it okay corporate espionage for wax pieces like what uh so uh so basically

we did this so there was this whole campaign where we would like they printed out these big ass billboards which basically had pictures of the ho wax museum of like Nicole Kidman. Right. And then it would have our version of it. And you could just see like how shitty theirs was. It was so bad. And it was like, now that I think about it,

it wasn't that bad, but it felt like really immoral at the time. But like, uh, so we had to, so we were, it was like in the front of the building and it was like, look at the difference.

This is what we doing. That's what they're doing. Right. Wow. So so you know so my employees were like upset about this they were like we're not we don't want to put this place out of business this is bad business practice and uh and i feel because it's like if they go out of business like that's a lot of their friends get you know get laid off and stuff so then i was like uh but then my bosses were like you have to do this we have to put these out every morning and it was like so crazy because it would be like i would be like you know trying to like it's hard to like please both party because i was like well i

don't want to get in trouble because i'm not doing what they're saying but also i don't want the all the employees mad at me like i'm like this big corporate arm or whatever because like I don't give a shit or whatever but then so I would kind of like you know sometimes I would open up and then I would like hey we don't got to put it out today so I like you know leave it leave the signs in the inside and no one would

so nobody see them and it would be like cool normal day or whatever and then I guess I didn't realize that the other managers were also doing that so then i was like so that means it's basically which was not out and i realized so kyle was coming around and he's like i i think he just happened to walk by when i hadn't done it and he i think he had been just off his rocker because he just no one's been doing it he just went off on me and i was like it was in front of everybody and i i think i like cried in front of him like i like cried i was like because i was

like it was like i felt so overwhelmed it's like i don't know what to do because i don't want to i get fired but i don't want to do this thing that you guys make me do it and then uh but anyway it was uh we ended i think they ended up it didn't even really work because I'm sure it's still there. I haven't been over there, but is the other one still there? It is. Yeah. I didn't think it predated Madame Jesus or at least a version of it because I went to like, I remember as a kid going to one over there. At least in the same, maybe the business or the ownership changed at some point. And I liked it a lot because it had stuff I liked,

like Back to the Future and the Ninja Turtles and a really miserable Home Alone. All three of the Home Alones were so cruddy. I think when, if you remember the Conan Tonight Show when they were firing wax figures

out of cannons and stuff, I think those were all bought in a giant lot from that wax museum. And they were like unbelievably shit like there's a really crazy looking tom cruise yeah even shorter than he is really those are kind of cooler because they're like shitty in a more kitschy way where it's like uh like it's kind of novelty but like mount desos does feel a little more like clean like it's like you know don't yeah don't fuck these up you know yeah yeah yeah um no they're

good they're really good and then like so you're so there's in hollywood you had this confusion about like people are saying the other one was madame tussauds i i there was a thing i didn't clear up with myself until we were going to talk about this which is i remember going to niagara falls and there was a and in my head the whole time it's been like oh yeah I went to Madame Tussauds in Niagara Falls and then I looked it up and wait but it wasn't though because those were so cruddy you know about this

you obviously know about this so that one is a whole nother fucking crazy drama because it's the name it's Louis Tussauds so it's like Madame's step brother or something it's a great grandson Louis Tussauds so it's like madame's like stepbrother or something it's like crazy it's a great uh grandson yeah louis tussauds yeah and he's like not affiliated like he just went off took the name and did his own fucking thing he's like fuck y'all i'm making my own museum my own

wax even though like you think that you did you hear this and you're like well this is some like scumbag who did this in the 80s, but no, this is like 1800s still. This was like forever ago. He had the scheme to like open a bad one. Cause there's one in London that people have been making fun of for centuries. Right. Like,

so he's been like the, you know, the, the, the, the bad stepchild for like over a hundred. Yeah. Yeah.

The ultimate Gallagher too. I would love to check it out. Yeah. But I, I remember hearing about that and it's just like, he's like, don't, you don't bring his name up. over a hundred yeah yeah the ultimate gallagher too so i would love to check it out yeah but i i remember hearing about that and it's just like he's like don't you don't bring his name up it's like really like it's like you don't talk about him yeah it's really serious like it's like lawsuits like tons of shit like it's like crazy like fully like a real family like issue this is a real family we're talking about yeah yeah right that yeah the two

so and it goes like we're saying it goes back a while like it goes back to the 1800s like madame tussauds herself was locked up during the french revolution toward her wax figures around england and ireland and then could not go back to france because the napoleonic wars were happening right and kind of like ended up setting up a museum in yeah london on baker street for a while it's moved since but it was on baker street which you know the street the fictional address of sherlock holmes is on baker street too but like madame tussauds in l was damaged during World War II by German bombs. Yeah, this shit goes back. It's like a legacy.

But she's like a little dope, like, fucking entrepreneur. Like, she was just taking the wax figures in the ship and just hitting people up with them. And, like, that. Or touring it. Yeah, yeah. I can't imagine touring anything in the, like, early 1800s. How the hell do you do that? Yeah, it's like no healthcare.

I don't know. What the fuck's going on. Yeah. But yeah, nah. But that whole hot boulevard is just like a crazy situation. I can't disassociate working there with just working on Hollywood Boulevard as a concept because it's just like that. I'll tell you a story.

I got a lot of stories if y'all want to hear all this of course the um so okay so that whole boulevard is like kind of like the mafia a little bit where it's like okay like you have the starline tour guys and you have all these other kind of random tour people who kind of be on these on these blocks on the boulevard so like that shit is like or like negotiated like where people are where they stand on that so what bouncy souls is coming in big european like huge company they're like what the fuck is this basically like have no regard for the rule with the setup or like the way everybody had kind of like decided this is how we're gonna do it so we're like so basically we

have we had this thing called a street team and it, this was like when it got real rough for me. I was real like, you know, losing my hair and shit. But I, so I was doing, because inside is great. When you work, I was managing the photo people. We take pictures. We sell photos. It's all good. Nobody fucks with you.

It was air conditioned. It was just a beautiful time. But then I was doing so well my boss was like hey so we got a new thing we're doing on the street outside on a boulevard and it's just a mess right now and we need you to kind of go in and like clean it up right like felt like i felt like joe clark and lean on me it was like i had to like go in and like fix the thing so then i'm like all right whatever so uh it's like you go on the boulevard basically we have these this street team that's basically hired on from like people who didn't work for the company but they were like passing out um flyers and shit so we got rid of that we had to start

over and basically i was from talking to him what i've already heard was that the rappers who sell the cds that other fucking tour guys are just really bad people like they're like misogynist and like fucking harassing the employees they're just like crazy right so i was like okay my employees don't want to deal with this shit and i gotta like come out figure out a way for them to like uh be able to be out there passing flyers without it being like a nightmare at work right so then so I had this whole thing right it's so funny because I'm like who the fuck do I think I am right so I come out because I used to be a rapper so I'm like maybe I can relate to these dudes or whatever so I'm like okay I had this big meeting I go out I have I go down to all the rappers on the block, right, who are selling their CDs.

I say, hey, look, I'm the new street manager with the street team. You know, I know how it is. I know the struggle. You know what I'm saying? I'm like you, man, like trying to act like, you know, I can relate to you, man. I come from the block, too, you know, trying to get my music going. I totally get it. I know I work for a company that has Madameame in the title but still yeah yeah it's mad it's a mad damn but you know

i'm saying like it's cool like so then she goes so then also i go um i basically like look y'all have basically because what i what i didn't want is for them to fuck around. Like, basically, you know, because, you know, what happens is, like, an example of what the issue was, is, like, let's say one of my employees goes into their space where they're selling their CDs to pass out flyers. They basically will be like, get the fuck out of here, right? So it's like, I was trying to avoid that kind of situation. So I was like, okay, so let's agree to have,

we're going to be over here. We're not going to mess with y'all space or where y'all do y'all CD stuff. And if there's any problems, like don't say nothing to the employees, just come to me. Like you come, my name's Lamar, you come directly to me

and we'll deal with it, right? And it was like a whole, I'm like, this is a whole new regime. It's a new day at Mountain Dew Souls, right? I'm here now, right? Used to call me Crazy Joe, now they call me Batman. So for a while, it was working, like peaceful.

Everybody was like chill, no problems. So then we hired a bunch of new people. And I told them, like a new people for the street team. And I had this meeting with them. I told them how to set up. You go on the blog, you pass your flyers, you see the rappers, you don't fuck with them. Don't talk to them, don't do nothing.

Of course, day two, right after I hire, I walk outside, I got my walkie on or whatever. It's a busy day too, hot in the summer. Line is way out the door. Shrek is melting, it's crazy. I get hot in the summer line is way out the door shrek is melting it's crazy so i'm like so i'm like uh get it i get a call someone says on the radio lamar can you come down here the uh entire rap all the all the rappers on the boulevard are outside the box office right i'm like what the fuck so then i go down and it's all of them like a gang like right in front of me

and meanwhile the line is long as hell. Right. So I'm like already kind of overwhelmed. And then they're like, I want it. I go, what's the problem? Because I did say, come talk to me. Right. So they say, hey, you said come to you.

