Podcast: The Ride - Nickelodeon Studios

Episode Date: April 23, 2021

We discuss the opening day Universal Studios Florida attraction/kid headquarters. Featuring Game Labs, Slime Geysers, parental separation anxiety, and the wettest asphalt you ever did see. Making of Me 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! On your mark! Get set! Go! These three hosts will go head-to-head-to-head to find out who oozes the most obscure information about a defunct TV filming location.

And you, the super sloppy subscriber, wins the fabulous prize of being talked at. It's Nickelodeon Studios on podcast The Ride, the first world headquarters for adults who can't get over being kids. I'm Scott Gairdner, joined by Mike Carlson. Yeah, that's a club that, I don't't know maybe we should all be arrested i'm not sure there's a pro maybe we just like there's millions though yeah i think this is this is a epidemic a different kind of epidemic within our generation i think i think it's in various ways that's the problem i don't know if it is a problem you're right we shouldn't lock all of us up i think

there should be a different set of things uh that need to be done for the different subsections of people in that category. But this is the headquarters, and I'm happy to be staffed there. Yeah. Jason Sheridan. Agree, disagree. You know, as comes up surprisingly often on this show, society has failed us. Government failed us. Religion failed us.

Education is real hit and miss. You're going real far with it. Wow. So we need to take comfort in either buying the vintage Nickelodeon studio shirts on eBay or be cost effective and head on over to t public where you can get perfectly good replicas for a fraction of the price wow left the leftist politics coming out hard on the nick studios episode i was gonna say i've bought nickelodeon things but i'm not thinking about how i'm mad about being generationally screwed. I just like the orange.

We are generationally screwed. I mean, that is... There are facts. I mean, I like tying them together. It's interesting. But I would just, you know, I just like gags. We take comfort in it. It's fun, and you take comfort

in more simpler times. If it's philosophical things we're thinking about, if it's philosophical things we're thinking about though or if it's if it's more like i kind of feel like it's more that our parents were a little more coddled and didn't have to put up with like not all a lot of them had didn't have to fight in a major world war so they coddled their children way more kept them young kept them like a little boy forever maybe i'm just speaking about my own situation and he now doesn't even realize he's maybe in his mid to late 30s he doesn't know that so yes he has

to go to t public and purchase a replica uh nickelodeon splat or some replica gack that he can buy and he can pretend that he's getting messy all over again like he did when he was a little boy i swear there is a way that it doesn't have to be dark there's a way to be fond of these things we've just gone all the way to well i just disagree a little bit with jason i'm i agree with his politics in general but i think maybe the reason for our, you know. You're taking it as dark. I am accepting the world as it is and taking comfort in the light of, you know, the first network by kids, you know, for kids. It's acceptance for, well, and our heroes have failed us,

as you said, and we don't, and we like, you know, what do we worship and i guess the answer is olmec it's olmec the temple god that's true literal god he is the closest thing we have to a god-like figure yes who watches over and protects us yeah yeah um he's one of the characters who lived in the magical world that we're exploring today the world of nickelodeon studios uh it's a big one it's a thing that the more that i i thought about it and have meditated on in the last week i think it's a i think nickelodeon studios is one of the things that makes universal studios florida perennially very 90s very early 90s there's like a sheen that it'll never shake in a way in a good

way and i think the nick having that initial nickelodeon core is part of it and i think it's a thing i think um like is universal studios florida was it ever really a working studio without this at the center i like i know parenthood filmed there or some odds and ends every once in a while but to me i'm like oh this is like it's a real studio it shows that i watch it's every show that i watch is filmed at this theme park yeah for sure um i there is a documentary called the orange years that i watched last night and it talks about how like the perfect timing of uh nickelodeon was like man we might need our own productions we might need a studio like can we get space somewhere right when universal studios how florida is like starting to break

ground and it's it's just the most perfect sequence of events that it ends up happening this is like i was just this is like when you're watching like a documentary like uh sound city about all the great albums produced in this one studio and you see yeah you watch the anything about nick studios and you go everything i liked as a kid on this one channel was here like 90 of it 90 whatever yeah and same two or three buildings like mainly two they sort of used a third sometimes i don't think i was aware of how like to me nickelodeon's years might have been like 19 sound stages i don't know but apparently it all happened and mostly in two magical buildings it was it was willy wonka's chocolate factory in my mind. It doesn't even really have a form.

It doesn't have a physical form. It can change shape to be whatever it needs to be when it shoots one of its shows. That's where it was in my mind. I'm sure this will talk about it. I never got to go. It's another thing that haunts me to this day. You never went to this at all? Never went.

Wow. Too painful? I haven't even looked at it in the last few years going to Orlando. I won't even go over there. It's kind of odd to me to even see it sort of as a shell of its former or not even a shell. The building that's been a Blue Man group place for a number of years? I won't even look at the Blue Man. I can't even.

I can't. They're mocking, scowlingling faces you take them as judgment when they're gone they're done it's over that's done that's done yeah right right boy so this is really nothing now this is just this is an office building that happens to be next to our favorite theme parks um jason did you go did you experience this in any way i yes i did like right in the middle of the gold like 91 or 92 i took the tour i did not audition uh uh for a show because that was a big thing you could audition to be on double dare or what would you do or um some of the ones that i'm forget uh nick arcade i think was an option guts later on guts um yeah and i uh i took the tour my big memory of it is at the end uh you

guys may have come across the game lab where they put everyone in bleachers and they demonstrate some games and they slime a kid in a tiny little pool at the end i did come across the game lab yes yes uh i saw that uh i did not volunteer this was before i got bit by the acting bug so i was terrified by everything and uh especially terrified when we went into this room which is in my memory was uh the size of a high school gymnasium in reality is the size of like a two-bedroom apartment um and uh they said all right parents sit in that bleacher kids sit in this bleacher and i was like oh my god we got to be separated what if i can't find them what if something's hitting me too it stressed me out, we're right. The separation. What is funny? It stressed me out so much.

I watched the clip of this, and I had the thought, man, that would have stressed me out as a kid. Stressed me. I swear to God. I just watched a couple hours ago, and I was like, oh, they separated them? Ooh, I would not have cared for that. And this is after the high of the tour, which was walking by a room with like very dramatic lighting that had a snick couch in it, like a museum display, like behind glass, the big orange couch. And I was like, holy shit, that's the couch. Nice. Smithsonian for kids.

Yeah. Wow. That's the couch. This is, boy, we both, we all of us, even like this is a little show where we will sit in a separate section from our parents. And this was too much. Too much. Yeah, it would have been far too much. Yeah. I wanted to get, I would watch What Would You Do? would you do and and for the younger ones who might not know the a lot of these shows were shows where it would be some sort of game show element and then kids would get hit with pies

whipped cream they would get slime they would get like goo dumped on them they would get messy a lot of these shows were based on mess a lot of the names were based on mess so as a kid i wanted to be on these shows really bad but it did make me also very uncomfortable. The idea that I would have a bunch of like orange goop dumped on my head. I don't know. Like that, that was stressful as well. So it was interesting because it was both of those feelings at once as a kid. Right, right.

Yeah. You get, so you get the, you would take a tour of the studios and then get the opportunity to audition, potentially. And I think I had the same thing, where I was sure that I would, and then the intimidation of being in the space was like, absolutely not. The day came, and I flop-sweated, and I blew. I wouldn't even put myself up for the challenge. Mike, you said you avoided the building as an adult because you're upset you didn't get to go. I remember, I think, every trip I ever made to the studios. And I probably got to see it in person three times. I think in 94 and then the 99 in 2003 when much less is going on

i think still in 2003 when i'm in college and especially when i was a kid uh like walking up to the building made me nervous it was such a shangri-la um i and and like you would i remember it's like a very um uh undramatic view you know know, you go into Disneyland and the castle, you have a clear view of the castle all the way down at the end of the street, at the end of Main Street. This is the opposite. You go down, it's a weird, awkward left turn pretty quick after you've entered Universal Studios, and you don't see the splat. You don't see it facing you. You don't see it like facing you. Ah, there it is. It's like weirdly off to the side.

So you approach it in this very like bad eyeline way. And even that, in a way I was relieved. I feel like I just like my heart would sink. Let's see, like I need a little time here. I just, let me see that splat really flat from the side. But I just, I have such a strong memory of like that awkward view and being like, like i need a little time here i just let me see that splat really flat from the side but i just i have such a strong memory of like that awkward view and being like can i even walk up to it this is so this is this the shot of the studio is at the end of everything that i watch

and yeah i even will i be able to stand if i go up in front of the building as big to me as a child as the white house as important a piece of architecture because it was on the end card of everything i watched whether it was the picture whether it was the zooming like can't like a plane shot or the little doodle one where the universal ball is like perfectly or the globe is perfectly rotating in front of the nickelodeon uh building which was never the not the actual architecture in real life um but i it just loomed so large in my mind yeah those shots a lot of the nostalgia is definitely from that yeah that the show would end the double dare would end that guts would end the show would end, that Double Dare would end, that Guts would end, Nick Arcade would end. And then the little package of this program was taped before a live studio audience at Nickelodeon Studios, at Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida. This, that little thing and seeing that at the end of almost everything just like built up not only the just like the legend of Nickelodeon, but Universal's Florida too. Yeah. Like,

like, is this why, is this a big missing component of why I'm so, uh, unstoppably into theme parks? Like, was like the, the idea of going to this place where there's rides and stuff,

but also everything you watch is made. Well, sure. And it, in, I think the narrative of the early days of, you know, sure.

Studios, Floridaida especially very early on is everything brit is broken there's no background music uh walking around the rides break down a lot universal uh nickelodeon studios at universal worked it did its job as a production facility and it did its job as a marketing device and drawing people down there because kids saw that and heard that's where it was and they went mom and dad we gotta go to universal i gotta see nickelodeon studios yeah yeah big time i remember that okay you're describing all the the different iterations of that little end card you know there's one where they draw on it and there's one that's like a, you know,

kind of a big helicopter shot. And then there's one, I even saw it on YouTube awkwardly labeled as like Nickelodeon logo, the one where the kids are running, which is probably also what I'd call it anyway without that title. And so sometimes you would see this grand shot

of the studio and a big nice lawn. I liked the lawn in front of the uh it's a very well manicured lawn in front of the nick studios building and a bunch of kids are just running feverishly pumping their arms uh because they get they get to go to the place and i just remember always thinking like when they get there when they finish going across the lawn and land at the studio they're going to have more fun than i have ever had or will ever have these these 12 children certainly this isn't just some shot and they're extras who were hired and like then they left after nine takes no no they are like this

they are entering heaven they will enter the kingdom of heaven when they get to the cowhide patterned building. Yes. Yeah, I also had that thing where I can't even imagine what it's like. I couldn't even... This must be just like you're whisked away by Ren and Stimpy themselves or any of my favorite characters. They say, hello, nice to meet you. It's not just like a facility of some kind where cameras are, and it's cold in there because that's how they shoot TV shows. I couldn't even dream of what it must be like. Hey, what's up?

I'm looking for a new best friend. Doug? The cartoon Doug? Yeah, I'll hang out with you. What? You want to go play in the Double Dare nose for several hours? Anything you want, Doug. Doug, Michael, hop in the car.

Doug creator Jim Jenkins, what are you doing here? An adult man who very clearly is the basis for Doug. Jim Jenkins is going to push us down the pie slide all day yeah looking back though because i this is exactly the energy i'm coming into this with like a mitt like watching it and imagining and when i there, if I'm even close to there, then I'll finally be happy. What were we thinking? Like what is there? Yes. What was there that even made us do this?

