Podcast: The Ride - The CityWalk Saga - Sector 17 with Nick Mandernach

Episode Date: September 30, 2018

Nick Mandernach (I Feel Bad, UCB's JV) joins us to discuss The Fallen Sector. Sector 17 consists of: Gibson Amphitheater (retired) Saddle Ranch/Country Star/Womhopper's Wagon Works Restaurant/Womp's Restaurant/Tony Roma's (retired)  Victoria Station Restaurant (retired) Marvel Mania (retired) Listen to Podcast: The Ride Ad-Free on Forever Dog Plus: https://foreverdogpodcasts.com/podcasts/ 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! When your town has let you down When your porch has fallen short When you're too worn out to run And need some ribs or a Cinnabon You need a place, a need a place A place for rock A place for roll

A place where Oakland Raiders Merch is sold A sublime hot topic And billabong A place where you can purchase A candy thong So let's go take a walk Let's all go to CityWalk, tonight, tonight.

Podcast The Ride presents The CityWalk Saga, a daily, 19-part, extremely necessary series exploring the stores, restaurants, and wonderful magic that make up universal city walk hollywood welcome to podcast the ride the city walk saga sector 17 i'm jason shardin here as always mike carlson hi i'm here too and scott gerner hello we're cresting the hill where we've almost made it true we're so close to the end of this uh joining us today uh writer on people of earth and the upcoming nbc show i feel bad nick mondernock hey thanks for having me hello thank you for being here i'm so excited to talk about this sector with you guys i think i think you got a great one i got a great one and it's an interesting one because this one is entirely uh fallen brothers

yes it's all things that aren't there anymore uh um including one that was very recently demolished now the the building of one is still around so there's there's remnants of all of it but it's all experiences you can no longer have and we're relying on your your memory it's a haunted episode it's a haunting haunted episode speaking of haunted oh boys, haunted episode. Speaking of haunted. Oh. Oh. Boys, boys, boys. He's with us.

You never know when these start. It's the sector trooper. He's back. Boys, how are you? Well, you came in in your iconic way of no sound or interesting ghostly way of appearing. We just turn and you're there. Yes, yes. My soul is feeling

fulfilled thank you you're at sector 17 oh great yeah you're feeling good because we're almost there and we've so many stones have been well you you give us the stones yes i send them okay usps because i um sometimes i can't make it you know i I have a job, right? Oh, really? Yeah, we mentioned your job. I'm still working at the admissions gate in heaven. Or in hell. Oh, that's right. Okay. But hopefully my skills apply in heaven when you save my soul. I'm glad you remembered from three

days ago. Yes. The last three days have been a fog. Of course. When you escape, are you going to try to get a job at CityWalk? If you'll give me a reference. Oh, cool. Oh, yeah. I can actually, I do have a connection.

My older brother used to sell light-up swords there at CityWalk. I can totally pick that up. No higher praise. Yeah. Wow. No kidding. How long did he hold that down for? Again, this is an easy summer. I think he did just a summer of it.

And yeah, you just had just a bag of those neon neon glow swords i think he had a blast excellent you've given me so much strength that being at sector 17 uh banjo kazooie white 2k bug oh all these things you miss they're coming to you now in salt lake city thank you boys thank you oh you're seeing all the pop culture you missed wonderful you're giving me great strength is it and it's giving you're enjoying it it's giving you joy yes you know what would bring me greater joy the sector 17 stone would you like your assignment well yes yes give us give us the places and we'll get you that stone or we'll get it from you, rather. You remember how it works.

Yes, of course we all remember. Sector 17, Gibson Amplitheater, Saddle Ranch, and Marvel Mania. Some ghostly phlegm in your throat there. It was an amplitheater. I think you put an L in there. Yes, I was. Wow, even human flaws are coming back to you. Yes, it's very nice.

That's why you're becoming so human, yeah. I can't wait to sprain my ankle again. You wouldn't think that's something you would miss, being a ghost. No, but you do as a ghost. You sprained your ankle, and that's how you drowned in the fountain. No, I didn't drown. I died of a staph infection. Oh, right.

But it forced you to fall down. Yes. I think that's what I was thinking of. It forced you to fall down yes i think that's what i was thinking of you forced you to fall down and you were like you couldn't get up for a while so you're exposed to more water than the average child in the fountain yes you're right you're right the the water filled my lungs inducing the coma but boys boys let's let's focus let's focus yeah we're i mean where where do we begin i guess well let's let's kick it off with the Gibson Amphitheater. Yeah. So this was the concert venue that was at Universal for many years,

I believe opened in the 70s. And it apparently was part of the tour. It was like the slope and the seats. It was outdoors, first of all, to begin with. And it was four stunt shows i think and but that didn't you know those are only used during the day and supposedly some employee who was probably not compensated properly for the idea was he said why don't we have bands come play at night and with with the kickoff of jesus christ superstar in i want to say 1972 uh though i could be wrong it became one of la's

great uh concert destinations until it closed down for the the harry potter experience to be opened up um uh it's funny when i started going through it like i think by the end the acts kind of like whittled down a little bit and i was like so ready to laugh but they actually had huge like like radiohead toward there i think they had like they had like they had like pretty some some pretty massive acts oh here's one that i thought was so interesting the dalai lama was really the dalai lama came and did like and and and did like you know a a talk or whatever that is so i love the idea that the dalai lama was at city walk for like a day and night or something like that walking around and were people like scalping tickets yeah who opened for him yeah yeah yeah

yeah i've done him uh right right i well stemming from that you might have found in the same list is similar area pope john paul ii also spoke at uh at the gibson amphitheater that at that time the universal amphitheater he was doing a tour of la and did mass at dodger stadium apparently yeah and uh and he did this special event at the universal amphitheater really glad i came across this right before we recorded um the it was an event where you could be there in person and see the pontiff with your own eyes, but also this event was simulcast to similar-sized venues all across the country in St. Louis and Denver,

and using satellite technology, all these cities were uplinked and able to experience the Pope all at the same time, and the name of this event was papal space bridge 87 that's one way of describing like internet technology and broadcast what essentially is a conference call today was regarded as a space bridge space bridge that's like like Thor's rainbow bridge that two realms are connected by.

The Heimdall is the one responsible for guarding. Space bridge, that's crazy. That's such a fun name, too. The Sector Stones will open the space bridge for me to go to heaven. Oh, that's what'll take you back. Off of the

love radiating from Pope John Paul II, who's left this mortal coil, but he's in heaven. You'll meet him. Yes, he'll be my guide. Oh, wow. That's beautiful. And as you cross the bridge, it'll be playing the anthem of City Walk, Gasolina.

Yes. I believe we established. Also John Paul II's favorite song. Daddy Yankee will drive me in a golf cart. There was a part of the, I bet now it's his favorite song, but I bet as of Papal Space Bridge 87, his favorite song was the song played for him on guitar by a man with no arms who played with his feet.

That happened at Papal Space space for j7 at the universal amphitheater that happened at papal space bridge 87 but also happened at hoover school the elementary school i went to oh when uh in 1993 hoover school 93 is this the same uh guitarist it had to be right yeah there couldn't have been so many the space bridge maybe he's really what is uniting us all his music and his guitar is like heimdale sword that unlocks the bridge yes um so there's hardly any events more special than papal space bridge but did you guys get to i grew up in l.a so i saw some stuff there. And Nick, I imagine you did too. Yeah, I'm a Valley kid, so I was there. I'm actually shocked that I didn't.

I looked through these. Really? I was like, how did I miss, All American Rejects seems to have been there every other weekend. For years. And I love, like, so many, like, pop punk, which is, like, totally what I was into. I can't believe I missed that. Oh, gotcha. Oh, i have a

friend my friend perry's i think snuck backstage and like we had a weezer thing yeah and got to land like like like meta like got pictures of it might have been weezer and tenacious d touring together possibly yeah there were great concerts there i saw weezer there not on that tour but on the when they were touring their famous albums their classic albums blue and pinkerton first night they would do blue album second night they would do pinkerton i only went to pinkerton i was trying to save money the time and pinkerton being my favorite album of theirs oh gotcha uh and it was very they did half of the new weezer and then half old weezer where rivers dressed up like he did when he was 22 and he dressed oh wow so the first

yeah so weezer was going through a phase where they had josh freeze who was like a famous kind of oh yeah drummer who played with like everyone from like nine inch nails to i forget he was playing with the replacements a couple of years ago was he in with like the queens of the stone age world maybe yeah he's playing with everybody. He was playing drums. They took Pat from Weezer off the drums. He was playing guitar. Rivers was not playing any guitar. He was just being a slick front man.

