Podcast: The Ride - Sesame Place with Evan Susser

Episode Date: August 20, 2021

Evan Susser (Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Dough Boys commissioner) returns to tell us about his recent trip to Langhorne, PA's Sesame Place.  Jungle Cruise (2021) 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. gets a new backpack. It's Sesame Place with Evan Susser on today's podcast, The Ride, a theme park podcast where four grown men talking about Sesame Street is somehow less strange than their normal topics of conversation. My name is Mike Carlson. Joining me as always, Jason Sheridan. Yeah, I mean, we've got two parents here. Right, it's normal. What we're going to gonna be saying today the topics are normal today it is normal i'm feeling very normal i like sesame street is one of the one of the pieces of uh media that like i have no qualms with like it's it's untouchable kind of yeah you still called it streep i know sesame besides that you feel perfectly normal well look i'm a little out of sorts you know i had to run home. I forgot the microphone.

I got a new backpack. I had not transferred the new backpack. I hadn't transferred... I mean, we shouldn't have even asked you to record. I hadn't transferred the bag, the podcast bag, into the new backpack yet. Voice of Scott Gairdner giving Jason grief already

before the introduction. No, what do you mean? Once you explained that it was a new backpack, that changed everything. I am excited about the new- Good vibes of Sesame Street. I am excited about the new backpack. I'd like to send our guest home and address the backpack for the rest of the episode, but that would be extra rude. So I wouldn't, I won't do that.

It's up to, we'll bring him in on the backpack conversation. But Sesame Street is interesting. Is it a Meryl Streep like Bay Sesame Street? They're placing a streep on the brain. Does Topsy show up on Sesame Street? Is that what it is? Topsy from Mary Poppins Returns, one of our favorite characters in fiction?

I don't know. Let's bring our guest in. He might know a little bit more about what we're talking about. You know him from Doughboys. He's the commissioner. He's a podcast rascal, I would say. Evan Susser is here, ladies and gentlemen, returning to the podcast. Welcome back. Happy to be here. Did you not introduce Scott?

Yeah, I did. I started talking. I said giving Jason grief, Scott Geer. It's great to be here. Mike, I've seen you jason and scott i haven't seen you in about a year and a half so long not since mike's party the last party that ever happened jason i haven't seen you in a year and a half i i get up to do this podcast you walk up to me very frazzled and ask do you have a hard out that was what i was told i was told to go out and ask if he has a hard out well I also directed you to the correct house because you were going in the back door the back gate of the wrong home

I know this is a lot of podcast this is the you know we're explaining what we're doing but we're back outside we're outside again because the new fucking thing so we're being careful just in case so that just as Mike also as you were saying like it's oddly more normal that we're talking about sesame street let's add to it that we're doing it in the evening and then we will slowly be going from day to night oh that's as we this will be an episode where it shifts and then it becomes a little sesame street after dark yeah You know, if you're scared of the dark, one, I know a great place where they could teach you how not to be scared of the dark.

And I know I could tell you how to get there, too. There's a place that teaches you that premise, that it teaches you to be not afraid of the dark? Sesame Street teaches lots of lessons. Sure. I would assume in many

decades of production. I'm sure they've covered it. It's just not like an iconic one. And then how to get there. How to get there is addressed in every episode. Well, no, they're asking how to get there. It's not actually addressed how to get there, is it? Because you don't really know. Other than like at the theme park.

Can you tell me? That's a question that's always unanswered as far as sesame so that is yeah i'm very happy to be here i've enjoyed the podcast over the pandemic even though we weren't together it was a way for me to feel like i was together with you guys uh lamar i was telling you guys lamar's episode i just listened to was so funny all those stories um and i will say as is my want i uh pretty unapologetically campaigned to do this episode and was insistent and pushy about doing the episode and i'm glad that you guys finally gave in and not enough apparently because i think i just i think it was i don't know i want to say it was in my brain somewhere but because you had texted almost like a little coy like oh yeah i was just asking because i'm i'm going to uh sesame

place i'm gonna be going to sesame place and oh you know it's because i went to sesame place and then it eventually took you saying so are you gonna have me on for sesame yeah yeah you know i i think i i mentioned it while so i was we should probably get into i was living on the east coast for a year during the pandemic and while i was there and things were kind of starting to look better with covid it was kind of feeling like oh that would be a fun thing to do at some point to go to sesame place and i think i've texted you guys and said have you ever you know done it like i might do it i'm close i've got an opportunity and you know kind of hinting there maybe if you guys had told me we'll do an episode with you if

you do it maybe that would have been the push but then you didn't say that then i went to Sesame Place. I sent some pictures. Got tepid, nice reaction, but not, oh, make sure to do some research. And then I finally just had to get back and be like, okay, when are we doing this? Yeah. Well, we apologize for that. We should have picked up on the hints. I think signal reading, it's, you know, like, I don't know. None of us have had to, like, date new in a little while maybe we're not good at picking up and like you i feel like even when i was dating i needed just like clear like

like no no i like you let's do it we don't have to go back so i i kind of appreciated the just nature of it yeah we're i mean i think it's safe to assume we're three men who really appreciated if a woman made the first move oh absolutely that's my entire dating career i wouldn't even think that's right yes yes i usually would like go like somebody being like well what is this are we gonna kiss or something like it would be an angry female who's like do you like me or what what is it so i? I think the words, can I, I think permission was asked before kisses. Of the parents. Handwritten letters. Yeah, yeah.

A lot of reasons why I think this might be a positive momentum for everyone. Yeah, yeah. For sure. Our generation, I feel like, was told, told like don't ever ask permission for that like in high school and college like don't ask just kid and and now i i think more people people are like don't ask don't do that and i was like i don't know and now i feel so much better just i mean fucking aggro morons i grew up with like this was like a thing well i mean it is it is crazy how quickly culture moves i mean i was just thinking about you know that book uh the game that like

you know with like yeah yeah that was like a bestseller like 10 years ago right like not even that long ago in our lifetime which was a lot of that really, really gross kind of. Well, it was like be mean. Be mean and also just make a move and see what happens. Yeah. So Jason was talking about mystery when he was saying a guy who told him. It was mystery. Oh, yeah, it was mystery.

The great ghost writer of our time. You were hanging out at the Saddle Ranch every weekend. Oh, well, I would go back and forth. Universal City during the week, West Hollywood on the weekends when it gets real wild. You and Toby, David Blaine, Leonardo DiCaprio. All the greats, all the greats. You know the name of the group.

You were the one that said maybe we should rename it. So you've kind of been a progressive voice. The progress posse. Yeah. The nice guys. The nice fellas. The alliteration was good, though. You should have kept it.

Can I say something else about culture changing and everything? In thinking about Sesame Street, and Sesame Street's been more of a presence in my life because now I have a kid and he watches it. And it's taken me back to like, oh, it's still good it's great like I do not mind watching it ever um and I feel like you know in the interim watched it as kids now watching it with a kid and in the interim there was just decades of god-awful comedy that was all about like hey what if Ernie and Bert were gay they're gay and that's the thing about them is that they are gay that's the joke street doesn't want you to know like how much garbage did we have to sit through as if like that is a problem

them being just like it was just one of those like extremely obvious beat into the ground yeah for to know and like the end there's no further point to that. Just the worst. There's another type of joke that annoys me with the basic premise of like, what if the thing you liked that was for kids is dark and fucked up? And it's like, that genre is still around. I've seen it. That's still around. It's also evolved into like, what if that thing you liked as kids came back? And it's worse. that's a different issue i'm speaking specifically about like yeah trying to like

distort it or yeah like the version that i always which i don't even know what this is if this is a show or like a screenplay that didn't get made it's just like the peanuts all grown up well i know exactly what you're talking about And that's exactly what was in my head. I can think of like three different versions of that. Yes, it's like, and then Linus tried to kill himself. And you're like, all right. Like, what are we doing here? What is this?

What is the point of this? But I agree with the very, I guess, basic take that Sesame Street, good. It was good when we were kids. It's good now. And it doesn't have the – what's interesting is they're all Muppets. Sesame Street are Muppets, but they don't have the scrutiny of the Muppets. Everyone – people go crazy about the Muppets and this and that and what's right for the Muppet.

Oh, and if they're going to come back, what is it going to be? Yeah. There's never more pressure on every move of the Muppets. If they're going to come back, what is it going to be? There's never more pressure on every move of the Muppets. But Sesame Street is just going. The key is that it doesn't get rebooted. It just has existed

and evolved and changed over time and had to. Scott, maybe you know this. I don't know if you guys know this about why Snuffleupagus is not on Sesame Street. Oh, right. That's darkness creeping into the world. This is a little bit of darkness.

Oh, no. So if you guys remember Snuffleupagus, which I did not remember this. The whole thing with Snuffleupagus was only kids saw him. Yes. And the joke was, or the game or whatever it is, he would always be gone when the adults came back. And kids would be like, no, Snuffleupagus was here. Snuffleupagus was here. And the adults would be like, no, there's no Snuffleupagus.