Well, the cards, the production, the, the branding of Nickelodeon and like the commercials, the little animated in-betweens, the splat, the,

all the different logos like the the pantone 021 orange which is the official color uh the official nickelodeon orange color um that was so good and i i did find out watching this documentary that like yeah they talk to kids a lot like they really interviewed kids like what is it like to be a kid what do you want and you know what do you guys want and and that is where a lot of the vibe came on i feel a lot of the early nickelodeon when they didn't have a lot of budget was vibe and we were texting the other night like did we want this much like repurposed canadian content and i also learned that the reason there was so much like uh repurposed like japanese cartoons and canadian content is

syndicators would not sell them anything like a sin like a big syndication person literally told a vp like i'm never gonna sell you a show ever because so much money was still in the broadcast field like in in like broadcast syndication and then cable was just enemies yeah a rocket ship but then like once double dare hit that put nickelodeon on the map and then they started doing smaller scripted stuff um uh salute your shorts and hey dude and then eventually get into original cartoons and it it's just kind of like a stepping stone it just gets bigger and bigger yeah i feel like it's what you're saying it's the aesthetic of like orange and it's outside of the building is so fun to be like for a kid to see and then most of the shows at least leading up to when they had the nicktoons

with doug rugrats were in the stumpy which were all good we all liked those uh was most of the shows involved kids running around screaming they would like wild and crazy kids because oh yeah running around and screaming kids were screaming in in the audience at uh at uh double dare it was a lot of like i don't know it was just like a fantasy as a kid to just be like i want to get out there and i want to yell and i want to do that for a long time and i want to make a mess i'm just like it's like a frust maybe like as you're little and you have all this you're starting to get all this energy you were watching just like you were watching uh what would you even say like you were aspiring to do that you were aspiring to go wild yeah wild and crazy kids the only place i go

where there's only kids is school and we have to sit and be quiet exactly like yes but unless you're on the playground but that doesn't quite the playground doesn't look cool doesn't look cool like these places there's and and then there's Chuck E. Cheese and there's discovery zone and stuff, but there's, I don't know, even those, uh,

leave you cold in a way. Yeah. And you can't, yeah. You, if you yell and run around Chuck E. Cheese, somebody,

an adult does say like, don't do that. I mean, or a teenager is supposed to tell you to do that, to not do that. But yeah, Nickelodeon was just like back-to-back programs where kids were screaming and making a mess and it would look nice it looked like a nice break from your life yeah that was a

big thing early on they're like yeah it's kind of hard to be a kid it does kind of suck uh looking back some of the marketing went too far of like the most the opening day broadcast starts with like the most oppressed group in history kids and it's like oh i don't know about all that i don't know maybe you're swinging too far in that direction an overstatement yeah yeah i wouldn't say that today but um but it's that's what it was all it primed us with a very important lesson, which is to hate adults. Adults are bad, and they want you to not be yelling. And adults, all right, your mom and dad are in front of you, and you know what they look like. But every other adult you're ever going to meet has far side side hair and big like horn rim glasses.

And they're always looking at you from a perspective where it looks like fish eye and they bulge once they get in your face because they have to lean down and scold and nag you with a finger. So you're going to meet a lot of gross lunch ladies in your life with big warts um so fear and distrust adults when possible spray them with liquids and goos and get them out of your face and gags but don't don't put yourself in danger uh and and also like all adults are either one of our two types of stage managers they're either like harvey from double dare and he's kind of like a cool square dad or it's like this maniac

from you can't do that on television who's just like it's i guess it's just before you know the phrase going postal catches on but like the the you can't do that on TV, guys. He seemed like he was about to kill someone at all times. As soon as Ross, he shouldn't have had that job. No. His job is to organize. A stage manager puts people where they need to be for the tapings and the shootings. So his entire lot in life is to tell kids to go be on these points and do what he says? Yes.

Wrong line of work, Ross. Yeah. Ross, really. Big mistake, whoever hired Ross. be on these points and do what he says long line of work Ross yeah Ross really big mistake whoever hired Ross I feel like you just hit on exactly what has stunted a generation also what's helped to stunt a generation is Nickelodeon successfully made us feel man adults are awful

they are awful they get in your face with their weird lens heads their fish-eyed heads uh and you do not want to be them because they just nag and they tell you not to do things don't do that be like they dress like it's the 50s it's not the 50s stop dressing like it's the 50s and when you go to bed they watch boring nick at night with dobie gillis yeah and lassie those well no sometimes they showed lassie during the day i guess lassie so it falls on either side of

the line dobie gillis though boring yes boring yes i not liked dobie gillis as a kid no no ozzie and harriet no no so they you know even nick at night i feel like but were they even intending to draw that connection that like all the mean adults are it's they're like from the 50s and then we like the only other culture i know of is like i just assumed all parents like wait for us to be gone for the day so they can just mainline old shows on nick at night for four hours watch donna re Reed all night. Oh, there's one. Yeah. Is Donna Reed the one where it's triplets? Is it the triplet show?

Does Donna Reed have triplets? I don't think. There's one where it's a girl. No, a girl plays her own sisters. What am I thinking? Not the Patty Duke show? Maybe that's Patty Duke. Yeah, yeah. She has said they're cousins.

They're identical cousins. Cousins, okay. That's in the theme. I never bothered to look it up. Boring. That's what the lunch ladies watch. My mom with her big red perm and her necklace, she would say, you're

watching Dobie Gillis and Patty Duke and Donna Reed and you're learning lessons from these. She would point at me and her head was kind of of fisheye lens. And that's how I know this stuff is because I had that experience. Yeah.

You want some fun? Lawrence Welk has a bubble machine. That's pretty, pretty out there. The difference though, is that you were saying that to your mother. That's true. Look, this is a podcast. We all love nick at night too i mean of course we're doing i would jokes we're doing some jokes here doing some jokes and a lot of what you're mentioning

i are blank spots for me because they were not on nick at night hogan's heroes and dobie gillis and like that dobie gillis was on nick at night was Was it? I never caught Dobie Gillis. I believe Donnery, Dobie Gillis, and Patty Duke show all on Nick at Night. But I will say three shows that did not connect with me. I liked Dick Fendike. I loved Lucy. I liked Get Smart. I liked all that stuff. But I did not connect with the other ones as much.

I really liked the stuff that would play both. Like Classic Looney Tunes or Rockin' Bullwinkle. When they got the rockin bullwinkle rights and they would like dump it on either nickelodeon or nick at night i was like yes any hour of the day please yeah yeah that was fun too um but hate adults this is a place to hate adults this is where the war might might begin and that maybe it's worth talking a little about the nick studios opening day special, which Jason alluded to. There's a three hour, three hours you can watch on YouTube.

I remember finding this in the past and the video said first hour only. And I said, fuck you. Why would you do this to me? I loved this special growing up so much. I think they reran it a lot lot, and I watched it any time it was on. To me, this was like a... That's an earned three hours. That's like Magnolia.

Every minute counts. And the scope of the story, I remember thinking... Similar to Ernest Goes to splash mountain which i have described as feeling like a you know like a like a terrifying cronenberg ordeal because earnest gets zapped a little bit in it or turns into a skeleton similarly the push and pull between the live opening special with lots of bands that I've never heard of and Mark Summers and Brad and Melody from Hey Dude in character. The fun that they're having over there mixed with the villainous presence of awful, the adults who find fun unbearably loathsome. The live broadcast keeps getting interrupted, pirate radioed with static by this awful group of evil adults.

And I just bought this hook, line, and sinker. This was like, I mean, as scary as if anybody's scared by, you know, the Joker's interrupting things or like the, you know, the tapes that he makes Anthony Michael Hall, the news anchor, read. Like, I was so terrified by Awful, which now you watch, and it's just the, like, broadest Groundlings Rejects actors you've ever seen. But this was, like, an epic film to me. Yeah.

I don't have a good memory of watching this at the time. I don't know. It's hard, because so much of it is familiar, but I don't think I did. I don't want to say because i don't think i don't have a strong memory about it but going back through it yeah that that as i've said before on the coming out of rochelle's episode and that was live obviously but like shredder he's obviously he looks he looks scary to a kid but shredder is very silly in that and i was just terrified that this man would take away our fun and i'm sure i would have felt the same way about these adults in this video where i would

just be like oh i cannot believe what they're trying to do here these are the these are the scariest people i've ever seen these twisted bastards must be stopped at all costs sickos because the the not nothing beyond the first hour had been on youtube until recently um i just i just remembered the whatever the end of it looming large similar to to like boy did i think urtus goes to special man was the scariest thing i'd ever seen and then i watched it like that was it was like 10 seconds that I had my kid brain just fuzzed into oblivion I just I and I announced to Aaron when we were watching it like whatever this end is let me

just declare that I thought that specifically the ending was like the scariest thing I've ever seen I don't know if you guys watched the special and know what the ending was I don't know what is the yeah what is the end I ended up watching like multiple Perfect Gentlemen performances,

but I don't think I got to the end. Perfect Gentlemen are good. I love those suits, and they're great singers. Perfect Gentlemen, yeah, a lot of time is ceded to the performance from this kind of like sub-new edition in polka dot, bright color polka dot suits. It's sort of

Dick Tracy villain-esque. And you wonder who are Perfect Gentlemen and it is, they are, one of them is the kid of Marie Starr, the mastermind of New Edition and New Kids on the Block. So he was attempting to do this with his own kid. Okay. So not great

success, seemingly, being that I only know them from dancing in front of the double dare set in this one thing yeah um anyway perfect gentlemen uh but you you get past all that you get to the end the end is like um they have to like um tap into a slime valve to um stop the adults of awful who are trying to stop Nick Studios from ever opening because they're like, there cannot be a world headquarters for kids.

If this place opens, we Awful are screwed. So in a live acted out segment, Mark Summers, other kids who I've never seen on any show, I don't know who they are, and then like a contest winner are all just fake shaking around as if there's some, you know,

earthquake or turbulent kind of situation in the building. So they're like bopping around like a bad play. The camera's shaking around all fake. Then the contest winner misses a cue turning uh a big dial that makes slime release into the room that off the pre-taped room that awful is in and then like you know uh like a two liter soda bottle worth of slime unleashes at their feet and they're like curses you foiled us again oh your studio but we'll be watching you um it is the most nothing of nothings there's clearly a cue missed and mark summers is silent for a while and trying to fill space because something didn't happen that he wanted to have that needed to happen yeah um

very no idea why i found this so in your mind it was like a snuff film of some Kind at the end or exactly Everything you say about Hellraiser yeah I thought There might have been like actual Death in it there like it was gonna cut to Like a you know like that creepy Fox corpse getting eaten By the maggots it was gonna be Something as disturbing as that

And then cut to Mark Summers bopping around Whoa this is how They killed Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, the spies. They flooded the room with slime. I was just going to say, why is aesthetic for scary adult like Roz from Monsters, Inc. with those glasses? It's like an older stern lady with those like 50s glasses. What is the origin of that being like a mean adult

you know what i'm saying there's got to be a specific who started it i'm not sure like a sort of like famous librarian like who was mean and wore those glasses like those i don't know it's just interesting that that's lasted for so long you still see it as like a trope of like kind of a stern older lady i think sitcom character hazel look like what were you gonna say jason well i think like uh like a lot of stuff i think it was like one or two tv writers had a teacher like that and use that as a template for a character just like did every TV writer have bad luck like with you know boys or girls they liked

or is that just the sort of person that is attracted to making television like Hazel did not have the glasses Hazel did not but maybe there's something else it's gotta come from one place Hazel did not. But maybe there's something else. It's got to come from one place.

And if we knew it. So if you know where scary horn-rimmed glasses dowdy adults came from, listener, if you can direct us to why this stereotype still maintains in a way, please let us know. Or that was just a style of educating teachers like okay you can be a strict like you're either gonna be a strict teacher or fun teacher we can't have too many of both we can't have too many strict teachers or the kids fucking check it out we can't have too many fun teachers or nothing gets done you gotta have a

balance pick your lane yeah yeah um the um in general this nickelodeon opening day special and by the way i think it's really insane that this entire thing is going on while universal studios florida entirely is opening and having all of the problems that it's happening like that's one of the more notorious bad opening days because so many of the big attractions broke. And then also, you got Mark Summers going live with the Hey Dude cast and acting out all these weird little scenes. Jane Seymour pops by at some point. Yeah.