And he had a trampoline on stage. And he would jump up and down. And like to the point where you would be like, he's going to fall and hurt himself. Like he was just like kind of this like guy,, very stilted with his arms in the air. And you're like, what is this? I don't think coordinated when I think of RuneSchool. I'm not thinking like, yeah. I saw him do Jimmy Kimmel Live.

And he had a ukulele for no reason. And he started smashing it. And you're getting the sense that he's out of control. But the first part of it, so he's just on the mic. And they played stuff like Suzanne, which is one of the best songs, which is great. And then there was like an intermission and he came out and he was old and now pat was back on the drums he was wearing his like sweater vest again like he was in the mid 90s and then they just did pinkerton all the way through which was great but it was very weird

that he played rivers like cosplay yes played as himself on the show uh my theory i've said this to you not on the podcast is that we's weezer is our beach boys they're the band like he's gonna be he will dye his hair black he will be doing he will be he will still be wearing sweaters progressively bigger and bigger as he gains age and weight we like we will be rivers is not going anywhere until he's 87 years old uh um and they'll start doing it'll be the christmas album we do the we do pinkerton again but with an orchestra they have like a cruise ship but like there's a cruiser cruise like just absolutely light up your point like yeah that's they're in there they're in the cruise world they're in the cruise world um uh this is a here's a bit of weezer trivia i don't know if you know this you know they're they're they're big hit they're smash hit new song africa

you know that the public has embraced so thoroughly africa actually they didn't write really africa africa was this older band called toto in the 80s, and my parents saw them at the Gibson Amphitheater in 82. But one of the first concerts with the enclosed, with the roof, which it was outdoor before. That was the year it got enclosed, 82. Yeah, one of the first things, and I'm very jealous of my parents for having seen Prime Tto 82 yeah for free apparently because i forgot i i haven't brought this up in any of these sectors yet that my mom worked it uh

at universal in the early 80s she was she was an accountant in what was like a the this big towering black skyscraper uh there at the time that's now like the smallest building on the property but uh yeah but everybody everybody went for free um and they also went to one other concert i think maybe the first concert my parents saw together at all possibly while dating uh was the first concert with a roof frank sinatra and uh and there was a moment that my dad's reminded me of my whole life from this concert where he, Sinatra, is setting up a song, and he says, all right, this one's one of the classics. This is some real music you're about to hear.

Not like that Betty Davis-ized shit. Furious. davis i shit furious which i developed the theory that maybe he's mad at kim karnes because he like tried to roofie her or something and then but she like put a coaster on top of the glass just the time and he didn't get to like a buddy he took her away when he wasn't looking like was like hey gotta get out of here save yourself yeah somebody in frank's camp betrayed him and like i know things you can't know get out of here kim the first few years of uh uh gambling being legal in atlantic city in jersey frank sinatra kind of had the run of the place like steve winn sure he gave him the exclusive contract and stuff and they would just let him gamble at all hours there's a story i think in the

there's a dean martin book there's a story of uh the two of them wanting to play cards and like going to the tables in atlantic city uh where one of them was doing a residency and demand it like we want the dealer to deal by hand which is like very illegal like casinos that's why you gotta do the the machines and like the dealers like uh and the pit boss is like oh it's frank sinatra you gotta do it and he was an asshole about it roommate oh really you know him up there is my roommate in hell you get him yes we we room together it's weird that he has to share the space but i guess it's hell and you're being punished so um has he changed his ways is he uh no he's still a son of a

bitch um this is this is total this is absolutely true also in my my family history i don't think i've said this on the podcast before one of the stranger stories in my family history. I don't think I've said this on the podcast before. One of the stranger stories in my family's history, my grandfather wrote for a modern screen magazine or some 50s entertainment magazine. And he wrote something unflattering about Frank Sinatra. And Sinatra sent thugs to his residence to dangle him over a window. And he said nothing happened.

He got, he wriggled out of it. But one day he opened the door and Sinatra's guys were there. Oh my God. Yeah. My grandfather. And which I've, so I've always thought like if that had gone the other way, maybe my mom isn't born. Maybe I'm not born.

Maybe I'm a lost soul just like the sector keeper if sinatra had gotten so you have a man you want to send frank a message via the sector keeper oh yeah sure i can pass it yeah now's my whiteboard on her fridge um what what i mean i hey i guess just hey fuck off chairman scott that should get the job done you gotta be careful when there's no more room in hell the deg will walk the earth oh god i'm gonna run into him and what if the sector keeper you wouldn't i mean let's cut a deal here just please promise you won't like introduce us if i end up in hell and if we don't get you out i mean i have every intention of getting you out of course if you get all the sector stones i won't like introduce us if i end up in hell and if we don't get you out i mean i have every intention

of getting you out of course if you get all the sector stones i won't send the ghost of frank sinatra after you oh my god now we really have cause to do this right because now my soul is at stake he's gonna get like i didn't get my my boys didn't get their hands on your grandpa it's it's frankie's revenge you know what's so funny to me i was just like i was just reading someone like posted like a tweet or something about like these rap music we're worshiping these thugs it's so funny because i guarantee you that guy would be like not like frank sinatra these days no literally the man bankrolled by the mob yeah by the outfit itself what are you talking about like what is your man a man that i heard donald trump tell a story that he was horrified by

the man with no shame he was i was like i was hanging out with sinatra and a man this is on an old howard stern show he goes yeah and a guy we were in vegas and a guy came up to him was like mr sinatra i just got married uh to your. We danced to your music as the first song. And Sinatra goes, get him, boys. And he just had the shit kicked out of this guy. And Trump is telling his story. Trump's like, yeah. You can tell Trump is put off by this.

One of the most terrible men. Vile. Vile man is like, that guy was a little crazy, huh? Oh, my God. S my god sector keeper has he hurt you um boys boys no that means

yes tell me about the gibson all right all right we'll stay away i think that sticks out in my mind and i i don't think i went to this but this was where uh conan when conan did his live tour before he had his tbs show but after the tonight show he played the gibson amphitheater which is spitting distance from the soundstage built for him to host the tonight show so like it's probably his first time back on universal property and he is doing like a sold like a packed show like around the corner from where he had just been fired zucker is clenching his fists

how dare he yeah i thought i exiled he was banished and now he's spitting on my very turf yeah um jeff zucker who now is at cnn and and trump is like shitting on he's calling him like little jeff right he's getting he's getting the trump business so in this case i as little jeff or little little little member he was using the d's oh he was calling little uh what's his name corker oh really right he was really that's the most condescending he wasn't just writing little he would write L-I-D-D like wasn't it Bob Corker he was goofing on oh maybe

he was like little Bob Corker he was calling him that's it wasn't it little like wasn't it like Marco Rubio yeah you can't use the same what the fuck he's run out of really great Conan oh yeah there you go He's the same. What the fuck? He's run out of really great. He's run out of stuff.

Conan. Oh, yeah. There you go. He just has like three. He just cycles through. If he ever decides to have like a punch up room of name generators. Yeah. Though I don't support the man.

That'd be a fun gig. Yeah. If you could think of mean names. It's you and Dennisis miller and dan manan the millennial the millennial comedian yeah gavin mcginnis the old room of red boys uh what oh the gibson was also the home for a long time of the uh mtv movie was it the movie awards and the teen choice awards uh this is famously we've mentioned him before sasha baron cohen uh his friend bruno uh was there his associate

his associate bruno fell on eminem oh this is our podcast. That's where that famous accident occurred. That famous accident. Yes. The butt to face, wasn't it? Wasn't it like this? Yes. Yes. And all of D12 got mad and left.