We don't believe you. We don't believe you. Can you guess where this is going? Yeah, I'm a little concerned. And then child psychologists approached Sesame Street and said, this is not a good lesson to be teaching children. That if something crazy is happening and they go to an adult, an adult won't believe them. So there was a big thing on Sesame Street where all the adults finally saw Snuffleupagus. But then when they did that, it was kind of like, well, what do we do now with this giant?

That was the whole thing, kind of. Well, but there is a i think he's still kind of around because there's a photo op at sesame yes he's still kind of around but he's much much like if you're watching scott i wouldn't be surprised if you haven't seen no i don't he's not like a regular part of the show because they kind of they diminished his role yeah because that was his whole thing and newer characters that they're kind of more into. And also newer characters that they incorporate. Your Abby Cadabby's. Yeah.

I had forgotten. I remember when Abby Cadabby, kind of remember when that character was introduced. But that was well after our time. I thought Elmo was more recent, but Elmo was in 1980. Elmo had that giant burst in popularity with the Tickle Me Elmo when we were like just past the age of Sesame Street he took a while to find his voice yeah character that's sure but he was around yeah the design of the character we covered a little of this on on the second gate because I went to another a separate Sesame Street place but we were also like if you've

been watching it a lot i gotta ask this again uh elmo's world i like elmo's world i love the song i love both songs my son's obsessed with uh the beginning song and the end song i mr noodle drives me up the wall i like just snip it out why is why does this happen why it is a rouge faced mime man or multiple of them now well this is a noodle extended family yeah yeah i'm so relieved when it's the dog yeah when it's schmoodle because there's just less there's less like uh broad insane faces that a dog can make and yeah and i'll say my daughter doesn't seem to really care for mr noodle no I don't think. Yeah.

But they're committed to it. Yeah. It's a misfire. I don't know exactly what they're going for. Maybe nonverbal communication or something like that. Physical comedy, I guess. And it works without a lot of explanation. I don't know. But he scares me.

If he scares me, maybe he would scare a child. Although I'm scared by a lot of things that a child is not. I am happy. I had heard rumors, you know, because me and Scott have this thing of watching Sesame Street again after not watching it. I had heard that Cookie Monster

didn't like cookies anymore. Oh, that was a big rumor too, yes. PC talk show monologue point. Happy to report he likes them just fine. Yeah. I haven't verbalized this. I felt the same way. I was like, oh, I know what's up with Sesame Street.

They're not doing the cookies anymore. Not true. It's great. Not true at all. He loves them. He eats way too many of them. It's great. He just occasionally would tell children,

like, try eating something else sometimes. Yes. I haven't learned that lesson. So Cookie Monster is still like, and also, too, I think he's also, he does, he's become a bit of a foodie, too, which is also. Yeah. He's got the truck. Yeah.

He has the food truck. Who's the helper? Gonger. Gonger. Is the name of the helper. Oh, I like that. Who's a great character. I don't know.

Gonger. They do recipes for, like,. Who's a great character. I don't know, Gonger. They do recipes for good sounding food with fresh ingredients. You're watching good meals get cooked and they go talk to the guy who's sourcing the ingredients. I'm enthusiastic about all of this. Oh, wow, yeah.

Gonger looks awesome. Gonger's cool. Gonger's in the park. Gonger's in Sesame Place. Wow. I've seen him. Yeah, should we get into talking about Sesame Place? Let's get into the place. yeah so yeah i've seen him he's yeah should we get into talking about yeah um yeah open 1980 i believe and now we did you i forget you grew up well where in that general i grew up in maryland so pretty close to like very close to sesame like two and a half

hours we went uh a bunch of times when i was a kid when the first time we went with my younger brother who was like two and a half when we went for the first time and after the day my parents always remember this so he said after thinking like this was the best day of my life and yeah we loved it i mean it's uh they have a lot of, like, they have the characters. It's like, it's not like Disneyland or Universal, but it's a little bit more than just a completely janky amusement park. Yeah. It's somewhere kind of in between.

And they have a big water park section, which is, like, that you can enjoy even as you get older. Sure. But the characters are all there. They have rides have like kind of games right and fun yeah and the street and the street that's the thing yeah yeah that's the castle fiction you want to be um it does have the street siri i assure you yes um i i grew up like 40 minutes from sesame place oh okay uh and i remember going a couple times as a kid it's sesame place in bucks county pennsylvania i grew up in delaware county and it's just kind of on the other just a little north of where i grew up and uh i i only had very faint memories of it i think we went like once when me and my brother

were both very little and then we went again when i would have went like once when me and my brother were both very little and then we went again when i would have been like nine or ten and it's one of the few theme park experiences i remember ever have i still had a great time but it's one of the few times i remember going like i might be a little too old for that because like at nine or ten you're towering over like a lot of the other even a short jason was towering over a lot of kids and at the time sesame place was only like three or four acres and now it's kind of uh quadrupled in size where it was like back then it was mostly water park and my my dad reminded me there was a big like a huge jungle gym netting kind of climbing area.

And now it's, like, kind of split between water park and then, like, there's two roller coasters. There's a bunch of flat rides, you know, kiddie rides. And it's really kind of grown quite a bit. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, on that point of, like, feeling too old for it, I i think i saw the tagline go before you grow go before they grow and i almost started balling like i almost was like oh god yeah really tugging on the heartstrings tugging on the hearts there's other stuff in this where i uh in this park where i'm like that's so nice that's so kind uh but i guess they are like they're not um the other theme parks are more like okay we have

to advance them to the next thing and what do you like when you're a teen and what do you like when you're an adult and uh i guess sesame place just counts on well maybe you loop back around that's when we get you again is when you're you're taking kids no truly and the i mean the you know take them before they grow or whatever i'll say that you know my wife and i who both grew up going to sesame place you know it was something that we talked about like oh that'll be fun to go with our daughter then this freaking pandemic happened and we're also uh i don't know if you guys know kenny stevenson he uh you know he's got kids too and he told me we talked about sesame street and he was like yeah kids love sesame street and then like right about when they're three and, you know, we talked about Sesame Street. And he was like, yeah, kids love Sesame Street.

And then, like, right about when they're three and a half, they're kind of, like, done with it. And I was like, oh, no. You know, and the pandemic's going on. And we're like, we're going to run. We're right here on the East Coast. We got to get to this place. We're going to, you know.

We're running out of time. This is, like, the biggest loss of the pandemic is we might not get to go to Sesame Place. Well, if you can hold out till 2022, Sesame Place San Diego is coming. Yes. Well, we knew that was happening. Yeah.

So we were looking forward to that. But then we decided to, when we were, you know, Jamie and I got fully vaccinated. Cases were relatively low. And we were like, you know what? A lot of it's outside. So we went. We went with a lot of it's outside so we went we you know went with our daughter to sesame place so we we got that experience in which is

great that's great that's great yeah i actually made the clock ticking when i i did this so there's sesame street stuff in c world and i and i i sort of like yeah we set a date to do it partially because well things seem kind of clear pandemic wisewise for the moment. And also, what if he doesn't like Elmo next month? These things are pretty – and already it's less. It's definitely less even than then. So I'm glad we – you got to strike that again. And I mean it just is crazy with a kid when they start watching Sesame Street. And you're like, how would you like to go to real Sesame Street?

What do you think of that? It's like a mind-blowing concept for a kid was you got to have that because I my son's not speaking yet so you you got to communicate this yeah we got to talk like and like how would you like to like meet Elmo like would you like to meet Elmo is that something that you'd that you'd be impressed with your dad if you if you arrange that like well you know like maybe might be the kind of thing I'm able to arrange. Give the guild a little ring, see what you can get done, you know. How did it play out?

So, well, it played out well. So we got there, and right away, the funny thing about Sesame Place is you can do, like, everything there. It's, like, the park was open until, like, 10 to 5, and we were like oh is that gonna be like enough time and like yeah we have enough time to do everything there um so we get there and right away we're like oh like there's a parade at 10 30 that's like a good thing to do we'll see everybody and we're like we like are running in because we drove in from you know dc like that morning to like philadelphia it's like a two and a half hour drive and we're like parking and like we gotta get good spot for the parade and then we get there like where is the parade happening like no one it's like the

smallest like there was no it was not very crowded um so we just get a good spot and it's they call it a mini parade and i don't know a big theme of the whole trip was is this because of covid or is this just always how it is so it was a small parade with which some of this is good because it's kind of overwhelming but it's like bird and ernie elmo cook uh oscar and cookie monster and that was it for the parade. And like three floats and that's what it was which you know it was like exciting but even like Abby who's like one of her favorite and I was like there's not Abby

there's not Big Bird. In fact, spoiler, no Big Bird the entire What do you mean? Like represented with like you know pictures and stuff. Did like the tall person call in sick? I guess.