Very odd celebrity assortment. Linda Blair. Linda Blair. Linda Blair. She's in a remote we we also need to a key to this is said very early in the broadcast right at the top he's mark summer says this is the first ever live broadcast nickelodeon live broadcast and you can 11 years in 11 years and you can tell because a number of times they have people on camera

and they have not turned off the channel with the warm-up guy is like all right now everyone's here like you're hearing two different parts of the room at once and you should not be and it's like overshadowing the guy who played super boy that the girls either have a crush on or they're pretending they have a crush on yes super boy yeah there's so much like they're just filming a live broadcast in a big party and you're always hearing the party it's never not present um so like there's an interview steven spielberg is there there's an interview with spielberg and there's a bunch of like noise interrupting him he seems distracted um and spielberg i didn't know this

part of it at all um that spielberg gets slimed we get to watch steven spielberg get slimed very cool yeah it's fun uh man him and mark summers what a him and summer seeing these guys together two legends spielberg two legends meet that spielberg plays along too he's in a like a construction hat construction helmet and like poncho and he goes like I don't trust you and I don't trust your network like he um he also makes sure to tell Mark Summer that he uh doesn't picking a favorite movie is like picking a favorite child but making empire of the sun was a great experience i guess he did pick um let me show you another crazy one this is uh when i did a deep dive on a facebook group with a lot of good photos that i think is called nickelodeon studios past present

and future um this is this is a little crazy to see um here's a shot from outside nickelodeon studios i believe on that very day and uh who do we have here oh the man himself lucas george lucas at nickelodeon studios i had no idea this occurred i don't know what he's doing he's maybe just like popping by to see a little little shoot happen but um that's that. But that's a wild combat. Those things don't go together for me. The Nickelodeon splat and George Lucas, those are different universes. It's crazy seeing them collide.

That is wild. Was he down there, yeah, to see Spielberg? Because Spielberg obviously was involved pretty heavily with Universal Studios, so it would make sense that either he was down there for some other reason and they got him, or he was just making an appearance to help boost the place or whatever. But yeah, George, is George just along for the ride?

Who knows the source of the caption? The captions seem to imply that he was there with Spielberg, but I hadn't thought about that either, that he's so on the Disney side of the line. So seeing him at Universal Studios is kind of strange too yeah he didn't do george didn't produce like super sloppy double dare or something did he do we don't know i want to make it can we make it sloppier um that i don't want to get on this tangent because this is its own thing but uh um for this for the second time in a little bit let me name check uh fellow forever dog podcast double, podcast, double threat,

uh, which played a clip. I sent you guys this of the show of a, uh, not Nickelodeon studios, but a different shot at universal Florida game show called, let me, it's the clunkiest name of all time.

Let me see if I get it. Secrets of the crypt keepers haunted house. Seek the game show. It's a game show, but it's called secrets. Like so clearly a legends of the Crypt Keeper's Haunted House. The game show, it's a game show, but it's called Secrets. Like so clearly a Legends of the Hidden Temple stand in. Weirdest, cheapest thing ever. I was so delighted by this. Never knew this existed.

It's a Tales from the Crypt game show. And because of the Tales of the Crypt connection and the Crypt Keepers in it, they have to give producing credits to all of the producers of the crip connection and the crip keepers in it they have to give producing credits to all of the the producers of the show which include uh robert zemeckis and uh who's the richard donner it's the crappiest like worst 96 cgi you've ever seen and just like it's for bad kids and they have attitude and they're like screw you dude and

then you see a big zemeckis richard donner shared credit on this syndicated crap it was amazing and that's that was the nickelodeon difference you could tell they were just a little loose they were a little like wilder a little less like buttoned up about stuff you know obviously it's it's nickelodeon stuff is made by you know uh development people and marketing people too but it it just felt like they were having more fun you know yeah it seemed like a real like um you know like let's actually have fun in this new space and not like focus group this stuff into oblivion focus group it in the right way like find out what kids want but then not like note things this stuff into oblivion focus group it in the right way like find out what

kids want but then not like note things within an inch of their life i think the vibe too was that like once they greenlit something they were very hands-off they just let the people making it make it so yeah it wasn't like um you know chaperone to death it wasn't a lot of people looking over your shoulder it was like yeah like the 70s filmmaker revolution with scorsese and uh altman it was like that but for kids tv in the 90s it was like you know the auteurs could really go and do their thing get to slide get the kids sloppy in any which way they wanted slime gack pies pie coasters pie uh throwers the yeah your imagination was the limit in the 90s with how messy you could get kids i really want real quick uh i was zooming through this thing uh and i noticed that they have all the commercials on this thing too which is great which is obviously we could do an episode on each commercial yes kid quiz do you remember kid cuisine oh i a real treat i was not

allowed to have kid cuisine i tried and i tried but i was not allowed to have it my mom thought it was junk i'm sure she was correct but man that food in that commercial looks like shit of course they say is pizza if they didn't say it out loud, this is pizza, I wouldn't recognize it. And Erin and I were both recoiling while watching that ad. And then she said, I definitely specifically recall throwing up because of Kid Cuisine. Definitely happened. And real quick, and I don't know the name of that. There's a bear chef on the image.

I don't know his name. that like there's a bear chef on the on the image i don't know his name i only did it briefly took a look there is a character that's now the kid cuisine still exists oh and he has a kid there's a new mascot and his name is kc and he's like a cool duck with a jacket that says kc and he's like got he's like a real like slick kind of guy he's kind of like oh yeah maybe he's a pay or is he or is he a black duck like daffy i think he could i think he's a duck but i guess you're right it could be a penguin as well does it say but it's frozen it's it's frozen food so it's probably a penguin yeah um but it says what do you uh what do you

love and he says keeping the fun going by giving kids their favorite foods and real meals that are still really fun and getting the last laugh when I can now that's suspicious I agree it is so then they say what do you dislike and he says just like any other kid

I don't like for the fun to stop even at meal time and then how would you I'm go ahead i'm just gonna do the last but yeah sorry how would you describe your personality he says playful and curious that's because i wear a lot of hats you can tell if you look at me my uh look at all my different meal boxes a man's gotta have a code and sometimes that means watching someone's soul leave their body because of violence he did to them. Rock and roll! The best question, though, I feel, is the question, what's your full name?

And KC says, Kid Cuisine. It's not just the abstract idea of cuisine for kids. His name is Kid Cuisine. His name is Kid Quick like name is kid quick or something right it's a final evolution of that theory of like pixel every Pixar thing is like you are your job

Casey is kid cuisine and he is he is being literal with his hats he wears a like an uncle Sam top hat for his all American chicken breast nuggets and uh he's wearing what is he wearing in this uh what's that what are we looking i recognize the mac and cheese what's next to the mac and cheese corn is it a roll is that a big

roll this thing you're asking it's it's casey's strawberry cake oh Oh, it looks awful. Oh, man. Never changed. As gross today as ever. Pop star popcorn chicken. There's that cake again. And the strawberry, Casey's strawberry roll. That's like insulation. That's foam.

It looks like if I squinted, you'd go, is that someone's tongue that was cut out of their mouth? Scott, if you ever let us babysit your child, we're going to feed them fucking garbage. So we have a reason to sample the garbage. Hey, here's your kid cuisine. And for me, another kid cuisine. The same one you are eating. You just gave him mini corn dogs and strawberry cake? Yeah, two food groups, two major food

groups. It's not fruit. Yeah, and you'll he'll be coloring Kid Cuisine coloring pages that let the parents know that this is advertising for Kid Cuisine. It's a fun coloring page that we're looking at.

And at the top in smaller font, it says, hey, parents, this is advertising from Kid Cuisine. Yeah. So I think there's more Kid Cuisine to look into. But I just I got a little I got a little taste here. And I felt like we'll go back and see which what the names later of the old characters. And I was obsessed with it. I just it was such a strong memory of like being like, please please and she's like that's bad that's food is bad we can't get that right yeah made my made my future wife sick our parents had to lay down

some boundaries mine was we did not get dunkaroos i don't know why other kids got dunkaroos and i just kind of and i would have it sometimes at friends house but i was like you know we don't do that and i think my mom was just like oh they're too expensive which probably means like it was you know uh three dollars a box instead of a dollar fifty like little debbie's they practically pay you to take it away but hostess hence i, has a couple actual ingredients. Not a lot. But Hostess was always more money. But Little Debbie's is always dirt cheap, you know?

And you were a Little Debbie family. We were a Little Debbie family. Back East, too, there's a lot more variety in Debbie, single-serve Debbie content. Like, I think my school made a small fortune on selling single-serve Little Debbie packages. I hate to bring us right back into kid cuisine territory but take a look at this real quick it's an advertising break this is a commercial break oh oh no no no kid cuisine shrek shaped fun nuggets turn your tongue green with shrek shaped fun nuggets shrek shaped fun nuggets

wait and look what turns your tongue green swamp pudding it's not even spinach it's that's the dessert it's green dessert shrek nuggets are oh they are shshaped. They have little ears like him. I genuinely, this does not happen to me. I feel a little nauseous. And it's less looking at the food and more the words. I think Shrek-shaped,

I'm like, I think I'm gurgling up a little. Shrek-shaped fun nuggets and swamp pudding are really doing a number on me. Okay, let me say to the listener out there, a quick little assignment. If you're with somebody in your apartment or house or something, turn to them, and if they're listening or not, it doesn't matter, and say, I'm going to say a phrase to you, and I want you to react to it in real time, and know that the phrase is something that existed in real life. And then say, Shrek-shaped Fun Nuggets, and see what their reaction is life and then say shrek shaped fun nuggets and see what

the reaction is and then we'll tweet about it and you can tweet at us what this person's reaction was to shrek shaped fun nuggets i like this is disgusting this is a trigger this is like i this is as if i went to see a hypnotist show 15 years ago, and the secret word. And then when you hear Shrek-shaped fun nuggets, you will vomit on command. You'll be nauseous for an entire day. You are a Manchurian candidate now. You are now the Winter Soldier. You've been activated.

I have to go puke on Biden now wow you meet you meet your cohorts and you say I saw her face and they say I'm a believer I thought love was only true in fairy tales

this is wow this is awful anyway all right i got all of kim possibles involved yeah um i gotta get out of here and yeah i'm i know for me to be able to speak anymore what are those what's that black stuff what's is it when it's next to chewbacca there's a is that like a those are like little crispies that look like Darth Vader's helmet? Oh my god, some weird YouTube video with a man in a weird mask popped up. Ew, it's a scary puppet like the old Genesis video and it's

an ASMR video somehow, but it's with little crackers that look like Darth Vader's helmet. This is the darkest territory we've been in in a while. Wow, this is, yeah, there's a really kid cuisine here. Can you read? I'm trying to read what it is.

No, it's pretty pixelated. BB-8 and R2-D2 shaped breaded white meat. No. Chicken, wait, hold on. I gotta take the microphone off the stand here. Chicken patties with rib meat, corn pasta and cheese sauce and battle cookies oh it's like little death stars yeah they're battle battle cookies oh i genuinely i this has to be off the screen this has to i have to hide the zoom window soon

okay all right i'll stop sharing here uh man this is gonna unleash some madness we're now to like keep trolling me the listeners will like film themselves happily eating kid cuisine and swamp pudding and battle cookies while their insides just rot. I want the next live show that every listener brings Scott some swamp pudding. My fear. When we're back recording in person, we're making a little tasting board of Kid Cuisine for us to enjoy. God damn it. Let's stay on Zoom as long as we can. Oh, yeah.

We got to do Kid Cuisine as soon as we're back in person. Country bears off. Kid Cuisine on do Kid Cuisine as soon as we're back in person. Country Bears off. Kid Cuisine on. Kid Cuisine on. Scott's going to be mainlining the sleepy time tea supplies. He's going to be mainlining the tea to try and settle his stomach. I am not. I'm not having one lick of any of this.