All of D12. In a totally spontaneous moment. Headed for the Purple Hills. Jason, did you ever see a concert at Gibson? No, never. I never saw it at the Amphibia Real brief the only other thing I saw there A free concert

Well it wasn't free I saw it for free Put on by The Shins Oh another return We talked about the Garden State earlier Oh wait The Sector Keeper You should listen to this band.

They're called The Shins. They change your life, I swear. The Shins? Shins. Do you remember how body parts work? That's a thing you could injure. You could twist your shin. It's also the name of a band, and they are so good that they could change your life,

I swear. Oh, excellent. I'll check them out when I ascend to heaven. When you get all your memories back. Thank you. Yeah, excellent. I'll check them out when I ascend to heaven. When you get all your memories back. Thank you. Yeah, yeah. I think they'll give you strength. The other things I saw there,

in 2005, I saw Beck two nights in a row on the Guero tour. That was fantastic. Oh, sure. And my dad dragged me to a concert in 1998 that I was all harumphy about and probably like a real jerk during it. Like, I have to go with my dad this lame concert

instead of the rap i like instead of buster rhymes and this concert that i frowned and crossed my arms through the whole time in 1998 was chicago and hall and oats oh my god wow this is my exact wheelhouse today i've seen both of them multiple times i made a video with chicago wow this is i'm i'm bored and mad in a chicago concert in 1998 and then how many years later 13 years later i got i did a video with with the band for funnier diet and i got to say hey chicago meet my dad oh great yeah yeah that's many years after the fact i feel like that made up for what a like little yeah jerk ass i was but i'd love to see that um i have a chicago story um now we're talking the trumpet player from chicago went to my church and uh i used to i basically wait who's the wait

can i name it uh trumpet is uh pankow that might that might i literally do not this is my dream for this well was it parisator that might that might i literally do not know you're in school nick by scott this is my dream for this yeah well was it parisader or lawson or uh the banker fake out let's go let's go pink i only i only i learned their names because i had to block them oh yeah to arrange them in this it was very it's very hard to move eight people yeah um but what uh what happened i i i was playing i did like half-assed trumpet through uh through middle school and high school. Yeah, me too. I would just pretend to play a lot of the time because it hurt my teeth.

And I did play at the church. And it became clear that my mom was friends with the trumpet player and wanted him to come and encourage me to continue to play. So I played, but I blew it. I mean, I forgot the solo. I fucked up. I was like, my arm was all fucked up it was like like it's all so he came up after us he's like and and clearly like wanting to like support me but knowing that it would never happen and he just was kind of dancing around like playing trumpet all right oh wow nice like we had nowhere to go they had no just honestly it's the most honest thing but

it was just him like clearly like being asked to to bolster me and not being able to in good faith oh my god it sounds like he didn't like force a compliment he didn't force a compliment again and i have all respect this is this is a story of respect he's just like yeah all right but there's nothing else to say like what else could you talk about so it was just i just had an awkward like three minutes of him just going like right on whoa i think it i think it's lofty this blonde guy does that seem right yes yes okay that's it lee loftney he was one of the nicest guys very nice in the shoot they were all very nice but those horn guys especially and you're like wow i can't believe you guys are here you guys are legends hey it's been a crazy ride that kind of just like pleasant it was i honestly i'm so my chicago day was very special to me i'm sorry i feel like mine went went better than yours yeah definitely but no but i you know

something even at the time i was like this is the right thing to do you should not you do not do not encourage my my lack of talent don't do it yeah he'd say well yeah if i and you know you're a you're a working successful comedy writer now as opposed to a uh right like a twice divorced trumpeter in a scab in like a garage ska band or something just failing out right um uh yeah well uh congrats you uh you made it out of that alive yes um any other memories of the the amphitheater what oh you know we mentioned this uh because it was replaced by harry potter and i think some of the foundation stayed i think they kept some of the infrastructure of the building right i'm not totally sure but um you know i said

this in the harry potter episode but i think it's a shame that they had to tear down the place where the greatest album of all time was recorded the blues brothers briefcase full of blues i feel like it should stay up as a historic monument um and uh i so i'm i'm mad at the harry potter ride i go on it but but I shout, what about the Blues Brothers? Oh, and also the last Blues Brothers concert was there. Oh, right. Several years later.

So, Blues Heads, a lot of history here. Should I maybe keep talking about the Blues Brothers for way longer? Or... Oh, okay. Why don't we continue the music discussion, though, and jump on over to Saddle Ranch. Yes, please, boys.

Saddle Ranch. I mean, Saddle Ranch was the final restaurant occupying this space, but certainly not the first. No. This is a very exciting uh area now the building is gone entirely and i'm not sure why and i don't know what's going in there well i know the rumors about it oh really do you have anything you can say sure but there's message board rumors that the toothsome chocolate factory is going right where the saddle ranch the giant

ripoff willy wonka dessert restaurant that's in Orlando already might be going where Saddle Ranch is. Very popular. Chocolate Emporium and also like savory, savory treats. There are sweets and savory, anything you would want. Yeah. Pretzels and candy. The whole thing smells like chocolate. So when you order a plate of mozzarella sticks or wonton nachos or something, you will not stop smelling that chocolate odor.

Yeah. So just like I like that they're keeping up the tradition of that space, which is just quick closures. Just like you're spending millions of dollars creating a brief anecdote. It adds up to being mentioned on a podcast briefly. Okay, so I have a full list here. When it initially opened, it was called Womp Homper's Wagon Works Restaurant. That was, and the backstory of this, do you know the backstory, Scott? yeah it was about a flim flam man who uh uh found a good a good uh line selling people wagon pieces and build a giant factory on top of this hill at the coanga pass and now they had converted it to

a restaurant this way i didn't i just copy and pasted the bio and hadn't read it till right now my my little thing says cl womp hop i was gonna ask what the name was it's c l womp hopper a legendary slick talking wagon salesman who invented wheeling and dealing this character invented the general notion of wheeling and while dealing great grandfather he's your great grandfather you have so many connections to this place wow yes he i i'm with him right now you said i'm out yes i'm so proud of the he was an entrepreneur in this chocolate place is piss on his grave so you want him like remembered and i want him honored yeah yes yes boys boys promise me

one day you'll reopen the wampumper oh my god promise you were quick to make that i'll make that promise oh okay you can do it yeah i can do it thank you you got it i mean there's an old saying in la you know in the biz that if you want an easy go of it for a little while, try to open a restaurant in LA County. At City Walk. At City Walk, potentially. I feel like C.L. Womp Hopper. Am I getting the name right? Actually, it's Hopper.

Hopper. Hopper. Excuse me. Yeah, Womp Hopper. C.L. Womp Hopper. hopper cl womp hopper i feel like he probably is related to like other deceased characters from different you know shopping and dining uh experience platter centers like merryweather pleasure or even tgi friday tgi friday or even just because i want to say the name marvel mcfay from astroworld yeah yeah um yeah and do you find are you looking at a photo of him from somewhere

because there are photos of him. I'm bringing him up. I have not seen the photo. I'll do it in real time. You're right on the money, because would you believe that he is a bearded man in a top hat? Of course I believe that. Is this him? Yep.

And who else does he remind you of? Imagineer Joe Rohde. Well, you're close. Are you going to say Stan Lee from the Marvel Medium? No. I'm still not. You're all wrong. The original Top Hat old-timey Beardo in Theme Park. Dream Finder.

Yeah, and when this restaurant opened, who was hired to play C.L. Wompopper, but Ron Schneider, the original actor who played Dream Finder. Holy shit. Literally the same man. Wow. And he's just playing

him. He isn't C.L. Womp Hopper who obviously was a real man who used the sector keeper. Yes, yes. But he did him justice. So he did him justice. He played him well, yes. His portrayal was not piss on the grave. No. Here's a photo of Ron Schneider that also came up in the search results.