That could be. Or I thought we went on a weekday or because of COVID, maybe it's like the Big Bird costume is more of an ordeal. We don't do that. Did you ask? By the way? What? Did you ask? We should have asked about big bird but we

did not and then we did a um a meet and greet with elmo which unfortunately because of covid they don't actually get to touch and interact so you kind of like stand but then it was nice because when we went to the meet and greet it was elmo and abby was there and uh and then my daughter was very like you weren't at the parade. Like, we were looking for you. Which was nice. And then Julia, who's a newer character. I don't know Julia.

She's an autistic character. The first autistic Muppet. So that's a nice thing that they have. And then the big thing, which was had uh cookie monster's foodie truck at sesame place okay which we were building up it seemed really exciting it also was like oh this is like you know being worried about indoor outdoor dining like oh that's outdoor it's a food truck that'll be great um but then on the drive up our daughter was like oh great and then like cookie monster like will serve me the food and i'm like oh that can't be how it works you

know it's just gonna be a guy yeah uh and then unfortunately the food truck was closed the whole time we were there so there was a lot of that kind of stuff of like building up and expectations but still good and a lot of we tried doing the rides because they have a lot of rides there but very off the shelf but like nicely decorated with Sesame Street stuff yeah but the rides

all of them my daughter was just like this is not my favorite but so so I mean she like me you know my wife is much more she's like oh maybe she'll like they have roller coasters maybe she'll want to do the roller coaster i'm like are you insane she's two and a half like you're getting like um because i like you guys i'm scared of rides and even like we did like their version of like the teacups, which our daughter hated, and I hate it. Like, I don't like- Really? You didn't like the Disco Grover teacups?

This is actually the, hold on. That's okay. Is the Disco- The monster mix-up. The monster, but it's the same situation where you can turn it in the car, but did you just not turn it?

Yeah. Jamie, my wife, was trying to turn it, and I like pushed her hand we don't like it we don't like that so yeah so there there's like a lack of like I think the most expensive Sesame Street ride is in Japan right or port yeah I've ensure in Spain I think this is spaghetti spaghetti oh you're talking about spaghetti universal Japan Singapore it might be saying a poor yeah yeah I think? Are you talking about the spaghetti? I'm talking about spaghetti. Oh, you're talking about spaghetti. Where is that? Is that in Universal Japan? Is that in Singapore?

It might be Singapore, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What is that? What is it right? It's a dark ride where Grover goes into space and sees monsters, and it's like E.T. Adventure a little bit. Spaghetti Space Chase. It's Universal Singapore.

I would love them to have some good dark rides, but they don't. There is a dark ride in spain i believe okay so yeah it is interesting that like the the thing i think you're talking about you want something like that yes that's like not thrill based but there's a lot of stuff and robots and right because basically they kind of have like state fair kind of rides with like uh sesame street branding right exactly sure sure uh which some of that stuff you know i said we i can't say kind of rides with like Sesame Street branding. Right, exactly. Sure, sure. Which some of that stuff, you know, I said I can't say a bad word about Sesame Street, the show.

Sesame Place, there are some criticisms that I could give. Oh, yeah, sure. Oh, please, because it's not a given. Like, you know, like I understand that like, well, this will be enough for a kid. The kid will like it. But maybe you're attesting that like maybe your daughter, like it's, this will be enough for a kid. The kid will like it. But maybe you're attesting that maybe your daughter... I don't know.

They'd take more, too. Yes. They would happily accept more. One huge thing, my big complaint, is the gift shop, which I would love to have gone nuts in this gift shop. Yeah. But they just sell stuff that you could buy online, just normal Sesame normal sesame street stuff so that that's a that's a small thing but come on like it was i finally found like a shirt that said sesame place itself versus just so that was general that was one i i have a

piece of merch if we're talking about merch this was again in the in the sea world uh san diego thing that i saw and maybe you ran in this too. This might be at multiple locations. Sesame Place, by the way, owned by, it's in the SeaWorld umbrella. So there is some crossover and some of the same stuff. Which maybe could include this shirt, which has the count on it and the shirt, he's doing

a very particular move and the shirt says, Count Dabula. Yeah. Yeah, there are some attempts. That's good, though. Yeah. That's good. But he's not Dracula, though.

Yeah, I know. He's Dabula. He's Dabula. Count Dabula is good. If you saw Count Dabula, would you have gotten it? Yeah. Wow. They were not the first outlet to think of Count Dabula T-shirts.

I am finding out very quickly. Is the Count or is it actually Dracula? Jason? What's that? Is it the Count specifically or is it actually Dracula? Oh, no. It's a lot of generic looking Dracula. Okay. Yeah.

Got it. But nobody's made the move to make Count Dabula into a feature film, which is what I think should be the ultimate. As soon as this is now in the universe. Yeah. Now it's made the move to make Count Dabula into a feature film, which is what I think should be the ultimate point. As soon as this is now in the universe, now it's going to happen. Yeah, for sure. One of the most popular shirts is now. Major motion picture. And a streaming series.

The viral shirt is now a hit movie. Yeah, that's a good idea. No, file that away. Yeah, you're the screenwriter i could see you like the light bulb going off it's nice to see the creation process martin scorsese criticizes the viral shirt um and the street itself is great it feels like you know that like you were saying scott like as good as it is, you could imagine that being even better. Sure.

You could have more fun with actual Sesame Street. You could have characters kind of... Honestly, would they do a universal with the Italian-American? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But if you had that with Sesame Street characters, that would be... You want them to roast you as you're walking down Sesame Street. Oscar popped up and said mean things. Right. That'd be what a thrill. That'd be great. Hey, look at those you as you're walking down Sesame Street. Oscar popped up and said mean things. Right.

That'd be what a thrill. That'd be great. Hey, look at those dumb shoes you're wearing. There is a trash can that you can touch a button. It's like, hey, leave me alone. That's kind of fun. That's cool. But he doesn't pop out.

He doesn't pop out. Well, Oscar has a roller coaster. Yes, he does. And Oscar also has a garage. There's a facade that says Oscar's Garage. So Oscar has a lot of business ventures going into this park. Yeah, Oscar is very all over the place. Yeah.

Living in a trash can, yeah, he gets a lot done. They don't even have like a donkey, like a donkey universal, like waffle cart with Oscar? No, they don't have that. Well, here's something I know from a little looking into retro Sesame Place is that they did have this at a certain point. And not only that, but it was, I think somewhere in an early contract, it was stipulated that you could not have representations of the characters without the real voices. They wanted this to be consistent. So there was an Oscar and a, what was the other one?

A Cookie Monster. And they were animatronics. They were simple animatronics with the real voices. So, and they, like, you look at photos. They're, like, cool and early 80s and analog. I don't know, like, why you would have that and then stop doing it. That seems confusing. Because to see, as with any of the Muppet attractions, seeing, like, well, this is how they look on TV.

They don't even have to change mediums. That just is Cookie Monster there. That'd be really cool. It feels like you could, like, make more money getting rid of all the rides and just making the street amazing i agree with that and you know in the things like the shows some of them like the meet and greet they're just waving obviously they're not talking but then some of the shows they do have you know they're like lip syncing to like recorded and that like blew my daughter's mind being like whoa they're like here, like they're talking. And this is great.

Well, now what were those? Because we got to, and I said a lot of this in the second game, but I went to something called the Furry Friends Dance Party, which I believe is there too. We also did the Furry Friends Dance Party. Yeah, all right. Wow. My daughter, I think I sent Mike a video of it. I mean, she just was so excited to be there.

It was like, you know entering uh studio 54 as height for her slightly less cocaine but um just for the parents yeah but she uh she loved that so that was really good there was the the magic of art which was a little bit of like a story kind of show that had like some humans and like learning lessons and like my daughter like will sing the song from that show like even now which is crazy like she really made an impression oh that's cool um is there a an elmo the musical there's not an elmo the musical is that in seWorld? No there wasn't I think maybe there was Or has been

Yeah Because that's like also A recurring Elmo thing That it's He makes it musicals And there is a Like a curtain Flap

That speaks I think Oh that would have been A little like I don't know I think they may have done that I was trying to find evidence Of moves like Bert

The parody Do you have it? I got you covered. All right, thank you. Did you catch the song Moves Like Bert? We did not get Moves Like Bert. We got the Elmo slide. I really like the Elmo slide.

The Elmo slide. It's like an earworm for sure. Yeah, that's one of those. It's been kicking around and then out of nowhere, you're just doing the dishes. And when you're at such a place we probably heard the almost slide like 30 times that was in the show we just like turned to each other one day out of nowhere like i think i like the almost line yeah no i think that's not i think i'm not laughing at it i think i just like it um let me let me do a little hit of because we this was a song that I got in my free friends dance party,

referenced on the second gate, but I think it merits a clip. If this is too quiet, drop in some of them later. That's fantastic i'm very disappointed that that was not a part of yes is that the video from sesame street live uh i think it was yeah that version is for i think this is from a live tour that went around by the way after this goes a couple other characters get rounds, including, I think, a very overlooked character at this point. Telly. Telly Monster. Yeah. One of my childhood favorites, Telly Monster.