The challenge is for me to be able to look at it in front of my actual eyes that's what i if i could survive that that's the challenge eating is off the table oh i just scrolled i just scrolled again through the kid cuisine and i saw the pizza and i went like i went i felt it i felt what you're talking about i'm like it's just i don't if this is going to be prepared it's not going to be in my microwave. If we're doing it at my place, this has to have an off-site. You need to find an industrial kitchen that will prepare this. Ghost kitchen.

The podcast is the right ghost kitchen. Oh, man. Okay. Okay. All right. Commercial breakover. Disgusting commercial breakover have we'll get off of this opening ceremony i have one more thing to say about it that i really like which is there is a a continuing presence in it from a young will friedel will will friedel later from boy meets world who's i think really really funny he's the

older brother on that show um you see him as a kid um he he does a he does a rap song that's about uh editing and graphics and like old analog editing equipment that isn't used anymore i think they played this on the tour wilfred l rapping um he's charming throughout um but there is this part i don't know if you guys found found this, where he talks to some skaters from the about-to-premiere Nick show Skate TV. So there's a couple skaters, and they're going to do tricks around Universal Studios in the Hollywood Boulevard area. And Will Friedle is a little like, I think he reminds me of Little Me, because he's got big cheeks and brown hair, and he's just got like an upbeat attitude so i see myself in it like this seems like a sweet nice kid and then he's with these taller jerkier older skaters and he's trying to be nice to him and ask him questions about skating and he says uh well so where you guys skate pretty much and they're

like you know ramps and uh pools they're giving him nothing and he's like oh pools is that pretty tough to skate on you know with the water and then one of the skaters says no we do it empty idiot and they use this they use it on the in the special and it's real it for sure is this 16 year old jackass calling the host of the show an idiot. It really broke my heart for young Will Friedle. I mean, I'm glad they left it in. They wouldn't do that today, but yikes. These skate TV jerks. How dare you? That old TV thing where they didn't make sure everything was good.

I've talked about it on old Tonight Show clips where it's just like, no one was editing this. They were like, yep, great, put it on TV. We shot it, go for it. You know what's funny is you talk about old Tonight Show clips and the sloppiness of old Tonight Show. And you think of people like Burt Reynolds being drunk or just, you know, kind of not together on the Carson Tonight Show. And then a rare moment that was like this in the later era on Jay Leno was the Burt Reynolds-Mark Summers feud. Yes. One of the only major memories I feel of the Leno Tonight Show. I don't remember how it escalated. Were they just like kind of like zinging each other

and then it went too far and Burt was actually mad and then it culminates in some sort of like they turn their backs, take a couple steps and do a duel with pies. Do you guys know this clip? I have seen this clip. I'm trying to remember how it starts. Mark is like very passive aggressive toward Burtt but burt probably said something jerky to start mark off on that track

so they're going back and forth and then mark like splash or no bird splashes i forget who splashes like water first on them yeah yeah uh and very andy kaufman-esque it's kind of for something in like 95 96 you're, this is pretty old school feeling. So I commend Mark Summers for engaging in this talk show awkwardness. Yeah. The danger, the danger of it. Yes.

You don't feel that any, like it wouldn't air if that happened on Jimmy Fallon and it wouldn't happen on Jimmy Fallon because everything's like planned out very specifically. I'm of course talking about when I say like when I'm talking about like nothing was planned or it was boring or a little more raw I'm talking about an interview I just watched two nights ago where Richard Dawson was

guest hosting the Tonight Show with William Shatner on and they were boring the shit out of everyone just nothing no interesting thing to say yeah you forget the golden age of tv a lot of it is spliced together in montages or oh yeah if you watch like there's a bunch of johnny carson stuff on tubi and um there's a lot of audience silence during some of those monologue like the monologue is very lazy like barely god got those jokes out you know yeah

yeah yeah um yeah no i we we start to think that like that thing where the guy throws the tomahawk and it lands in the uh there's a little shape of the body and it lands at the crotch yeah like that's an old famous carson clip like we think that happened like over and over and over again there were 40 crotch tomahawks per episode but in fact that was the one good thing that happened in 10 years right yeah he's the king of TV though

let me say well okay you talk kings of TV my childhood affection for Mark Summers was so strong like I really do. It's almost weird to me that he's a real person because with his Universal Studios presence, he almost is like King Kong or Jaws to me. He's almost otherworldly. I liked him as much as I liked Michelangelo.

Like, you know what I mean? I do. He was a pillar of what i watched as a kid so that there that it is a real man um i liked him so much just so charming and everything always love double dare love what would you do the best and then we were a little older unwrapped started and i was just like there's my friend he's back yeah doing a new job yeah that was a similar feeling i had when like keenan thompson was on saturday night live i was like oh he made it out he made it from my kid interests to my adult interests and the same thing with mark summers were like when unwrap started it was like whoa

hey that's cool there is life after yeah because a lot of people don't get out they're sort of stuck in kid world or they aren't and yeah no he's he's got a pretty big like reality career um my little thing of like how i came the closest to living my nickelodeon dreams because i was never on a show i was never slimed i was too scared to audition um but about 10 years ago at this point, Funny or Die produced a Double Dare themed music video. There was a full recreation of the set and they got Mark Summers to participate. This was a music video for one of history's great bands. I'm talking, of course, about Good Charlotte. So I just, my friends, Josh Martin and Ryan McNeely. Oh, you guys know them, too. They they put this together and I was in the right place at the right time.

And they asked if I wanted to be like a helper, like the I guess a Harvey or more like one of the people like helping with the games and like, you know, cleaning up water balloon spill and stuff. So I got the shirts. I got to be in a shirt. Erin came. She did it too. Fellow podcaster Ryan Stanger is in it, unrecognizable in his mega long hair that he used to have. Anyway, just this was like the dream of all dreams.

I'm on a recreated Double Dare set with Mark Summers, standing in the wings in a shirt, and then he does the thing. He does the on your mark, get set, go! Such chills, heart beating so fast, the coolest thing ever. thing was that um you know probably a situation they encountered in the early days of double dare um the setup to do this thing was just mammoth it was so crazy to flip it from the game show part to the physical challenge or obstacle course part it took forever and mark summers was just standing around and then me and everybody else who were wearing the double-decker shirts and who grew up watching him all kind of poked around and like, hey, so

is this cool to be here? And he just told us stories for 90 minutes, everything you would ever want to hear. The nicest guy, the greatest guy, everybody got pictures with him. Like, I am just glowing in my Mark Summers experience. And he's just volunteering.

Well, you probably also want to hear about that what's the Magic Castle special I did. Oh, yes, of course, yes, we'd love to hear about that. He just volunteered everything you'd ever want to hear at a Q&A, but just for us. So, so cool. So if you want

to see that and hear a great good Charlotte song, and I don't know if it's in the cut but you might get to see my wife fish a pie out of benji madden's pants um so if you have any desire i've heard was he uh he's like a tabloid famous person right was he married to i think was he married to hillary duff hillary duff perhaps yeah yeah i think i think so um did the other one married to nicole ritchie am i wrong or maybe i'm mixing those up yeah um i wonder if this is the rare place that the the good charlotte people were where like no one on the set is fawning over them

like not one person is like trying to get pictures or autographs. It's just bees to honey for Mark Summer. Wait, no. Benji is married to Cameron Diaz. What, now? Benji's married to Cameron Diaz? I was right about Joel Madden being married to Nicole Richie, but I did not realize really? Cameron Diaz is married to Benji?

Wow. Or at least was. Guys, we gotta keep up with us weekly we're not reading the tabloids like we should I feel like sometimes I know what I'm talking about let me hear let's see

yeah Jason's right 2015 wow alright and here I am being snarky about him on this podcast well yes this man who has 500 million dollars I mean they were very big All right. Hmm. And here I am like being snarky about him on this podcast. Well, yes. They're A-list. This man who has $500 million. I mean, they were very big when we were teenagers.

Yeah. Yeah. Geez. Well, anyways. Yes. Watch these A-listers and I'm in the background. So that's my Mark Summers enthusiasm. I don't know.

What else are we like excited about in terms of what you could see there, what was taped there? What are the big tent poles of this place? Yeah. When I toured it, I asked my dad, was anything taping? Because you would go through. They had big glass windows, big soundproof glass windows, so you could look in on makeup and hair.

There's footage of Mark Summers complaining about like you have to turn the mic i don't want people watching me get my makeup done this is weird um and and so there were all these little fish bowls you would go above the sound stage like up by the lights and you could look down on the set i think i asked my dad his memory is that double dare i don't think like was in the middle of a game when we were there, but at least the set was standing and we saw the set. And so I'm sure it was either dark or there was just some guys, you know, coiling cables because that's the thing. If you take a tour of sound stages or a movie studio lot,

you're going to see a lot of silence because um you know when you film stuff they're trying to record sound so like uh they did plan this to be like both a working exhibit where like people could go through and tour it while stuff was filming but there there was some sparse areas certainly the courtyard by the slime geyser while it was thrilling to see the slime geyser uh it was kind of empty otherwise an occasional photo op a small gift shop kiosk kind of thing but yeah if they like you imagine it always being like you imagine there was some party going on there all the time whether or not there was show was taping just because you'd see it like i feel like with what would you do they started using that zone all the time. So you imagine there's always some hubbub.

But yeah, it was pretty, a little sleepy, a little like photo ops. I also will say my recollection of Slime Geyser is that my kid memory made it 200 feet tall. Oh. Getting there and realizing like, oh, this is like a you know like a pvc pipe art exhibit that you're that like a handy little collective would make you know yeah and the thing you may forget is the ground of the courtyard was uh black asphalt and it was always very wet because the slime guys are kind of splashed or wasn't kept up well like it was always so wet over there but largely silent

except for like the like fake sirens when the slime geyser would kind of erupt and it was water i mean it was mostly water there was some tubes that were dyed green you know and there was like fake fog i remember that that that's another thing that that disappointed me a little is that i i probably watched whatever you know launch of it there was or opening of the slime geyser there was and like i'm picturing just the deepest greenest slime and then it is like it's it's like murky water it's like sewer water basically like that's the what came out of that geyser looked disgusting oh yeah that's the whole i'm trying to think like everything everything looked disgusting to me at the time it like i think i was always like thinking

logistically too like if i got hit with this stuff from the geyser what am i gonna do am i gonna get a new shirt i don't want to put a different shirt on because like i remember how traumatic it was for me when i did and i we posted that already and i talked about on the chicago show i sang a song with my mother uh uh which i'm blanking on the name of it uh gloria that's fun gloria estefan song uh and because there was a green screen behind me i had to put a different shirt on that they had in the actual studio and it was weird i hated it i hated i remember this really well like this is not my shirt and i'm wearing it so i had like these like paranoid feelings about like if i hit hit with that, I'm gonna have to put on a new shirt

and I don't want to do that. It's not my shirt. Well, when they would slime the kid in the pool, and again, the smallest amount of slime, like a orange Home Depot bucket, half filled worth of slime. They would put the kids, yeah, in another outfit or a pair of coveralls with like a helmet and goggles

and the other thing is slime it's mostly like cornstarch and water and dot like we would make slime so much in elementary school science class and middle school science i can't the number of hours that science teachers ate up making slime in the 90s, where they're like, oh my God, I'm hungover. It's experiment day. They're making slime. That's the other thing. Slime's always edible, too.

There's footage of Mark Summers eating it in the opening day special. How much slime did you guys have as kids? And it didn't have to be nickelodeon brand slime because at a certain point they started making like gack and you could buy that which we had a thing of gack at home which was yeah not quite slime it was a little bit more like uh spongy than slime but slime would come in my ghostbuster toys uh my ninja turtle toys there was a catapult thing that would come with slime and you'd always have in a little

bucket, or not bucket, almost like a Play-Doh container. And we had slime around the house. We kept slime in the house because of how many toys came with the slime. Yeah, multiple IPs, I guess, all had green

slime, too. There's a lot of different sources of green slime. You could buy separate retro mutagenoos for the Ninja Turtles, which I think we probably had an extra little thing of slime just in case we needed it during my play. There's a blackout or a storm. Yeah, if there was a pandemic at that time, there would be a run on slime and we would have at least had some in the house in case.