So they said one of my employees walks up to them, basically getting off the train. One of our employees was on his way to work and just said some kind of snide comment to one of them. Like basically some to the effect of comment to one of them like basically some to the effect of like these guys are like crooks don't buy their cd basically so he kind of said that under his breath and kept going and then so they're like we want to talk to him and i'm like well hold on i can't just feed him the uh so i'm like so then i go okay uh this shit it's like i'm telling this and i'm like how is this a real thing right but uh so i go up uh to the break room right and i see him in there and i go i was well i don't want to say his name but we'll i'll just say we'll just call him uh uh jimmy right

okay so jimmy was like in the break room and um he in a banana or something he looked like he had no clue right so i go hey man did you say something to those guys because i had just hired this guy right so i'm like trying to figure out what happened and he's like oh yeah those guys the guys are assholes man fuck those guys right and i was like oh well they all downstairs right now and his face just dropped like he was like he was like what like he looked so scared and he should be I mean these guys are not these guys are not rappers they're like they are criminals like then I go um so then I'm like okay don't worry I'm not gonna let nothing happen to you we're gonna take care of this right so meanwhile the line is getting crazy it's like I'm getting calls out the ass like,

come down, we need a refund, all this shit. I'm like the only manager. I'm losing my mind. Then I get down there and I say, stay here in the break room, I'll be right back. I go down to the rappers and I say, okay, he says he's sorry. I think it was just an honest mistake.

Let's just say bye guys. He's like, no. They were like, no, we want to hear it from him. We want him to say it. And I was like, well, I can't do that because if y'all do something to him, it's cool. We don't have to call the cops. Right. So they were like, no, we ain't going to touch him.

We ain't going to do nothing. We promise. I'm like, give me your word. Y'all ain't going to put your hands on him or whatever. And then we'll squash this shit. Meanwhile, the line is crazy. I'm losing my mind. I'm like, they're calling me like crazy.

I got a refund over here. So then I go back up. I say, hey, man, okay, here's what we're going to do. We're going to go down there. Don't worry. I ain't going to let nothing happen to you, I promise. But we just apologized to them and we'll be done with it. And then there we we go so he's like all right man yeah i felt so bad i was like he's putting so much trust in me because i got no

idea what's about to happen right i killed this motherfucker right so then i come down and then they immediately of course immediately break their break their promise and like they're like ready to fucking scratch i like jumped in. I'm like, I like go off. I'm like, you guys said y'all wasn't going to do nothing. I told y'all. I told y'all what would happen if y'all do that. Right.

So I'm just yelling at them. I thought and I was like, I thought y'all was a man of your word. I'm like lecturing them and shit. And then the line is watching it. I got this whole audience. It's like crazy. And then and then I swear to God, I'm not making this up because it's going to sound like it makes me look really cool but they all just like left and they like they're like all

right i don't know what i don't know what came over me but i felt like after that i was like yo y'all owe me i'm killing it at map too so i didn't save that dude's life he almost fucking got killed but so street robbers. But yeah, and it was almost like a mutual respect thing. It was like, all right, man, we got you. So then ever since then, after that, everything went back to normal. But it was just like, that's the kind of shit. That was just like a daily type of shit.

Shit like that. Just working in that area, just bomb threats. It's crazy. We had one time. Sorry, I got all these. I mean, you guys have to answer questions. This is incredible. There's another one. It was another one was like we had a full right i mean i don't know if y'all remember this it was a dj he was a really famous dj i think i think he died actually but um i gotta i can't remember but one of those djs that like was super popular and he like did a pop-up concert at the uh on the boulevard like on Twitter or whatever.

He like said, he just, we're just going to show up. And then it turned into this whole riot. And we had to like, basically had to shut, close the museum down and like bring all the wax figures like in, cause they were like about to tear them apart.

It was crazy. It was outside to get people in. You had to drag them all in and like shut the door. It was like, they were like this close. Like if they, if you, if they would have got in the

fucking museum, oh man, those those, man, oh man, Morgan Freeman, Justin Timberlake, they would have been destroyed. They would have taken the elevator up and made their way down, destroyed. Up to the third floor. The third floor, work your way down.

Using Marlena Dietrich as a battering ram. Right, right, right. They got the Betty Davis thing with her hands out. I love the close-up. Is it the man? It's just like everything like... Driving Travolta's car out the door. They got

grease lightning. Yeah, man. It's like Game of Thrones. It's like the different houses on the block and like you're in charge of one and you have the power as you say that i am thinking back to being down there like uh you know yesterday and then other times before i'm like oh yeah when when i was you know when someone was asking me if i wanted to buy a cd no one was simultaneously asking if i wanted to take it for and when i was buying a hot dog no one bothered simultaneously asking if I wanted to take a tour. And when I was buying a hot dog, no one bothered me.

Like, everyone had their own zone. They know not to bother you when you're trying to buy a hot dog. Well, there's a certain hungry heart. I got that blade on me. Don't touch your ass up. You're the toughest guy in the book. But yeah, man. Oh, yeah.

But it's all illegal, right? So it's like not even rooted in any sort of law. It's just like they've decided that this is where we're going to stand and sell these things, even though they have no permission to be out there. Do you have characters out there, like the costume characters? Yeah, they're out there. They're crazy, too. They're just like all like insane. I think, you know, now I kind of have a soft heart for them.

I'm not reflecting back, but they were definitely like just all like usually on drugs like it was just weird because you're like you see these you know like guys dressed up like spider-man or whatever and he like hugging kids and you're like then i see him like later like behind the building when i get off work with his mask off like smoking crack behind the thing you're like oh weird that's weird that he was like hugging these kids earlier but yeah no it's uh it's a wild world yeah it is like it is it is like a game it's like its own universe yeah it's very um there's very disturbing power structures and like truces in play and then like if somebody breaks the rules then the whole power is struck like uh is changed the whole structure moves yeah

and like there's big like colette like you what do you call it when like the lannisters and like the like they like work together we had yes alliance alliances yeah yeah we have those like we had the biggest one management so i think madame tussauds smartly was like we're not winning this on our own and they like lined up with starline which is that the tour company and then you started seeing the store starline buses with the madame tussauds banner on it right once we did that we had like basic control of the whole block because we it was like literally like the west rose it was like we just fucking were like we're like oh now we have this side of the block and we have now because of starline we have pretty much the entire hollywood the east side of hollywood which is like you know no one could fuck with us at that point because starline starline's like the fucking yeah they're like rooted deep in hollywood like you don't fuck

with them yeah there's little there's little tour companies that they must muscle out and try to yeah like those got the little small ones are like they got to get their permit they're like we got to go to them to make sure it's okay that we you know do sell our tours here because it's like risk or something like if you can get madam tussauds and then you can get like the hooters across the street then you can kind of form your own country there yeah and then that's a fortified wall we took the baja fresh yeah yeah we got the yeah raise a flag and then merlin has to manage this in like all the major cities of the world because

this microcosm is going on in like yeah not just in america and new york and vegas and stuff but right in istanbul and shanghai and australia and i'm sure they all have their own little like unwritten rules and tourism districts and stuff i can't even imagine yeah especially out overseas like even new york yeah it's like or vegas too like vegas is like a legit like that's like a real that was the first one in america in the venetian oh really i didn't know that oh wow yeah that one's really cool i like i like how they all have like an area that's specific to where they are, where it's like, we have old Hollywood,

and then they have, like, you know, the Rat Pack and all that. It's very cool. Oh, gotcha. There's a lot of different... Oh, go ahead. Oh, I was gonna say, my girlfriend lived in Orlando for a long time,

and she said when you go to the Orlando one, the very first wax figure you would see would be Ponce de Leon. What? Yes! Because it's Floridaida it's like the florida like history oh like okay that's so funny what it was the most specific historical i figure i've i found at the istanbul location uh the salt the ottoman sultan mehmed the conqueror the one who conquered constantinople making it istanbul has a wax figure it is he has one there wow yeah man they really be going how did it yeah like that shit they really like secretly are just like kind of like locked in like like they might be able to save global warming or something like the way they are positioned like they're just positioned all

over the world and they seem like they at a, wherever they go, making some kind of, like, connection to the place that they are. Like, the DC one is, like, has, like, a lot of really cool ones, too. But, yeah, that shit, it's, like, crazy how they actually, like, you know, they get by it. Like, I always thought, like, Waxview was sort of lame before i started working there but it is like there's like an art to it like some kind of craft to it and they're like even i don't forget my first day like uh nicole kidman like fell like so a kid pushed her and like her head her head shattered everywhere it was like nightmare it was such i can't get that image out of my head. I was like, oh my God, Nicole Kidman. But yeah, it was, it's like, these things are expensive, yo.

It's just crazy. Was that, yeah, I was going to ask like the situation with damage in general. That's crazy to have in the first day. Was it a pre-winter? I started, yeah. Oh, and you started, yeah, yeah. Did that happen a lot though? Were there people?

It does, yeah. Like they get damaged a lot because people are pretty like aggressive with them but um we have like it's funny you know another crazy thing is so we have this thing where we have to take them off if they get damaged because we don't want them to look bad on the floor and uh but they have this interesting rule where you're not allowed to move the figures uh without them being covered and it's like they it's like some psycho human psychological thing like they like we're not a lot of like show moving bodies like that like it's like a weird like a corpse yeah yeah

we put it in the cover it before you put it in the ambulance like this especially of disbelief or something like so we have to like put a sleeping bag over them and take... So that would happen all the time. Like some kid would scratch Justin Timberlake in the face, and then we have to take him off. And it's like a secret mission. We block it off. It's like a kidnapping.

Yeah, it feels like that. It feels like... Yeah, it's so interesting. But that happens a lot. I mean, the full head shattering is rare. I mean, that doesn't happen all the time. Because they're pretty pegged in i was surprised like first whoever got them off was that what it is because they have to be light enough to to be

moved in theory yeah then they can't be they got to be locked down for yeah it's really the head is all the thing that's the only one that's really actually valuable like the body is just a mannequin like it's basically a mannequin it's like you say you're pretty it's pretty light you could like you could definitely do a heist and like get a couple out of there but uh yeah not that um because they'll reuse that like if somebody is retired like for instance evidently new york had a matt lauer and then obviously they don't want to keep having a matt lauer so you can just take those hands off take that head off and then like that right somebody else exactly yeah they discovered a few years ago the beetles wax heads that were the ones that were photographed for the cover of sergeant pepper's oh yeah and those heads were like just in a storage at madame tussauds in in london for a long time and they were auctioned off for over eighty thousand dollars like eighty

one thousand dollars low that's low to me yeah the beatles heads from sergeant cover like twenty thousand ahead yeah the ones from the i think i would think like paul's was a half a million at least yeah i know the beatles heads from sergeant covers yeah the ones that are like just over their shoulder the ones that are like the mop top ones. Oh, right. Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah. The craziest one I looked up in terms of people fucking up figures was that there was a Berlin.