He's holding figment in the Dream Finder. He's a whimsical guy. Wow. So, yeah, I really wish I could have experienced this place. A restaurant with a plot, obviously, always up my alley. Aesthetically, it's this fake, rusted out tin shack, but then you go in there and it's nine rooms. It so massive it's so big also they made a point of using a reclaimed barn wood to construct it i read and corrugated tin roofs just like back in the day i'm looking at the

picture and it looks like they're tin roofs but the but the roof is made to look like it's wood. Right? Am I wrong? That's what I'm getting from the mixed materials. Yeah, mixed materials. But then you go inside and it's brass and it's bricks and it's dull 80s browns and Tiffany lamps and all the stained glass, all the shit I love to swim in. It's beautiful. It is amazing. all the stained glass all the shit i love to swim in it's beautiful it is if you were watching the

movie version of hello dolly and just ran face first into the tv screen that's what whompers wagon works looks like and so that lasted 81 to 86 then it became womps it's such a womps restaurant like how hooters tried to become hoots yeah wampers became wamps uh wamps lasted 86 to 88 and then it got taken over by an old friend of ours tony romas in 1988 to 1995 as we said one of the only establishments to make the the city walk jump to be put in a different location but this one's the one in my heart we were i was finally recalling it with eva yeah that's that's that's my that's that's my tony romas wow that's that's uh uh did you did you ever make it to that one

uh or do you do you have like a first universal studios memory or well i definitely remember like like hard rock was i remember being young enough to be impressed by the hard rock cafe. I was floored by that. So that was, yeah, that was probably my, my, my, they've got all this memorabilia. Holy cow. I also remember a big thing that my friends and I would do cause we were in high school, but like, we didn't like like rap rock is we would go to BB King's house of blues, but to hear the music.

So we'd go there and there's like, I think we had like a substitute teacher who played harmonica there and we fucking idolized and we thought it was so fucking cool um yeah we uh we would go there we saw we did see like the scottalites played there which was like like fun but we we would often be at bb king's house of blues wow that's funny because we've covered that one and i don't yeah i don't i don't even think of any as i don't even think of it as a place anyone would have gone to right yeah definitely but again we were those kids you know what i mean we kind of appreciated good music oh so you must have gone to that baked potato down at the bottom of the hill yeah yeah yeah those yeah we got bad expensive

baked potato but it was so i mean that place is so fucking expensive though i mean it is the club the big potato yeah i don't know anything about it. I know its reputation. It's like a jet, yeah. It's at the base of the hill off of the Coinga Pass, a legendary jazz place. Yeah, but I think it's like... I mean, maybe this is... I was in high school,

and maybe the entry fee was even $3, which seemed prohibitive to me. But I remember it seemed really expensive. But we would also go to... There's a place, Charlie O's, which is, again, now a fallen brother in the Valley. We would go there. But there was actually a time where there was a pretty good amount of jazz.

And, you know, if you were, yeah. You were like a, you were a high school jazz, jazz cat. Very consciously. Very consciously. Like a Ryan Gosling, La La Land kind of a guy. Now it would be problematic stop like stop stay away from the right at the time all right so they gave you your your your jazz fix it gave us our jazz fix that's nice over there totally but yeah this uh yeah this this roma is also i found like aesthetically uh perfect well they kept a lot

of the original building but then there was also some roman columns right uh yeah it's like weird there's it's like two styles mushed together it somehow looks smaller than womp hoppers but i don't think that's right womp hoppers womp hoppers this is the guy this is the photo of that restaurant is something i would like just stare at for a full 60 seconds just to like take me back to that time sure and it reminds me of how like it's the kind of it's a lot like i i took a trip to a uh a mall and outside of toronto where uh mean girls was shot like any of the mall scenes and mean girls and i it's so locked in time like perfect of the of this dull late 80s aesthetic and i showed right after i've been our friend uh danny jelinek i showed photos of this mall and he was i showed him like four or

five and he was like i don't know what you're showing me. I don't know why these are photographs worth being re-displayed. I don't know what you're seeing. And I don't blame him. But do you know what I'm... With this photo, that logo, that sign... Well, you actually went to this place, too. I did, yes. So that's another added element.

It's my Schomburg model. But I think what you're actually describing is what I was talking about on the Pleasure Island episode, where I was reading through people's memories and looking at their photos of it. I have obviously some memories of Pleasure Island, too, but I didn't live my teenage years there or my early 20s there. But by the end of it, I had this deep nostalgia for a place that I never was. I felt I was living this youth that these people had had and they were also like they loved it and you can feel it with reading their writing and looking at the photos so it's like the same thing what you're describing i think it's similar there's a similar

thing of like it reminds you of a place and it's like it's probably really just we're like remembering being a kid or like it's tied up in that though i bet there was less of a culture surrounding the tony romans if i had to guess uh but like pleasure island seems like it had a big culture all that like the knots and disney dance clubs seemed like they had it and people like the these facebook groups are crucial for everybody like pooling their memories and uh there's real community in these theme park places um you're mentioning this is a quick universal studios but off of movies but i remember this this time i was in middle school and we went to the uh the movie theater like the the universal like the amc there or whatever this was one of the first times i went

like i was i don't know me like like 13 or something like that um we went to the group my crush ariel fortune sat next to me uh and i was so floored i was so fucking nervous that she sat next to me so you would say fortune favored you that night nothing nothing from that you make me weak fortune favored me air fortune sat next to me i got a large like like mr pibb or something like that or like dr feb or whatever i'd put it in my seat. Before the movie starts, Ariel turns to me, she goes, oh, like,

can I have some of your soda? And I just panic, and I just go, it's empty. But it wasn't empty, it was completely full. It was completely full. And so I just didn't touch it

the entire movie. I don't know why I panicked, I just said no. Oh no. I don't know what I thought was going to happen. But yeah, and then at the end of the,

she watched me, I was like, I picked up a clearly a full, I was like, I threw it entirely away. Nick, was gonna happen but yeah and then at the end of the she watched me as i picked up a clearly a full threw it entirely away nick that's actually a very alpha move and you're really gonna turn that you really could have turned that into something if i not like lied just bizarrely lied and denied both of us if i just said no oh man you could have you could have been married wait aerial fortune fortune yeah in an alternate universe you're married to aerial fortune uh

touring the country in uh yeah uh low rent trumpet clubs tempted by trumpet heads left and right. Tested by trumpet groupies. Please. I can't. I have Ariel at home. Or you're just in Chicago. Yeah. Look, I know I'm passable at the trumpet, but I can't. I cheated on her once. I come home. I'm just a little quieter.

How was your trip? Good. It was good. Not in the right homebound. it'd be selfish to tell her that's what you learn from the guys on the road drama that's playing out with your other life um well uh you know what wasn't in the cards for you with your trumpet career was being a country star. Country star. Probably the most interesting, in my mind, restaurant to occupy.

What do you know about country star? So country star, and we alluded to this very early on in this series, country star was the attempt to make a planet hollywood-esque hard rock cafe -esque restaurant solely focused on country music which is very funny because at the same time there is right across from it which we'll get to later the marvel mania restaurant which was an attempt to make a hard rock-esque restaurant based on the Marvel Comics properties. Country Star was owned by a number of famous country musicians. Does someone have the list in front of them?

I do right here. Country music superstars including Vince Gill, Winona Judd, Reba McEntire, and TV hosts Lorraine Crook and Charlie Chase. I know all of them. You do? Wait, so that's pop culture before you were... Oh, okay, okay because they've been popular so long

putting the clues together michael thank you you know what you you've you know garth brooks right oh well yeah he was before your time and chris games oh you do you did get to experience chris game oh okay you went you went back the other way i taught him as garth brooks chris gay i would like if in a little wing of the country star cafe there was like the chris gaines blue room it's a little like sad jazz request that ahead of time on your reservation country started me the outside of the building is nearly not, it's unrecognizable because they built giant facades that look like jukeboxes in front of it, which I don't necessarily associate with country music. Yeah.

