Podcast: The Ride - The Boys Love Drive Through Haunts

Episode Date: October 23, 2020

We take a look at the modified Halloween experiences springing up around the country and sample some of the ones in Southern California! Creature's Choice Awards Episode now up at The Cemetery Gate! Patreon.com/PodcastsTheRide VOTE! Verify that you're registered and make a plan to vote on or before November 3rd 2020. Find voting resources here: https://foreverdogpodcasts.com/vote 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! enjoy drive-thru haunts on haunt cast the fright welcome to haunt cast the fright a haunt cast so scary that when you tell your non-theme park people about how long our episodes are they scream in terror my name is usually mike carlson but this month's it is spike narleson do you just do you change it i changed it again yeah i so it's been some controversial ones this month, but that's, I think, non-controversial.

That's just fun Halloween. Joining me as always, usually Jason Sheridan, this month. This month, Jack O'Lantern Slimeton. Very consistent, very good Halloween name. Yeah, I wrote it down so I would remember and uh thanks i worked

on it for a while i was worried if i just went with jack o'lantern jason that's like a fucking improv warm-up nonsense i like that too though i'll be honest i like that too or jason jack o'lantern i think it works either way uh joining also us as always usually scott gerdner well i was thinking if we're all kind of experimenting like what is the rule dictating that we'd has to reflect our real name in some way like because i you know i'm scott all the time or i you know and if i was just something similar to scott like what's preventing me from just being rick zombieberg i just want to change it up there's nothing preventing it i think that is sort of the fun it sounds a little like it so it's like a version of you but if you

want to do a whole new persona i think that's good yeah i think so i'm just you know i don't know rick is a cool name that's a name i'd like to have every you know just for a little bit and it's not a parody of anything i don't know what the non-halloween version of rick zombieberg is um maybe it's like zellberg or something but it doesn't matter i'm rick zombieberg okay from now on because i'm i'm sick of my own initials that's fine what if i just go by ice pick from now on okay hell yeah That's so cool. My name is Ice Pick now. That's what it called me that for the rest of the month. And maybe forever.

We got to break out of these rules. Like, what is this unspoken that it has to be a pun about your, like, let's go wild. Let's go hog wild. That could be, I don't want to say what Jason's is, but if Jason's was hog wild. Hog wild's pretty good. I was going to pitch Mr. Murder. Is that better or's was hog wild hog wild's pretty good I was gonna pitch Mr. Murder is that better or worse than hog wild

lateral I mean they're both they both have their good points I think there's both big reasons to like those it's still up to you to choose ultimately that's what we're doing with me embracing being Rick Zombieberg it's all about grabbing the reins of a new persona.

How about Dr. Murderhog? I like that. Hell yeah. That's kind of best of both worlds. Yeah, yeah. And I had a doctor in, too. So you have a lab coat that's covered in blood. And respect.

Yes. The scariest thing you can have on your coat that's right sorry dr murder hog dr murder hog that's good yeah i think you know if we can remember selectively through the episode you know we're gonna default to what our regular names are but it'd be nice to you know um but you know we're talking about like drive-through haunts and, well, the former Jason, I went and tried one. But if I was like, now, doctor, how was it? Was there like a big backup?

Because it's, you know, like, was it, how many people were there? I mean, did you have a good time, doctor? Yes, I did. I did. I was a little concerned at first. They certainly had the place markers for like, oh, if it's running long, they even had like from this point, 50 minutes. Yeah, that feels good. That feels right. right mm-hmm mm-hmm um ice pick uh does that seem like something you

could uh make your way through yeah it does sound like that oh wait a minute now i have a different voice the voice changed entirely wow yeah no but that feels good being called ice pick feels good and it makes me feel different tossing it away so casually yeah just like yeah yeah uh and i've actually forgotten your name so tell me what it is rick zombie bird that's right of course i'll write it down so i don't forget it uh okay yeah and rick you were just talking about it uh you're talking about your whole this whole zombie burg family and what you were doing uh how did that go how was that oh yeah well there's so many of us by the time you get the zombieberg cousins out and the you know some

people are only how you know it's a hyphenate uh um you know zombieberg and um ghostlington zombies so you gotta get the zombiebergs out and the zombieberg ghostlingtons um so you know you're talking 50 people coming to your halloweens usually but you know now it's all going to be on zoom so it's all it's all fucked yeah i hear that yeah well that's good that's still seamless uh i like i i'm loving this new persona it's injecting some life uh into this halloween season which as we've said uh is you know is hampered uh by the current state of affairs and what we're here to talk about is halloween experiences that you can do and that

we went and did uh in the los angeles area but there's stuff all over the country you can do i like that we're that we're trying to break out and uh you know make something happen in a drive-through fashion or a virtual fashion uh i i applaud the creativity on the parts of everyone doing these kinds of things yes it's uh yeah they're making the best of a bad situation and i think you know there's a variety of these things which is nice too i think a lot of people are doing a version of this i think so and i think we've all like we all did something pretty different. As fun as some of what we've done here in 2020 is,

I think it can't help but make you be nostalgic for Halloweens gone by, more classic Halloweens, like when you were a kid and when you could actually do the trick-or-treating. And I am, more now than ever ever incredibly nostalgic for my favorite halloween which was in 1994 uh on which halloween i got to appear on the tonight show with jay leno um this this was uh this was a thread left open months ago uh this was discussed deep into our longest episode it was buried under minutes and minutes of content in our episode about the tonight show ride which is available on on the patreon so if you didn't hear it there uh i basically i had a family friend

who uh worked in the music department on the the carson and then the leno tonight show and uh uh there was there was a sketch going on and i was obsessed with i just the fact that i knew somebody worked at that show was mind-blowing to me and i could go like be in a bit i felt so much like bart on the crusty show uh in the what birth i didn't do it situation um now it didn't go that far because bart had a line i was just one of many many trick-or-treaters um and i'm wearing a mask so you can't tell it's me i'm wearing a richard nixon mask which i may have said in the other episode i i thought well maybe jay will appreciate that as he is a political satirist a very sophisticated one yeah yeah so we know if only we had him now to sort through the ins and outs of this complex situation we're currently in

um anyway uh all of this is just to say you know like i'm not gonna play a clip of it because it's just lengthy and you know you you basically just see a nixon uh in the mix as the sketch goes on includes it including uh the uh mainly starring health guru susan powder who is famous of course for her catchphrase stop the insanity um as i may have said in the other episode none of this was explained to me like what it was going to be it was just like okay go out there like there was never a rehearsal this was never run nor like what it was going to be. It was just like, okay, go out there. Like there was never a rehearsal. This was never run, nor did it need to be.

That was, it was, you know, they, they did the right amount of, um, uh, preparation and not overthinking. Um,

so all this to say that clip will be available on our Twitter. Uh, so you can watch it and I'll make sure to circle which one I am, uh, just so you know, cause you, there'd be no other way to know um but in finding the tape um i had a an interesting discovery uh because i was

like what was the rest of this episode like what was a like i don't think a lot of people have like a tape of a leno episode in general from that era from 94. And this was a jam-packed episode because there was a remote done by Bill Marr, who was a correspondent who was reporting from Tiny Tim's wedding. I'm not sure I even know how to explain who Tiny Tim was. Yeah, like a musician fringe character type guy he had a novelty song guy yeah he had an interesting voice yeah he was an eccentric yeah i don't know there is that it is that i think i think so he was famous for getting married on the carson tonight show and then he was like they seemingly tried to do it again, but very half-assed, just

with these Bill Maher check-ins. So that's going on. I remember being in the hallway and passing by Richard Simmons at some point, wearing just full, exactly the Richard Simmons wardrobe that you'd want to see. So I thought that was really cool. But then I was trying to remember, who was the musical guest because i remember thinking like oh well what if then the show keeps going and then i basically get to see like a concert what if it's a what if the musical guest is one of the people i really i really like what if it's like a cool band like hammer or the beach