When the Berlin, Madame Tussauds opened, on the first day that it opened, the second guy in the door made a beeline for the history room where there was a Hitler. And he started yelling stuff about no more war and then just charged at Hitler and yanked the head off. And this was like the first morning. They had a Hitler.

A lot of them have, I don't know if Madame Tussauds does, but I've seen multiple Hitlers for sure. I saw Hitler on one of the videos. There's a few Hitlers floating around. The London one was in the Hall of Horrors, I believe it was called. Oh, yeah. Sometimes they go up in like, yeah, yeah, yeah. With like monsters and stuff.

Yeah, with fun monsters like Frankenstein and Dracula and Hitler, that fun monster. But then Hong Kong just has a Hitler still floating around in the historical section. Okay, okay, yeah. The one I went to the the the louis tussauds in niagara falls talk his name i'm sorry yeah i'll make i'll make sure it's the last time i say it uh but the uh they had like a house of horror and i had a video and i don't if i might bring this up again i was like wasted for sure in that one because niagara falls i don't know you get through niagara falls without being drunk as hell it is like such a bizarre stressful unpleasant place and they leave it

open late and i think the idea is like this is the wax museum that's a little shittier and you run around and you're drunk at it and that one had a bunch of video of a house of horrors where like it goes from a crypt keeper that's talking past some guy i didn't recognize over to saddam hussein what and i had to zoom into the name tag to be able to tell who it was because he honestly kind of looked like alec baldwin with a mustache he might have been a reused yeah it was an old alec baldwin i think maybe yeah yeah that goes um but like but that one in general and i've seen that i saw this complaint on different yelps that they would put they everybody has a name tag because it is a little iffy who everybody is.

Like, I saw the full name, Beyonce Knowles. You know, everybody says her last name all the time as if Beyonce is not famous enough. But I think maybe they did have to do the full, because it was questionable. This was truly, like, the teeth were so clearly not Beyonce's teeth. The thing was so strange like you'd be like okay it says beyonce but it might be a different beyonce that i don't know beyonce smith yeah okay beyonce and a flight attendant she's just like i'm famous so yeah that we have one that that that was like, uh,

it, the opposite too happens, not damaging, but people will come in, like they have like so much reverence, like, like Michael Jackson, we had a Michael Jackson one and every day, like this woman would come in there with flowers and stuff.

It just like stay in there like all day. It just like, yeah. And like, just kind of like, kind of be there. And like, like,

I don't know what she was doing with it, but just like, she was in the room with him all day and wouldn't leave. But she would, like, have enough money every time to buy a ticket and go in. But, yeah, that shit, it's kind of weird. I always thought it was, like, I grew up really religious. So, like, I've always been interested in, like, idolatry and stuff. And it is, like, interesting. Like, essentially, it is, like, a religious experience because we kind of do worship celebrities so you're

like this is like a temple like in a weird way to like the way our culture is because it's um like the fact the very fact that it exists as a thing to do is like uh really interesting well i guess it makes sense like in a in an era where like instagram and social media is so big that you can go right up to them and touch them and there's like props and they want you to put your arm around them and take a picture i when i we first started talking about this i was like oh it's wax museum they're probably like a little removed like a museum like sculptures or paintings they're a little removed set back and you don't want to get too close to them right and then yeah my car was like no you get up and fuck around with them yeah yeah there's like hats you can

put on at some spots and take a picture with oh yes oh yeah i did not know that either that was about the costumes and everything which i didn't we're still pretty covid and now we're kind of delta e so i'm not i'm not i didn't put any spare hats i put I put the hat on. You did a hat. But I had the... Which hat? The cowboy hat. Yeah, they still got like Paul Newman over there. Yeah, Paul Newman, Robert Redford.

But you will see through the sequence of photos I took yesterday of how I started to disregard COVID as I went through the museum because I was being so delighted by it. Right. Yeah, it's really hard. You're just falling for the magic. covid as i went through the museum because i was getting i was being so delighted by right yeah you're just like falling for the magic i start out i start out so like mask on this at the end i'm doing pictures with audrey hepburn maskless i'm asking strangers to take my photo i'm like look i'm only going to be here once and then in the like this part of the year probably i'm not going to be here like a lot so I better make the most of it.

Unless, did it convert you? Are you going to be like that Michael lady now? I think you're coming every once in a while. I'm bringing flowers to Ingrid Bergman tomorrow if anyone wants to go with me. Oh, man, but it would be, not dope, but it's really cool when it's the anniversary of somebody's death.

We do cool shit where we're like, it was really cool when they like it is when it's the anniversary of somebody's death like we do do like cool shit like what we like well like um trying to think like who do we do that for it was someone like ingrid like one of the old hollywood ones where we just like did like this whole celebration to them and it's like wow people could come in and like yeah it's really yeah it was it was a it's a really cool museum i guess guess it's cool. Yeah, it's so, it's such a weird part of my life. But that shit is, like, cool. It is, like, I always felt cool giving people tickets. Like, I could always get people free tickets.

And that was, like, my one currency where I'm like, I can get you into Wetlands and Sells. That's what I can do for you. But they have a, they also have, like, a really cool rooftop. If you ever want to throw a party or something, you can rent it and like they have the like they they would have like alfred hitchcock like a part a lot of the parties would do like um kind of like scared like a halloween thing and you do like alfred hitchcock and have them all up there and then people are like partying or whatever you

probably do a live show up there can we do a live show up there oh oh you definitely can i mean it's very expensive but all right no tickets 700 700 but yeah you get to take a picture with bridget bardot yeah yeah johnny grant you'll find me by johnny grant the honorary mayor of hollywood i can't believe i i wasn't first to bring up johnny grant that's so insane like i was so delighted i took pictures being as if my mind was being blown by being in the presence of johnny grant johnny grant what had johnny grant is the weirdest that's the weirdest one yeah yeah johnny grant there when you were there oh yeah yeah yeah he's he's because isn't his audio like the thing that welcomes you when you go in that room he's like welcome to hollywood like this is a wonderful place to be yeah i heard it yeah are they did i just not associate that

with there was some sort of narration i don't think i was looking that i wasn't paying attention to it i mean i did like i mean johnny grant was like yeah the quote-unquote honorary mayor mayor but he just sat on a lot of the boards that did like the walk of fame and they hate that right you know he was always in those little ceremonies he's always hosting the handprints and the, and the stars. Yeah. It's kind of like the, the, I think like the Hollywood equivalent of like Danny Gans is in Vegas where

it's like, uh, Danny Gans was, no one knew Danny Gans outside of Vegas, but then in Vegas, he's like one of the most famous people in the city. Oh yeah. That's good.

I didn't know when I moved here, I had no idea who he was. And then, but yeah, over time, like, I guess he's like, i didn't know when i moved here i had no idea who he was and then but yeah over time like i guess he's like out of respect i don't know this mickey rooney yeah it's like the spirit of the city so yeah i want to know who else is like what figures are there now because i like last time i was there we had you go up this is a party room is that the party room is a real mind book because you expect maybe to be uh like led in slowly like like this will build

to something like i feel like maybe even other wax museums might and i've seen them more like end with like and then here's the grand room with it's bob hope and lucy and kind of the people you expect but then to get off the elevator and immediately be in the room of like all current like yeah actually legitimately currently relevant stars all in a party with a light up floor and everything yeah it's a beyonce stonks they'll play i think they were doing all the single ladies i heard that somewhere yeah she got moved down to i think you were talking the behind the scenes oh yeah yeah because they do a lot of videos about with her talking about sitting for well she she's two. She has two figures.

Oh, she does have two. Yeah, she has two. She's in the music room and she's at the very end. Oh, okay. I think they were pushing Ariana Grande. Oh, that's new. She wasn't there when I was there. She had a big display. Ariana Grande looks so real. I felt so uncomfortable taking a photo with these

figures. Am I alone? Did you feel odd? No, that one I i alone did you know that one i took a yeah that i felt lecherous taking photo like a photo like by yourself as a single guy you're kind of like you're like all right okay so can you take a picture of me with ariana garza yeah well i did i was not gonna ask anyone to do that i selfie my way i selfie my way through the theater i did not want any like i didn't, like, can you take a picture of me and Howard to use? I took a photo.

I took a photo on the bike. He is tall. On the ET bike. I did take a photo. I asked the younger, there were some like two ladies that were like following me around and they were happy to take photos with me. They were directing me. They were giving me notes.