We were very, our slime was rationed. Like I, if we made it in school, we usually came home in like a grungy Ziploc bag or a sandwich bag and we could keep playing with it until it started to break down. I feel like my mom, if a toy came with slime, we either used it until it dried out or she palmed it.

So we didn't have it. I remember once going to Chuck E. Cheese and getting a free thing of Gak. I was like, we got to go to Chuck E. Cheese. They're giving away free Gak. And it was pizza. It smelled like pizza. It was special to Chuck E. Cheese. They're giving away free Gak. And it was pizza. It smelled like pizza. It was special pizza Gak. What?

Yes, it smelled like pizza. We got home, we opened it, and it smelled like garlic that had gone bad. And my mom was like, this is going in the trash. Wow. I'm a little sad, but I also can't disagree with you too hard. But I feel like a fool uh that week we went

through all that to get free gack oh wow smell here it is smell my gack okay scott did you ever have gack yeah yeah i believe i had one reasonable container of gack but it didn't smell because we didn't have gack that smelled yeah there's this yeah there's uh wow interesting and then there was smud and floam as well floam was fun yeah yeah floam had some like physical properties right it was like little almost like like mustard seeds right yes the little the tiny balls made it stand up there was texture to it yeah um so yeah i feel like slime and i don't know do kids do the kids today are they oh there was a big slime trend a couple years ago kids were crazy for people were making slime their slime tiktoks and snapchat like i've seen like mentos and like soda tiktoks

recently i've seen a lot of that that's back we're just we're in another we're in a new cool packaging of mentos and yes yes there's i saw like three of them yesterday going through like youtube whatever fleets whatever youtube calls fleets or whether it's version yeah yeah um so yeah have i talked about that on the show the men when i was a pa and i had to help the mentos and soda guys set up a massive rig of mentos and Soda on the Vegas Strip. E.P. Bird? Huh? Was it a group called E.P. Bird?

I think so. We were outside of Caesar's Palace, and we had to do this and then clear it up real quick because Don Rickles was getting a Lifetime Achievement Award. What was this? What was this for? I was a PA at what was called the comedy festival in las vegas at caesar's palace i lived in caesar's palace for like 10

days like in 2006 working this event lucky lucky people were uh the audiences were drunk and unruly and uh no one seemed super happy to be there both performers and uh audience uh zach alphanackis was very nice we had to scramble to get him a big pad uh so he could write it on and he was super cool a big pet not like a what's a big pet not like a big pad of paper when he would do the bits where he tears off the jokes. Oh, the bit where he tears off the... The big pads, yeah. Okay, okay. Zach Galvanakis is an incontinent.

No, no, he's not, no. But yeah, I had to set up. They had rigged, they had just bottles and bottles of soda, and they had invented these capsules that you would pull a string out of that would drop the Mentos into the soda thing. So it was just a massive puddle of Diet Coke in the promenade at Caesar's palace.

If is it, was it two guys in lab coats? Yes, it was definitely. Yeah. I, my, uh,

like I had this editing job in 2008, 2009, where we did a ton of work with those guys. Like they had cornered the, we are the diet Coke Mentos guys. And then there was this whole thing where we've uh we're doing our new experiment we're not just the diet coke mentos guys we've got a new experiment for you it is sticky pads like like like post-it notes and they were gonna like do is gonna be

like a bunch of cool designs where like post-it notes flowed like water and we made all these videos with post-it notes flying around and no one liked any of this nobody cares it's not remotely as cool as diet coke and mentos this is this long arduous project that was a tie-in like ep bird's special post-it note experiment to promote abc family's samurai girl what do you What's any of this? What is the... Those guys were nice. They promote three products at once? Yeah. I did not meet them.

I cannot say anything about EP Bird. I was just like part of the... I guess both of us were part of the EP Bird industrial complex. Yeah. I think they were having a lot of fun. They had other jobs. They kind of fell into it, and they were nice guys. In my experience. I don't know. I never met them, so I don't know it and and they were they were nice guys in my experience

i don't know i never met that so i don't know yes they could be they could be perfectly nice so uh but yeah but that's similar appeal like oh you make a big mess like that was what nickelodeon you weren't like mike said we were saying earlier you know you make a big mess and you're not allowed to do that in your home but you can do it at nickelodeon well this is maybe a good point to talk about one of the big tentpoles of the tour which is the gack kitchen yes that was sort of the you know because the other things that you see i think you are outside a like control booth i watched a video where you know you're you're at all the monitors and the switchers and like the director who's who's calling the shots up there and they prove that the glass is uh soundproof by having a bunch of people all scream nickelodeon

at the top of their lungs yes which if you could hear it what an annoying place to work i guess you couldn't the person didn't turn around but it's you know it's it's cool and i ate all this up as a kid like this is totally what made me want to work in in tv or media or whatever the hell like i definitely ate all this up but for in terms of like kid color the gat kitchen is probably the craziest thing and that was where um because you don't like i don't think i was ahead of it i wasn't like smarter than everybody i know that it's edible and it's just cornstarch i really don't think i knew what it was made of and it was cool seeing it come together and get mixed up in a bowl.

They'd let people take a bite or whatever. I don't remember a lot about what the Gat Kitchen presentation was. Oh, sure, yeah. I remember seeing that. Yeah, it was later. I think I saw that first, and then it was later I had a teacher

who had been a scientist or a science professor and was very into, like, yeah, oh, did you know this is really this? And that they would do the slime stuff. And they certainly got our interest. Yeah, that's a good fake science. Yeah. Kill time with. I mean, I think there's probably a point where i thought oh maybe like the slime uh burns you really yeah you just scream after you were getting slimed or something or

it would change your i would like like the joker it would change my face my color it would change me to green permanently or something yeah i mean i'm sure i had those thoughts um maybe i thought it would be like like a drug, like euphoria. Like maybe it would make me happier. Like as soon as you're kissed by Gak, then you just feel lighter than a cloud. Yeah. There's no easy solution like that other than, you know, six ounces of white wine. That's as close as I can come to what I thought Gak would do.

I don't know. I think if you... Jason seems like he knows exactly how to make some slime in the lab. I think if Jason can whip up some slime for you, maybe have that white wine, and then we'll just dump it on your head next time we're in person. Let's see if we can't recapture that old magic, that old feeling. Now, look, i'm excited that i'm very excited for the

forthcoming us returning to in person but look germs are still you know we're all still a little psychologically scarred from the last year how is this suddenly becoming a super sloppy podcast the ride now we're sliming each other now we're eating kid cuisine which will probably make us vomit now suddenly there's all kinds of fluids going on fluids being exchanged on super sloppy podcast the ride and i don't know how i feel about it has dr fauci weighed in on super uh sloppy slime and if it could actually increase the spread of covet or i would really like to know before we do this, because you're right, you're right. We are getting a little ahead of ourselves here about getting sloppy when we're

back in person. And I think we should just follow the CDC guidelines about how sloppy we are allowed to be. Yeah. You know, it's almost paradoxical. They want to say, I don't know, without any repercussions. And then when they say it they get slimed and what do they think is going to happen well we've all seen ran paul getting very testy with dr fauci uh lately um because he wants to get sloppy immediately he's wanted everyone to be sloppy this whole time jim jordan wants to be super sloppy it's our in our our basic liberties we're guaranteed the right to get sloppy well grand paul got sloppy with his yard work and uh he got to come up and for that so we'll see what happens if he gets sloppy with his ass work um so uh what have we missed here what's

part of this uh yeah kitchen kitchen it seems It seems fun in general, and that the official chef there is called the Gakmeister. I like that. I could see, like, yeah, the reality as a kid there, I would have gagged having, like, eating it, even if somebody was like, you know, it's just, it's candy. You eat the same colored candy all the time like it's nerd color of nerds and there's not i would still be like oh but it's oh no i can't like it would it would still psychologically be like disturbing to me i think but that you know i feel like i might have liked it i was watching a video where a kid tried a little bit and then

like got nauseous. But I feel like I'd like eating Gak. I don't know. Hey, I could see. Now I would love it. But I'm just trying to remember. Look, I'm doing my best because I didn't get to experience this thing when I was younger. Because we couldn't go to Universal.

We only went to Disney. You know? Yeah. I'm trying to live. You're talking to your parents right now. Am I? You went into that tone of voice. Maybe I am. Maybe I feel like we didn't get to go to Universal

until it was like 1998, you know? My family always went clockwise back to like, or counterclockwise back to like ET and back to the future first. So I think like I got the glimpse of Nickelodeon Studios the first one or time two times we went but usually did it later in the day and that was probably a good move because i saw the more like behind the scenes stuff like alfred hitchcock and murder she wrote uh so that kind of

prepped me for a lot of spare sets like empty sets with like fluorescents on them uh because again it's a tour it's not gonna be like you're walking into a middle of a commercial so i i did very quickly temper my expectations i think that like yeah i'm not gonna get hit with a pie out of a secret door i wish they had done more like people jumping out of secret entrances or stuff or like you know some weird stuff in the tour yeah it could have it could have been sillier it could have been wackier i suppose it is a little a tad functional from what you can tell about it but did the game lab do anything for you we talked about splitting up into kids and adults but then like was that show a satisfying show i i think it was fun to see it demonstrated in in person yeah once i was like got my shaking down to a manageable level i could try

and and look and i saw the slime and i could see that it was far away from me and yeah as my as you said it's not gonna burn me it's probably not gonna get on me yeah not gonna turn you into like clay face like a slime monster uh yeah i found uh oh go ahead no you go well i was gonna say i found some of the merchandise like i i don't know why i never got one of these shirts that everyone wore in the broadcast because they surely had them for sale i did have this shirt which i apparently yeah i know it's at my mom's i can apparently get 80 dollars for it on ebay this is a shirt with the the nick studios logo which by the way there's the nick logo which is a big splat but then the studios logo where it's a splat that has different shapes like a camera and uh film strips and a

blimp for some reason um i really like that that outline what they how they modded it out for the studio setting apparently that was heavy uh heavily influenced by like the mtv logo could kind of do anything and go anywhere and they're like we got to be able to do that too oh that was a big oh yeah how you never like um associated with a particular color scheme the whole thing was that it would flash through different crazy patterns yeah so that's why like it'd be

a blimp sometimes and then it'd be a shit a plane or like a big splat like it could it could the font they said the font was always the same and the orange was always the same um but then you could do a lot with it. Gotcha. My general takeaway going back into the Nickelodeon archives

and watching a bunch of shows in the last week, just that, I mean, the shows are great, but it's the look and the graphics and the promo department and the odds in it and just all the various pieces of media where they sing, Nick, Nick, Nick, Nick, Nick, Nick. All of the stuff between the shows, they did such a great job. And then you take that into SNCC and The Couch, and that is so memorable.

I feel that way about MTV as well, because, yeah, it was like two branches of the same company. And it was like as much all the stuff between the shows as what was in the shows i just just all that middle crap they did such a great job yeah it's it's really it's a vibe it's what jason was saying earlier like truly like the vibe of nickelodeon was like perfect they really like figured out how to make you feel like it was all part of a piece and like this is like you hear the nick nick nick song and it's like that's my that's made for me this is this everything is almost not everything but almost everything is good on this channel there was there was not like uh pooch-ism you know like poochie

being the character added to Itchy and Scratchy who is completely the product of focus groups and out of touch adults thinking what kids might want to see that was never the situation like they calibrated and defined our taste

in the process like they put something out there. Is this your taste? We said yes. And they kept going. And then it completely became our dominant taste for the next five years or so. Yes. Can I real quick?

I want to go down the list of the things that were shot here. And just I'm going to point out highlights because so many, so many things were shot at Nick Studios. Eureka's Castle is a show I liked a lot. My sister was a little younger. But I'm big puppets, if you don't know, Dragon, Bat Puppet, Bat Lee. I like Bat Lee.