I think Telly's being phased out as well, too. Wow, did Telly, is something wrong with Telly's relationship? No, I think just not connecting. Oh, man. You know what I like? That song and then the shop, Trader Burt's. This park really showing Burt letting his hair down a little, finally relaxing a bit.

I sent Lindsay moves like Burt, and she said, why isn't it moves like Ernie? There's two syllables. Doesn't he have enough? First of all, I disagree with that concept. Ernie never could have enough. But Ernie, two syllables syllables means like Jagger. And also, who would you think

has the moves? Right. It's funnier. It's a funnier comedic setup with Bert. I guess that's why it's happening, but Ernie. Maybe Bert and Jagger have that in common. Is that slight symmetry? Jagger. Yeah, maybe. Moves like telly is fun too i'm glad

telly had some some uh representation there i just liked having i don't know maybe it's the kid situation brings us out of me i've i think i've been hard on uh jack fm type music what would the mad tea party fiasco and i just want to say that in terms of like theme park entertainment from songs within the last 20 years, from vaguely contemporary songs, Moves Like Bert melted my icy heart. Wow. Yeah.

I mean, it's hard to imagine a parody sung by Bert that you wouldn't like. Yeah. You know, he's got a funny singing voice. He's a lovable character. Let me ask real quick. Everybody Bert or Ernie as far as their favorite

as a child? After all that, it's Ernie. Jason? It was probably Ernie. I think I had stuffed animals of both. Now I think... Now as we're talking about this, I'm concerned that as a Now, I think... Well, we know now. Now, as we're talking about this, I'm concerned that, like,

as a child, I just absorbed all this through osmosis, and my personality is just a combination of Cookie Monster, Oscar the Grouch, and parts of Bert and Ernie.

A little bit of Ernie in there, but a lot of Bert. Yeah. Maybe Ernie, like, 10 years ago, as far as I know you. Like, Ernie's gone, I think. Do any... In his 20s, he had Ernie. Yeah, in Ernie like 10 years ago as far as I know you. Ernie's gone, I think. Do any of you have in his 20s?

Yeah, in your 20s, I remember Ernie inside. But now I think it's just Bert. Oh, man. What? That's the most hurt Jason's ever been on the show. Working together this long has led to that? Yeah, I did it. You beat it out of me?

I beat the Ernie out of you all these years. My Ernie antics have beat the Ernie out of you all these years my Ernie antics have beat the Ernie out of you only Bert remains uh so yeah Ernie Ernie's uh uh I just I always get bummed that Ernie's not more popular these days yeah yeah I don't why do you think that is i don't know i mean his zany antics it fit better in the couple decades where he was at the top i don't know almost not as zany i don't think like yeah he's not as much of an anarchist as ernie was that's like ernie i think is also like a holdover from your bugs bunny like he just comes in the situation and tears shit up he's the cat and hats the same way yeah like young kids days, they don't like that as much.

They don't. Right. That's not as fun. And I think Elmo kind of elbowed in a little bit, too. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, with like, you know, as far as being a wild. What's interesting about Elmo is he's wild, but you kind of get the sense he doesn't know better. Yeah, right. The funny and maybe bad thing about ernie is he knows he knows he knows the thing where he he gets the sheep to

carry bert's bed out of we've all seen the the segment right there's a there's one where ernie's i'm trying to think it's a shuffle off to buffalo or something he's doing like a song and he keeps way i mean he keeps like messing with bert he's like playing a saxophone and he's doing like a song and he keeps way i mean he keeps like messing with bert he's like playing a saxophone and then he has like sheep come in and they carry bert's bed outside and the thing ends the little segment ends bert outside at night and he can't get in and he's trying to like ernie has kept him outside of their bedroom at night and like that's it it's over and you even as a kid you're like Bert has to sleep outside that is kind of mean like oh okay right I did find even though Ernie was my favorite like I liked him more than

maybe my favorite period and definitely liked him more than Bert he would sometimes do things like Bugs Bunny that would make me uncomfortable sure um so So, you know, I think that I can understand. He would tell you just to go for the kiss and don't ask. Yeah, right. He was often giving you that advice. Yeah, no, I agree with that. But, yeah, I liked Ernie. He was so much fun.

I liked both Ernie and Bert. I had both Ernie and Bert dolls, and I was pretty obsessed with them for a couple of years. By the way, real quick, sorry. I have this Ernie doll in my bedroom now, and it is terrifying. It's from when I was little, like one. And I have it, and he's in his pajamas. His crotch is ripped open.

I think I've talked about this before. His stuffing is coming out. His hair is crawling out. I think we don't need to before. His stuffing is coming out. His hair is falling out. I think we don't need to explore that too much more. That's not dirty. There's nothing dirty there. It's just because the thing wasn't made very well. His hair is falling out.

It's a connective point. Yes. His mouth is gone. The little piece of felt that was his mouth is gone. So you have a portrait of Dorian Gray, kind of Ernie doll, that just falls apart and you stay youthful? Like Robert the doll, the evil doll. I have the Ernie version of the living doll that Chucky was based on.

Yes, I have it still in the apartment. So I'll post a photo of Ernie. Anyway, sorry. You were saying, Scott? Was I saying, I think that does some of, is there a little bit of a slide with Bert and Ernie because you no longer have the originals doing it? Because that's like

an ultimate Henson-Oz. Like, unfortunately, and I think a lot of the characters have maintained and bounced back and changed hands successfully, but that one, I mean, those are just such, like, classic sketches, and they just had such a rhythm as they did with Kermit

and Piggy, and, uh, I mean, that's an unfortunate fallout of yes and I ask is that is that kind of the same with Grover is the same I don't know I feel like Grover is pretty minimized but he's around more than I

thought I thought this was a thing I was not like telling you not like some of these other ones I maybe even more than honestly maybe even more than Bert and Ernie. But really the show is Elmo and Abby are like the stars. Yeah. Cookie Monster, I would say, third lead. Wow, really?

Pretty good. Yeah, yeah, which is nice. I'm glad he's so represented. And then just like celebrities from shows that film in New York. Yes. It's a lot of, you know, Chenoweth and Ellie Kemper and Michael Che. And then it kind of rotates in. It's like, oh, this one you'll have Bert and Ernie. This one you'll have Gonger.

And then also, yeah, like Zoe, Rosita, like newer characters. Yeah. Yeah. I did think, reading about the roller coasters because the um super grover coaster is a like a metal steel coaster and i was like is that for the millennial parents is that for the older folks oh so grover almost reads as a retro reference in a way oh well i mean yeah i get he's still around and stuff uh uh but i i just remember being a big grover kid in like the 80s late 80s yeah yeah monster at the end of this book yeah i will i have a special bond with grover because uh i had a lot of like action figures as a kid and i love playing with them and really the only time I ever remember being punished by my parents, I broke a cabinet

by hanging on it repeatedly after they told me not to and they took away all of my action figures for I think it was a year. It was probably three days but it felt like a year. I think after 12 hours of seeing me in agony,

my dad snuck me a Super Grover. Like Homer with the pizza? Right, exactly. And it was like a lifeline to have the Super Grover. Wow, interesting. So that's why you're bonded to him.

Yeah. Because he saved you. He's also Jewish. He is. Oh, wow, yeah. Canonically, that's true. I don't think I realized that. And he's a Jewish superhero He is. Oh, wow, yeah. Canonically, that's true. I don't think I realized that. And he's a Jewish superhero as well.

Yes. As is the Count, which I have some weird feelings about. Oh, yeah, sure. The Count is canonically Jewish? He is canonically Jewish. Wow, really? Where is all this established? I knew Grover, but I didn't know the Count.

I don't know. It's in the Sesame Street. There are Jewish books where it specifies that they're Jewish. It's, I think, kind of consistent. I think that in the show when they would have a Hanukkah episode, they're Jewish. When you cut to a Hanukkah party, that's who's there. That's who's there. Two of them.

Count is there counting his money. That's the issue, yes Having a perfect handle on everything you got But yeah, those are the Jewish Those are the Jewish Sesame Street churches And of course Bert and Ernie, Bert is

Episcopalian and Ernie is Methodist and that's where a lot of the friction comes from Small differences, you know Yeah That was the underlying thing in all the old sketches That's where a lot of the friction comes from. Small differences, you know. Yeah. That was the underlying thing in all the old sketches. That's right. Protestant strife.

Yeah, so I have not obviously watched. There's a lot of childish things in my life. I have not watched a full Sesame Street in 30 years. Yeah, I'll say it would be insane to do that. Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah, I'm not going to say you should do it. It's just a thing you don't, like, it's a pick your poison with the kids' entertainment, and like, well, this is, it's a good poison. You always have

the option, of course, of the Elmo Not Too Late talk show on HBO Max, where Elmo hangs out with Lil Nas X. Okay, sure. And John Mulaney, and, you know, you could... I could watch that, yeah. Elmo's friend, Lil Nas X. Okay, sure. And John Mulaney. I could watch that, yeah. I'm his friend, Lil Nas X.