And then, which was fun but then for the et bike i gave some younger girl my phone and she did not want to do she clearly didn't want to do it and then her dad i guess she was with because goes like oh honey uh where are you he goes she goes uh some guy wants me to take a photo of him and i was like like this man yeah did y'all do the uh wax thing the hands did you do the wax hands hands were closed i was oh yeah that's probably a thing yeah yeah oh yeah damn i'm so glad i did not work there during code that would have been a nightmare it's a little faster it's a small space yeah but people used to pass out all the time it was such a like i feel like i learned so much about uh like uh first aid work in there too just really yeah like i was you

constantly having to like save like lives like it's like there was like uh so because it was so hot so the way you did a wax hand i don't know if you have you ever done one in general like at a fair or whatever no no uh so like they basically put your hand in like ice cold water for like 30 or 40 seconds or something like that and it's super cold like it's really cold but then it numbs it and they put it in the hot wax right then it pulls it out it makes a hand that you can keep but sometimes in the summertime when they do that they'll just pass out so it would be like it'd just be we had like we literally had to come up with a code for past someone passed out and we'd have to go down and like and like give them water all this shit and it was crazy like yeah

and like there were so many times where it was just like uh like i'd never realized like that's part of being a manager is like someone if someone gets hurt in there you are the first person that like right with that yeah yeah so i was like oh yeah i always felt like a you know it i just i felt like i became an adult working there because oh i have to like i have to deal like this lady was like bleeding in the bathroom and i like it was like literally about to close it was like just me and the janitor she's like she's and the janitor she's so funny she was like she's like this lady she's bleeding in there and I'm like

and she's like you gotta go in there and I'm like you go in there and it was just like and it was like we had to call an ambulance and it was like

it was crazy man I was like I'm like man this shit and yeah people like it's like maybe just the Hollywood nature of it

or just the fact that it's like a tour but it was just like every day there was something like it was always a a thing but um but and that's but in that sense i like really know cpr i know how to do all that shit so like if anything happens to y'all if y'all want to go to a theme park i'll help you that's it theme parks you got to know that shit at theme parks people get hurt oh yeah yeah sure vomiting do you vomit incidents oh all the time yeah vomiting like a lot of like a lot of summer type illness like hot people being too hot not drinking enough water like that kind of shit

would happen a lot um what else uh like you know a lot of homeless stuff you know homeless like just you know they're like they'll just walk up in there and like i would have to like get them out like yeah it's like a weird like thing i say like the homeless people were actually became cool after a while because you get to know them and stuff like i like know them like i like like i like when i see him i'm like oh shit i know he used to be over there it's like we're interesting to be like and sort of have a relationship with people who are just live on the street but um but yeah man it's a life that's the life i lived my life you know the man of tussauds story oh but i'll tell y'all one more story i got i got a hell of story that is i haven't talked about this in so long it's like crazy i'm like i couldn't believe

so it was like people like oh they want to hear about this i'm like oh i could talk about this shit all fucking day so okay so it was so funny so this so we had this one uh because the janitor thing reminded me of this so like the this guy byron he was like this uh kind of like tall black dude kind of reminds me of like keith david you know like that kind of vibe and he like uh he so he was like cool as hell but he he kind of was out for back surgery for a while right well meanwhile we have we had this really cool collabo with jamba juice right so jamba juice um would basically set up in our courtyard because we had to we had that black um we had we owned that part of the property and they would basically

sell or give out you know sell uh jamba juice to the public people walking on the boulevard right so as a bonus we would if you work that magic so you get the you get a free smoothie so we was coming in every day to work getting the smoothie right it was like the best because it was like they were so good it was like whatever reason that was like the perfect type of treat you wanted in that moment and it just like was making it was like the happiest i've ever seen my employees they were just like always in a good mood and we did it for like three months right it was so funny so like i mean it was like you know how you know how should i you know when you at work you work at a place like that that kind of like no one really wants to be there but there's

like one thing or like we do chick-fil-a on sundays and it's just like the biggest thing in the world just because it's just like makes you somewhat happier if they're having a life existence or whatever everything yeah yeah it's like this free aspect to it so everyone's just talking about it a lot so like finally uh byron comes back with a surgery and like literally we're doing the pre so we do this meeting every morning called pre-show right and one of the you just kind of give everybody update and uh uh the guy the manager's like that day he's like uh so last day yesterday was the last day working with java juice and then byron lost his shit he was like what is it with smoothies i told my wife i was gonna bring her a smoothie i told my wife i was gonna bring her a smoothie oh no y'all wrong for

this and he was like he was going crazy he was like walking up and down the museum like it was like a it was like a seat for a family guy or something because he would like walk away and like i can't believe y'all got rid of the smoothies like he was just so like he was like it was like you know you just know he had been hearing about it. You know, like the other janitors, like the other janitors probably were like, yo, Byron, they got these free smoothies, man. That shit is dope. And he's like, oh, word. I can't wait till I get back there.

And it was just so, it was like, I never see someone like heart just break in front of me. It was so funny. I'll never forget that. He's been sleeping on the couch for weeks because he fails to bring the food to the home. Yeah, yeah. His wife is just like, where's the fucking smoothie, Byron? He's been sleeping on the couch for weeks Because he fails to bring the priest into the home Yeah, yeah, his wife is just like Where's the fucking smoothie, Byron? He told me that she was going to bring me one

Are you a provider or not? Like a fucking liar I'm telling you, they had him I swear to God, it was a whole thing, I swear But yeah, that was a trip, man Poor Byron I hope he found his happiness That pain is real I don't know that i would have flipped out

but i would i would be upset yeah like he's like why why today of all days yeah stop this shit so sad yeah i i were there was an old job that i used to work that i hated and um a lot of other people did too but the food trucks different food trucks would be there every day yeah and uh like wednesdays like every other wednesday was always like boba and popcorn chicken and everyone lined up for everyone loved this truck but then the days where it's like oh we got a catering gig or like oh the truck broke down it needs some maintenance it's not gonna be here today just everyone walking around very defeated they can't just shove popcorn chicken in their house yeah these jobs suck like nobody want to be here and you're like that's the one thing i always like

remember now working in the writer's room and shit it's like it don't matter how hard that job gets like people want to be here they want to be in working tv yeah like when i was managing these people uh you know i remember my first day as a manager you know just trying to motivate i i told this girl i go um i started clocking out for the day and i walked up to her i was like hey uh i just wanted to let you know you had a really great day today your numbers are really high and she's like lamar i don't give a fuck and then like walked away and it's like oh like they hate this like it's like like a lot of them like really want to you know especially in hollywood they want to be they want to do what

i'm doing but it was funny i would get it i would always get really bitter too because i'm like you think i want to do this shit like i want to be a actor too because they would call out all the time for auditions and shit yeah and i'd be like i get so mad because it's like you know how auditions like there's no way you could really do that efficiently and be a good employee because you're basically finding out the day of and you're like oh i can't come in i got an audition and i actually get so mad because i'm like you think i want to audition too i can't just fucking leave but you know whatever yeah i try to support the dreams one of them's doing actually really good my homegirl deja is like she was it's so funny because she was like uh so funny to me like always made me laugh like and she was like one of those people that kind of like you know like was unapologetically i'm here to be a star like

sure hired her she's like i'm a fucking star i can sing i can act i can do all of it and she's like fucking working she's i've seen her i've seen her and it's like yo if we i like i can do all of it and she's like fucking working she's i've seen her i've seen her and it's like yo if we i like i'm i haven't talked to her yet about it but i'm like if i if i sell this pilot i'm gonna cast her in it and we're gonna fucking get wet i'm gonna make sure we get wax figures in that motherfucker and we're gonna be next to each other and we'll be in our uniforms i think that'd be that'd be like a such a dope ass dream to be like you could be like they worked here and now they're actually famous and like they're wearing uh oh and the company would love that they would be thrilled at that public yeah that was like yeah that would get the some

of you want to work there the ultimate would be working there and then becoming a wax figure yeah that would be the dream yeah just being like it's just like fully getting waxed like just being like, just like fully getting waxed, like just being waxed out. It's just like, I can't move. But yeah, no, but there were some talented people working there. I remember one time I had to fire this guy. He goes, and he just starts singing. He's like, please don't fire me. I need this job. Please, I have so much to offer.

And he just starts singing. And his voice was pretty good. I actually, i was so bad at firing i just basically like kept him i just was like i was like all right whatever you can stay good enough sung your way back wow wow it's wild just having to be in charge of like i say like to your point it's just like most people no one's coming there to want to work in that and want to be at a wax work at a wax museum but uh they you know you have to kind of motivate them to actually care when they're not getting paid enough money to begin with so it's like it's ridiculous sure so yeah yeah any yeah you're

like i can't really fault you i can't yeah yeah we know what it is but it's kind of nice like that you know that that's's the real Hollywood experience. All these people who want to do other things and be writers and actors and singers and stuff, but getting in on the ground floor, we're in the dirty center of Hollywood. Right, right. Which that, I don't know, you've got to feel like, yeah, then if you go on to do anything, I really did it. I did the trashy center of Hollywood experience. I started here and now I'm here. Yeah, yeah hollywood yeah it's a way it gave me a lot of perspective because you kind of see most people who would

work there at a place like that are like fresh in hollywood like they really just like just like me i had just got moved here so you're like you see this sort of cycle of like, I wouldn't call it delusion, but just like this idea of like what they think it's going to be. And then like, because I've been, I worked there for seven years, so I've seen them. And then like, they're basically like two years in and they're like, I got to go back home. Like this is when you just see that people cycle in and out. And you realize like, really, the secret is like, just don't leave. Yeah. Because I'm like, yeah yeah that's how i mean it's like i i worked there i basically was like uh full-on like i had a full career there

like but it wasn't like i knew that like this was i was like oh my comedy career is not happening is like this is what's gonna this is what i'm gonna end up doing yeah but what it was so interesting because the way that i ended up leaving mountain so it was like because i had got uh such a big reputation with um the photo department this other company wanted to recruit me and they kind of like sneakily was like hey we're gonna build this new photo site up at warner brothers in the tour and uh we want you to open it and run it right but they didn't tell they because they're like they partner with mount two souls but they were like kind of like we want you over

here so but they offered me like it was like almost three times what i was getting paid at um at uh the wax museum and i was like i but i kept feeling like if i take this job like my every all the dream i have of being a comedian and writer is done like i'm just this is who i am and i remember calling somebody i just remember i think it was one of my best friends and i just asked him if i should do it and it was like he was like um yeah like you should do it right now it was like it's it's so much more money and you can like it that because that to me was like the thing was like you just always want to be able to afford to live here. Like that was always the thing that I felt like I was missing because I kept trying to skip over it.