boys the two music acts that i liked at the time and then i remember being disappointed like oh it's this uh this sucks it's like a grown-up band it's a it's a boring adult band and i never knew what it was until re-watching the tape the band in this episode was big star what what yes beloved cults like one of the most respected bands in history um i mean it was this like reformed version big star was alex chilton and a guy bell was the other guy um i don't know why it's not coming to me it was it was alex chilton and other people like hired guns i think the chris bell was the guy who was in the band but he died he died before 1994 oh gotcha okay okay oh wait in that year where this was happening no he died before 94 sorry oh before 94 okay he died in i'm looking it up now 78 oh gee okay long ago um yeah anyway this just lingered in my head is like

i wish that band wasn't so boring and now i've realized it's like one of the most revered like you know quietly adored bands in history and they were like so in this room at this time like in the same room halloween 94 jay leno matthew broderick was there jennifer tilly and richard simmons alex chilton and a nine-year-old scottairdner in a Nixon mask. Wow. That's wild. Could not believe that. What song did Big Star play? They did In the Street, which not too long after became the theme to that 70s show as

covered by Cheap Trick. So yeah, iconic song. They barely performed live ever. This might have been one of the only television appearances of big star not even yeah i'm not even that up on like where they went sort of after they stopped putting stuff out so i'm surprised i don't even know the timeline of like why they were on the tonight show in 1994 what what was going on at the time i think there was a there was a live album they were promoting or something that could have also just been like oh the the albums are

finally on cd because i was like wait were the albums even at print 94 like uh that's true a lot of people a lot of bands did perform in that context like the reissue of such and such interesting wow so yeah anyway i mean it wasn't like you were supposed to know, get excited about Alex Chilton at the time. No. And I was I was insufferable enough as a 17 year old talking about Alex Chilton, let alone if I was nine. I mean, I would have been the worst as a nine year old who brought a Richard Nixon costume to a TV show. And then, like, I have this other memory of like this is an exciting time for me this was i must have gotten the bug to be in in media because right around the same time it was

right after this like in the same week i went to a recording studio to record a christmas album with uh this the saint mel church uh boy choir and uh we did you know mostly standards for you know kind of uh uh you know like ring christmas um and uh i remember that i wore a big old like didn't fit me tonight show hat to the record. So I'm feeling so high on my own shit. I've just been on the Leno tonight show. Now I'm recording my album. And I walked into it. And I was not friends with anyone else in the boy

choir. We did not get along. And some kid is like, where'd you get that hat? And I was like, I was on the show. And he was like, no you weren't. And that was the end. And I didn't argue back because i was too scared to oh wow no you said no you weren't you were like yeah you're right yeah he's probably right he's bigger than me maybe never mind actually he's more confident than me he's much shorter but extremely confident so he's probably right i've apologized a million times for doing that it's just whenever we get in a tiff i see that guy

that boy choir i'm looking at you in my zoom window like i bet jason doesn't believe i was on tonight's show prove it i will hat i'm putting this tape on and you might think that i'm just Steve-O is on The Tonight Show. Prove it. I will. I'm putting this tape on, and you might think that I'm just going to circle an arbitrary kid in a Nixon mask, but it was me. He'll turn, and you'll see Scott brown hair, and you'll know. Do you think if you had, like, we're like, well, yeah, I walked by Alex Chilton. He was like, whoa. No kidding. That's one of the guys.

From the box tops? Oh, man. The guy who sang the letter? Boy, he's one of the guys tops. Oh man. The guy who sang the letter boy, he's one of the guys who made me want to get into recording. That's why I'm in this studio to recut Mary to cut Merry Christmas from the St. Mel's boy choir. That would have fixed it. I think would have shut everyone up. If only I knew.

So I failed my mute, my lack of musical knowledge at nine failed me. I'll try to post that whole album, too. I'll try to do it in a lossless format, like a flack, like an FLAC. Yeah, highest quality. You could play it on Neil Young's Pono. That would be like the version. Neil Young's short-lived five-minute. I'll try to get a hold of him.

If I can get Neil on the line try to get a hold of him if i can get neil on the on the line just to you know oversee the fidelity of it um i have a memory about recording that christmas album also which is that uh when it began we were promised 100 each and a cd of the album and it ended up being 25 in a tape that prepared you for a career in media better than anything else. Yeah, really. It all was contained in those couple months, wasn't it? And I got into it anyway. And I had to, because when I got hit by those lights

and I got to share the stage with Susan Powder herself, I had to keep going um so anyway that'll all be a video on the twitter and uh you know the album we gotta wait till christmas we got halloween to get through first oh man you have the album oh sure yeah yeah the oh the album's around yeah yeah and i could scan the cover also and try to prove that one of the blurry dots in the red robes is me could you do a remix two of it maybe for christmas like an edm style remix well maybe so um i mean that depends i can't promise how like in tempo um bill the piano player was i don't know that you could like set a metronome to it i see but i'll bring

it into garage i mean if i gotta cut it up um right i can do that all right well that's exciting that's a good tease yeah yeah yeah i i knew i was playing the long game like the audience for these things wasn't there then but i knew someday i'm gonna accrue a rabid podcast audience that is going to really want to hear my falsetto on a Christmas album. Wow. So, yeah. Did you look at that Big Star performance on YouTube at all? It is. Yeah, yeah.

So, you can just watch that. I'm not going to post that for you, but you can watch Leno introduce. Yeah. And so, yeah. Two of the greats in the same... Alex Chilton rocking one of his classic songs and me rocking one of the best masks ever worn by a child. Man, if only you had wandered out on the stage as Nixon and done backup vocals on In the Street.

Hang it out! With peace signs, probably. It would have been the soy bomb of its day. This episode's going to need, boy, anyone who doesn't remember the 90s well is going to need a glossary to recall Big Star and Soy Bomb. Yeah, these references. These references, we apologize to the

younger listeners. But go check out Big Star and check out Chris Bell's I Am The Cosmos solo album too. I've never really listened to it because I'm afraid it would make me too sad. Oh my god. It sounds very sad. I Am The Cosmos is the saddest song you will ever hear.

And it is truly like you put headphones on, and it is the sound of a heart breaking. And I don't know if there's any song that I think is sadder than that. Yeah. I mean, because I've, you know, like some of those big stars, like Kangaroo, it's very, very morose. You're going to really be in a state. And that seems like too hard of a drug.

Oh, my God. This year. Those albums are pretty good. But like, yeah, 13 might make you a little too introspective for quarantine times. 13, though, is like a fun bop compared to I Am the Cosmos. Yeah, that's a little it's a little uplifting yeah yeah yeah yeah it's sweet and nostalgic it is very sad but certainly like oh my god i am the cosmos it's great anyway this this episode every year is normally titled mike

loves haunts but this year it is it just gets longer and longer of like the boys love appropriate, safe Halloween experiences and also are losing their minds. And also have some things to say about Big Star and 24?

26? Is that right? Is that math right? 26 yearold Tonight Show episodes? Yeah, but only the ones I'm on. I mean, I'll watch some old Tonight Shows definitely in other contexts. I've spent a lot of, I've spent the last couple weeks watching a lot of

90s MTV movie awards also, so I'm yeah, I'm off the deep end. Now that's fine. That's fine we really don't care who you are just uh uh just audience be glad that scott didn't find an organic way for us to talk about the rumor of mccartney releasing mccartney 3 in december the long-awaited follow-up to mccartney 2 from 1980 um yeah because then we're in then we're in three hour territory yeah yeah yeah we're never getting out of here um but to veer us back in let's get out of let's get out of halloween 94 and we'll

be back to christmas 94 soon for the boy choir but halloween 2020 we're stuck we gotta stay distant we gotta stay in our cars what did we do how did we overcome this what did we how did we all get into the halloween spirit i genuinely don't i kind of know what jason did i mike i don't know um i'm sorry ice pick i don't know doctor i'm curious your thoughts about the drive-through uh how do how do we get into it well i think i'll start with mine so so um there there are a variety of things we were talking about that that different places are doing varying levels of scares varying levels of production you know um yeah i think everyone's doing in their own way i saw downtown la has uh and i forget the name of it but they have a more family specific family focused thing where like they still hand out a bag of candy i'm not sure

if they do it in like the way that taco bell does the covid theater of having like a rubber maid they put the bag in and hand it to you through the through the window which is covid theater in my estimation um but they have something like that i believe um so everyone's being creative. Everyone's doing their best. And I was looking through stuff to do. And I will say up front, I should have done something scarier. Because I, look, I'm the toughest one of the three of us when it comes to haunts. Okay? Not in everything else, but haunts, I'm the toughest guy. And you have to acknowledge my toughness when it comes to going through Haunts and my love of Haunts.