I mean, that's pretty great to see. They have a lot of fun together. So give that a go. And you know what? They get, like, is his sidekick Ernie? Or does Ernie work there? Like, they fit everybody in. There's sort of a Larry Sanders component.

You see people in the booth, the stage managers. Bert would be like a good arty, like a Larry Sanders. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fred DeCordova. Yeah, yeah. Or I was going to say, like, Gelman on Regency. I have to really quickly correct something. I don't know that I've ever gotten so many corrections for an error I made on the podcast, The Ride.

But on Patreon, and I apologize, this is only on Patreon, I incorrectly said that Green Day's venue and street that they played in was Gelman Street. I think plus 10. 10 people told me it is not Gelman Street. It is Gilman Street, you idiot. Gelman is the producer on Regis and Kathy Lee lee or whatever it's called now that's a bad mistake and uh so i'd like to apologize formally for getting the name of the venue slash street which i think i may be getting that wrong too uh and i'd like to apologize for any of this ever

coming up for any green day content being in this theme park podcast blue blue the door is wide open with everyone and they're like scott isn't like american idiots that was a whole big thing uh yeah no we yeah i've been i've been following oh okay so you know all the controversy i see okay but you didn't text about you weren't like worried about us and if we aren't getting along anymore because i think i texted carlson privately and said that you're crazy, that Green Day is great. Oh, okay. Yeah, you're pro-Green Day. Oh, I'm getting out of number. Alright. Then why'd I

agree to have you on? I knew that. Well, that's why I kept it to myself. The Cesar band has instated a few other things I wanted to touch on in the park if that's okay. Of course. Yeah, go ahead. So, the food options. Fun thing, we got soft pretzel, Elmo soft pretzel. It looks like Elmo.

Great. Yeah. Very good. I wish there were more stuff like that, but happy to see that. Right. Then the food is pretty, I mentioned that the foodie truck was closed. And then the dining options, pretty sparse, like hamburger, chicken fingers, fingers mac and cheese yeah like that's kind of what you get but right uh my wife's a vegetarian and she said whoa look at this they have impossible

meat they have an impossible burger and there's an impossible meatball sub so that's good you know that's like uh not have to worry about that. She can eat. And so I went in to order the food and I was like, I have a hand. They didn't see it on the menu, but I was like, I'll have a hamburger. And do you have an impossible burger? And this is the reaction from the person. Let me check. They leave leave they come back and like yeah we have them but it'll take like 10 minutes and i said that's okay that's fine okay i'll call you when it's way more than 10 minutes fine i'm just like you're being punished yes i i

finally at like 15 minutes i just want to make sure like the impossible burger like yeah we're we're working on it and then we called somebody walks by this was like the comedy part like another like you know looked like visiting sesame place from brooklyn hipster-y kind of dad hears it he's like oh you guys have impossible burgers yeah yeah we do they take they take 10 minutes i looked at a lot of the menus and a lot of the places have i know they have Clearly, they're not being ordered. Like Buffalo Cauliflower. Yeah, these things are not being ordered.

I guess, yeah. Don't put them on if you're going to make a big face. They're probably frozen because they're not in rotation a lot, so it's a huge to-do. Yeah, I mean, it didn't seem like that big of a to-do. I mean, I had the whole thing. I'm like, yeah, I know, they're frozen. I'll just take a little bit longer. Unless's further than that and forgive me if i've

said this on the show but at that knots chicken dinner restaurant there was some occasion where my wife ordered something pretty heavily vegetarian and the person froze the way they had never encountered this before at the chicken restaurant so like absolutely that will be fine and then it took so long to come and we are very sure that somebody had to make a trip to the store for ingredients for this positive you know that's the other funny thing about sesame place like it just is like it's on one side and then like across the street is just like a mini mall with like a best buy and like a sports authority and maybe a grocery store so maybe it was just like just we gotta get there do they have the impossible burgers here hey it's time for an intern to shine other gripe to bring up jason i think you'll be right here with me so there's a big water park

yeah okay and they have like lockers and stuff so you can put your stuff how much do you think a locker at sesame i saw this i did see this go ahead yeah i saw it so we weren't didn't do a lot of the water stuff but we were gonna do the lazy river and we were just kind of unsure we're like oh like i did it once with my daughter and then oh let's all do it can you go put the stuff in the locker and we'll go around twice for like 10 minutes and i said you know we can probably just leave like people aren't gonna like there are million strollers out right are people really gonna run by i was like fine i'll do it i guess the locker is 35 dollars

for a locker wow for in no amount of like it you can't like do it for a period of time it's just like that's the whole yeah that's what it is and it's also not a huge locker so it like really only is for like a backpack um no the bigger lockers are more and also like summer 45 dollars and then yeah it even goes up from there yeah and i i look was looking at ticket prices i remember it's like oh one thing i remember at sesame place is it was always pretty affordable and there's a lot of hotels that do discounts in the area there's a lot of deals in the area so you can usually find discount tickets but like summer tickets seem to be on average like 40 bucks yeah that locker is just under ticket price the price of sesame place is 90 Place is $90, but it's never $90. You can always get a discounted ticket for half price.

So Sesame Place is like $40, $45. Right. But then the locker is the same price as going. It's insane. Yeah. Prices seem to go up for the Halloween and Christmas stuff because the park operations, it's like it's open all summer, rides in Waterpark, and then it continues on the weekends in September and it continues in Halloween time, some weekdays and weekends for like the Counts Halloween

event. And then there is a furry Christmas, I think they call it. Very furry Christmas is the name. A lot of people show up too and are very disappointed by what they find. Oh, this isn't what they said. And so. There's only one furry here. Yeah, but I don't remember if they did that when I was a kid or not

because they didn't have many rides of anything to open at Christmas and Halloween. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. They also too, which I didn't remember from being a kid, have like a whole like carnival rides kind of section. Oh,

yeah. Games where you win a prize. Yeah. Okay. Um, did you, did you play? Yeah,

I did. Which was also my daughter's first time ever seeing something like that. And just the idea of like, you do it and you get something was like, yeah, that's great. That's did she, did she play at all did she play yeah kind of i mean with me assisting i see was it like the water squirting thing or yeah that's it did i ever have i told the story in the podcast where i accidentally beat a bunch of kids on the pier santa mon Pier, and won a Homer Simpson doll. That's great. At what age? 29.

Like, I was like, oh, game, I want to go sit down and play, and I played, and then I looked to my right after I won, and I was like, I think I just beat a bunch of kids. I didn't realize it was a competition. Yeah, so now I have a new rule with that where I have to be sitting first at a game. And then if the parents see there's an older kid there,

then it's on them. And maybe their kids are sharp. That's how I think of myself. Maybe their kids are, you know. That's right. They're setting their kids into the fire if they see me playing. But I'm not going to go there.

So you're staring up against. There's a bunch of kids. I'm not going to do that. I like to scope those things out. And if it's really empty, like, can I be a player of one? Can I guarantee myself a prize? Well,

but then you get a smaller prize. Yeah, exactly. I mean, the right way to scope it is like, see like a bunch of kids. A bunch of kids, yeah.

The littlest kids possible playing, and then you got one seat left, and you sneak right in, and you beat all of them. That's the way to do it. You got to get ruthless, Jason. You're going to get like a little like,

decoder ring, or a little one of those really cheap prizes. It's usually not the IP also. You know what I'm saying? It's the small. You'll see, oh, it's a bunch of Simpsons things. Right. And then the thing you get if it's only one player or two players is like, oh, it's a generic bird or something.

Yeah. A plush bird. Like an 99 sensor. Right. It's not the same way maybe at Universal, but on the pier, they always put the attractive IP prizes and they're giant. You have to have a full packed house playing to get

those prizes. I played a game at Knott's back at the Christmas Food Festival with the duck game. Pick up a duck. Pick up a duck. Similarly to what I said I did, I appreciated this setup.

They're like, okay, you're guaranteed to win a prize. $5, you can pick one of these. $10, you can pick one of these. And I was like, so I'm just buying a stuffed animal? They're like, yeah, but you have to play the game. And I'm like, all right, fair enough. But it sounds like that's what you want to do anyway. Kind of, yeah.

Because you don't want to play, you don't want to be playing it. I was a little disappointed when I walked in a gift shop, and I was like, oh, well, there's that little Snoopy. I didn't realize. I thought they were maybe a little more exclusive to the prize bits. You should go inside a dollar store and have a little bucket of water with a duck and pick the duck up and then buy yourself something nice. You know, that's a good idea.

Yeah, some limited run cereal that they're just trying to clear stock out of. Yeah, old vitamins. I play carnival games at home and give myself... Yeah, give yourself a little prize. Nothing wrong with it. Fresh treats. Bakery treats is the prize.