I'm like, fuck that. I want to be I want to be in a writer's room. Get me in there. But then it wasn't happening. And the harder you try to like halfway work, like I'm part time working. Yeah. Until hopefully my dreams come true or like a big break but uh so i i took the job it was so crazy so i it was like basically

what it was this was like right after like like after the seven years so i go um to warner brothers i start this whole site i don't know if you've ever been there but there's like um you know if you go on a warner brothers tour and on the studio lot I start this whole site. I don't know if you've ever been there, but there's like, you know, if you go on a Warner Brothers tour on the studio lot, they have this whole section called, it's called like Studio 64 or something like that. It's not called that. I hope that it wasn't called that. But, like, it's like some kind of part of the tour.

So the tour, you go around the studio lot and you go in this room and we created these like experiences where you get to ride the bat bike and um and you get to ride the harry potter broom and it's like it films you like you're you're going it's almost like a 3d experience where you're like in the in it and then you get to keep the video whatever so i like hired everybody i like put installed we we like was there for the construction, the whole thing. We did a grand opening and everything.

And it was like a huge success. And then like, and then I got my first writing job offer, like literally that week. And I just quit. And I just like left. It was crazy. and it's just a lesson.

Like it's never like to me, it's just like, it doesn't matter. Like, cause like if, when it happens, it'll happen, but none of the stuff you did before will matter. It's never like to me it's just like uh it doesn't matter like because like if when it happens it'll happen but it won't none of the stuff you did before will matter yeah it's not like i did it the right way or anything i fucking worked in corporate world for eight years but

the um but yeah that place that place is cool you have to check that out i don't know if you ever want to do that one we could do a part two i can tell you all about that that's what we just were talking about it yeah because they just added a bunch of new stuff to it like yeah they're reopening for gov it after gov it i mean yeah so we'll we'll get there you still know people in all these places to some extent like if you walked in would you or maybe not the location but like well i just found out one of my closest friends who had moved away when i quit i just literally found out yesterday that she is back in la and is working at max random two so it's right now so i might go up there and say what's

up to her but for the most like the guy colin who hired me he's gone like they're i don't i don't think a lot of the people i worked with are still there but i still i'm still friends with a lot of the people but yeah that shit was a lifetime you know that's a whole that's a long career that's not even like a quick dip of the toe into a profession you really did like a full arc a lot of your life yeah it's a bit it's definitely more of my life is that world than the current world that i'm doing right now sure it hasn't like i haven't like beat it yet a few years i will but yeah man no it's that shit to me that shit is like uh it's so like cool to just work somewhere where it act you actually like think like it has a sense of irony but you always get to remember it like you're saying mike or you're like you get there you

have this irony about it and then you're like oh yeah this is a cool thing like it's hard to like be like it's like it's hard to get that it's hard to keep the like this is lame thing going it's just like a vision just like falling to it a little bit yeah yeah um yeah which hey you know all your stories are amazing and everything it is a it is a cool place you you want to like what else do we feel like about art because i well i feel you caused like some fun days for all of we all went by the way not together but not telling anyone that we're i think we all went by the way not together but not telling anyone that we're i think we all wanted to come in like i went no i went and we so we all went

separately yes i did a uh i did a family trip we all went oh really yeah yeah i brought my uh my 15 month old and so i gotta thank you for that for bringing this topic to our attention because i was like how's he gonna respond to Is he going to be weirded out? And he didn't really care about the wax figures so much. But it's just like a room with a bunch of lights and stuff. So in that party room, he was just like, he hasn't been to that many parties in his life. Maybe he's never been to an indoor party. He was born during COVID. So this was like a light up stage where there's glowing on the floor and Demi Lovato is up there.

Like he's going nuts. He's walking around and clapping. There was like a, uh, there was a kind of, a kind of a scary room like with, with tombs. And I don't know how much it is the same as when we were there.

Um, but that, you know, that's, you know, Frankenstein's in there and Dracula and stuff. And then like, but there's like,

they projected a bunch of bugs crawl around the floor and that blew his mind. What's happening here? He's trying to catch the beetles. Oh, that's fine. There's a big wall of garlic next to Dracula. He's trying to pull garlics off. But then he's giving high fives to Quentin Tarantino's framing up a shot.

He's got his arms out. So my kid's giving him high fives. This was like one of the best things ever done in his life. Love, Matt. Yeah, what a success. So I'm almost thinking like, I don't know, Wank's museums are silly. I guess that might be funny to go see.

And then having a kid especially reminds you like, oh yeah, no, these places are great to go to. And then especially that Matt is so well done and so many little themed environments. That's what we care about that's what we got lucy's kitchen up here he uh he he kept trying to like go out little fake doors he didn't understand a set door so like you didn't do it here but like lucy's door he'd walk up to it like how do i uh how do i get out of the kitchen right she was always one of my favorites

yeah that's right she's right when you come in now is that what oh no she was in the in the gift shop when i worked there at the she was a suit that'd be that she'd be the last thing you would see so lucy and kong are in the lobby now right yeah oh kong is totally new to me i've never seen kong which correct it this what oh and they gave her a set so that's a set the refrigerator and stuff yeah she's got a full set and i came straight from tennis uh i look like shit so you've been playing tennis now you must have looked so insane with data picture ariana grande great minds think alike i guess because we took identical pictures

ours you give a peace sign too but i really was having because like i've oh i believe it or not i've been playing tennis i may have mentioned on the show and i also i also in the last few years believe it or not maybe i mentioned it on the show or into haunts so i started yeah believe it or not if you haven't heard it uh so i started getting like kind of haunt flashbacks immediately because of how real some of the figures looked right so i couldn't my body physically couldn't go up to lucy because i was sure there i obviously knew she wasn't alive but there was some part of my like like um prehistoric brain or whatever that's like this

is a living person and she's gonna scare me i got better you're like this is what we're learning is that you've never been to a wax museum i I never, no. Because if you had ever done, then you wouldn't be having, this is pretty elementary stuff, I feel like, being scared of the figures. I agree. No, I found it a little unnerving first in that big club room. Scott, you're brave and you can deal with wax figures. I was the king of that party.

I'm being vulnerable on a podcast and explaining what I felt like. It's just funny. I guess the first wax museum experience ever. And again, I would say, I'm glad you did this. This is great. You got to go check out a crappy one. Crappy ones are so funny. I'm all in.

I don't want to take... I'm a wax guy now. Who is that? Is that Rihanna? That's Rihanna. Mike loves wax. Lamar is a wax man, but I'm a wax guy. Casual interest. And I got a wax man, but I'm a wax guy. Casual

interest. And I got a wax baby. And you've waxed baby. So I took a photo with Rihanna. Then I started feeling... That's a great one. The first few of them, I also was like, I can't... I don't want to get too... Again, I felt like this is a human being. And then there's some of the pop stars

are like wearing a bathing suit. Then that made me also feel lascivious. And I was like, I can't like put my arm stars are like wearing a bathing suit. Then that made me also feel lascivious. Yeah. And I was like, I can't like put my arm around this woman in a bathing suit. Are they bathing suits though? Is that how you describe them? Well, it's not. It's a sparkly bra.

It's a bralette. What would you call that? You know, I don't have the name exactly. You're right. Her midriff is showing, Scott. What would you call it? So you then just stuck to Ryan Reynolds in a generic black suit. Yeah, George Lopez is going strong.

He is not moved. First off the elevator. That's funny. That's a funny first one. And this is all. That's an L.A. thing. I'm wading into the water here. Those first two, I'm like, okay.

It is creeping me out a little bit. George, I thought it was a real person. I got off the elevator. I'm like, oh, there it is creeping me out a little bit george i thought it was a real person i got off the elevator i'm like oh there's some people just standing around in here yeah and i was totally caught off guard i went oh my god they're all wax figures there's barely any real humans in this room yes and that yeah that happens to everyone when i used to work in that room and they would walk off and always think george is real like every time this one is terrifying yeah yeah he's really scary we didn't say eldon john oh sorry yeah i'll put all these up we'll put all these up um and then they

have uh is that lord that's lord that was one of the two in that room where i was like who is this i was like oh it's lord and the other was i think chloe kardashian who's just in a very generic outfit it's no it's kylie jenner it's not chloe yeah you know what i mean who's just in a very generic outfit. No, it's Kylie Jenner. It's not Khloe, yeah. But you know what I mean? She's just standing by a chandelier. Yeah, Ariana Grande. She looks perfect. She looks real.

She looks like a real person. It was wild how real she looked. Yeah. Again, I'm not sure. Her shoulders are exposed. I'm not getting too close. Okay. She's like, come over here.

Come on. There's Morgan Freeman. You don't want to bother. He's wearing a scarf. Yeah. I will say, when I used to work at night, I used to close that thing at night. And there was this moment right around 1230 where the entire lights were shut out. But I had to walk all the way through the museum to get to my car.

And it was always a rush to get to finish before that happened because it's terrifying. It's not like there's like no light. So you're like, you really can't tell what's here. It looks like just figures in the dark and you're like, it's so scary. Well, cause there's this history in movies and TV,

horror movies, and just like regular movies or TV shows of like wax museums are creepy places. Something might start moving in here or you might get covered in wax. Yes. Well, in every talk show. Who is that? Is that Jason Derulo?

Yeah, Jason Derulo. He's coming. Yeah. He definitely did that pose. They probably really measured his ass. Oh, there's Elton John's piano. Oh, yeah. I see it.