Ice Pick loves Haunts. Ice Pick loves Haunts. And the Haunted Hayride. Now, maybe I was trying to look for an excuse, but the Haunted Hayride is supposedly scary. They usually do it at Griffith Park, and they're doing it in, I believe, San Dimas? Yes. Yeah yeah by the dusty raging waters by the shuttered

raging waters this summer Ted's hometown in hindsight I think that probably should have been the thing I did but it was 90 minutes away and I will say the idea of getting scared in my car did scare me a little bit that seems a little more scary for some reason than having just a

teen jump out at you from behind a corner you think it's more scary i yes i do think it's more scary i would rather be less really because i would rather be walking through having an ability to move and react there's something about it if it's like i think there's like five teens all crouched around the car and there's loud music being played outside and they're just going to keep popping up i guess at a certain point get desensitized to it but there's something like that feeling like trap that i don't like do you disagree you know what i'm saying there's a trapped feeling of like i can't even control at all and i'm not gonna like put my car in a drive and run them over like i can run faster i can hide behind a valencia teen at six flags but i can't hide behind anything here well but i think i mean you can hide behind your steering wheel that seems

comforting to me in the car you're hidden yeah you're in the car there's i guess i could crouch down and put my hands over my head to just not look you're right i guess because i hear them i hear them hitting the window go away scarier stuff from what i've because there's videos of a lot of these online at this point and like the scenes happen either far away from you or they get close to your car and you're in park right yes right right because they can't have you you can't be driving and get scared and run all like hit hit uh take the wheel and just swerve off the road and run into a bunch of people dressed like frankenstein yeah like that's not gonna happen uh so anyway i that all that to say up

front i did find something that was pretty highly rated from the way from what i was reading um something called knights of the jack and this is in calabasas and it was sold out up until november 1st and i had to do what i love to do which is checking to get to do it you haven't done it all year i haven't done it in regards to tickets i certainly have checked to get NECA Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle action figures but I haven't done can you talk about the thing that you did I don't remember if that worked out which thing? the bot

oh yeah yeah yeah so well this is a long story I'll try to make it very quick so basically what was happening is these teenage mutant ninja turtles that i love that are made by this company neca uh they go up for pre-sale uh not pre-sale their main sale and it's like you'd never know what time it goes up the target

website is confusing and the first couple times they put them up they put up metalhead i believe and they put up casey jones these are all the cartoon versions of Ninja Turtles. They were bought instantly by bots. And I was just like, I'm good at getting this stuff. I'm good at checking. And I was beaten by the machine. I was beaten by these machines to get these toys. And this is especially early on in COVID where it's like, I'm not trying not to go into the stores as much or whatever. So it happened again.

And I got so fed up. I looked into buying a bot. I looked into buying a program that could outbot these other bots. So we're going to create life. I was going to create a being designed to buy this one toy and then wander the wanted the digital earth for 10 000 years i was going to you know you had a have a real son scott i was going to have a digital son that could procure me sweet nostalgic toys your son buys you toys yeah that's all he does inevitably it would have been a star trek situation like uh

professor moriarty on the holodeck where he wants to get out of the computer somehow and i'm trying to make that happen for him and he's wreaking havoc but it wasn't going to get there yet so so people i think also people uh who who deal with this stuff like this happens in sneaker sales a lot where there are bots uh and i know people are very anti-bot so i'm i apologize the only reason i was doing this was not to get the toys to flip it was just to procure the toys for myself i was becoming a bad boy just so i had a guy in sweden make me a bot this has not come up before i don't know there's a lot of weird stuff in my life that hasn't come up before let's be honest uh i made a guy in sweden to make me a bot that could get this stuff

pretty quickly and or in yeah and whenever they went on sale so the long and the short of it is he definitely worked on it a lot to get it to the point where it could take me up till like the purchasing screen it was never it never worked perfectly it would just auto refresh and then it would load and get me to the main screen and i only used it once because then as soon as that uh it's almost as soon as the like next sale went up target kind of fixed the issue it outsmarted your bot instantly well they didn't outsmart the bot it's just the target system got better for purchasing these turtles so as as soon as they were up, they would last for at least like five, ten minutes, basically rendering my bot useless.

I paid – I'll be – I didn't pay – I paid $100 for this bot. So it wasn't like a top-of-the-line bot. I've been told bots could cost you five grand if they're very sophisticated. What is – what do you... Do you ever see anything? Okay, so if you want to know, there's a program called Python that is a program that basically can take control of your Google Chrome.

So basically what this does is it just automatically has certain prompts to put in. So you get like a text document. What this does is it just automatically has certain prompts to put in. So you get like a text document. You load in what the website will be for the item you want to purchase. And then you put in like your credit card information, all that stuff sort of in a script, in a text document. And then you still have to do this. Python is a coding language.

Yes, I had to learn. I had to learn. i had to learn i had to learn a little bit mike's newest discovery is not a an obscure movie or band or anything it is like a decades old very basic coding it is a coding yeah so so essentially you know this, this nice man in Sweden made me a document that I could place all that information in. And then it would load, auto load. And essentially, it would just like refresh the page until the sale went live. And then would load it into the card and go through all the screens. And that's what it was doing. It wasn't, I look, I wanted it to be to be like hello michael what are we purchasing today another toy from your childhood what's wrong with you he still gives you the business like dr smith and uh never that robot was how about we try

how about instead of spending 25 on this you try therapy i redirected you to a different website better health wait better help what did we read which one have we read ads they're not paying anymore we don't know them we don't know them knowing what the name of it is okay wait so you can't then like reprogram this you can't now take the bot and say, new mission, you are going to check FastPasses within the Disney World app for fans of my show who are lucky enough to actually get to go to a theme park. No, the bot, this is a thing I learned very quickly,

the bot has to be specifically made for the website that you're using it for just because it's the way every website is a little different so no this is not some i mean maybe there's like again there's a five thousand dollar super bot that can check almost anything but yeah this one has to be specifically programmed for the target website but i really i have not used it so i wasted a hundred dollars essentially uh what's the bot doing now the bot is sitting here on my desktop uh he's sleeping the bot is sleeping also scott don't be ridiculous there's no fast passes right now you gotta get park passes that's what you gotta get as my family uh learned

but we booked a trip to orlando a year out like well let's be optimistic about the end of 2021 and they assured us in a few days you'll be able to pick which parks you want to go to which day and we're like ah we haven't given that enough thought uh when are these park passes in effect too oh the answer to that early 2022 that system is set up till now oh my god this thing that i hate about disney world that other people seem to like where you have to plan your trip now it's literally true you have to all right so just think about what you might want to do 14 months from now this is uh it's good it's even crazier yeah so uh yes i think that's going to be the way for a little while now probably yeah even whenever disneyland opens yeah i think that's probably going to be similar but anyway well set us up

with your swedish guy if if the swedish guy has time to help us and everyone listening to the show that'd be great i will uh i will do that uh but yes the bot right now there's really no need for him um and yes look i look i was getting desperate you know i need these dumb turtle toys i just got the rock sir i just got the rock soldiers they're just they're beautiful toys do you remember him from ninja turtles no he's krang's uh rock soldier from dimension x his name is general trag i mean i like him yeah he's great what's not to like it's great so i approve it's wonderful yeah good good good good if this bot lives kind of

where you recorded the podcast right so he's listening to everything you're saying and he's heard every episode you've recorded lately you know so you could if anything ever happened to you could the bot replace him or replace you uh i think that's probably true i mean he it's probably like uh i don't know who watched star trek picard but sort of spoiler alert uh data's consciousness has been sort of living while data's been dead uh so i think maybe i might like everything about me as a person is now stored on the computer in my bot so there could be like some sort of epic adventure sort of to go through the internet and retrieve my personality my whole programming if something happens we could put your personality into general trog and he could tell us about jason his name is general drag drag jason excuse me god

god damn it get it right humans make mistakes not your bots. You have to cut us some slack. Bots can pronounce all the characters' names correctly. Granator, Leatherhead, Metalhead. Trogdor the Bernadator. All your faves. I will be known as General Trag from now on, not Icepick. Okay. All right.