I like his voice. I like doing his voice still. Magellan, you know, Eureka, I like that. A fun puppet show. Obviously, Double Dare we were talking about. I liked the show My Brother and Me. Do you remember My Brother and Me? Yeah, I did remember that as I was watching clips.

I oddly watched a lot of My Brother and Me. We loved My Brother and Me. The two kids had a friend named Goo. Goo. Oh, Goo was so funny. Goo was so funny. The show only lasted like a season and they would just replay them over and over again but we watched all there's like what 10 episodes probably burned

into my brain is the one where a basketball player shows up and they say his name so many times and i only knew who he was because of the episode but just how many times they said his full name kendall gill kendall gill kendall gill's gonna be here i like i love kendall gill now because of that episode uh yeah underrated show i feel like anybody who knows it is like yeah i watched a lot of that yeah you bring it up i am i guess i'm more fond of it than I realized. Yeah, we loved it. Get Goo on SNL. Goo should be there too. I agree. Now, Wienerville is a show I watched,

but it was creeped out by. I loved it, but I was creeped out by it. I was very conflicted. I was afraid I would get puppeted. I would get turned into a puppet and I wouldn't be able to get turned back. Something would go wrong. I was terrified of that happening.

Well, I saw Mark Wiener live at the Arlington racetrack too, like in 1994 or 5. Betting on the ponies? No, no, he was not just there with like a racing form. He was actually doing some kind of show, and we went to see him, and they had kids like get Wienerized there. And even though I was like older,

I still was like, I don't want to risk it yeah i'm not gonna risk getting turned into one of those characters permanently you'd be permanently wienerized i didn't know you know i think there was still a feeling in my head that that was possible i don't know if it was as strong as what jason's describing but i did have it did was like i did have that feeling of like i don't know if you were wiener ride that means that you because he had like little puppet bodies on his own uh full-sized head is that what wienerizing yeah sorry to explain to the audience who might not know wiener mark wiener's wienerville i know nothing beyond 21 title on i i again i probably watched like more episodes of this than shows that I like a lot today. I probably watched 50 episodes of Wienerville, but remember nothing.

Right. That's fair. I don't have such strong memories. He had a biker character. Is that right? He was kind of like a- Greaser, maybe a greaser type. Was he sort of a kids in the hall style blonde office lady who'd go like, oh.

I think so. He was that. was it dotty am i is my memory correct is it dotty my interval i believe it was dotty yeah there was definitely some sort of dotty involved it says 93 to 94 so much only shot for a year or two and they would just grind it out or what would happen with like clarissa explains it all and keenan like they would shoot some of it in florida and then the person would get you know momentum in their careers they're like all right we gotta move this to los angeles yeah all that says season one and two only shot there which i liked all that as well but i think we talked about it on the show before it was like when i started watching saturday night live and i was like i can tell saturday night live is better but i do like all that i still like watching all that um what else is on this list um uh nick arcade oh god i mean roundhouse season one oh yeah sure

oh i was just gonna say that everyone everyone is upset. Still, like, traumatized by how badly everyone did in the final round of Nick Arcade. Yeah. Because it was like they were on a green screen or a blue screen or something, and they were looking at a monitor to see where the bad guys were coming, as if they were in a Nintendo game or an old arcade game. And it was impossible. They failed almost every time and as a kid you were like you didn't understand the physics of that so you were so frustrated watching them

just eat shit every time they went to the bonus round or the final round yeah and there's footage of like the stairways were practical those were real or the orbs those were real but then everything else yeah like you said it's just an empty blue screen and a weird a monitor a giant monitor but at a very weird spot it's wild this is a pretty good video that i just found that's um uh three to four orlando local news outlets who clearly all got invited to some media day of nick like there's a new show nick arcade launching and you can go be part of a taping and maybe be on the show and they have their report their wacky reporter go do a round of it and they all completely eat shit including a weatherman and a weatherman that's what they do for a living yeah in front of you're watching i have to point this way but

it's going to be flipped the other way and i have to point this way but it's going to be flipped the other way and i have to base what i'm doing off a monitor so if a weatherman a professional fails at that then how is some kid gonna understand the intricacies of chroma work yeah uh no the kids poor kids um there was roundhouse i think is the one that we have that that's like one of when you start thinking about these shows when it is not your childhood when enough time has passed that it becomes nostalgia oh remember this remember that roundhouse is like the first one where you go oh some of them were bad it's like the like the first that it occurs to you there's other shows

you might say oh that didn't like this and other people would say oh what are you talking about that was good roundhouse i don't think you're getting any argument. Well, not with She's All That right after. Or not She's All That. All That. She's All That the show. All That did a She's All That to the concept of children's sketch comedy. They elevated it above a roundhouse or a welcome freshman.

I liked that justification. I liked that i got it he fixed it he fixed it he retconned it no mistakes in podcasting well i was gonna say about what would you do which i really really liked what would you yes was mark summer's other show and it was just the same concept different set basically i mean it wasn't the same exact game show, but kids, there would be different ways to get slime. I will say, so at Nick's Studios, which was in a theme park, there was a ride on What Would You Do?

That I feel like was not used a lot. Do you guys know what I'm talking about? I vaguely remember this, yeah. The Pie Coaster. The Pie Coaster. And I believe they only use this once in a while because i don't remember seeing it a lot because they'd have the pie pod which was like their signature i believe on what would you do which was you'd sit in a seat and then like arms would like fly like fling pies

at your face which i remember being scared that would hurt as well as a kid i was like i liked the idea of the pie pod but it was very uh i was a little traumatized by it but then i remember this very distinctly and i remember that it wasn't on a lot and it's probably because it was hard to maintain but it was the pie coaster and they built geez it's a little soapbox derby that is so low rent oh my gosh And it's the biggest pie and it goes backwards. Yeah. And I bet that they were like, we can't, this isn't that good. It's not good enough to justify the insane setup.

You feel the Bob Gurr in this. It's like not literally Bob Gurr, but you feel some guy rolling up his sleeves and banging this together at two in the morning. And there's like a hard like bank up at the end here. Do you see that? Yeah. So it can swing back with momentum. Right.

It's not plow into the audience. Kid probably got her like neck hurts. Her neck probably got hurt on this. And they were like, we can't maintain this pie coaster much longer. It's a little whiplashy. It looks more architecturally sound than rip ride rocket though i'll say that well that's that's fair like a more pleasant experience too that's where they got the idea for a rip ride rocket yeah this is um the uh i was looking for reddit

threads people who got to go to nickelodeon tapings or be part of the shows and i saw a post from somebody who was disillusioned by the whole thing because they got to go to a taping of Legends of the Hidden Temple, which was such a grand show with huge games and huge sets. And they said that the taping was not very fun because they had one of the games set up, you know, whether it was one of the ones running across water or whatever, those are so involved. And it was basically, here's the game and now we're gonna play it six times

with six different groups of kids because they're block shot by set not so much but they don't like film the whole episode in half an hour real clean like a talk show um so i think it was uh sort of like laborious and boring i wonder if that was the case with the pie coaster too like not worth the setup yeah i bet they had to wheel that thing out and test it like 10 you would think like I wonder if that was the case with the Pi coaster too. Like not worth the setup. Yeah. I bet they had to wheel that thing out and test it like 10. You would think like to move a roller coaster, even a little one, you then have to test it to make sure the person in the coaster isn't going to fall off because moving a coaster is a big, big, big, big pain in the ass.

So you would imagine that, yeah, that was probably a logistical challenge um i wonder if logistical challenge that's my my favorite thing about the double is that they in the way that kids all adopt a way of you know how everyone says all kids say the pledge of allegiance in the same way i pledge allegiance to the flag that it was like that with physical challenge where nobody said physical challenge it was always, Physical Challenge. Just a big lean in right up on the fuzz of Physical Challenge. Like, why did they? Somebody could have said it in a different way, but by then, the tone just got adopted.

Yeah. Whoever the pioneer of that was, the first kid to say it, set the tone forever. Set the tone forever. Yeah. By the way, of these you know also to continue praising mark summers i guess maybe equal to michael eisner and my kid i just liked these nice guys in suits spoke clearly um looking you know the whole thing with him became oh but he's like he's kind of crazy he's got ocd he doesn't like uh he was a host of double dare and

he doesn't like messes this guy let me tell you he washes his hands all the time that's how crazy he is he'll wash his hands for like upwards of I don't know 20 seconds what a like vindicating era for Mark Summers this all has to be

we are all mega germaphobes and what a hero because like not only is there all this mess, children are, Scott, I'm sure you've learned, gross, disgusting, like so much goo. They're their own little slime factories, their own little GAC labs, you know? It's all personal GAC labs. Yeah, I know. And that he did that, he like had this problem and yet suppressed it to have this crazy specific job

yes it's pretty amazing and someone said about mark summers the thing why i think he he immediately caught on with kids is he always treated the kids as adults he always talked to them like equals whether they were excited whether they were nervous whether they seemed like a brainiac or like just kind of out of it he always was like you know acted like you know alex trebek would act to the jeopardy contestants you know yeah um yeah super great charismatic he also that story there's a story in that orange years documentary that he he told to us in person i think this is part of his little like i'll like i'll give you the inside stuff but the story where like a kid almost like bends their leg and hat like like there's a super dislocation of a leg from a slip

and fall in which i think in person he might have described it as like i feel like i was like am i seeing bone what happened like it was really bad. It was a truly horrendous accident on the obstacle course. And they were like, everybody's already thinking this is going to be lawsuit city. We are so screwed here. And then the parent comes up and says,

hey, so that next one, before he slipped and fell on your set, the next game was going to get us that big screen TV. You give us that big screen TV tv maybe none of this ever happened oh well maybe yeah i thought sure i think we could make that work and then backstage they're all like oh my god we can just give them the tv and make this go away holy shit like they they save nickelodeon three million million with this one free TV. Yeah. TV, the resolution these days would look like shit. It would look horrible. Yeah.

I can't believe there even were big TVs in the 90s. Why? Why did they even bother? Well, my mom's keeping hers going. God knows how many times she's gotten it repaired. It's in a big wooden cabinet. It is a massive, it's probably as tall as I am. How old is it and oh uh i would say that was

the event of the year in 1995 when we got it 1994 yes whoa it's a piece of furniture yeah how much is the repair on it i don't know and she got it repaired like years ago and it i mean it still works um my uh my dad had the exact same thing where the cabinet that the tv is in is driving the lack of replacement of the tv like look it's hey it's nice it's but you know it's that's good wood panel it's good varnish you don't replace that yeah my dad also i i have to say because this happened yesterday and i it's i have to unload this burden of what my dad said, which is he pronounced the word sushi, su-chi. He did a C-H-I, and I'm like, Dad, we have said the word sushi to each other. You know that it is not sushi.

He said it in the context of like that weird stuff you eat, like sushi. And I stopped him like, hang on. I will not let this stand. You know in your heart it is not sushi. You have been on this earth since the 50s. This is not a new word to you. You know what? someone in my family

did that to me recently uh with the very bitter with a kind of bitter leafy green you get in a salad you know arugula and i don't even remember how i i don't even remember what they were trying to say arugula arugula yeah something like that and i'm, you've had a rule. No, no, no, no, no. This isn't oat milk. This is, come on. It's in every bag of prepackaged mixed greens. Come on. Ooh, ooh, ooh, gluck, gluck. What is that California crap you're eating?

Who, uh, Jason, has your dad had sushi? Yeah, my dad's had sushi. My dad, so my mom's repairing the same TV from 1995. My dad moved a number of years ago and immediately bought the biggest Sony widescreen TV he could get and opted for like a pool table instead of a dining room kitchen, like dining room table. So he's a little more hipper.