But not with. So they moved Elton from the stage. So Demi's up there. Demi Lovato's on the stage. My son's running around. That was like the best moment of his life. Yeah. The other thing you learn

about is like because they're doing it you know to the actual sizes he are like oh yeah celebrities are all um not that tall bob hope was tall yeah well jimmy stewart and snoop dog i think were the tall jimmy stewart freaked me out i don't think i realized he was so tall but like i could i could like jimmy fallon i take timber like i love meryl streep's figure they and that to me that my favorite part of the wax museum is they are this this one is that they they get real outfits like yes these are like that's definitely like betty white's betty white and she betty white looks terrifyingly real as well yeah extremely i met her she was she came in when we she came and hung out with us and stuff. Oh, wow. I had the experience in the party room of sitting next to a wax figure of someone who I have been around in real life, which is Conan O'Brien.

Yes. Which is a very strange, like, oh, this is new to me. I've never been here where I've been around the real person, which is really, that i think freaked me out on a cosmic level and mainly i was worried that he would come to life reveal that it's the real him and start punching me in the arm which is what he did in real life yeah yeah yeah i don't think i'm telling tales out of school that was a frequent uh he left me alone mostly because i'm a weakling he knew i couldn't take it but there were some arm punches conan's on a bench and you could sit next to him but also on that bench is simon cowell and he's just kind of in the yeah like oh yeah those guys get moved up we when we first started we had the american idol uh room america when i first got hired american idol was the thing like that had been they had just like become a thing and i that since then

like those figures have not found a home they just keep moving like uh what's the main guy's name the host secrets yeah secrets he moves around so much they can't figure out where to put it oh because is he he's not in the movie area and he's not in the classic hollywood area like what do you they had him by the bar in the park was he still there like he was last time i was there he he's just in there's like a bar in the corner he's just sitting there like as if he's at a hollywood party and he's like this is probably where i would be currently at the bar barack obama oh yeah that's weird why is that that's kind of behind betty white like he was lurking in the photo you had earlier i was gonna ask this was there ever a time where there were more political figures because i feel like other wax museums would have a lot of that but this is the

hollywood ones right less no yeah we barack was our only major political one but there was a time where he was the feature like when he was he was literally the first thing you would see when you came in but um dc has a lot of them yeah they got all of them yeah recent presidents and then like uncle sam there's somewhere it's like here's albert einstein and you turn up like in some of the other museums like here's albert einstein you know here's winston churchill and now here's rocket raccoon yeah they're breaking them like i remember there was a big we had a big fight at one of the pre-shows because like we couldn't figure out if the rule because i thought there was a rule that we don't do characters like but it seems like they're breaking that rule or they're breaking that that game marvel yeah yeah

yeah because i i remember um we had it was a big argument like because she uh one of the other manager was like they were like nope we don't do characters we only do real people here and we're like i don't know i think i've seen a couple characters i definitely seen a video game character in the action hero room but it was like a huge debate but i think i think it probably started out that way and then they were like uh well might as well sell out yeah do fake people kids in there you know yeah like yeah they have the actual like wolverine and shit now kids gotta get the kids in there, you know? Yeah, yeah. They have the actual Wolverine and shit now. Kids aren't as interested in Casablanca. There wasn't a line of young people

lining up to take this picture with Ingrid Bergman. Yeah. Yeah. I will say, this was like my... When you hear my album coming out, we'll talk about it later, but I'm really big on old Hollywood and it's from working here.

Oh, nice. I really got into it. I love Audrey Hepburn. I started getting so excited in this room yeah i was an adult man alone wearing like sweats like tennis like hey i'm sweating to it's hot outside headband on by the way well my hair was so bad i felt like it looked better with the headband on and also everyone in the museum you're saying sorry i was playing tennis uh tennis earlier it was tennis i did not think also

that I was going to be taking photos with all these things. I thought I would be taking photos from far away. So I probably would have gone home and put a suit on or something. You got to go back and wear a full towel. It shows respect. Do you guys have these photos too?

Some of them. I have some of them. Yeah, that's my favorite room right now. A hat and a mask. Myself is the worst. My arms are much shorter than yours. Oh, they still got Star Trek popping. Star Trek in the deck, yeah. Yeah, this is my favorite one.

That's obviously the best photo op. I have multiple photos with him, but I won't bore you. Jack Nicholson, yeah, there's one photo op, and we'll put it on where he's got a cigar, and he's at the Oscars, and he's like telling you a joke. I assume it's dirty, and you get to react to it. Mike's pretending he's not offended.

Yeah, well, yes, he's a legend, so I would not. I wouldn't scold him for the language. Might burn you with that cigar. Yeah. I was, when I first walked in, I was like, I'm people watching a little, because I was curious like oh are people into this are people excited to be here right and i think um uh it was i saw a person

walk by the jimmy fallon one went oh jimmy fallon looks so cute and then uh down on the classic hollywood section the marlon brando from the godfather a guy so loud they went oh yeah this is cool like it was so exciting i was like i yeah okay it's working it's working for people what were your favorites um of all the different photo ops well johnny grant i was very excited that they had johnny because that's so much johnny grant too yeah um uh howard hughes too because he was just such a insane life like such an insane man like it was so funny to see him like by uh bogart and then like fred astaire and ginger rogers and then there's howard hughes and his like aviation right yeah did you lamar did you have a favorite one over the years yeah

i had a few i think uh morgan freeman was one i just the detail him was dope oh yeah uh who else did i like i always liked um yeah the meryl streep uh trying to remember there was one i just loved i really love shrek too which do you see shrek or no i don't think shrek's around i think he got replaced with kong it sounds like you can't have Kong and Shrek I feel like that that's a thing where like we only have one big ass thing because I uh that was like a big deal we used to have to because we would take him out in this front to have him uh attract kids and stuff yeah it would be so funny because he would like we had like a two-hour window and he started his face started melting and we had to like run down and like bring him back in it was so fun but like i really like i really like shrek he was his his shit is full wax like i don't know it must have took a lot of wax because his head is like all wax and it's huge

yeah yeah a few of the museums have shreks and i swear like one of them i don't know if one like the google image results like one is a madame tussauds Shrek and one is a bad Shrek, but there was one where it's like, that Shrek face doesn't look right. A picture I saw online where it's like, oh, that Shrek doesn't look right. Is there a melting possibility in general? Is there an actual danger of that with these figures overall? Oh, yes, they will melt. You put them in the sun, they will melt.

They melt, they melt, they melt. I can't tell you all enough, but, you know, inside they will melt. You put them in the sun, they will melt. They melt, they melt, they melt. I can't tell y'all enough. But, you know, inside they're good. You know, you keep them in a cool area, like room temp, they ain't gonna melt. But if you put them outside, like in LA, in California, you'll see, when Shrek used to melt, if you didn't get out there fast enough, his face would just like, it was like a legit cost-benefit.

We were just like, we're getting so many people it's like excited by having them outside that it was worth the damage like we would actually like the the guys in the back hated it because they we constantly had they had to redo them all the time because it was just melting oh yeah because there's upkeep people that's my that's my question what does that look like how many people are working each day in that area? It's like one guy usually. It's probably a staff of like three, but there's only like one in a day. And they're like way cooler than everybody else.

They're like, oh, would you fuck up Shrek again or whatever? Bring him in here. But they're not the guys who make them. They hope to be those guys you know like you kind of start out in the in the bet we call them behind the scenes uh guys and they they not got there's women too like so they all work back there and they kind of just do like makeup and they keep their hair like it's a good job for like if you like in the hair and makeup too you do that shit and then um um but they have to they they're they're like their hopes is in the same way that i got promoted to manager they're hoping to get promoted

to like the big where they make the real shit and get a part of it where is that yeah where is that a centralized location i think it's in the uk i don't know where but it's definitely not in america but i think i think it's out there can i say something about this zone was sort of the classic guys i uh the godfather i got stuck uh there for a while um because my son was interested not so much in him but in his uh desk was just kind of playing with his desk just like the texture of the desk so it made me stare at that for a while which made me notice that like it's really good and a good little set there but uh don corleone's desk does have uh the the

cord management holes like he's got like the hiding your uh your your iMac uh so i guess and i don't i i i just i don't think that wasn't his was the era where having too many you're too many

fucking cords don't let coppola see that where having too many fucking cords, too many dongles. Dongles are killing me. Don't let Coppola see that. He'll walk in and it's like... Do they still have Kobe Bryant in there? I'm curious if they did anything with that after he died. No.

I don't think so. I don't think so. They had a sports... Or did they have a sports room? No. I bet you that's what they turned into, that scary room. Well, there's that or like

What was on the first floor What was kind of the big like final room Before the buy in the scenes Because currently it's a big 90s exhibit Oh yeah yeah yeah Like that's where Tupac is now There's a Selena in there And there's kind of a 90s bedroom

Yeah it's after this yeah so snoop in here snoop i guess counts as a 90s i don't like the way they're appropriating the rappers in this it's a little i guess so nice yeah like yeah but they deserve to be in the party room i think it was furbies and tupac basically yeah like tupac should not be with uh cameron diaz with the the sperm hair like that's insane uh oh yeah bodyguard era witness specifically so i don't know maybe this was sports at some yeah there were not this used to be the action hero room like this had like they have arnold arnold's in there arnold's in that room but yeah he's like they left him from because he gets technically that is the 90s who is that in the back with the suit on uh pierce

oh okay yeah yeah he was there he was there selena's back there i don't i didn't put all the photos and then madame tussauds herself is on like a landing she's on like the exit landing oh yeah she is an insane person she was making she looks insane in this picture all right there are some of her where where she's hunched over a desk, and this is the better version. Yeah, it's really creepy at the end. Yeah. To see this Mars attacks haired woman

who creates the perfect facsimiles of people's faces. She also made heads off of, she would get decapitated heads. Heads that had gotten guillotined in the French Revolution. I believe so. I couldn't write a report on it. But she almost got beheaded. At some point. I heard that. Yeah.