Let's cross that out. Icepick, General Trag. Okay. So, General. Yes. not ice pick all right let's cross that out ice bitch general drag okay so general um let's get back to what to knights of the jack okay knights of the jack all right so here's so so i saw people talking about this and that that that they really liked it um so we drove to calabasas i got a ticket i was checking all day i did this manually this was all brain power no bot power um and uh we we went lindsey and i went last night and we drove to calabasas nice getting out of the house uh sometimes and the calabasas around like what's called i guess the santa monica mountains which i've really never spent too much time around um they're not particularly nice looking mountains but it's mountainous and you know it's

got their scenery so we get there and this was the first um round of the night uh for this experience it was 6 30 so i'm assuming like most of these and you'll tell me if you guys did a similar thing uh i you have to drive through this long winding, essentially a queue. Yeah. And the queue for this wasn't like full of cars, but it was so long and it was so bumpy. I was like, are all four of my wheels going to burst? Well, let's put this in context because this is on a farm. Yes.

This is normally. Thank you. Thank you. It's King Gill this in context because this is on a farm. Yes. This is normally- Yes, thank you. Thank you. It's King Gillette Ranch is where this is located. And it's normally a walkthrough. It's always a lot of jack-o'-lanterns, but it's normally, I think, a walking- Right. Cider, probably cider donuts sort of fall events, Halloween events.

Yes, that is correct. So we're driving through there and I went, is this whole thing going to be on this terrain? Because I was like, I don't know if this is, should we just turn off now if this is? And luckily it was not. Luckily after we got through this queuing part, it was not so bumpy. But I was pretty worried for a couple minutes. I was wondering, okay, are they going to, they should have warned us about this That we should have brought a jeep to this Not the case not the case

So just telling you everything So it's a long stretching thing and we're driving through And we're a little bit early And there's a lot of fun like kind of cardboard Cutouts of monsters and It's very friendly or whatever and we see A sign that says tune your radio To 100.1 FM and we go

Oh this makes a lot of sense there's probably a soundtrack to go along with this and you play it on your car this makes a lot of sense this is probably what's going to happen here so we start driving in and it's i don't know has anybody seen let me i'll show you uh i'll share the screen real quick just to give you a sort of an idea of what everything's like. Um, and I have some videos too, and I can post those. Um, so it's like, you know, this is sort of the vibe we're getting here and this is the website and it's just kind of like, it's very, things are nicely decorated. There's fun little things there. Uh, so we're, so we're driving and there's, you know, displays that are similar to this.

There's, you know, skeleton on a motorcycle or whatever and different pumpkins and and we're listening to this 100.1 radio station and it's like playing like grease lightning and we're like this is really a halloween song and then i'm like and i'm like wait a minute i go this isn't this isn't in this couldn't be in sync because everyone's going at different intervals so like what are we doing listening to the station and then all of a sudden like bad to the bone starts and like we're driving through like some like atmospheric things and we're like wait a minute this station is just for the queue area isn't it and lindsey's like did I just hear a train noise outside?

And we rolled down the windows and it's like, oh, the audio for the whole thing has been outside for many minutes that we've been driving. Yeah, were you listening to K-Earth? Like the oldies station? Yeah, it was just sister golden hair every other song uh so it wasn't the whole time but for a couple minutes because there's this fun like aliens have landed in like a pumpkin spaceship and it's like we're like well this isn't the right song for this

what song for this what and we're like maybe i go maybe you should just turn it off and put my own thing on and it's like then we finally we heard and we're like oh okay got it this is what it is so then we were finally a lot of hiccups a lot of confusion now we were on a uh even enough road and we were actually hearing like the music and stuff playing and uh here let me share a couple videos just wait i quit uh i can say while you pull those up that i just was curious what the history of this ranch was and uh at one point bob hope owned it and he gave it to the catholic church to some specific order where they ran a seminary but then it became a seminary for a different thing a new age church called the church universal and triumphant um which is some new age like most of it's in montana it seems to be an

outgrowth of christian science and mary baker eddie like she coined that phrase and uh you know i don't have time to read the article but you know some certainly people have called it a cult so it may be questionably something resembling a cult used to happen here where a pumpkin spaceship has landed which seems like maybe the like potential ultimate event of a what would probably be kind of a fun cult yeah yeah it seems like the land now that you say that because i didn't read that before now that you say that that makes some sense because there's a lot of interesting buildings around this location and it's got an interesting

vibe without the fun halloween lights and music you go what is that building okay that looks like is it oh that looks like a church of some kind but not really there is like a weird vibe to the to the architecture uh but they didn't really i mean there's i guess they they brought they um put up some like lights on the actual building itself but there wasn't any like recruitment or anything happening i don't think that i saw um so so yeah here's the here's the gist of some of it okay so basically yeah there's just different little vignettes now you can see the screen here right yes and some of the vignettes are confusing because some of them as i said aliens pumpkins and then it must be like hot like

hollywood and they're playing the hollywood song and it's hard i'll post i'll post some of this and you can see there's a marlon brando pumpkin from the godfather and it's sort of hard there's james bond there's sean connery now it's hard to because because i was driving so it was hard to like dictate exactly what i need to get a video of but there was also a section of pumpkins for hollywood couples so there was a pumpkin with tom hanks and rita wilson on it because lindsey was like oh rita wilson yeah lindsey was like oh you have to be really good at pumpkin art to convey rita wilson uh it conveyed it i'll say it conveyed it um but lindsey's like oh are these are these like gonna be like deceased celebrities no no no some of hollywood's hottest couples in fact

uh so yeah not alex chilton and chris bell uh not that i saw but again i was driving you know i couldn't i couldn't focus on everything uh so basically unless i miss something there are just a lot of sort of random vignettes and on the website it was like you know you know ours our drive-thru is not so scary but there's some spooky stuff uh unless you're five there's nothing spooky there's nothing it's fun and atmospheric but i think i was hoping there was gonna be a little of that uh there is a good little section here that i'm going to share with you now that's an unlicensed nightmare before christmas yeah And they pump snow, and that's very fun. And, yeah, so they do some fun.

Does Gosling wait in on this yet? I haven't seen Gosling if he wait in yet. Maybe he's trying to get in all. You know what? He probably hasn't gotten tickets because he's not as good of a checker as I am. You're going to King Gillette Ranch. You don't want to see christmas stuff you want to see spooky stuff um my favorite part of it and i think that they maybe if i was giving any notes i would say more of this please is there uh is an area old west type and there's a spook easy yeah yeah see like this is a little bit more i want a little

more of that a little less rita wilson that would be my note in general uh but there's some nice vignettes and uh i think this is good if you have like young kids i'll say that um i feel like a lot of these things are maybe geared to that which is good and you know a lot of the pricing on some of it was sort of high and you're like well if that if that you know whatever 60 to 90 isn't being spread them it's for people right you're really getting your value there and like i'm showing you something these are some really great art some really cool looking stuff um yeah because a lot of this stuff i was reading about it is hand car yes so it's like there's a lot of artistry to it um but just sort of there's my face you can see in the corner there with a mask on uh they told us we had to wear the mask while the window was down just to

be safe so in case you were gonna make fun of me for wearing a mask i know we had to wear the mask while the window was down just to be safe. So in case you were going to make fun of me for wearing a mask. No, we had a similar experience. Yeah. So basically, it is a little bit pricey. But look, it's a lot of work to put on. You're paying for the fact that you're not doing a bunch of other Halloween stuff. And chances are, it would be good if you had a kid. And I just want