Yeah. Were you going to say something? Yes. Mike, before we did this, I asked you to remind me about something. Oh, yeah, I haven't reminded you. You haven't reminded me. What's the time? Yeah, go for it. I reminded myself. Okay, well, I'm you to remind me about something Oh yeah I haven't reminded you You haven't reminded me I reminded myself

Okay well I'm going to set this up though the way you did it You said remind me on the podcast And I said what And you said I'll know And not to backtrack too much but also You specifically texted about me not liking Green Day in reality Let's not focus on that

This is an exchange like I better go out Of my way to talk about Scott in Green Day? In reality? Let's not focus on that. This is an exchange. Like, I better go out of my way to talk about Scott and Green Day. Well, I mean, surely, you know, the early albums you could appreciate. No, appreciate. Yeah, yes. We'll sit down and we'll listen to the whole catalog together.

Yeah, we're going to record it. He's going to have to listen to American Idiot. Okay. Watch the Broadway show. So there is this thing that also happened while I was at Sesame Place that I don't think is representative of Sesame Place. Okay. And in fact, I would like this to not be in the-

Look, they can't keep track of what all their employees were doing on January 6th. Okay? Well, I would like for this not to be in the podcast. So I would like to tell you this story, and then maybe you could play moves like Bert, and then you'll pick up just on your reaction to the story. Hang on. Wait a minute.

How close can you get us? This is just all entirely bleeped. I love you calling this shot. I love this. This is an interesting move. You can hear the story, and if you guys think that it should be included, I maybe leave it to you to do it. Okay. But I think when I tell you the story, and if you guys think that it should be included, I maybe leave it to you to do it.

Okay. But I think when I tell you the story, you might all decide that I've made the right decision. Okay. Wow. Interesting. So the listener is really teetering on something. You might hear an interesting story, or you might just hear a full block of moves like Bert. Yes. Wow.

What's around the bend? Wow, I don't know. Let's see. Have a great day at Sesame Place. Okay? It's really nice. Only good feelings about it. We're about to leave, and I decide to go to the bathroom.

Okay. Walk into the bathroom, and I see that there's kind of a bathroom attendant person who seems to be has a All right. Okay. Okay.

I go in the bathroom, and the conversation with the appears to be getting and it's only me in the bathroom and this man. Okay. And he Okay. And then I'm just going to the bathroom. This is happening. And then I'm just going to the bathroom.

This is happening. And then there appears to be. And then I leave. And that's the end of the story. Okay. Can you edit the mask to record it? Like just edit. You want me to edit this live out? Just edit everything.

You want me to edit that live out? You want everything. You want me to edit that live out? You want this to be scrubbed from your brain? Yes, I think yeah. I want the eternal sunshine. Now, you've heard the story. I don't think it's representative of Sesame Place. I can't imagine

it. I'm not there every day. I'm very sympathetic, actually, to the situation. And I haven't really told many people it. Understandably, I think. But I felt like I had to tell the three of you. Right. Thank you for telling us that.

Do you feel scandalized? How are you feeling? How do I feel? I feel fine. It's an odd story. It's an odd story. It's an awkward situation. Do you feel like my proposed idea is a good way of handling it? I feel like now I'm in show energy and I need to come down from that.

And then I have to assess once show energy is over. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I'm a different guy. We'll review the tapes. We have to review the tapes. The brain trust will meet. It feels pretty clear to me that the preference from the three of you would have been not tell the story and include it, not tell the story and just play over it. You would have preferred if I just never told you the story.

Oh, that's a good question, too. Oh, I enjoyed the story. Okay. Yeah, no, I like the story. I liked hearing it. I almost wish that there was you had more are you sure that this is not i don't know how to ask this way if we're editing part of it but is this a situation where all right this was a story that happened in the

bathroom and you thought you understood what was happening in a different stall but remember this also happened to a guy uh wait no it was it was to uh tom arnold a uh a gambler in a casino in the film austin powers international man of mystery where he what he thought he was hearing in the other stall is not what was happening at all so maybe i can say that that's not the case it was not some involved involved with double entendres and misleads. I guess. You know what? I'm saying I'm confident, but I guess I could be wrong. It could have been like some sort of immersive performance.

Yeah. Okay. Located entirely within a Sesame Street bathroom. Okay. Is there a version of this where there's fits and starts of what we play? Maybe. And it's like a radio dial is changing and if you hear a little

or maybe you know a Patreon episode is just that disturbing little story. That'll launch our extra tier. That's more money. Oh, which is kind of about like, you know, shame and horror. That's right. Shame tier for us. And me having to listen to Green Day. It's where all of the worst shit

goes. So the worst shit goes. The gummo tier. Yeah. Gummo tier. Yeah, maybe. I don't know. Again, I'm in show mode right now, and I'm going to have to be in editor mode later.

We're going to have to assess there. I'm not going to be able to truly think. Can I tell a Green Day story? Yeah, go ahead. Now, this one I'm gonna wish I hadn't heard this I want the eternal sunshine before I even heard it

um now I'm going to now I'm like completely blanking as I bring it up but anyway when it was my bar mitzvah uh huh

I uh we were looking at a band to play at my bar mitzvah and there was a band that was like the cool band to play and they played a Greenvah and there was a band that was like the cool band to play and

they played a green day song in like their like video oh on the yeah so higher than like the higher right right um and the now this is where i was like mad at myself because it's like their most iconic early song uh basket basket case do you have the time to listen to me? Yeah. And I saw that, and we were moving forward. And this is like very much, I thought you guys would appreciate it, as good boys. Because, I'm 13 years old. This is so embarrassing. But I was thinking it was my bar mitzvah.

And I was so worried, because there's a line in that song that's like i went to a whore yeah who said my life's a bore right and i was just imagining they're going to play this at my bar mitzvah in front of my grandparents in front of my and and and also i think the tape i'm like my parents like they don't know what green day is they don't know what Green Day is. They don't know about Basket Case. I'm like signing off on this band. The police are coming to Stephen with this being dredged up today. I'm signing off on this band, and it's going to scandalize my bar mitzvah. I was like losing sleep over this. So I knocked on my parents' bedroom door, which in my memory at 2 a.m., probably like 11 p.m.

And I just said, I know that you're maybe moving forward with this band, but we have an issue. And I laid the whole thing out. So I don't know if we can get a different band at this point or maybe just a DJ or maybe. And they're just like, you don't want them to play the song okay we'll just tell them not to play the song okay thank you that was not on the table for you that there was just an option to just not play that particular song i don't know why i didn't yes well because honestly i mean it was the same this bar i didn't i mean i'll say maybe i was a stupid kid in the same way that you couldn't go to the real green day and say hey you're not playing basket case tonight right

i thought that this bar mitzvah like they had a rider would be equally offended and choose to walk and was equally you would be like song that got us here yeah you're like ed sullivan telling the rolling stones to change the the lyrics right exactly uh i thought that they would walk i thought that fancy pants would say listen here susser you became a man today that means we can kick your ass for talking to us like this wow that's so great so you thought that just that line is that it's sort of like a movie where then everything like there's like a sudden distortion and everything goes quiet and everyone stares at the band and then everyone stares at you yes and then

everyone either files out or starts hurling insults or like relatives cry how could you do this to us yeah i think truly that is what i thought would happen like your grandparents are like hanging on every word of the song which is like fast and like if they're singing it like billy joe it's like a faux british accent that you can barely understand they're loving it up till that point your grandparents love it so much right and i think i also too was like taking, like, taking a lot. Like, of course. Like, I had no say, really, in what the Bar Mitzvah band was. But I felt, like, the pressure that, like, my parents have included me in this decision. And I'm sitting there, like, signing off on this. And I have this information.

And, yeah, the shame that it would bring to my family and to me. It truly was very. Excommunicated from the religion yes i know the only way it this all could have been better is if you went and consulted with a rabbi right i mean it would have that would have been good there's a heavy toll on me lyric printed out dookie cd excuse me rabbi i truly yeah i mean this is like scott i mean like your you know crazy version of it is pretty close to what i imagine i truly like would go was like going through the guest list and imagining each one of each person's reactions to this scandalized lyric she would be okay with it right yeah yeah hate it he'll be mad at me right and again

me thinking that green day was this super cool underground thing that only me as a 13 year old you know montgomery county maryland was the only one who was like hip too what is this song you found yes like probably the bit like number one song on the Billboard chart at the time. It's on the radio uncensored, I'd imagine. Maybe it depends on where you were. Your parents were about to hire Gigi Allen. He's going to take a shit

on stage at the bar mitzvah. We have a big problem here. You don't know what this man does, and I didn't tell you. And now the bar mitzvah Boys' favorite group. He endorses every word in this song. If we had just watched Sesame Street for just a couple more years, would it have dealt with any sort of developed neuroses like that?

Like if we had just got a few more years of polite, nice entertainment, maybe, yeah. The many issues of, like, when you're booking a bar mitzvah band, hey,

it's okay, it's probably not a problem. Set lists can change. I'm trying to find out if Green Day's been on Sesame Street. That's why I'm looking at myself.