What is it, like, doo-wop? That might be, like, kind of more of, like, a Johnny Rock. I think of it as, like, yeah, Johnny Rock, it's American graffiti, like, the 50s that didn't really exist, but in our imagination it did they on a roadhouse they probably had a jukebox though i guess that's true being said the old the the wop hopper hopper wop hoppers looks like it could be country star yeah like that actually looks more probably like what you would think they went they went backwards and not not to jump ahead but then they removed the jukeboxes for Saddle Ranch,

and it just went back to being a rusted-out shack. So what was the point of this jukebox? It's weird. I wish I went to this, because I don't know if you have this over on your thing. They had a menu that's fantastic. They don't have the full one here, but, for instance, you could get reba mcintyre's garden vegetable pasta or when known as hickory smoked chicken very clever name or the vince gill cheeseburger you know like that that is what i want from one of these restaurants clever sounding cheeseburger

names will come up again on this episode oh yeah but i think hard rock seems to have less of that i think they used a little more but you don't get like the joe perry macaroni or something but that's what i want i want everything named there's a few i think every now and then i feel like they they they have a seasonal met like that's the quarterly menu or something where it's just like pitbull spicy chicken wings it was a What is the rest? There was a restaurant. Mr. Worldwide's Wide Mouth Club. Oh, man.

I want to have that now. Yeah. That's one of my great theme park regrets when I was in Orlando last year is not buying the limited edition pitbull mr worldwide t-shirt that was only being sold at hard rock orlando did you have you seen the video classic comedy clip of pitbull and jimmy fallon playing a giant beer pong while the while the simps outside of mose while all the simpsons characters including the Simpsons and Sideshow Bob standing next to each other,

all cheer him on. And it opens with this great little skit in Moe's. You're Mr. Worldwide, huh? Well, I bet you can't do beer pong, though. No, that's where you're wrong. All right, let's do it. It's the most mumbled sketch I've ever seen. I know we still have a year

plus left but i feel like that's going to be the most representative piece of 2010's culture while the silent cast of the simpsons raise their arms yeah raise their raise their... Well, Gil the Salesman. No, Gil the Salesman became president. At this country star, they have, they would have like

the outfits worn by your favorite country super... Did you ever go, by the way? No, I missed this. Do you remember it even being there?

I think I might vaguely remember that. Yeah. But you could, there was a monitor that you could touch and you could choose between reading a biography of the star, listening to an interview, or watching the music video that the clothes were worn in. Biography, please. Jeremy, we're being seated. Let's go. i want to read about the judd family the first family of country music is this how many uh man this and the premiere was the opening of this restaurant was attended by loretta lynn

charlie pride hoyt axton diamond rio wayne gretzky and little richard wayne gretzky yeah what i don't know you know what wait that reminds me we didn't have time we somehow missed this in the tony romas episode but there was let me try to pull this fact up that uh the the when it was a tony romas there was an event that was like there was a there was a rib-eating uh contest that happened up here just while we're talking celebrities in this location uh i'm really glad i could go backwards and fit this in uh in this tiny roma's this the fifth annual celebrity rib-eating contest hopefully we all together can participate in the The next one?

The 31st or whatever Yeah, whenever they do it again Chocolate covered ribs What? I promise to hold a rib contest if you save my phone Oh, yay! Man, we have so many incentives to give you what you want On the other side of the space bridge

Daddy Yankee will serve you ribs And we can wipe up the sauce with the Pope's robes On the other side of the space bridge, Daddy Yankee will serve you ribs. And we can wipe up the sauce with the Pope's robes. He doesn't mind. The winners, if you were wondering, of the celebrity rib-eating contest were five stand-up comedians. Monty Hoffman, Bill Fox, Tom Taneik, Al Cleethan, and Greg Goldman, who together called themselves comic rib leaf so many celebrities team you would it was a rib-eating contest knew what a team yes five yeah how many ribs could a group of five eat in a nod to comic relief they also gave the money to a charitable cause, but their charitable cause was their family court lawyers. Their bankruptcy lawyers from the stand-up bust.

Jason roasting comic rib leaf. Take that. take that um okay so and then after uh country star this became uh then it became the saddle ranch which is a long time fixture of the of the sunset strip uh one of the the sleazy in the best ways locations uh on the horrifying house i don't know if you guys passed by but the mangas are horrifying outside of that they're just like their skin like they're like weird sallow skin it's let's make sure to show the proper respect it is called the saddle ranch chop house oh boy i have one story about this uh um which is i was hanging out on my in my tour guide summer i was hanging out at the saddle ranch one night and i was new to i was newly 21 um and i was trying drinks i hadn't had and so i

was somewhere where i'd had a mojito and i thought that's fun with some mint and uh you know that's new to me so i went up to the saddle ranch bartender and i said i'll have a mojito please and he was like oh yeah cool that's good that's that's real great uh i got news for you though buddy we're drinking man drinks tonight he rejected my order he mocked which to me a mojito while sweet still you can taste the alcohol in it that to me isn't the ultimate example of uh like fruity no girl drink also like when it's hot in the middle of the summer like that's a perfect drink so it'll be so sweet on these parts i'm sure that's what uh hemingway was drinking in cute

well that rum daiquiris and yeah you can easily kill yourself with mojitos yeah i remember ordering like a vodka cranberry and my friends were like a red drink we don't have don't drink don't order something with like a bright color that's not what you do that's not what a man does this was like really this was your origin story as ever since then you've only drank the brightest color that's right i scan the menu for the most neon color the most unnatural color and then i want to drink as much of it as possible if it has five of the colors that's true that is the best uh yeah good for you fuck those guys and fuck this bartender and fuck sinatra uh and then sorry to the person who complained in the itunes reviews that we swear too much uh i i never went to saddle ranch but i feel like it was a few years living

out here until i realized because my knowledge of it was that it's where people went in west hollywood to get fucked up and i didn't really have a bearing on the one at universal city i don't think it was still family was out visiting they're like oh we could go to this barbecue place like we were up there and then we ended up somewhere else anyway but i feel like it was a while before i realized like other than the name chop house in the title that it's like oh they have food you can eat there because i don't think i'd ever and then i remember the last few years of Saddle Ranch, they had a lot of signs about like weekend brunch. Come have brunch at Saddle Ranch.

Yeah. The one on Sunset, I think a lot of people, like I had, there was people that moved out here that I think have not, have maybe moved back since that I knew. And they would be at like Saddle Ranch on Sunset every week. Wow. Once a week or something. That was the place

which i think i guess i've been there once on sunset the one at universal i've only went to once and it was after avengers age of ultron and the writing was on the wall for saddle ranch because there was no one there the mechanical bull was not working oh or it was not on they didn't plug it in maybe and it was like that was actually the first time i had been in that one and you were like there are over 30 empty rooms in this establishment so many so many rooms they were not filling that space like gold wamp hopper yeah they weren't they didn't have many a wagon to wheel and deal and saddle wrench the biggest problem is that there was no character you know to represent it there was no j, you know, to represent it. There was no J.H. Saddle.

Grandpa. Mr. J.H. Saddle. Oh, that was a. No, Grandpa. Oh, Swamp Hopper. Somebody like him. Yeah, yeah. But if they had had a whimsical bearded character that that guy, what's his name, Ron, could

play. Yeah. Deserted. Deserted. Where I sleep. I sleep quiet. Deserted wait so in the in the time when it was doing bad that was okay for you because there was a free room yes uh that you could use sure nice and quiet you tried doing that at the john lovitz comedy club but there was just so much laughter. It's too loud. It's too loud. Too loud. Sides hurt. I mean, is that what we have to say about the Saddle Ranch?

I think. Let me do. Did you have a wild night there with your Universal employee? No, I got disheartened when my drink choice was complained about. Did that change you? Were you then self-conscious going forward in the next couple of years of ordering a mojito or a mojito or not beer or not whiskey or something?

I'm not sure I've ever had a mojito since then. It's one of my favorites. It's delicious. I know, I was really liking the drink and now that guy is like over my head like a specter going this answers a big audience question which is why doesn't scott drink mojitos yeah we had a breakthrough so now what we know we have to do is we have to go to disneyland we have to get you nice and loaded

on mojitos and then we go on every launch coaster and splash mountain yep and conquer it all in one on one day um i think i think they'll help i think the mojitos will give me strength just as completion of sectors does the sector and hopefully like a one-to-one equivalent hopefully like no like captain hook comes up and sees you with the mojito when he points and you have like a flashback or something well if it was the my most feared character the big bad wolf with the big dangly tongue oh no then i would i'd never get on a ride or drink a mojito again he's not in california adventure at least right now so you're only going to probably run into like the incredibles which they don't care if you have a mojito.