to tell everybody the bumpiness doesn't last and do turn off the radio once you start because I was really sure we were just going to be listening to like random 70s or 80s rock or going through it and I was happy to learn that was not the case so wow knights of the jack um just to go a little further the the church universal and triumphant was a doomsday cult um it was this one woman elizabeth claire prophet she said that the world was going to end in 1990 when russia and the u.s got into a nuclear war and then that didn't happen so the cult just kind of uh petered out i think it exists maybe in some regard but it got a lot quieter also uh the woman who founded it everybody all the followers called her mother well why isn't the maze about this yeah yeah that would be like

it's haunted by elizabeth claire prophet this would be awesome and i'm sure some of these other mazes have like sort of more narratives because i think that's what I would have been like. Yeah, you can make an interesting story. But yeah, that writes itself. You get the ghost of Bob Hope involved. Selling her the deed. And then, yeah, as soon as the world is about to end, that's when you exit, like Mr. Toad. Oh, you just survived yeah yeah right here it's you hear reagan and gorbachev yelling at each

other and it's a period piece yeah you have teens play gorbachev and reagan and they go on the sides of your car applying your gorbachev birthmark paint every night. Psyching yourself up to do it again. I got this. I know this character. So, yeah. So, well, there it is. Really fun. Well, love it. So, Dr.

Merhog, thoughts about this year's haunt? Well, do you want to hear mine or do you want to hear some of the other parks around the country oh let's well let's do that because we're talking about la things but you it sounds like you looked into some stuff that our our friends around the country could maybe check out uh yeah i mean uh the first so back in july i saw an article that i sent to you guys about like uh i want to give them credit it's called the haunted road it's in um florida orlando area

and they there was an article in theme park insider i think a lot of places picked it up because they were seen to be one of the first ones to say like uh we're going to do a haunt but it will you will drive through it and um uh i watched some videos of this uh it looks it looks very cool uh you know they this one is scary but the scenes are all pretty far away uh there were some spooky some ghoulies who got pretty close to the camera person's car and screamed at the car um but everyone's got masks on um oh there were kids and like glowing like those purge masks like that the characters in the purge where like kind of weird looking masks like that um uh it doesn't seem like it like i said it's a lot of maybe people pop up 10 feet away from your car

and scenes play out but i don't think they want to do jump scares when you're behind the wheel of like a 3,000 pound sedan um there's another one in Kissimmee called Screamin' Stream the what was interesting about these uh was that it's a little off the beaten path so it was like pitch black and dirt roads

so certainly adds to the ambiance Screamin' Stream had a giant floating deer skull puppet. And that looked pretty cool. That looked pretty insane. Wow. What else? Sticking to Florida.

Busch Gardens Tampa was doing a Halloween event. Just scare zones, no houses. In Chicago, the old Carlson neck of the woods, there is a haunt. This is the craziest one i've come across it's called alley of darkness it is a drive-in haunt so you drive in and park and this is the copy they had on their event our haunt is set in an alley in the shadows of the red line where a horrible incident occurred not long ago. You'll settle in with a drive-in movie experience that sets the narrative. The undead,

demons, zombies, and more jump out and rock your car accompanied by sound effects and sprays of blood. That's right, your car gets covered in blood. You may opt out. Yes. Yes, I do.

Our drive-in haunted house where you are confined to your car for 30 minutes so you can't escape the horror until the end. And then it wraps up. We cannot remove every drop of blood. It will be clean enough

to drive on the road and you cannot, for any reason, short of heart attack, leave your car or open doors or windows. What? this is a lot of terms wow i need to get some one of my old friends to go do this or i get like make my dad i made my dad do it uh i have to thank uh franny comstock for sending me that the host of the girls like us podcast uh sent me this, and it is still the weirdest one I've come across. Wow. No videos yet

of that online, but yeah, if you're in Chicago and you want a messed up experience, go for that. That sounds messed up. I don't want your parents to mess up one of their cars. Okay. It's only going to be a pain for them.

Yeah. What if you rent what i'll tell them to rent a car and then do it um let's see what and there so there are some walkthrough well there's more la stuff there is a walkthrough experience i forget um on the way to palm springs they like built a house set but it's all like tarps outside seemingly there's a big strangers things drive through thing that's happening downtown it's not happening until like right before halloween and uh it runs until january but it's the first like few weeks sold out really quickly but probably the biggest haunt for our audience might be interested in is Universal Orlando just said, fuck it. We got two houses.

And the thing about Universal Orlando is they, up to very recently, were full steam ahead going to do Horror Nights with some changes. To the point where most of the houses were done. Enough that eventually they canceled the whole event but then they did open up the houses uh revenge of the tooth fairy and bride of frankenstein lives and you can find videos of both of those online revenge of the tooth fairy kind of a walk through a messed up storybook narrative where a child does not want to give up a tooth to the tooth fairy and then everyone starts getting murdered by fairies

and Bride of Frankenstein lives appears to be so dark it will not show up on camera but the sounds were very good great sounds so now that I said all that here is the best thing I have read

about any haunt this year and this is coming from screamscape who i have to give credit to we teased them in the past because they have stuck with their old website but during you know covet times their posts have mostly stuck to just the facts but there is one rumor that they reported that i have to read aloud because it is so funny um so one of the rumored houses for Halloween Horror Nights, there was a bunch that kind of leaked. One was going to be Haunting of Hill House. One was going to be themed to the music and persona

of the pop star Billie Eilish. So that house did not go up this year. And while most of the other houses that are completed, there's very good chance they could just get put on the shelf and put in warehouses and spaces backstage so they can do them in 2021. I'm sorry, this is still universal, the Billie Eilish potential experience?

Correct, yes. But Screamscape reported that the Billie Eilish house will not end up being used should some of these houses get used in 2021. Per Screamscape, the reason it won't return in 2021 is that Billie Eilish's personal theme slash branding will be changing to something not dark before halloween paradise 2021 rolls around so if you're a fan get ready for that new personal brandon that's coming to the eilish household wow interesting she's gonna be a sweetheart she's gonna be like jessica simpson in 2001 wow we'll just have to wait and see this is confusing i we already went back and forth on taylor she was all about bats and uh you know thrusting and then she became about

butterflies and colors i like how do how are we supposed to keep track of who's light who's dark the hollywood vampires famously turned into the hollywood nice guys and then back to hollywood vampires it's so confusing well the sun came up so you know what are you gonna do during the day only concerts during the day for a little while right yes um that's so strange well that seems like a real that's a pretty big spoiler for the forthcoming billy eilish output yeah really yeah um she's gonna try smiling for a change you know it's wrestling sometimes feuds are telegram like they're like well this seems like it's what wrestle the big match like wrestlemanial will be this they're setting up 18 months out 12 months out

you know sure all right well prepare for that everyone prepare for that the only thing we don't know is if we will still be in lockdown by the time Billie Eilish's new phase is occurring there's

no way to know let's hope by the time there's the the smiles and sunshine tour that we could go see it in person and not just from our cars uh yes we hope so uh on to my haunt or my age-appropriate halloween drive-thru experience so i went to um it was called haunt a ween and it's still going for a little while longer it is in woodland hills california uh mike i have to say uh unlike you uh yes we did discover roll your windows down to hear the audio there were a lot more signs at mine uh the roads were very smooth because this took place in an empty mall parking lot yeah that's one of my childhood malls uh because i grew up near that

and the topanga plaza and this is the one that died this is the dead mall of the bunch um but that's like the theater where i saw you know so many classics independence day and men in black and uh um you know it was nice and peach colored a really good color that aged really bad and it's one of those places where they've started doing weird like there's like church services in the amc now hopefully not now but for the last couple years i remember there's like parts of the parking lot that are not safe to go in anymore. I don't know. I think a bunch of people live in this garage now. This time has not been kind to the promenade.