She had to have her head shaved and then she had to prove her loyalty and some of proving loyalty was well, will you make the wax heads for people we've cut the heads off of? Yes. And then, so how, that it's this like,

Hollywood Boulevard, hey kids, come see the stars and that this all stems somehow from this bizarre dark beheading era. Yeah, it's very interesting. And then like Hollywood, the way she got out of it, it was like a friend helped her out.

So it's not like, it's not quite a friend getting you a gig, but it is a friend getting got out of it it was like a friend helped her out so it's not like it's not quite a friend getting you a gig but it is a friend getting you out of jail so you don't get beheaded here come on let me be an assistant on your show i'll work my way up uh knotsberry farm two years ago did a maze a haunted maze called waxworks about an evil wax person and i was like this is who she is i think like like there's no telling like what like what's real probably in the old museum like right some of this is real you know yeah yeah like i wonder like what they don't say i'm sure there's like a part of her history they don history. They're not telling in the museum to these kids and stuff.

Like at 3 a.m., she'd get the shovel and go to the graveyard. She'd take some bodies. She's obsessed with dead bodies. Yeah, yeah. She'd sleep in the coffin with one of them. She had to take reference feels. She couldn't take reference pictures. Her face had to rub up against their face for eight hours during sleep in a coffin.

Every night for a while. Every night. Yeah, no, she's a great villain. I mean, look at her. No, no, her great grandson is the, Louis is the villain. Let's be clear about this. There could be two villains. I'm sure Louis thinks that she's the villain.

Louis is like, they're the villain. They're the evil corporate villain. That'd be funny if he's just like a great guy like i'm just totally brainwashed because i'm like yeah you only heard it from the madame's perspective like you said he's open late like he's just awesome he's like y'all come and drink in here and party like he's like probably cool as hell he was the real he was the good one oh yeah that's that was that's been there since the og that's that's has not okay this is this new marvel room and maybe they aren't all new.

They just grouped them together. Is that wax, technically? No. No. That's, like, not a wax figure. I guess that's just, like, a statue of Spider-Man. Yeah. Can I say one thing about Louie's before I forget?

I'm sorry to say his name one more time, but one more memory I had is that I went to the bathroom, and I was, like, I walk in, like, oh, this one's occupied. I'll use the other stall. And then I'm, like, I walk in like, oh, this one's occupied, I'll use the other stall. And then I'm like, is it occupied? And then you go out and like, uh-oh, that's a, and you're risking a big scare if it is, if your hunch isn't right. But there is just a wax figure permanently

at one of the urinals. Really? Yes, so just occupying one of the, so they better hope there aren't two people that have to pee. That is kind of cool. Maybe Louie's cool. Like, maybe Louie, that's hilarious.

I like that. There's nothing like that going on in here. If you got in an elevator and there's a way. You say that. I'd never do that. But when I went into the bathroom here, I was greeted with this massive sign that says, have time to poo? Then you have time to review.

Review us on Yelp and TripAdvisor. Wait, you're missing a big deal or a big detail of of the word poo which is that it is censored by poo emojis oh yeah it's two poo emojis instead of the o who did that was that and that's at madame tussauds that's at madame tussauds and then the stalls i don't know if this like was when you were there but like the different stalls wanted a sign that said politician and yeah we had that i thought that was cool like i would totally do that too like i'm a politician today i'm gonna'm a politician today. I'm going to be a politician

when I take this shit, right? That's fine. But yeah, that sign I've never seen. I want to know who was responsible for that. Would that have flown during your administration?

No way. That's insane. I would never let that happen. Yeah, keep that shit classy. Tomo Poo. I did not go. I should have gone to the bathroom.

Yeah, so they have like... Okay, so yeah, they have full characters. They do characters now. Samuel L. Jackson and Nick Fury looks pretty good, I think. His actor one is good, too. I did YouTube face for this, too. You're hamming it up. Yeah.

So that means you guys went into that theater in there? Jason and I did the theater show. We should just do a... I could talk about the theater show for a while. Well, we can talk briefly about it. Yeah. Yeah, they're doing

the Marvel Universe 4D, which seems like it's been around for a while, and it's... Yeah, I opened it. Oh, okay. I was there when we were like... I was in charge of the opening for that. Yeah, it was very fun.

And the premise is that the Marvel heroes are at Madame Tussaudauds and they're opening they're they're seeing new wax figures of themselves right that's the oh that's different they they said the actual movie you're watching is that's what's happening yeah the plot oh yeah we didn't yeah it wasn't like it was more of a there wasn't wax figures yeah yeah and it it smelled like burnt pizza in there yeah it did smell they fired off the water effects it smelled like burning they shot water at us and every time it was as if the water was burned

that's so funny like 40 theories are hilarious because you're like if you don't do them right they're just annoying like did they have that they had this thing that was like just a stick that was coming out of the sea poking you in the back. Yes. They sure did. They did it once and everyone went, ugh. Yeah.

Everyone. Because it didn't happen again and it was so forceful. You could see a hole too. I lean forward. I don't want to deal with that shit. Yeah. It's so disrespectful. I'm like, why is this part of it?

And then the under the chair they did the like you know a bunch of things run under you yeah so they're like whipping things at you and but that effect was going for a while well that's like a grab for too long my legacy the water though you got shot three times with water for different parts when like a like a bad guy blew up or whatever. And each time it was more unpleasant than the last. And smelled awful. Yeah, it's a weird smell.

I remember that. I'm surprised I never fixed that. And they told me at the front, I said, how often does this run? They said every 10 minutes. And I think the reality is it runs anytime someone walks up and asks for it. One or two parties that's funny we had like 20 people in the theater oh yeah really and a family of three all together and you sat next

to each other was it busy like i mean i guess since covid it seemed like they're doing okay i was like actually literally legit concerned about it. When I started the, when I started on that, the first room, there wasn't that many people, but I think I was taking my sweet time that a lot of people caught up to me. So then by the time

it was Hollywood Room, there were a lot of people. There were a lot of people jockeying for position for like the Grease Lightning photo with John Travolta. So yeah, not so bad.

It's disappointing to hear about the theater. It's because we, we always have problems when I opened it. It was like, it was like, oh, it's disappointing to hear about the theater. Because we always had problems. When I opened it, it was like, oh, it was going to be the coolest thing. And then it just never worked well. It never fully was the thing that it was supposed to be. But that was six years ago.

I was surprised they haven't had a fix. It sounds like it's just there now. Or it sounds like people don't, they don't really. Was the video, in the movie, they like, they get attacked by Loki at Madame Tussauds. He infiltrates Madame Tussauds. That's really funny. They fight like Loki rock monsters. And then they spill out onto Hollywood Boulevard. And there's this big like squid monster.

Yeah. That's like hovering above Hollywood Boulevard. And they're fighting. All the Avengers like show up eventually. And they fighting it wow overall they got and you know you got chris evans and uh well robert danny jr i don't know rocket raccoon was there too i don't know that it was bradley cooper though i don't know but uh yeah it was not i don't know that's not really what i want from this place yeah it's it's it's off it felt like it was not, I don't know, that's not really what I want from this place. Yeah, it's off. It felt like it was, I remember it clearly because I remember not wanting to do it because I was like, okay, we were just not doing well.

We needed something. And it was like, they were like, we needed to have something to market it. So I remember them like being like throwing it on me and my other one of my friends pini who's another manager uh who's like in the israeli army he was like he was just like this ex israeli army guy and he was just like one of the other managers and he was like all right lamar pini you guys you guys are gonna like run this thing and it just felt like oh they just dumped this like pile of shit on us it's like oh man but yeah it feels off it like it feels off of the the main aesthetic but you're there you're there for the wax you're there for the wax guys

we want more wax even the marvel room feels underwhelming after what you've just seen yeah and i was excited like oh cool because i like all that crap so i was like oh great i'll take a photo and it's like this is sort of this is anti-climatic like climactic it is because it's so much like the exit hallway like there's a giant sign that says exit like next to robert downey jude yeah it says yeah exit past robert downey yes exit past that's what everyone kept employees were like yeah you exit past tony stark and i was like oh okay that's it well i ask, like, where is the theater? And they were like, just follow the exit signs.

And I was like, oh, okay. Past Tony Stark. Tony Stark, he's just a, he's a sign. He's a trash can. Yeah, he's basically like directing traffic. Yeah, the way his hands are. He's wearing that way.

He looks more like, almost like Eric McCormick or something. Yeah. I think they, I think they gotta stay away from characters. I think it's gotta be real people.

That's the thing they do. That's the bread and butter. Was there ever one that people, like, you felt like complaints about one? Like, was there ever one that was retired, not for some Matt Lauer reason, but for, like, just... Oh, yeah, Shakira.

Shakira was... I mean, wonderful performer, but, like, her wax figure did not look like her. She was back. They had her. They had her back? Maybe they fixed her up.

Let me see if I have a picture of her. But I remember it They had her. They had her back. Maybe they fixed her up. Let me see if I have a picture of her. But I remember it being a thing where we were getting way too many complaints about this wax figure, and they took her off the floor. But I was really happy to see they had Selena there because that was a big deal because we had a lot of Latinx employees,

and they constantly were like, we want her as a figure and it never happened i was like oh shit they actually ended up doing it she's got her own little like wall like a video wall that's very yeah yeah definitely it's like a big old tribute there was one that i would i'm thinking like they would change something about um i think it's in the 90s area which is the britney spears one is it's her outfit and like area, which is the Britney Spears one. Mm-hmm. It's her outfit and, like, the set of the You Drive Me Crazy video. Right.