Yeah, they're chill. Dash just comes up and you really care. And the mode could maybe sort of like give you like a tsk-tsk or something. Yeah, she'll put you on blast. So the lamp will shake its lamp head and the light will just go across your face. I don't want the walk around look. It's kind of ambiguous, but Scott takes it very personally. No, no, it's at me.

No, the light. The light, it's at me. I think it was stationary. I don't think it moved at all. No. I can't go on this quick launch. Just don't bring it into the pre-show for Guardians of the Galaxy. Uh, no.

What's that drink you're drinking there? Is that a mojito? You better not bring that on the gantry lift. Uh, no. What's that drink you're drinking there? Is that a mojito? Hey. You better not bring that on the gantry lift. I may be a raccoon, but even I know that ain't a man drink. Yeah, we drink. Man drink. Scott foiled from having a nice summer by toxic masculinity.

Yeah. It's around every corner. All right, well, let's talk about the... Oh, do you have something? Well, what I want to hit before we get yes he's sick i think go ahead we're all moving it along we're all trying to but really because i know we're we have a lot to say about the the final topic but i want to say really fast first that the state the the area the the restaurant venue that that this thing moved into was initially built to be something called

Victoria Station. Yes. I want to make sure we hit Victoria Station. Which it kind of gave me some more perspective on the creation of CityWalk. Besides Victoria Station which was like a

trolley station themed restaurant that you could take a little trolley to from the parking lot. It took you up the hill. It took you up the hill. So that was there and then there was also that Chinese restaurant

that was there. I forget the name of. Which I asked my dad today if he had any CityWalk memories I should share which is where I remembered them going to Toto or whatever. And he said, oh, yeah, well, I did go to that Chinese restaurant, which was real nice, but we were leaving there one time, and my mom fell.

You have all these traumatic family stories attached to restaurant locations. My dad's dad had a heart attack in what became a Bubba Gump, and my dad's mom tripped and fell outside of the restaurant my dad is cursed when it comes to chains that's why that's my spite that's why he sticks with apple bees and apple bees only so so victoria station the chinese restaurant wampompers a movie theater so there's almost i'm never gonna say it right i don't know why i got in my head reading about it that there was an m in there and had it wrong in my notes it's like flop flop glopple from the the et character flop glopple from the et probably thinking of the flop glopple you're confusing

lomp hoppers and flop glopple so there's all these disparate businesses scattered around not that close to each not that close to each other. Not that close to each other. And it took them years to think like, maybe we should put up a pathway and some signs and a couple other things up here. Maybe people shouldn't just be climbing unpaved hills to get to these different restaurants.

But I do think, I think CityWalk Circa, or pre-CityWalk Circa 82 or whatever, would have been my jam because uh uh Womp Hoppers seems great to me yeah Chinese restaurant looks beautiful it was sitting there like unoccupied for decades and now they're building a hotel there but it was like it was beautiful from the outside and then and then Victoria Station which I didn't go to but my wife went to and I texted her if she had any memories, and she said it was the epitome of elegance in my six-year-old eyes. She loved Victoria Station.

And apparently, Victoria Station, an extremely popular chain all over the country and in Canada, and specifically the Universal location their most uh popular location and at one point one of the highest grossing restaurants in the country wow it was a train themed restaurant in general as he says you could eat in a train car uh aaron swears that it was superior to uh fellow la chain or chain train train chain uh carneys which is also a train restaurant. So the king of the train chains. Other than that, I don't know much about it.

Other than I watched an ad and the prime rib looks amazing. The shrimp Victoria looks divine. I bet they had excellent mojitos and Johnny Cash sang in their ads and get ready to gasp guys, no matter what you ordered at the end of the meal And Johnny Cash sang in their ads. And get ready to gasp, guys.

No matter what you ordered at the end of the meal, a free mini rainbow sherbet ice cream on a mini cone. Oh. What else would you want? Could you have Toby Keith kebabs? All right. There was one thing I didn't have. Every restaurant has something to bring to the table so at one point

there were two train themed restaurants was carny's with that that's that same time yeah and there were multiple there was another there was a carny's on sunset too and you probably grew up near the other carny's right were you fond of that uh it was fine as a kid i was like this is fine don't forget the two dining cars the pacific dining car restaurants in la oh yeah why don't maybe i didn't go to those oh they're still around yeah it's like a 24-hour steakhouse there's one downtown and i think there's one in santa monica and of course coal mongers my favorite order that black lung hot fudge sundae favorite ice cream and chocolate cream so everything's dark the thing about Victoria Station that for so why why was this of interest to me but it still is

the idea that there could be a restaurant you could enter from the park or from outside the park why can you give me any reason why that's why i find that interesting but i do well anything like that i remember thinking oh so you'd be able to like the rainforest cafe outside animal kingdom oh you can go inside or outside that's not interesting why do i think that's interesting because i think as a kid the walls of a theme park truly feel like you're going into another dimension so the idea idea that there was... You are. Yeah. You know Astral Plane and stuff. That there's some transparency that you can see through the facade.

So you know, like, oh, we get a ticket and then I go through the turnstile. But the idea that like you would be, it would be like almost like being in two states at once. Oh yeah, being in four corners. Oh, turtles before states.

I think that's sort of, you're like, oh, I'm in the park, but I'm not in the park. Thank you. That was a succinct yeah i think that's right way to put that yeah i agree it is interesting a liminal space yeah yeah that zombies are another neither dead nor alive and also much like my life yeah you're trapped in a marvel of the mania victoria station-esque situation which is also a little bit like Tom Hanks in The Terminal

my selected movie for the CityWalk movie meal deal The Terminal? Oh you'll get there I know right now you are Terminal but soon you will get to see The Terminal Larry Crown

So many great Hanks's. And, of course, Forrest Gump, which inspired the restaurant in your home. We have a lot to talk about. Yes. Yeah. You have a beautiful life once you're free. But the only way to get you free is to keep blowing it. So let's get into it.

Yes, you're giving me great strength. A fellow astral plane splitting restaurant. Feel free, gentlemen. What replaced Victoria's Station? astral plane splitting restaurants feel free gentlemen what replaced victoria's station probably the maybe the main one of the main theme park things i am sad i didn't get to go to the marvel mania restaurant you're here for a very specific reason you told me this offhand at an event yeah i think we had like scribbled down like oh yeah we should mention marvel mania in that sector stuff that's not there anymore and you you when i said we were

doing city walk yeah you told us that you had direct experience with marvel mania 12th birthday party my twin brother i had a 12th birthday party at marvel mania which was open for like a year so we were maybe yes maybe there are maybe like 15 kids on earth who are saying this yes but yeah we yeah we went we gathered a group of friends uh we went to marvel mania it was incredible i had i had a fucking blast that's amazing now my oh sorry i was gonna say my uh my wife was on and she talked about her, I forget, maybe 11th birthday at Wizards at the Magic Club, which sounded like an ideal middle school age birthday. But I'd like to hear more details about yours. I'd like you to one-up my wife as much as possible.