Yeah, my dad put on the biggest platter of sushi ever. He put on the sushi channel. I don't think he goes to sushi. He likes nice restaurants. He gets sushi. I don't think it's his favorite. Dads just don't like sushi. They're scared of sushi

for some reason. I don't know what it is. I'm not a big sushi guy either. But I'll eat it. It's rice and avocado and some fish. Pretty base, I feel. What else? These boy parents, you know, as you think about it,

then they're on adventurous food tape. Boy parents, I hate them. Their stupid glasses. Always saying don't eat sushi with their horn-rimmed glasses. Stop eating sushi. You're margling! They should have sushi in Kid Cuisine, I think. Yeah.

Okay, what have we not... Well, we're naming shows still. Guts. Gotta mention Guts. Guts and Legends of the Hidden Temple was kind of... That, I feel feel like is the dividing line somewhere around there and secret life of alex mac which i i don't think shot here but like soon after that a couple years after that they get door the explorer and um spongebob

squarepants and then it's just like a rocket ship like it's it's a different era things things change a little you know sure yeah there's stuff that just there's stuff on this list is like just out of the time i was watching like mystery files of shelby woo i didn't watch i was like i was on to much more sophisticated shows at that point you know uh like i don't know in 1998 what v what? VIP. VIP, Relic Hunter. All the different shows I watched on a Saturday afternoon on UPN or whatever. You know, all these future luminaries that Kenan Thompson's doing his early, we're cutting his teeth there. That Mike O'Malley on several shows before he wrote the

margaritaville musical you know all the greatest talents that still is a bizarre fact to me i don't know if listeners know that fact that guts host mike o'malley wrote the jimmy buffett musical yeah yeah well wrote the book wrote the book yeah of course he didn't have it we know the gentleman who did that yeah yeah mike o'malley very interesting career Well, wrote the book. Wrote the book. Yeah, of course. He didn't have any songs. We know who wrote the songs. We know the gentleman who did that. Yeah. Yeah. Michael Mallet, very interesting career if you look.

Because obviously as kids, we were like, oh, the guy who yells a lot. Who yells a lot on the game show. We like to watch kids run around. But yes, it's like multiple sitcoms, created things. And yes, the Jimmy Buffett musical. He's in Sully. He's in the scene with the constant recreation and the birds. That's Mike O'Malley in there. So, yeah, I liked him a lot.

I liked him and I liked Mo. I liked them both a lot on the show. But Mike specifically, sometimes a little much for me. Sure. He was very, very aggressive. So while I did like him, I definitely was like, all right, well, you could not always yell at me. You need the balance. Yeah.

I guess I preferred the the friendliness like i sense that if i yeah if i met them in person mark summers would be nice to me as he was when it happened and michael malley might yell at me and bully me and tell me to go up that rope quicker which i imagine what happened today he but he well you know when jimmy buffett was meeting with michael malley michael malley was yelling at Jimmy Buffett. There's no way. They couldn't work like that. Jimmy wouldn't. He changed his tune.

He softened it up. Yeah. To be able to hang out. He shifted to island time. Tully Mars wouldn't do that. Don't make me write Tully Mars in a way I don't like, Jimmy. He wouldn't do that. He would not say that to Jimmy Buffett.

Because nobody knows Tully Mars, the character that Jimmy wrote in multiple novels, better than Jimmy Buffett. We got a tight story here. Volcano doesn't make any sense. They're never going to be able to pull off the set of Volcano spewing on stage every night? Are you crazy?

Well, actually, in the context of the musical, the volcano is probably one of the things that makes the most sense that's right i didn't see you the yeah that's the last thing we all did before pandemic yeah with eva anderson with eva and we should have done a second gate i mean maybe we still will but we should have if it weren't for pandemic like watching that away there definitely should have been a second gate on that musical um which was honestly pretty fun i'll be like pretty yeah we had a nice time the story is not so sophisticated it's a fairly simple story believe it or not um but you know throwing o'malley under the bus bad book oh i don't you don't not a bad book i don't want to say o'malley

wrote a bad book i would never say that i say O'Malley wrote a bad book. I would never say that. I just think that he knew what the show should be and he wrote appropriately. You want the hits. It's hard to write simple. It's hard to write simple. You know, it's a great compliment

to say like something is simple and pared down, you know. The biggest disappointment was that it was the final performance and I was so hoping Mr. Buffett himself

would come out at the end like he had been in previous times. Yes, because he was in the city he had posted on insta well at least if you believed his instagram i was tracking him on instagram and i was like he's in los angeles why would he not come out at the end and play margaritaville with everyone and he did not so oh well oh well you put a tracking device on his personal assistant's car yeah i they're in town so uh-huh and i had a i trained a pelican to be on lookout for him and it had like a little earpiece and then i would give it the pelican directions and say like where where is he now follow follow that car follow that surfboard

or something and the pelican go heinz 57 fly the pelican's living here now by the way it's been living with us the whole pandemic he's in your pod your podican yeah there's only been three people me lindsey and the pelican and the pelican um guys if i could circle back before we we talk more nickelodeon stuff to the kid cuisine world i messaged uh our our shrek expert griffin newman um to say what is your off-the-cuff reaction to this box and he he sent quite a bit uh so i'm gonna summarize um sure sure probably the biggest things he said i would not touch that fucking tray i find the sad bastard dinner that shrek eats alone in the first movie more appetizing and then uh you can see it's

tomatoes and peas and like a fucked up sausage i think that's real stuff yeah of course yeah it's more organic than kid cuisine could ever be he says this says this too is someone who eats chicken nuggets at least three times a week so um if he's turning against the shrek nugs um you need a shrek shaped or he doesn't like on his own turn them into Shrek. He doesn't carve Shrek ears out of his own nuggets. Well, we'll have to ask him when we talk to him again. Well, I have to ask him. PTR legend Griffin Newman.

So that's two for two against. Okay. So the rules are always if it sucks, Mike and Jason have to stand up for it. Hi, did I stand up? Scott's gagging. I don't know that I necessarily endorsed the Shrek. Maybe I'm forgetting. Wait till we get to the episode, and we'll see.

We know where things land. When I eat the Shrek nuggets, and I go, this is so good. It's good. I like it. It's cute. My stomach feels cute. I'm in the bathroom like, it It's good. I like it. It's cute. My stomach feels cute. I'm in the bathroom like... It's all good.

My voice is a little hoarse. Can I go take like a 40-minute break? Okay, bye. Run away. Don't even make it to a bathroom. You see I'm like tweeting from the show account. These are good. I love these Shrek nuggets. it's just a shame that was

10 years after the time capsule was buried when it couldn't preserve them now that's a good segue and my you know hey we're talking mike o'malley one of the big moments of mike o'malley was his hosting of the nick time capsule ceremonyule Ceremony in April 1992. What we're now, how many years out are we from the, it'll be opened in 21 years, I believe? Yes. A long traveling time capsule. Yes, yeah.

So I remember watching this one as well. This was a big deal to me. Nickelodeon in April 92 buried a time capsule, an orange time capsule that was full of things that are important to the children of 1992. And there is a special hosted by Mike O'Malley where he makes declarations guaranteed to become not true. Like kids will come to this spot, this spot that'll stand forever. And they'll find out what it was like for you guys.

Now that you guys are the adults running the world. But of course, as we'll get into, there is no Nickelodeon studios. It hasn't been there in a long time. So it, this, that was my big concern.

I remember when I heard that the studios were closing like what of what of the time capsule this is like an important thing in my life now like i'm seven watching this and where will i be by then what will be my life in 2042 and i i need to know i need to track this thing so it's moved they've they've had to move it several times yes and it's at it's been moved what twice is that right still it's at the new hotel after they closed the worst hotel the worst nick hotel oh no no it it went to the nickelodeon suites hotel now it's here in fucking burbank by the office yes yes yes yeah uh we can go now we can go see it today. Yeah. We can, but we need access.

A drive-on. The Nickelodeon studios in Burbank are not open to the public like the old ones used to be. They're restrictive and they need key cards and stuff. They're blocking. We're still the kids of 92. We should have automatic access to that thing anytime we want. So this does bother me if there are any listeners to the show that have an in for us to go see the time capsule behind the gates i this

this genuinely would be very cool and important to me to get to check in on the time capsule i like i've even walked by that i've like parked my car and walked around there and gone like, is it in the courtyard? Is there a place I can see through the fence and see? I don't even get the kind of a taste of it, but I don't know. I think you need to know somebody. Do we know anybody? We know people at Cartoon Network, but I don't know if we know people at Nickelodeon.

It's a good question. I don't know off the top of my head. I have never actually been to know people in Nickelodeon. It's a good question. I don't know off the top of my head. I have never actually been to the Burbank Nickelodeon. I auditioned for some weird wizard show a couple years ago with the closed one on Sunset. Could you have been the

new Mr. Wizard? No, it was not Mr. Wizard. It was like some show about a kooky wizard and I acted like an ass in this audition for five minutes and then I left. i think i actually did okay yeah but i did not get it and it was not for a mr wizard i could look up the the sides again but i have never been on that burbank nick which literally is very close to here i where all of us yeah that's true we're all like within pretty close proximity it's all equidistant we're all equidistant we're all equidistant. We're all equidistant. We're all equidistant. We can all start

running and get there in a little bit. I mean, I don't know. We feel great. Oh, man. If only we're open. Can we reunite at the Nick time capsule? Perfect. There was a couple articles. Can we put new stuff in there? Oh, yeah. Shrek 2

nugs. Slime pudding. Swamp pudding. swamp pudding what was it swamp pudding that's right um pudding there was a couple articles but you can kind of tell it was like maybe pr people just tossing something off of like oh they're hoping to give tours of this because they build a like new office tower there the five or seven story office building it's like oh they're hoping to give tours and you could you know walk by where the time capsule is and like oh we moved it in conjunction with this building this new

office building and it's like I feel like you're falling asleep as I'm reading this that I could hear the sleepiness and their voice saying stuff like that nobody I don't think anybody cares about this thing I don't think people realize the people were there were kids watching this special and thinking how this going to be a way to frame my life like how much

how many feelings how many emotions i'll have when i get to watch whatever now incredibly sad thing occurs to open this time capsule like by that point there is no nickelodeon there is no cable just like nothing's going on it's just like a bad little like it's like a sad convention not like it's like comic-con in 1988 not comic-con in the 2000s like a it's like a it's like a funeral like all right we got a good turnout this is nice well does anyone want to say something that's i'm fearing that's what the time capsule openings like like tesla has acquired a lot of Paramount and Nickelodeon's programming. Tesla owns most of the world's entertainment at that point.

And it is like, yeah. It's on fire. The time capsule is on fire. 60-year-old, 65-year-old Elon Musk opens the capsule up and like says like. It took it to Mars. You have to go to mars to see the time capsule well now who's being dark uh i now you say that but one of the video montages i found of like here are the videos that would play throughout the tour was uploaded by the nickelodeon rewind

youtube account and it's so rare that these vintage videos are actually uploaded by the companies we're watching like vhs rips to get ready for episodes and this was like as good quality as as you know you could get of like ripping you know uh dv tapes or ripping um dv cam tapes or whatever i do appreciate that yeah the Nick official YouTube has posted the clips that you'd watch on the studio tour. And did they post that? Did they officially post the time capsule ceremony? I feel like they might.

There is a pretty good quality of it on YouTube. Yeah, the good quality with the commercials for Pizza Hut, Cheeseburger Pizza and the soon to open Gremlins 2. What a time to be alive. 1990. Jesus Christ, all of that at once. Well, I mean, 1992, there's a lot of What a Time to Be Alive

because, I mean, we could talk about some of what's in that capsule, but maybe in my mind the most notable thing is that they've, like, it's all been picked by kids. They've sort of pulled kids, what do you want to see in there but then right before it goes down who shows up but joey lawrence and joey lawrence has a baseball cap that says whoa 92 and that goes in there right before it goes in the ground will children of 2042 uh find the catchphrase whoa as important as the 1992 show as i know i did in 92 i i would like to hope so i would like maybe they'll reboot joey lawrence's catchphrase whoa soon for a streaming service i don't know how they'll do it but whoa should come back in some

context and then it's almost bizarre that there has not been just the the billion dollars in cash just like backed up to my ambiolix house to do a lazy yeah trouble blossom reboot oh yeah well she's got five days she's got a cat show she's doing great so i guess she doesn't need to do it. Oh, yeah, because all these reboots are always people who need to do it. Hey, all right. Kelsey Grammer, I know that you have more money than some small countries, but would you like to do four bad Frasiers? There was more story to tell for Frasier. That's a different situation.