Is that the one that has the crown books in it? I always forget. Yes, yes. Still with crown books for a really long time. That is maybe one of the most shocking things. We met my friend and his wife there a few years ago at this point. And is there a magianos in there that's right yes that was still going strong yes the magianos has the deal where if you buy an

entree they give you a free one to take home oh you know my parents are at that magianos all the damn time yeah they get you at a free dinner every time you eat dinner there. And then we were walking around in this creepy dead mall, and we turned a corner and there's a Crown Books, a long dead, I thought, book chain. So maybe that's the scariest thing in this episode, is that a book chain I thought was dead for years was still operating in this mall. Beyond the grave.

And it kind of felt also like everything in there was from 20 years ago because it was a lot of used books i believe so yeah kind of a get them out of here sort of weird that mall i'm so delighted i'm glad they have never there's been lots of rumors of ways to retheme uh lots of boring ways to turn this into you know boring apartment buildings or sites it's going to be boring whatever it is but right now it is open and available to do big weird like pumpkin tunnels and stuff so what what do you think how was it uh it was good i mean they're just utilizing the parking space the parking the parking lot you don't go inside you don't drive through the crown books i wish you

drove through and also there's a big shiny outdoor mall across the street and like an amazon grocery store some sort of drive-through dispensary i think that was already closed for the night but we were very confused and interested what that was but that's the one where we did the weird that's where we did the not the void but the other one yes the other virtual thing that I assume is doomed due to the current situation yeah and then we went to my childhood hot dog place flukies

flukies kicks ass flukies great flukies episode coming soon I'm so glad I hear it here's guys you can see the map of the events and where the mall is situated versus the drive-thru experience um you know i i really we liked it um i have to say it was pretty well staffed like they had a lot of people working with uh you know those wands

those glowing wands that you direct traffic with everyone was kind of freestyling it with those uh traffic directing wands like one guy was really like he really told us to roll the windows down it's like no this means stop this means stop and then we drove by someone else who was doing a similar motion i went to stop and they just went happy halloween and they were just clearly like waving their wand around to celebrate the whimsy. I ran into a few wand situations as well where I went, is that a come forward or is that a like scratching your face? So happy people are working, but also like a little stressed out by all the wands.

I also, you know, it did not dawn on me. I mean, just to get here, had to i was like oh i haven't driven on the freeway at night in like six months so that wasn't a that was a bit of a trip and then was that okay oh yeah it was fine it was just like oh yeah this is so weird you know i haven't either not not since i had to go uh have a baby that was like that's the only time in many many months didn't you go on knots to eat the chicken not at night when it like oh yeah i guess yeah yeah all right wow i hadn't thought about how scary it's gonna be the other thing is like yeah as mike alluded to like these are very narrow lanes and especially in a mall parking lot where

they've just set up like handrails, they've essentially made like pen lanes. Like you were driving one to four miles an hour through like car switchbacks, like, you know, going snaking around to go through these little scene lets and stuff. Um, so it was a little stressful honestly at

first to be like that confined and that going that slowly but driving test like don't hit the cones exactly um so yeah i mean there it started off with like a big like jack-o'-lantern tunnel um i'm gonna share the screen again because i have like a bunch of uh pictures um so it started off with like a big jack-o'-lantern tunnel and a pumpkin patch um and there was a what we do in the shadows tunnel which i was like oh did they record voices like will the characters talk to you and um i'll just show you they just kind of bent one of the billboards that are around la into a tunnel shape yeah wait a minute this is just like imagine driving through a poster this was going to be on like a hotel at comic-con and they repurposed it for this yeah so kind of cool to see like a 12 foot high mark prosch um and a six foot high fx on hulu logo

um and yeah i first so so then you you went through a pumpkin patch um a couple different like pumpkin scenes there was some there was a pumpkin patch with funny jokes. And then there was this big LA sign with a Kobe jersey, similar to Mike's Hollywood sign. Everyone's got the city on the mind. That's kind of weird, though. That is weird, yes. The jersey of a deceased. Yeah.

Yeah. We started off, I should say, with a man in kind of Joker makeup came up to us. And he asked, do you want to play a game? Are you ready to play? What? And then he shoved a pole with a basket full of candy in the window and dumped it on Jane's lap. And that became a reoccurring thing throughout

the night. A joker approached you with a pole and a thing of candy at the end of it? Oh, no. There were pirates. There were vampires. There were, most importantly, characters from the new HBO Max

original Roald Dahl's The Witches. At the very end of this, Importantly, characters from the new HBO Max original Roald Dahl's The Witches. At the very end of this, there was like you drove through the town from The Witches and they gave out candy. A very funny moment. Jason, what was your haul at this place? This seems like you got a lot of candy.

Yeah, that was the other thing because this this event was also uh similarly priced 70 and uh i gotta give them credit because we thought it was like over and then it turned out we were only like halfway through and so by the end of it uh this filled a reusable trader joe shopping bag so oh my god that's a ton and a big variety yeah wow a very big variety we didn't get candy at all and i will say about ours uh i thought it was half over and it was actually over wow uh but yeah so this i mean there was a skeleton band there was a scene where the skeletons were having a party there was a pumpkinheaded man who was just kind of picking up loose hay.

I don't know what his deal was. Yeah, I'm trying to remember what other scenes. Yeah, the whimsical skeletons were very fun. A lot of whimsical music. There was a pirate who kept popping up. He would follow like followed the cars from scene to scene uh very fun there was a very fun moment where like one of the guys was dressed as a vampire and jane realized she knew them and asked are you so the voice and he gave us extra candy um sweet so uh my god here's

this is so strange and the dog with the candy on the floor yeah the dog just slept on the ground next to the candy um that was the other thing they didn't really we should have thought ahead of like they're just dumping the candy in both our laps. So they kind of had to pick up the floor candy and put it in a bag to transport it. But it was good. I think all in all, by the time we got in and went through it all,

it was like 30, 40 minutes or so. And they may have had too many people working in the pumpkin patch because someone almost gave us a second pumpkin and we're like, no, no, we got the pumpkin. But you got to pick which pumpkin you wanted. Like, that was cool. So, yeah, I thought this was really fun.

Yeah, windows down, masks on, and they had fun, like, Halloween-y music pumping through everywhere. And it was a really nice time. It's all made so much more surreal. Like, you're describing jokers coming up to you in your car, and then it's all, like, in the shadow of the long-dead Macy's

where I would go get my school clothes it's just some of the strangest it's eerie but comforting i'm just i'm glad things are happening but they're all very surreal to look at um a giant mark approach it's this is all so strange oh this is a this was a skeleton beauty parlor where the skeletons are getting their nails done and primped. I like that. Here's the party. Of course, you see they got the big guys, the Home Depot big guys. Has anyone thought about getting the Home Depot $300 12-foot skeleton?

If I had a front yard, I would absolutely get it. And money also that I didn't spend on a bot yeah that's true yeah your your drain your skeleton money went to the bot right well i that seems pretty strong um yeah i would recommend it it was brought to you by like sponsored by butterfinger party city and f FX so you end up with a lot of candy FX I don't quite know what material support they provide it but the Party City stuff you know everything's

the costumes aren't like our night's quality but everyone was having a lot of fun who worked there and it was like spirits were high oh it was spirits were high spirits were high that Oh, it was. Oh, spirits were high. Spirits were high. That said, it was 80 degrees at 8.30 p.m. the night I went, so it was a little weird. The Woodland Hills is hot.