That seems very possible. It seems very, very possible. Sort of a rite of passage. I don't think they have. They were on The Simpsons on the grandest stage of all, the movie. Well, that's true, yes. The high point of The Simpsons. We know the movie.

Yeah, got it. Yes, yeah. Let me say a, here's a little, little like let me go back into like founding of this place because I remember I'm like, you know, I didn't grow up because I'm on the other side of the country. And I remember it being I even it was clear to me like, all right, maybe in my life, if I'm lucky, I could go to Disney World. Right. But maybe. But I don't think that a trip to Pennsylvania specifically for this is on the table. I think my parents did kind of say,

like, well, let's maybe, I don't know, see, as much as I would have liked, like knowing there was a tangible Sesame Street place. So I just, it was always, it always just kind of lived in my imagination. I sort of, I don't know if they ever talked about it on the show or showed a picture of it or how I was even aware of it. But the vibe that I always got in those early days, now it's pretty aligned with bright, happy, current Sesame Street. But I just remember it being very, it's that early 80s brown, the dull, kind of muted vibe that I'm sort of obsessed with now but if you watch any

old video of it i don't know if anybody did but like it seemed just like the most kind of gentle still place and that didn't was not even ride centric jason what you're saying about how it's it's like the acreage expanded it was like pretty small and modest yeah and the like the characters are represented there were these animatronics, I guess, but mainly it seems like you took a, like an escalator into Big Bird's mouth and he's still represented kind of abstractly and it feels very early 80s.

It's not on brand. It's like a sort of odd minimalist Big Bird. I guess I'm just, I'm saying all this to say like the vibe that i get of original sesame place is like it's not about rides and characters as much as these like um like you you climb up a vinyl pyramid you know what i mean like do you remember is this your memory and you're yeah i mean there is some one of the things that I remembered, I think I texted Jason, like, these, like, tree sculptures of the characters. Oh, like, topiary.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, it's not like you get some big bird, which is, like, cool. But also, yeah, I think that kind of, like, what you want is it's a street and the characters are all around and all of that kind of stuff. And, like, a dark ride that, like, that like feels like you're like going into Bert and Ernie's like apartment or something like that. It's like a madcap chase. Yeah.

It doesn't really deliver in all of that kind of way, but it's still, it's kind of nice because, you know, I don't know if you guys have had, if you had similar experiences, like when I went to disney world as the first time i like didn't sleep for two days straight because i was just so

like overstimulated yeah yeah sesame place is good because there's just not too much going on and no one's ever built it up no one's ever said my parents notably as i was saying all that did not say there's the greatest place in the world and it is in langhorne pennsylvania and you would not just boy someday so it's never been built out you didn't build it up too much right yeah i mean i think that it would seem crazy to me to fly from like california to go to sesame place it's's like a good regional theme park. If you're on the East Coast, even the Midwest, I could imagine if you're like, oh, we'll go to Philadelphia

and also make a day of going to Sesame. That doesn't seem crazy, but to get on a plane to go to Sesame Place, that seems a little much. It reminds me of when we had Mookie on and we're talking about um uh the new hampshire theme parks the park story land one of the uh executives or one of the people who run it describe the park in in the way that the park how many hours to

uh allow for the park well the park usually outlasts the kids meaning like the kids are gonna tap out before you run out of rides and that definitely seems like the vibe of sesame place where like yeah you can get two maybe four hours max if you're taking real little little kids who are gonna you know run towards the characters as soon as they see them you know and burn out a lot then and then if anything has a line or anything has a way you're gonna lose them big time yeah i saw one advice about this park uh a youtuber who did like you know 20 tips for sesame place said do the don't do the water rides first do the regular rides first do the water rides in the afternoon or later afternoon because everyone else usually does it the other way they go to the water rides when it's bright and sunny in the

morning okay but usually the sometimes the crowd shifts it seems like and you did not do water rides we only did well you know we maybe we watched the same video we took that advice but then it was like cold in the afternoon and then we're like well and the lines were never that bad so we did the lazy river and then a lot of the other unfortunately like i think either because of either because of covid and they don't want to you like risk of it but i think more likely just being understaffed and underserviced like there's like a fun sprinkler area that they just didn't have open yeah which would have been fun and then they had like you know water slides with like you know tubes and stuff which like our daughter is not gonna go on that oh sure so we didn't uh we just didn't do a ton of the water and stuff but the lazy river

was fun sure um i was starting to say i had to say like so just like the vibe that i always got from the place this early it always felt like sort of like like yeah like gentle and about like foam and like you're going through like you know like those those punching bags that you run through or like ropes courses or those sort of nets that you climb and everything and ball pits and stuff and it always felt very for some reason it felt really Canadian to me like all the footage of it felt like so like sleepy and brown and just nice. And you can tell this is not a hyperactive place. It's just kind of like and it's just it looks pleasant, muted color, forest greens and browns. So then I was looking up the guy who founded it, not founded it, but the guy who designed the park initially.

Eric McMillan is the name. And it turns out this guy was a British guy, sort of a fastidious John Cleese type, apparently, who moved to Canada and did installations for... Really obsessed with cancel culture now? Don't look at the tweets. I don't know why he's doing it. No, like, this guy did installations for, like, Canadian World's Fairss and expos and the kinds of things that i like that i get such a pleasant like you could smell it from those old

yeah i just always had the vibe right there's a thing up uh in toronto called ontario place there was like a big kids area and it has like a very epcot-y dome where they showed imx stuff uh and he designed that and that was such a. I guess this guy is credited with kind of reinventing what kids' play areas were. He's called the sort of creepy phrase Father of Soft Play. He's considered the very creepy. If you want to redact that one, too,

we could take out Father of Soft Play. But anyway, just the crazy thing is he liked this like kind of abstract design like and and you know just places that are visually stimulating and that seemed like the point of it more is like here's little challenges for kids and weird environments for them to be in among which apparently in the 70s when this guy's building different places he he i i what i'm getting at is i think this guy invented the ball pit. What? The guy who designed the initial plans of Sesame Place initially called a ball crawl.

Wow. But this like did not exist. Like the guy, he was looking at like a, he said like a, like a jar of pickles or something that was tightly packed. And he said like, what if a kid could dive through something like this? And it's not just like, it's not being in a pool. It's solids, but you're in a pool of solids, basically. But it's definitely pickles.

Yeah, and then they tried to fill up a big thing with pickles, and they gave it again. They couldn't replenish. Jason is furiously scribbling down notes now. Pickle pool. How can I make this happen? My memory of it as a kid is, I don't know if this was here in disneyland or if it was in florida you know the honey uh i shrunk the kids land the playland the playland

in florida yeah that was kind of the closest disney thing the vibe of uh sesame place those smells all the soft padding everywhere interesting. Interesting things to look at and to crawl around and to play. Yeah, yeah. With this ball pit thing, then what I realized because I saw a sign that said something like this when I was down in the Sesame Street area in San Diego. And it turns out

what now is called the Sesame Street Bay of Play was this thing that this guy designed called Captain Kids. Much like the oft referenced weird buffet that is closed on harvard boulevard yeah um but that that place where i was this what is now sesame street place was the site of the first ball pit ever in the world whoa yeah wow very and i was there and i even noted i said on the episode, there was a thing that seemed like all it was is like five pieces of foam that some mean brothers were playing with.

I think what that was at one point in time was the first ball pit ever. So that's all kind of a mind blow to me. But also that ball pits didn't exist until the 70s. And then I guess if you think about it, it is kind of a psychedelic thing in a way. It's sort of a heady, trippy thing to do. But I would never have guessed that ball pits are that recent of an invention. It makes sense now that you're saying it, but I never even thought about it. Because I don't think I've seen some 60s footage of kids playing in a bunch of plastic balls.

No, I guess not. Because it just kind of became ubiquitous so fast. And the rise of chuck cheese and grew and grew and right and um something else in this park i noticed that that's come up when we've done smaller parks or regional parks before uh it seems like dip andots has cornered the market. Every mid-size or smaller theme park. Non-Disney Universal. Non-Disney Universal. And not that Universal, I think, sometimes has Dippin' Dots.

But the smaller parks, there's always a Dippin' Dots stand. And I remember at the Jersey Shore, them giving out samples of that when I was a kid and they're like pitching, they're explaining it. This is hard. These are little ice cream. It's frozen. It's colder than ice cream. It's the ice cream of the future.

Like, you know, and that and then and then it was everywhere very quickly. Yeah. Do you think like, you know, like a serious radio or a serious sex time or whatever? Like they basically the only reason they're around is because they meet deals with like car makers and they like force you to like listen to it. Like that's how they've been able to survive. You think it's a similar situation

where nobody really likes Dippin' Dots. Just convenience of like the satellite radio is in your car. Well, I'm thinking like a big blanket deal with a bunch of companies and then that's really where they like, they're surviving off that just like that money that they're getting every year. Probably's possibly a 50-year contract i think they definitely make money on people forgetting they have the service a lot of these build every

month services are can i ask a sincere question were you when we're talking about the balls were you thinking of how this is a good connection because these are littler colorful balls uh no i wish i went i mean maybe subconsciously i was because honestly it was like i was like where does this transition oh they're like littler balls i just remember as a kid going to amusement parks and theme parks and the ball pits just getting bigger and bigger and more elaborate and more like it's kind of going the other way now i have like a personal little ball pit for my daughter which is like which when i was a kid i was like people didn't I don't think people really had that.