Let me ask you this. Did Storm serve your wife? I mean, a wizard came by the table about a weather wizard storm served us we were fucking stoked um uh um there uh one of the things i remember they were just like a for some reason they really thought that comic books meant like cryo chambers so they were just like a ton of these like cryogenic like everywhere there were just a ton of them they housed fake memorabilia i think again like kind of like hard rock cafe inspired but unfortunately marvel is in a fictional universe and so they yeah thor's

hammer no it's not this is this is that's not but but it was with the same reverence as if it was that like like the the avengers like like like the Avengers signed their, um, uh, their agreement to become the Avengers that was like displayed as if it was, they all signed a contract. There was like the five points that they agreed to Hulk signed his signature. It looks like shit. We've already done each other's positions and how many points on the back end. Yeah. But that was displayed. was displayed um uh and here's the thing you know one of the things that i think when when people think about marvel now they

probably think about the cinematic universe and it was and how hugely successful when i think of marvel i think of i just instantly think of a trillion dollars i think of what the pile would look like but this was at the time where it was like this where marvel is bankruptcy marvel yes this is two years before x-men which is their first big like movie yeah and this is yeah they thought this was they started a restaurant division they thought this was going to be a big hit uh we talked a little about this i think on on the twister episode but when islands of adventure was sending out preview stuff about like islands of adventure is opening city walk is opening in

orlando three hotels one of the restaurants named was marvel mania and it never happened it never got built there this was the only one ever built it was open for like a year and a half like it kind of limped across the over the year line and it is yeah it's bankruptcy era marvel and and mike and i i this was for me well were you nick were you a big marvel comics fan we were reading i loved him uh this is like a deep cut but maverick was my favorite oh yeah uh he was like uh kind of in the wolverine kind of weapon x universe uh um uh but yeah we were definitely reading a ton of them. I remember one of my first memories, I remember I wanted to buy stock in Marvel at that time. I was like a kid, but I had some money,

and my grandparents had invested. And so I had mentioned that to my grandpa, and my grandpa had did a bunch of research and sent me a letter that said, you cannot do this. It was Marvel. I mean, if you had held on to it for 20 years it would have been insane yeah this is also around the time when like stan lee was talking

to michael jackson about possibly buying marvel together there was a whole thing yeah where they because stan lee never owned marvel he was always worked for hire but there was like they were gonna dig together and i'm sure with with mysterious sheiks, pool together all their money and buy Marvel. Marvel is such a bizarre history. And all of a sudden it became this... But it was never like... Because Warner

Brothers owned DC for so long, but Marvel was floating around and then was owned by Toybiz for a while, which rescued it from bankruptcy. Toybiz was like who Marvel hired to make their toys and then Toybiz outpaced them and sold Marvel and the lamprey still hanging on is

Ike Perlmutter who owns Marvel. He's a great friend of Donald Trump. Yep. One of the CEOs who loves being with Trump. There's only two photos of Mr. Ike Perlmutter that exist. One from either the early 80s, late 70s, and one with Trump at Mar-a-Lago from a year ago.

Whoa. There are only two photos you can find of Ike Perlmutter. So when that surfaced, then you're like, oh my God, he exists and he's there? Yes. He loves Trump. They get along very well. Notorious piece of shit.

Famous for saying, we're not making girl superhero action figures girls don't like superhero like girls don't buy this like yeah so that's by the way just as a little segue there that that philosophy comes through on the menu when you know when we dig into the menu because there's so many like you know obviously i want to appeal to everyone but you know you've got like um you know ghost riders ribs that's a good one i think that's a good themed connection but then you can see you have storms hurricane shrimp okay uh but then you can see they've run out instantly run out of like women superheroes so then it goes to mary jane's

roasted herb chicken and then and then like like you know aunt may's like like they they're just done like you know like you could just see that yeah yeah it's like may has where was it as soup i think yeah oh god may has i look there's i have nine windows i should have consolidated this nine windows open with different parts of the menu yes yes so much and different types of menus it looks like they cycled out of like what the menu was for like they had one that looked more like a comic and then they had one that looked more like i think there was a take-home one so i the adult menu the kids menu and then i think there was a second generation of the menu where they tried to make it a little nicer looking um but yeah this is such an odd time this is also wet after the bubble burst on the comic boom of the 90s and like after stan uh jim lee had left the company

after all the image founders uh went and started their own company. So Marvel lost like a lot of a list artists, Jim Lee, Jim Lee. I mean, I think there's some great, like there is, it's very funny.

Cause this is kind of like, there's some standard Marvel house style in this, but then the, the pages of the menu with the X-Men are clearly like the Carlos Pacheco drawings of the time. And there's some like Chris Bacalo. And so there's like some, are you sure that's not Mike Warringo drawings of the time and there's some like chris bacalo and so there's like some are you sure that's not mike warringo art of the x-men of the x-men i don't did warringo

draw the x-men i don't know but that looks a lot like a warringo style to me more than i'm looking at a different page i think it's pacheco this is yeah just the way you draw that sounds like pacheco you're're right. Jason, I apologize. I finally know what it would be like for a regular person to listen to any episode of this podcast. Classic boys, classic boys. But then there's some very weird choices. So it's very late 90s Marvel art style and coloring,

but the drink page looks like the letter columns of the 1980s like this was like what they would where they would print letters and print like check out this other book uh featuring the characters you like right like it's kind of a you you could get dom perry on you could get a bottle of dom probably my favorite detail whoa what's it costing you a bottle of dumb is uh uh 140 dollars well that's not a bad but for 90 97 who are you trying to impress who the fuck are you impressing at that table at marvel mania trying to impress the one blank storm yeah garçon garçon do you have to another thing about the drink menu all the like section headers have an x exclamation point at the end so

it says like domestic bottled beer yeah that's right they they thought they really did whoever designed it thought that comic books just meant they loved fucking word bubbles yes it was it was plastered in the fucking things i don't know the gift the gift shop by the way the word bubbles yes it was it was plastered in the fucking things the gift shop by the way the word bubbles just said marvel stuff and then exclamation points yeah it was those two things and and they brag about like giant screens to watch marvel tv and movies on but at the time that meant the cartoon yes and the cartoon x-men. So instead of sporting events, there's many TVs devoted to old Marvel. I fucking loved it.

Do you have the shot list and the martini list over here? Yeah. Okay. The negative zone. Trade off. Have fun with it. They were called web shooters, first of all, when you would get a small shot.

Cool. Pretty good. Which now I think they would not do that because they don't want kid-friendly friendly characters associated with liquor they want the kids ordering ice slides which are their like smoothies alcohol-free smoothies but the web shooters you could get a gamma slamma you could get a clobber in time you could get an adrenaline shot you could get a nuclear waste or you could get a dimension distorter whoa and they were all in a take-home glass um and this is i mean this truly as i'm reading it is just the my favorite restaurant

i've never been unless i missed it they there should have been like one of those bowl fish bowl drinks that you get like four straws in called the ultimate nullifier which is like or the cosmic cube like something to get you messed up like one of the deus ex machina is from marvel comics where it's like they also yeah i love the idea of a tram driver just like kind of just like just had a fucked up day and he goes you know like it's the it's the closest place you're just like yeah gamma slama just like a real sad are you sure you know what happened last time Yeah right You're a fucking hero

Gamma Slamma The manager of the place Should have been Uatu the watcher But he can't interfere If someone Cannot interfere That's why he has

Someone go do it But he's just sort of Like the pit boss Of the whole thing I'll bring it to You know what Uatu Is going to fucking say He's going to say

Just let him do it And then like Somebody has to audition For Uatu And it's like You's gonna say just let him do it and then like somebody has to audition for Uatu and it's like you gotta shave your head though they're not gonna let you wear a bald cap

I don't know it's worth it for the visibility there's some a very 90s detail to me of like the the milkshake flavors and ice cream and desserts

there's a lot of Butterfinger crap yeah Butterfinger crunch is kind of everywhere on this menu Blastar's ballistic Butterfinger crap. Yeah. Butterfinger Crunch is kind of everywhere on this menu. Blastar's Ballistic Butterfinger Bread Pudding. That's also, when you're getting to Blastar,

when you're getting to the Fantastic Four villain Blastar, you're scraping the bottom of the barrel. There's some obscure ones. It's Swordsman, I think, is in here. Oh, there's also the Two-Gun Kid. Cheeseburger, to me, is gonna be i'm we're thinking it's gonna be like wolverine or like it's gonna be there's a heavy hitter it's like two gun kid well that's because they needed to distinguish between caps battle burger which is

on the kids menu it is there's yeah um they also have vince gill's cheeseburger yeah yeah this is my favorite this is my favorite of the menu this is on the dessert menu it just sounds like absolute shit the fin thing foom fruit fajitas yeah fresh fruit sizzling in a vanilla rum sauce served with chocolate tortillas vanilla ice cream and lots of yummy condiments. Those delicious dessert condiments. They don't even specify what the condiments are. Last meal. Last meal. I mean, it's very much a tour de force, too,

of, like, 90s food. I mean, Blastar's ballistic butterfinger bread pudding. We were recently up at CityWalk. I had a delicious banana bread pudding at Margaritaville. But the idea of taking bread pudding uh uh we were really recently up at city walk i had a delicious banana bread pudding at margaritaville but the idea of taking bread pudding and just cramming a bunch of butter yeah butterfinger was huge i mean like simpsons crossover like it was like like yeah like like butterfinger bb's no one better than your finger on my butterfinger bb's the uh the what i was talking about earlier the michael ringingo drawn menu I'm looking at. It says here, so it looks like a comic book.