That's true. Are you guys comforted as Comic-Con fans? Are you comforted seeing activations again? Yes. Have you missed like- The answer is yes. Big billboards masquerading as missed like the answer is yes big big billboards masquerading as experiences the answer is yes uh missing comic-con there's been a lot of things that i have i've

expressed outwardly that i've missed but i have not expressed that i miss seeing like trains re-skinned with a tv show or a movie that i'll never watch and i'm not saying that's any of the things you're talking about i'm just saying that's any of the things you're talking about i'm just saying that nine times out of ten when you see a billboard at comic-con you're never gonna see you're never gonna watch that thing but i like some weird it's like a show about like the young chronicles of the guy who built chucky it's like some maker the toy maker the toy maker and he's like why is he this like brooding 22 year old british guy hot why is he shirtless yeah so hot the guy who made chucky they're they're gonna like kind of suggest chucky abstractly in the opening montage but he

won't actually get built until season six that's right it's on epic tv you know you're never gonna watch it you don't even have the means to watch it right you wouldn't know where to find that available with a and then a map of course on the hilton bay side there's a big poster for scott's new show kincaid the origin story of reuben kincaid from the partridge family oh yeah well thanks for reminding me i know i got a lot to do i gotta work on jaws 19 and i gotta get kincaid right i'm glad comic-con got canceled because i was not ready for my panel yeah so next year there'll be a a 15 story kincaid poster i'm really excited he's hot too by the way i was gonna say we found a really great actor to play the partridge family's manager he is 22 he is british playing american and he is oh so hot

yeah and you will not see the partridge family until season nine you might get a phone call and you think it's danny but you're not sure. It's ambiguous. He drives by a hospital and they suggest Danny was born. He was just born. You just hear a baby cry. And he goes, oh. And then there's kind of like a little, he picks it up. And then he tells me I'll be seeing that baby someday.

Well, that's all well and good for you. But due to executive shakeups, i've been brought in to fix gail the dorothy gail wizard of oz prequel and i am not optimistic about the chances for this show it doesn't help that the star billy eilish is changing her whole persona and branding that's totally gonna overshadow yeah man yeah she's gonna be in persona change meetings from here to 2023 you're never to get any time with her. Right. I'm getting no material support from Cider, which, of course, is the brand new streaming service for Martinelli's Apple Juice.

There are no help whatsoever. Cider spelled S-Y-D-R. Cider. $14 a month we gotta launch in the fall guys why aren't you listening the tie and the cider seasonal tie i don't understand i feel like i'm shouting at a wall we are comfortable launching with only long form cider ads we think we'll build the audience with that and then we'll give them some original ip i will say hey hbo max deserves more credit because they had witches houses there are people dressed like the characters i think i'm not really that familiar with the book and previous movie but from the trailers it looked like the one character that talked to us in a spooky accent

was dressed like an athaway's character and they had big houses and stuff and so that was fun i've heard they have another they have a an in your car experience based on the vow the nixxiom documentary where you sit in your car in a big line for nine hours and nothing ever happens well that you have been um taking the producer role on the producing the documentary about that cult that mike's jack-o'-lantern festival was used to hell yeah yeah we're in and out after the vow this documentary is uh 13 minutes long it's gonna be jam-packed we're gonna plow through it it'll be a real quick bite you know i've been saying ever since the vow i have been saying that people want quicker entertainment they want their content and quick quick little bites yeah that's what i'm gonna do

damn it i've been on the record about loving quick bites many times i know you remember famously so um okay uh my experience um so there's with me doing any sort of halloween haunt experience there is a lot for me to triangulate uh not only the ongoing pandemic but also my baby's uh frequent nap and sleep schedules and most importantly me being afraid of haunts of of things that uh occur in the dark even the the things that you guys just showed me seem perfectly pleasant but i would always be afraid that around the corner as mike said there were some teenagers shaking your car or putting blood on it without my permission or a joker with a candy basket get away get away get away from the car you swerve into the mall i'm gonna go hide in that macy's my favorite macy's um i don't want any of this i i i wanted

a different vibe so that is why considering all of this uh i decided from my experience to take a 10 a.m visit to the halloween experience at the citadel outlet mall whoa so uh this has come up on the show before but again for the non-los angeles people um if you're if you're driving on the five tour from the five freeway tour from disneyland this is probably the most like notable site of your trip to knott's berry farm or disneyland uh because suddenly after a bunch of really industrial boring stuff there's suddenly this giant what looks like an ornate middle eastern palace or i've also said it kind of looks like a mario fortress like it's like the it's like a level eight um and uh first of all

neither here i mean we could do an entire we'll we'll do the you know that was one of the keepers we met i believe was the citadel guy who sounded like a real drag but um uh this was apparently a former tire factory if you were i don't know why i'm saying this now why does it look like a real drag but um uh this was apparently a former tire factory if you were i don't know why i'm saying this now why does it look like a middle eastern palace well because it was a tire factory you see um doesn't really answer it and then i just remember the aaron and i went there a long time ago and we were like whoa so it's themed so it all looks it's all this assyrian vibe that sounds crazy and then we went back there and it's all just behind that big building and it's like the most boring place

you've ever been it's like it's like there's a lot there's a couple outlet malls that into like inside look exactly the same that on the way to palm springs like they all feel like they're in the same yeah yeah there's one camera like that that might just be what all they all of them are they don't uh you're not paying for theming it's as bare bones as it could be i guess that's what an outlet mall's all about um so i have criticized this place for dullness dullness for not delivering on the promise of the assyrian palace that you see from the freeway but for halloween let me tell you uh it's a whole different story uh i brought i brought the whole family i can say uh and thus making this probably the first

themed experience that my son has been to so that's a that's a big moment um yeah pretty exciting um so uh over by the food court there there is their main claim to fat. The big thing that they are boasting about, up on those video billboards that we know from our Disneyland drives that we never get to do anymore. And they're advertising up on those Big Jack, who is the largest pumpkin in Los Angeles. Wow. in los angeles um wow so they say i wonder if they're allowed to make that claim partially because the big jack-o'-lantern mickey is not available for public consumption at disneyland so maybe in another year they couldn't say it um although i saw big jack and he's pretty big jack might be bigger than the than the mickey um big jack is 16 feet tall he's 15 feet wide yeah he

weighs 1500 pounds and he's surrounded by 40 plus bales of hay um that doesn't feel as special now you guys showed me so much hay i think you everybody saw a lot of hay anybody yeah anybody going any of these haunts will see a lot of hay so if you're a fan of hay this is your year um big jack is also surrounded by a spooktacular garden of giant sunflowers and candy corn um and this is one of those so all right you know this is this like little cutesy experience and in another year i might have been more you know where i'm going to the immersive theming of an actual theme park. And pre-having a child, I might have been like, oh yeah, so they got sunflowers.

Those probably look stupid, right? Well, it's fun. They try something. I don't know. This was, to me in my current state, breathtaking. This was wonderful. It was great. It was wonderful to to see big things big cartoony cloth things uh my boy like stood and like stared into the flower and and held it and was one of the

most fascinated i've seen him being something like he did register this is something different uh so now i am like bless you spooktacular garden why would i ever have been snarky about this before oh thank you for entertaining my boy um we uh then uh proceeded to do the experience that you know they don't want people going in to just bc big jack and leave they want you to go explore the many offerings of the outlet mall, which is pretty much open. So that's why there's an activity called Let's Track Jack and His Friends. And this I like because we got some original IP involved. You go to a visitor's center past a bunch of brochures, and they give you a map of the mall,

and then stickers of all of the characters that you might meet uh and their names and you have to go look for them uh now if you plan on doing the citadel tracking jack and his friends you might want to hit the skip button a couple times uh because i'm going to spoil some locations for you um but uh kitty cat was at michael kors so if you're looking for a hint though also just go to michael kors that's one of the 12 you gotta find 12 friends um mums with a z who's a mummy uh was outside of rubies which is a a chain that i am shocked has not gone bankrupt during the pandemic somehow uh they've made it um and then best of all skelly the skeleton was outside of the rocky mountain chocolate factory rocky mountain chocolate factory the home to truffles the large sad bear who we love so much

uh aaron we always we've talked about this and i think and and god bless our audience our audience has now posted a lot and sent us a lot of photos of them comforting truffles the sad bear uh who needs some emotional support i've loved seeing all these please always keep them coming but a lot of truffles live indoors so we haven't seen truffles in a long time and we've been we've been at home taking care of the boy so rounding it realizing oh my god that's a rocky mountain is he out is he out oh my god truffles is out uh he was wearing a mask and a confusing i'm sorry a mask not like a hallway mess but the you know, that we all have to wear because of the disease. And also a confusing costume that was like a cape and a necktie at once.