This was always the intent for it to finish and then be brought back 17 years later how long has it been many many years and it was always the intent for it to be done after the death of the dad and probably without david ike pierce that was always the plan from the creators of the show oh yeah but some of the i mean i think i think reboot punky brewster is gonna give 110 compared to like reboot frazier you know maybe i don't know much about reboot punky brewster here's what i say reboot my brother and me that's what i say hell yeah absolutely that they didn't get to finish that show i also they shot uh the secret the mystery files of

shelby woo i like that show a lot uh what else that one that one came up already we did that was like an hour ago and i said i didn't watch it because i was stopped i kind of was not watching i was watching different junk at that point oh i got that confused with something else but that that was later they were still like even up to shooting the live action of the early spongebob's they were shooting down there you know there was sort of a like a reprise of they attempted to get a new little pack of shows going slime time live their equivalent of total request live and some other shows didn't really seem to take and once that little pack of shows didn't happen they and so many operations had moved to Los Angeles. For a while, it was Sunset Gower,

which, side note, is where the Chevy Chase talk show was shot. Oh, yeah. So if you ever get to go there again for anything, just know that similar with these declarations that are made that are proved to be not true, you can watch footage of Johnny Grant, the mayor of hollywood's christening it the chevy chase theater only for the sign to be thrown in the garbage

seven weeks later oh man that's where so latter day all that was in the same space as uh as the chevy chase show wow um but yeah so it all know, they just sort of stopped making shows there, combined with how Universal Studios was not really a working movie studio anymore, for the most part. And same with Disney MGM Studios, everything sort of changed their premise. Nobody cared about behind the scenes anymore. It was just that natural thing that happened to both parks. So they quietly closed it. There was a little window of time

where they made the color scheme a little less obnoxious, but also a little more boring. I think it had to be obnoxious. That's the way Nickelodeon Studios has to look. You need cowhide. So yeah, 2005, it sort of quietly shuts down. And then before the Blue man group shows up is mostly non-operators they sort of aren't doing anything with those stages you know which happens like

you know places where you make shows sit empty and that makes sense unless you're a youtuber and i don't know oh man guys people act as if like you, the Sistine Chapel got bombed. Like, it's crazy how the people's... And look, there's drama to all this for me. I really want the time capsule to be protected. However, calm down, YouTubers. Like, the studio closed. Like, it's not...

Your mom didn't get shot. Cool. Well, and there's a lot of of 2012 2013 urban exploration when there was still a lot of remnants and uh it's they were still kind of standing off the rough edges of youtube people are a little more polished on youtube now but some of those were on goddamn nightmare to watch uh there's i mean these are not bad specifically like the most popular video that you'll find that refers to the site of nickelodeon studios as abandoned it is not a bad video and it's not badly made i would maybe take umbrage at the phrase abandoned because abandoned implies

like that's like a that's like a nuclear site that nobody could go into for 20 years. This is like there's a ride next door. Like they're going to do something. This is not abandoned. I guess it's a little weird that they kept, you know, posters of Ren and Stimpy painted on the wall. Or that you can go in the bathroom and there's still green tiles representing Gak. Like there being such odd little remnants is definitely strange. Abandoned, I don't know. And then really, I had a problem with a less popular video

that is where the thumbnail is a picture of Nickelodeon Studios and then a big title splashed across it, Left to Rot. I listen. Do you think there are corpses inside the building? Cool it, YouTube. Yeah. I mean, we've talked on the show before how some of these videos, even things that were

like kind of legitimately abandoned, like, you know, Six Flags in New Orleans or something. Everyone is acting in those videos. And this video, like, you know indiana jones and they've just discovered like some sort of temple that's been lost to time or something like oh my god it's here can't believe it like there's a lot big there's a lot of uh theatrics there's a lot of uh hyperbole i feel like uh and this yes your point is correct uh that you know the rip ride rocket is mere feet away they know this exists here they just haven't figured out what to do with it there's plenty of examples for instance some of a big part of tomorrowland you could say oh yeah and i mean i know there's more things in there but it's like

sort of been abandoned yeah yeah i just don't know abandoned just there's just drama to it that's like what like a like a person a person who's that's like when the mom and ai leaves the robot david and drives away in the car that's like that's abandoning i don't when it's like a building and a corporation left and the corporation is fine they're doing better than they were yeah like there's nothing sad about the story i don't think other i mean look i am wistful for all this stuff i'm nostalgic for this stuff but it is very you know this this was the home of early 90s nickelodeon it is not the home of today nickelodeon and i'm okay with that it's nice to look at pictures and watch videos and remember it. And I don't need, why would I sign a petition saying, bring back Nick Studios?

Nothing's going to happen if I do that. Why would they do it? That's funny you bring a petition because I have something for the very end, but I'll save that for the very end. But yes, my philosophy, and I'm not even being funny here, is the energy has to move elsewhere, you know? It doesn the energy has to move elsewhere. It doesn't always have to stay somewhere. It doesn't always have to be in an institution.

It doesn't have to be in Orlando. Things can change. Things can move. There's a new fun place maybe for kids now. I'm not aware of where it is, but it has to be. It should be somewhere. Maybe it's in Burbank. I think it's online.

I think it's not a literal place. It's in our hearts is what you're saying it's in our hearts and on our phones you know i i do miss uh they they they don't lean on this which i appreciated as a kid and i really appreciate now they were like and we're not the magic kingdom you know we're not stuffy we're not this but they didn't lean on like being like the, like, the anti-Disney. But I do like the Devil May Care kind of, like, fun of, like, early

Nickelodeon, and I feel like entertainment, like, that didn't grow up with us. Entertainment got so serious. Like, I've been thinking lately about, like, and it's probably because uh you know disney bought that but like a marvel and star wars are just so deadly serious now like so capital i

important uh and and in a way that like the comics never sat with me they i never that's like i made them important because i was a kid but like i don't know i wish that nickelodeon vibe had continued into more media you know yeah well that's i mean i think i think you make the argument star wars is more serious at least than marvel not that marvel doesn't have its own like set of problems but like at least you'll get like a guardians of the galaxy christmas special which i don't know if it's funny yet it's not out obviously but at least that's the that's the spirit i'm looking for in some of this like yeah it's a little more of a vibe yeah yeah getting

rid of the hyperspace hoopla for star wars come on yeah i'll go on record saying i'm fine with that one we want to see darth vader twerk we want to see darth vader twerk okay to popular music that's what we like um so yes i agree i'm not signing a petition for that one but feel free to go ahead and sign if you wish okay well we'll put that together do you want to see darth vader twerk again in a hyperspace hoopla to popular music um what is your uh what what do you have or maybe well i mean i'll do a real okay here i found a petition and it involves kid cuisine it just says make kid cuisine less depressing and. And seven people have signed it, and it's made by somebody named Concerned Citizen. And the picture of the item in this petition is Kid Cuisine pizza painter.

And it's cheese pizza, and it's KC, and he's dressed like a French painter, I guess. And he's painting tomato sauce, a face on just a... I don't even know. I guess it's supposed to be crust. And he's holding a little sauce packet of tomato sauce, like a little Taco Bell sauce-shaped package. And he's painting a gross face of tomato sauce on this little piece of crust. A really perturbed face, almost like an angry Nickelodeon adult.

Yeah, and then there's some sort of muffin or something in this as well. That's a brownie. Is that a brownie? Oh, yeah, you're right. Yeah, it's a brownie. It looks like it has a bite taken out of it or something. It looks incomplete somehow. That's how you know it's good so yeah so anyway that apparently we're not the first people to have this thought that kid cuisine is a little bit strange or depressing

should we pump this uh petition up then make kid cuisine less depressing because they're trying to get to 100 and only seven have signed should we, I don't know when this was posted, I don't, well but I think maybe everybody should, oh yeah we will, we'll post that sure, yeah yeah, okay so, you know yeah, we talk about you know, this has all been about nostalgia

and you know, bringing back the energy of stuff we liked when we were kids and I think this is a good first step sign the petition to make kid cuisine less depressing. You can probably, we'll post it, but you can probably Google that phrase. I like the description, too. Kid cuisine is sad to me. It should be less sad.

I don't know what part of a pizza painting, a little French Pierre of a penguin. I don't know how this isn't cheering this concerned citizen up. Well, I think the characters and the logo are still fun. I think they're saying the food itself is a little, so make it match, you know, make it fun like the guys, you know?

Yeah. All right. Well, everybody get out there and sign this petition. This is very important. Yeah. That's piece of homework number one. Piece of homework number two, if you have any way to get us to go look

at the site of the time capsule, please let us know if there's any weird strings you can help pull for the good boys. Come on, you want to help us out. We've given you some laughs over the years. You owe us. Come on. I just want to burn the Hammer CD.

I just want to rip it to my laptop. And, well, let me say, all right, that's the homework. You survived Podcast the Ride Nickelodeon Studios Edition. And, you know, find us on the social media at Podcast the Ride Merch at Tee Public. And for three bonus episodes a month, go to Patreon.com slash Podcast the Ride. I rushed through all that to say we got an episode coming out next week that has a little bit of runoff of Nickelodeon Studios. It involves the time capsule we didn't talk a ton about that ceremony and there's something that happens in it that was so inspiring to us that it inspired a whole other second gate

episode so it's not quite nickelodeon studios part two but it's something else related to the time cap so if you want to hear more time capsule talk head to patreon.com slash podcasts arrive podcasts arrived there'll be something up uh next week um well uh good stuff um uh do we feel um as high as if we huffed some gack i yes i or yeah tasted uh slime or gack or or what was the other one chud flume flood uh uh yeah i feel i feel, I feel good. I feel like I feel like I actually got to go there. I feel like now I've kind of implanted this memory that I did get to go there as a kid.

Maybe it's like maybe I won't wake up in the middle of the night and be upset at my parents for not taking me now. Because I feel like I've been there and I've explored on this episode. You know, if you just go outside and hose down the street a little, um, and just stand there cause it's pretty hot in,

uh, Southern California right now and play the audio of the geyser and look away, like look into the distance. You can trick yourself into thinking the geyser is behind you. Just wet, wet concrete. Wet. Just the wettest empty, like, into the distance you can trick yourself into thinking the geyser is behind you just wet wet concrete wet just the wettest empty like no one else around soaking wet concrete yeah play kind of a muffled klaxon and then maybe like and then when that's over play like a just like a really

quiet version of the dug theme yeah and that's how you'll feel do it in like an office park and just imagine that one of the walls you're looking at is painted like a cow and then you'll feel like you're back at the World Kids Headquarters, the best place that could ever be and ever was. Well, I'm gathering my materials to do this right now as we speak. I'd also like to say, I just see that Gavin Newsom just announced that on June 15th, Los Angeles will be allowed to get super sloppy again. All right.

All right. As soon as I leave the Kid Cuisine depressing petition, I won't go sign the recall petition. Done deal, Gavin. Gavin Newsom, thanks for a super sloppy summer. Is that under other petitions you might like

under the Kinkwood Scene one? Is recall a governor? It's got to be. It's the same person. Concerned citizen. Oh, no. Delete it. Delete it. We're getting super sloppy this summer it's

gonna be a blast thanks for listening everybody goodbye bye forever dog this has been a forever dog production executive produced by mike carlson jason sheridan scott gardner brett boehm joe cilio and alex ramsey for more podcasts, please visit foreverdogpodcasts.com and subscribe to our shows on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Keep up with the latest Forever Dog news by following us on Twitter and Instagram at Forever Dog Team and liking our page on Facebook.