No. Now it's like an easy thing that like most people I know of, it's not like a huge thing. It's just like it folds out and you throw in balls and it's like, yeah, okay. But how often do you see a big sprawling ball pit? Those are kind of out of fashion. Disneyland completely stopped doing them. Yeah. Due to poops.

Pooping and dinners and fights. I mean, does anybody not like a ball pit from their childhood? I was obsessed with it. There was this place. This kind of maybe is kind of like Discovery Zone. Did you guys have that? Oh, sure. We, in high school school this was nuts

that this was allowed they would allow I guess at night you could just rent it out as like older kids and my this is dorky but my male Jewish youth group rented it out

and and my I guess what we would do rented it out and and my it had been I guess what we would do in the discovery zone was just have like fake wrestling matches of course yeah because it's like

foam and bubbles and two of my this was one of the best things I ever witnessed in high school was two of my friends like they had been building up that they were going to wrestle each other and like they're gonna have this big thing at like the discovery zone like event it was my friend jonah and my friend uh ben and jonah shows up first and he's like he has like a he bought like a novelty belt that he was the champion. And he was like, it's on.

You're going to need music or something. He was really ready. Ben shows up, and he has crutches. And he's like, I'm sorry. I twisted my ankle. I can't do it. I'm just here to hang. And everyone was kind of bummed, but I was like, oh, it happens.

The whole night goes by. And we have fun. We goof around, whatever. Everybody's leaving. And he takes the crutches and knocks Jonah into the ball pit and just jumps on him. Whoa. It was the best thing I think I'd ever witnessed. Wow.

I was delighted by it. Yeah, it's great. There's no... Yeah, no, that's incredible. A full night of playing a part. Yes, it's insane that they just were like, yeah, this is like a kid's play zone in the morning. But yeah, if you like this group of 17 17 year old jewish boys want to beat each other go nuts just wail in front of a do an angle if they want to do an angle later a trick oh god

that's great backing up to dip and dots i i tweeted about this so maybe uh you guys saw but i not at sesame place at the zoo there was a dip andin Dots stand where I got Dippin Dots for my daughter because it was just like oh there's something fun I guess I don't know she didn't really seem to care for it too much but then what he does the woman in front of me in line the funniest special request I've ever thing well ma'am if you leave them in the sun for like 20 seconds you're gonna have regular ice cream she just thought there were dots on regular ice cream i assume yes. Right. Yes, I think that's what she thought. She thought that it was like the topping. Right, the dots were the topping.

I guess a dip in dots without dots you could call impossible dots. Yes. Oh, you guys got impossible dots? Let's start winding it down here, I suppose. Do we miss anything from your childhoods? Any odd factoids

uh any ways to make this place better are there plus ups i mean clearly uh dark rides and uh stuff uh would be great it's it really deserves a fully like thought out and i don't mean it in a scary dark twisted way but a horror night style maze that's really what it like a fully immersive you start out on the street and then you go in and there's rooms with the characters you have interactions with all of them there's things you've seen on the show i don't know what like locations they have on the show anymore because i would say oh it's like with grover and the waiter and stuff but that's obviously kids that they don't maybe one for the parents at the end like that but like you go through and there'd be different experiences like that.

And the thing would be like 45 minutes. I feel like you could double the amount of money you charge maybe. And that probably the kid would come away and saying like, was your brother the one said this is the greatest day of my life? Yeah. Yeah. Something interesting that I forgot to mention. No televisions in the park.

So there's no actual Sesame Street. Interesting. And it's not there, just like lazily showing episodes or movies somewhere. That's kind of nice. The one big thing we didn't mention, the Sesame Place, the first theme park in the world designated as a certified autism center.

So all the employees receive training on um sensory awareness and social skills uh they're quiet rooms there's sensory guides that uh guests can get um noise canceling headphones uh uh for auditory auditory sensitivity uh and i just think that's nice i just think that's a great thing that they you know went out of the way and did yeah that's really cool that's a cool move to to make and to realize that you could do and that that's going to be true of the other one i believe yeah i think so i that funny thing about the other one so sesame place is opening in San Diego. It's taking over the Aquatica water park, which itself took over a not-soaked city.

So this is multiple generations of water parks. I think Jane brought it up, but I looked it up, and she said, oh, is Aquatica next to SeaWorld? And I was like, oh, no, it's about 23 miles away because they just took over an existing theme park. It's very, it's much, it's like way more south, like much closer to the Mexico border. Yeah.

So, but one of the posts I saw about it, so it was supposed to open 2021. Obviously, construction delays kind of happened everywhere because in the contract it said this park will open in 2021 because it has not on paper uh sea world may technically owe sesame workshop something like two thousand dollars a day until it opens until it opens. The person commenting on this from SeaWorld was like, we're hoping to work something out because $2,000 times

$3.65, yeah, that starts to really add up. $2,000. Ha ha ha. $4,000. Wow. That's what happens when the other side has Grover and Count

doing the contracts they picked the right people they picked the right Muppets I don't I mean where do you go from there you know what I think Evan says you survived podcast the ride.

It was great to be here, guys. Thanks so much. That was a blast. Thanks for having me. Let's text us through the gift shop. Is there anything

you'd like to plug? No. At Evan Susser on Twitter, I guess. It was recently hacked, but I got my Twitter account back. Oh, yeah.

You were hacked. Oh, sorry. That's weird. You're on Doughboys. Yeah, I'm on Doughboys. You'll be around for something. Yeah, I'm on Doughboys. We'll be around for something. Well, you'll... If you like this, you'll find more stuff from me.

You'll do a Google. You'll do a Google. Yeah, it's like I'm doing some of this game stuff where I'm making them come to me. That's good, yeah. Make them work for it. Bernardo, you came directly to us, making them come to me. That's good. Yeah. Make them work for it. But nada, you,

you, you came directly to us, which I appreciate. I think you did. Love, love the podcast. And I wanted to be back on, talk about Sesame place with you and see you guys again.

Well, and we, we did it. We, and we did the full day to night. Now it's a nice, it's just a nice summer evening. I hope nobody's getting too bit.

No, once I put this spray on my legs, I'm doing all right. And then Evan's husband and I actually just ate at the Jurassic Cafe not long ago, so maybe we can come back and talk about that sometime. Oh, yeah, we did eat at the Jurassic Cafe. Oh, wait, you just came from? Not today. No, not today. Yeah, yeah.

I was going to meet him up at City Walk, and I go, you know, because we both have passes. We could go down and eat in the park. So we did. We went on no rides. from not today no not today yeah yeah i was gonna meet him up at city walk and i go you know because we both have passes we could go down and eat in the park so we did when it went on no rides you only went to the direct to and is that the name of the main restaurant down there the jurassic cafe yeah no that's correct that's great yeah okay that's it uh that function is just a dinner and i felt sick afterwards you felt sick afterward i felt like oh this could go wrong but then it settled itself out it was fine uh we ate on the top of the jurassic cafe nice spot obviously i mean that i love great view um and then yeah then we left okay well it seems

like we did the episode did we i say yes okay so uh you can find us on all the socials at podcast the ride merch is available in our Tee Public store and for three bonus episodes every month check out podcast the ride the second gate at patreon.com

slash podcast the ride and you know maybe to I don't know how much this is going to play I'll post I'll try to post this as a video

but there's I think just as a little play out there's a weird video on YouTube called one day at Sesame Place that just kind of takes you around, like all the facets, the employees and the kids and what it's like when it closes. And they show you a little bit of a show. And this is just a really strange moment where the thing that's happening in the show seems to be that Big Bird is trying to say the names of everybody who's in attendance.

And that's a tall order, uh, for a tall bird. He can't figure out how to do it. Um, so he, but I still don't understand how it jumps to this point where a song starts playing and just imagine Big Bird, uh, poping is what's happening here, and then he picks up his pursuit. This one's hard to explain. I'll play it for you guys. It's a little musical way out. This is really odd.

So thanks for listening. Bye-bye. Audience delighted at pop-lockly hills cop big bird i mean i'm delighted alma wearing pants this is like some piece of abstract video art. Paxil B. He sounds slowed down. Yeah. This is like a vapor wave.

This is like E.T. It's E.T. at the end of the word. I stole it from this. Lauren. Clyde. Harold. Willie. I love that. Forever Dog. This has been a Forever Dog production. Executive produced by Mike Carlson, Jason Sheridan, Scott Gairdner,

Brett Boehm, Joe Cilio, and Alex Ramsey. For more original podcasts, please visit 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.