But that presentation is just a Britney Spears wax figure just as crazy about her. Are you kidding me? And this giant sign is in the video, something like this, but it's like, oh, maybe turn the sign off for a little while with the current events going on. Her dad requested it he mastermind fixed it yeah so that is not the shakira that i think that's the shakira from vegas which is better i think they brought it over but

that's not the one that people complained about yeah so she looks way better and my respectful distance from shakira thank you for being a gentleman. Oh, this Gaga, that was a big deal. I'll never forget that launch. That was like lit. It was like a party. It was like packed because it was just everybody wanted to see it. And they have this thing where they have a button, and it's like a countdown, like 10, 5, 10, 3, 4, 3, 2.

And it goes. And then it was like, baby, I want whatever. And it was just like, it was so dope. And and it goes, and then it was like, baby, whatever, and it was just like, it was so dope, and the confetti's going, I was like, what, little lady Gaga,

it's on point right now. They do reveal ceremony? That rules. yeah, every time there's a new one, they do that. Wow. Yeah.

I feel like we've been going a little while, is there something we can close it? Is there anything you haven't told us? Any final crazy details? I'm trying to think. I mean, I mean i feel like yeah there's so much i mean i can't think of anything else off top of my head tupac's great i'm yeah tupac snoop was one of my favorites where's the i'm looking for the um soleno michael jackson oh the michael jackson thing was really cool because they had this room that we did that was like, it was all stages of him.

So you see him when he's a little kid with the afro and then he's doing Thriller. And then you just see like, wait, what happened? When he's like full crazy. It's like a weird, you get to kind of see him through time, which is like a very cool room. Now they just have the scary the scary era it's currently scary yeah um i uh in that in that case let me ask a question uh and and you're just to see if you can i'll make this a little bigger because i was looking

at some of the otter wax figures and this this i believe is from this is from louis world this is not the madame uh i'm gonna show you a picture one is a real guy taking a selfie there's also a very odd short jimmy fallon who has kind of like regis energy right um and genuinely uh here i'll show you if you know it don't say it and i don't know it genuinely who is the guy on the left just look at him for a minute just hold it i want to give everybody a chance to i truly don't know does it is am i am i crazy to not know who it looks like he's like a leather jacket guy daniel redcliffe and someone had a child yeah a bit like dan rackley timberlake or something is it justin timberlake oh maybe it's can i say it one more time that might be right he's but he's got like it's not a mode of Timberlake.

I guess I've seen him look like this, but he's sort of like Robin Thicke, except for the face. It's more the Robin Thicke vibe. Lance Bass and Daniel Radcliffe together? I mean, that plaque's doing a lot of heavy lifting if we're doing mutants. We're doing mergers.

Are those two figures sitting next to each other? Could be, because they're together. They have a bromance. It could be Justin and Jimmy. But that's definitely Conor McGregor taking the selfie of himself. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That for sure is the real Conor McGregor.

That's where I'll clear on, right? Giving a thumbs up. I just, you know, I'll put this to the listener, too. I feel like I have one more of the, oh, here. Who are we looking at? Who is this this one might be a madame is that this is a this is like a a blonde is that a blue or is that a um i think this might be because you got red signs back there unless they're uh he stole the

sign vibe let me see one more time this one i do know i think that's i think i have a guess what the fuck is that i think it's is it blonde lindsey lohan you got it you got it it is so weird but like hard to guess right like and very like amy poehler in a wig oh i see it yeah yeah you had to think about it almost because i thought for a second is like is it blonde emma stone like uh but no I think it is yeah Lindsay Lohan yeah yeah yeah or here you're one more while we're doing it uh uh who we're looking at kind of short hair short uh woman in leather jacket she looks

like somebody from old Hollywood but they dressed her up in in modern clothing they time traveled her Isabella Rossellini I like the guess uh like uh who plays um Isabella Rossellini? No. I like the guess. Any idea? Like, they didn't get it right, but Team Notaro? You know who that looks like?

That looks like a young Glenn Close, like a younger version of Glenn Close. Oh, yeah, yeah. I could see that. If I zoomed it out, you would see her next to her husband. This is supposed to be Victoria Beckham. Oh. Yeah, yeah. They probably changed their outfits a bunch.

This one's credit. This is not the madam, for sure. This one is not. Madam wouldn't screw up that band. Yeah, no, that is awful. Yeah. Well, I'll post these. People can do their own guessing games.

Yeah. With that, I mean, we just got to thank you. We all had a great time. Oh, so much irony just melted away we're just there having a blast this opens up a rich vein of different experiences now we will be covering on the podcast too because there's a there's videos we did there i was looking through old madame tussauds videos from like england 30 years ago and it's like dudley moore it's called like benny hill and i'm like we're gonna, we got to cover all of this

eventually. So thank you. Thank you. It was real fun because I was thinking about because my ex who we're still close but we used to work together

so we were just talking about who's still there and stuff so it's cool to kind of reminisce on that shit. It was a vibe. It was a lifetime but uh thank you so much for your stories and everything that was such a blast the marwoods you survive podcast the ride uh thank you just like the very much like the uh this experience we gotta exit through

the gift shop what a gift shop it is which by the way yes the more the more one of the we were i mean at that point we're we're with a baby we like, how fast can we possibly get back to that car? Because even like a brief walk down Hollywood Boulevard, like a, you know, not even the full block, made me feel like a bad parent. Even having a small child protected by both parents. It's like, how fast can we, can we sprint with this stroller? Will we run over an Elmo's foot or something as we do? It doesn't matter. That's funny. It's so overstim overstimulating it's like they just have the big candy stuff in there

like the it's sugar they got rid of okay there's a whole nother episode but there were like for a couple years ago remember there were like multiple can't there's a giant candy store not just the sugar which was on hollywood boulevard right there were multiple Like on that second level When you went up the escalator There were those rooms There was a big Stay Puft Marshall Man head Oh that big ass one What the hell was that called

I can't remember What it was called It's all gone Yeah It was a giant Multiple rooms Then we would go back The next time

And one room would be closed The next time And another room Would be closed And now it's just gone The Randy's Donuts was gone There was a Randy's Donuts For a little while

Wow Like the big You know they have the big Yeah Sign And so there was one and now it's just gone. The Randy's Donuts was gone. There was a Randy's Donuts for a little while. Wow. Like the big, you know, they have the big sign. And so there was one and that has already flipped to edible cookie dough. Wow. So. Yes, edible cookie dough is there, yes. Yeah.

Times change. I bet that's, yeah, I bet it's so different there. There's a $10 store there. There was like a $10, the gift shop is connected with the $10. Oh, I guess that's the same place we exit, right? The gift shop you exit into, they were like, all right, and show us your baskets. If you're buying four things, you get a fifth free.

Like everything was marked down. Like, yeah. That's not Madame Tussauds. But what happened was they, so that was like a store that we basically leased space to. But that's so interesting. Like brand wise, it's confusing because it probably feels like it's part of the same thing but it is like a different thing i could tell you could tell it switches like they're like buy this stuff like it's chaos like yeah yeah it's claustrophobic

room i've been in since the pandemic i think yeah like uh chaos things everywhere of that of that play the owner is such a character he's like a very like you know like donald don jr kind of he's like hey man everything's 10 dollars you want something from the store let me get you something from the store come on here take somebody to change you go home like take care of yourself you know he's like fast talking like he drives like a convertible always has like a like a girl who's like way too young for him. Like it's just so, it's ridiculous. But yeah, no, yeah. What a life. Well, let's, all right.

So let's exit through our less icky gift shop because it's about what you have going on. Is there anything you would like to plug? Oh yeah, yeah. So check out Grand Crew coming out next year. It's starring Carl Tarr and my boy Phil, who's one of my closest friends. It's his show

and I'm writing on it. I'm having a great time. I'm about to drop an album called Wine Bars. It's coming out August 6th. It's gonna be fire. It's super romantic. It's basically,

imagine a hip hop album that you could play in a wine bar. That's what it sounds like. It's a vibe. It's lifestyle. Shout out to Villa Vibes, the label, DSes, the label,

DSO, the crew, and hopefully white women will, you know, I don't know when we're going to get fully back in the improv space,

but hopefully we'll start performing soon. You did a show, what, a couple days ago? Yeah, we did one up in Studio Stage over in,

I think it was over in East Hollywood, but that was the first show we've done since, like, the world shut down, so that was super fun, and so I was like, oh, it was over in East Hollywood. But that was the first show we've done since the world shut down. So that was super fun. So I was like, oh, it was right back to normal. Nothing had changed.

So I think we're going to try to get a big show going or something soon. So look out for that. That's cool. And you'll be out on Hollywood Boulevard passing the record. Yeah, yeah. I will be selling it on the streets. That's how I get my music out. Bothering a lot of wax figure employees.

Oh yeah. But it will be like Spotify. It will be actually on Spotify, you know, on the platforms and all that. Did you give your social media stuff? Oh yeah. Yeah. And then,

uh, follow me at Profmatic. Also, you can also check out my movie. It's on, uh, it's called It's a Party. It's on,

um, iTunes, Amazon, all that. It's starring Tone Bell, Tony Baker, Kirby, you can also check out my movie it's on uh it's called it's a party it's on um itunes amazon all that starring tone bell tony baker kirby hal baptiste ego wotum it's super funny it's an indie movie i made a while back but it's still relevant and funny so check it out i i own it so i get paid when y'all watch it so watch it yeah do Yeah, great. Jeez. And as for us, you can find us on all the socials at Podcast The Ride. We have merch available in our Tee Public store. And we got three bonus episodes every month. If you check out Podcast The Ride, the second gate at patreon.com slash podcast the ride. That was a blast.

Love the stories. And you turned us into wax guys. We're wax guys. We're wax guys. Thank you, wax man. From a wax guy. From a wax man to a wax guy. We're Wax Guys. We're Wax Guys. Thank you, Wax Man. From a Wax Guy to a Wax Guy. All right.

Thank you. To all our Wax Guys and Gals and everything at home, thanks for listening. So long. Goodbye. Bye.

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.

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