I didn't really know what they were. But I, and it's, you know, hanging off of them weird and bad. But I would expect nothing less from my buddy. I might as well screen share. You can take in this wonderful sight. We got to introduce my boy to our favorite bear, who, by the way, for a long time, I've said this before, this will be his first Halloween costume of his life,

is being this sad bear. Aaron was so happy to see him. I was so happy to see him. This was truly heartwarming. As you can tell, he's very excited he's very he's as invested as us not certainly not just looking off somewhere else um you should see you should see big jack too just tell me what you uh uh do you think this i was gonna say can you go back to the picture of the close-up picture of truffles real quick? And I'm going to make a really disgusting comment.

Yes, I might know where you're going. What's your observation about truffles? The mask that's like clinging tightly to his snout. It definitely looks like the lower half of Borat's yellow swimsuit with his testicles being ens ensnared and his mankini yeah there you go uh that's sort of the i just get a vibe from that i that's just me though he probably needs to wear a bigger mask probably to get the full coverage but i'm glad he's he's trying um you know truffles is always sad and in this trying year i just hope he doesn't have it even worse though how could it get worse for him he just seems so glum no matter what he's sadder than eeyore and so we always like to stop by and uh make him feel a little better i believe

we may have done this i think aaron did this without touching him uh because you know germs and all but you could still lend distant support um i thought you were gonna when you said disgusting i thought you were gonna comment on the multiple stains i mean that's gross too yeah it's not ill fit also the tie reads trick or treat be so sweet give me something good to eat be so sweet and then the tie is also stained well with chocolate he is a hungry boy he's a grown boy he's named after chocolate or or treats at least um what do you

think of big jack here uh i mean yeah he's great yeah i like him pretty huge i think maybe bigger than that mickey right i yeah maybe a little by a little bit it's interesting i obviously without comparison to like um where they're both located it's completely it's kind of hard to sell to tell yeah yeah but

you know it satisfied me i also liked that one here's one of these big sunflowers uh really impressed my boy and i like that it was in front of a flip-flop shop one of our flip-flop shops plural uh one of the uh you know an old fallen brother which we just found out is no longer at uh city walk uh does this count as a citadel saga i mean if this knocked it out i'd be thrilled i can't remember who the keeper of that was but perhaps we'll ask them we can yeah yeah somebody somebody can text um uh that particular keeper will you will you um for one halloween have uh your child be richard nixon well i do have the man i may have thrown away the mask at some point

um i don't know you know after my whole life's uh story of being really into presidents and you know and then how uh uh how uh insane and damaging the last four years have been i think i'm gonna keep my son away i'm gonna keep him away from the idea of presidents as long as possible okay like until he's confronted by photos of them in a classroom i'm gonna pretend they don't exist i'm not gonna say the word that's fair um seems like a plant he's here he's just looking at like a white pumpkin this is i can't tell you how much this this warms my heart my overall my my summation of all of this uh this we we did this in less than an hour um it was uh def it was definitely uh a little mundane it took place at a place i just called uh specifically not very well themed and it is uh without a doubt the best thing i've done in 2020

our spirits soared even we missed driving to disney we missed that bad drive oh yeah what's the 710 and is the 10 crowded today and uh uh like we gotta get over the interchange is on the left this time we miss all that we haven't got to do it uh with the kid i so even like driving halfway to disneyland we were like aglow leaving this outlet mall um oh and i forgot the detail that if you uh track jack and his friends successfully that your prize, there's a number of them, but you can get a free soda at Charlie's Subs. You can get a pretzel at Auntie Anne's. Pretty good prizes.

Not so good for my little Jack Tracker who cannot have any of those items. The only prize they could have offered that would have made us go do the whole thing is three ounces of smelly formula um that that would have like oh real well his favorite his favorite treat um did your child turn to you at any point and go like

since we're halfway down the five can we just go to downtown Disney? They've shut up a limited time shopping experience in stage 17 and we can get our picture under a play it sign. When I was coming into this realm, a spirit whispered to me, a ghostly boy spirit. He was full of youthful enthusiasm, Just like me, Papa. He said, please take your boy there so he can walk in my footsteps. The Disney outlets at the Citadel outlet reopened a few months ago when there was lines around the block to get that discounted park merchandise. That clearance, like, grad night, that never happened merchandise.

Here's the thing about the outlet malls they're not really outlet malls it's all this big scam this is how i feel like this is the end of the episode i'm guessing but like i've been in those disney outlet stores and there's like a little clearance section but everything else is regular price yeah it's not cheaper there it's not cheaper in most of these stores there was a day there's like two in orlando that are like really really dirt cheap clearance well that's a different thing they closed the one in california yeah but there is one in orlando i think maybe still that actually has cheap discounted stuff but yeah these outlet stores by and large not much different than a regular store

there was a day we were driving back from disneyland maybe i don't know if we did an overnight or something i think we just ended up driving back like on black friday or the day before thanksgiving or something and the traffic was unreal i mean it's always really bad around there although not currently because no one's going anywhere but like it was so awful one day and we were like wait a minute is this like pre-black friday at the outlet mall and indeed it was and once we passed it it was so crowded there were police everywhere directing like this was uh you know like a coachella audience had descended on this outlet mall and for what for slightly cheaper flip flops I guess yeah I

you know I feel like I went in an H&M which has cheap clothing it's the same it's the same price it's fooling it's fooling us yeah I've never been fond of this place I have to say until now until they gave us this wonderful less than an hour until

they showed us big jack um i mean i will always i'll always have a different view of this place from now on they made halloween real special maybe even in a way if it's possible more special than the one that i spent with jay leno and alex chilton wow well that's I mean you just said It all Back to the beginning I guess that's the point Where you end the episode and say you Survived haunt cast the

Fright local haunts Edition here's Hoping that next year we can go Back to the way it's supposed to be getting Screamed at by teens yes And that Mike can go have The Halloween that he wants and that Jason and I can have essentially the one we are currently having where we stay. I I'm working on Jason though.

What do you think, Jason? Will you declare one that you'll go to at least one of these with me next year? Are you willing to? This was supposed to be the year. This was like, all right,

I'll go to universe. I'll do the polished one. You know, I'll do, I'll, I'll get polished one. No, no, like'll do the polished one you know i'll do i'll i'll the polished one no the like high budget like you know okay it has the most liability insurance that that's the other thing i thought about all these drive-through haunts especially the small ones

what what must that liability insurance be like and here's a 300 cars a night and a bunch of people directing traffic who just learned how to do this a week ago good luck all right so jason will be at horror nights next year i'll do it next year done deal um and uh hey as for us uh next week hey we know what's happening next week there's only one topic it could be. It's the topic that we are parsing through as slowly as possible, as slowly as driving through a pumpkin tunnel, bumper

to bumper. We're heading back to the Haunted Mansion next week. I don't know. I guess we usually don't say it, but, you know, we know what week it is. We know what we're doing. Get pumped up. I can listen to the previous episodes because my memory has been destroyed this year,

and I don't know where we left off. I figured it out, so I know how to kick it off, and I think we'll be fine. How far will we get? Only time will tell. And I'll obviously go to the cemetery gate, the Patreon for the bonus content where we've had, I think two of them have come out and we got one more spooky episode for the month before we go back to the regular second gate. And that's of course at patreon.com slash podcast, the ride.

Hey, and a merchant T public. Oh, we got, we got a haunted man or a hot cast the fright uh design for shirts and other things i use your imagination what it could be on um and uh yeah that's that it's been a fun month um so for myself rick zombieberg, Dr. Murderhog, and General Trag, what does General Trag say? You have the last word. He says, we have to stop those neutrinos. All right.

So stop the neutrinos in your life. Stop the metaphorical neutrinos uh by uh plundering this country by voting vote those neutrinos i forget every the neutrinos were scott they were those three like space 50s like kids that like were hanging out with the ninja turtles i'm sure you would notice you would recognize them michelangelo they're not wait are they not bad no they're good oh shoot oh never mind vote for the neutrinos oh god vote neutrinos get neutrinos in the white house this year yeah for sure all right thanks for straightening me out general tragg uh and uh we'll be back next week happy hauntings forever dog this has been a forever dog production executive produced by mike carlson jason sheridan scott gerdner brett boehm joe cilio and alex ramsey for more

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