And it says at the top, absolutely no broccoli, spinach, or squash on this menu. Yeah. Heck yeah. Yeah, that's the kids menu. Kids love that. Kids love it. And so like, oh, Mighty Mutant Macaroni and Cheese. And the X-Men, specifically the gold team, X-Men gold team members.

That makes sense to me. The Champions Cheese Pizza. The Champions was like a obscure team with Ghost Rider and Iceman, a Black Widow and a Hercules. What was the gold team on? The gold team is on the mac and cheese. Oh, because the blue X-Men, Uncanny x-men blue team is uncanny x pasta yes and that's clearly gambit rogue b cyclops the classic blue team from the 90s nick you know what i'm talking about without a doubt yeah and then you have the defenders tenders which is doctor strange

yeah silver surfer hulk namor these are also like b-list teams from this the even especially the champions holds the distinction, I think, of being the first Los Angeles Marvel superhero team. That's right. The Champions were based out of LA, so I kind of get that. They have the Dare Dog. That sucks. I mean, that name just sucks.

Dare Devil. This menu is the... I hadn't had it in front of me until now. It's the busiest thing I've ever seen. There's 10 different menus. There's multiple menus. This was open for a year, so they must have just turned them over so fast. front of me till now it's the it's the busiest thing i've ever seen 10 different menus yeah there's multiple menus for a year so they must have just turned them over so fast i think they were letting you take home some of them because i found a lot of people like and then one day

we need one copy stan lee is on the cover of the kids menu in a top hat this was a thing yeah in the in the little uh corner box on marvel comics for a while there would be stan lee it's like a ringmaster figure that was also a nod to cl wampopper though with the top hat he does he does look like wampopper yes some of these are so busily drawn like some of them have like three items on an entire page just because there's so much happening yeah but then i'm then i pulled up another one where there's i think there's like 900 words on this menu it's like yeah it boy yeah this is this is headache induced coffee shop supersonic shakes love a drink called love tales i don't even know what would that be a

reference to i i think that is a marvel romance title from the 50s maybe um they also should be pointing out the mighty marvel spiceometer uh and that is how you know how spicy hot uh spicy stuff is and it's the human torch and he's got a there's one a spark of heat is a little bit of fire uh potent is a little more and supernova is full human fire human torch but i had to keep going back to that meter because like it's so hard to distinguish between like mild and medium right and then in an unreadable font under that, a helpful guide to our taste bud tortures. It's like so hard.

You can't read it small. It's really straining my phone. And it only applies to like four menu items. Like it doesn't even come up that much. How do you know that it's a, oh, okay. Elsewhere on the appetizer page i see a little blue guy but it's too small to see who he is but he's next to the dish gambit sugar cane shrimp oh my god i didn't see that where are you finding that it's a shrimp served on a sugar cane skewer

it's underneath the rainbow bridge nachos. That's different than the Space Bridge. Different than the... What was it called again? The Pope... The Papal... Space Bridge. Space Bridge. Daddy Yankee's Space Bridge.

Daddy Yankee's Papal Space Bridge 87. The gamut thing makes sense because he's from the bayou. Yes. Rainbow Bridge to me seems like a Sherbert thing. It's crazy to spend it

on fucking nachos. It's insane. The Fantastic Four also have two menu items yeah which they have the fantastic fries and they have the fantastic where was it was it pasta it's like what why would they there's more characters they're the first family of marvel comics world's greatest comic magazine i think they've earned two slots i just did you guys read mutant chicken wings already i i feel like we've been doing this for 19 hours. It's also very

funny that it's mutant chicken wings and the human torch is next to it. Ridiculous. 20% of the menu so far. We're not even close. One of my favorites is Submariner's Deep Sea Suggestions. Ask your server for the market price list. Oh my god.

Fucking incredible. And of course Doc Ock's Walk. Doc Ock's Walk. Doc Ock's Walk because they used Shang-Chi Chinese tacos in Sunfire Spring Rolls to actual Asian Marvel comics characters so when

they got to the walk they were like oh that rhymes with Doc Ock. Yeah. I'm glad they didn't go with Iron Fist who's famously a white Yeah. I know. They're like, oh, that rhymes with Doc Ock. Yeah. I'm glad they didn't go with Iron Fist, who's famously a white guy. Oh, yeah. Do you guys, but we haven't,

we're missing the main thing, which is what the sandwiches are called. Do you know what the sandwiches are called? Let me find the thing. The stand-wiches? They are called stand-wiches.

Oh. Nuff said. Nuff said. And then the word excelsior. Excelsior. All stand-wiches. Stan-wiches. Nuff said. Nuff said. And then the word excelsior. Excelsior. All Stan-wiches are served with

our marvelous baked potato salad. Is this business closed? No, I'm confused too, sector keeper. Well, I went there for

we were talking about I must have got one of the sandwiches for my birthday or whatever there's a little bit of a drama that happened because i um when they when they would come so i think maybe because it was our birthday but they came and they had they would also like the there'd be like a uh a little like gift basket thing at the end it was like a bucket full of comic books you would get that um i mentioned i loved maverick but this was the 90s and one of the things was if you missed an issue of something it wasn't super clear you would ever read it at least for me it was like it like i had three comic book stores i could go to if it wasn't there i was fucked and that was the case for maverick number

four what happened was we we got these these buckets i don't know what the fuck happened but one of my friends wesley got Maverick number four in his bucket. Oh my gosh. Wow. And I was like, I could pull rank. I had this option that I could pull rank, but I was also because of my Christian upbringing,

I would never ask anyone for anything. I would never do it. So I was just staring at this fucking bucket while he just like absentmindedly flipped through it. Didn't say anything. The whole ride home. He was sitting next to me. I could see it in his fucking bucket. Didn't say shit.

I got home and I just cried. I just cried i just could not ask for this maverick number four whatever and you were in an area like la has always had a lot of comic shops like that's crazy maverick the thing was i think it was small enough and yeah that didn't run i remember that but that book didn't run it was very small it just wasn't one that they were going to like keep a huge back and you know you might go to there were back catalogs you could go through but it might be like one six eight for some reason i just could not fucking find this but your christian upbringing didn't prevent you from lying to ariel about the soda even in that i feel like that even can be traced back to just like my complete discomfort with any being around any like you know romantic situation that one's tricky because you did end up lying which

is against christianity but it was a situation where you liked a girl which is forbidden but i didn't hate myself in terms of getting a smooch or something like that yeah i did myself in my chastity i'm just realizing there's a dessert called chocolate carnage which is the spider-man villain who is a uh psychopath serial killer mass murderer mass murderer yeah even before he became a super villain he was a killer in jail and then uh venom symbiote a little bit the symbiote got him and gave venom on the menu anywhere or is there's chocolate just because they had a c at the start i guess it was a c yeah that is surprising because venom wasn't a c h it's not even like yeah right it doesn't make

sense i'm looking through the video of what you were talking yes you're talking about the the different artifacts and i'm gonna what i'm gonna do is i won't say what this artifact is i'm gonna show it to jason and jason's going to announce one of the things you could view on display at Marvel mania. Ah, Namor is famous conch shell. What? Name more is conch shell. Oh my God.

It's a trumpet horn. It's a trumpet. They just didn't know what was popular. You can just see like two gun kid was held to the same standard as like spider-man they just didn't yeah they got a list they didn't know which was more important it was just alphabetized i mean spider-man captain america and then they probably could have just filled it with the x-men because they had the most exposure in the 90s absolutely uh which is very sad to think about now that they have taken such a back

seat because of like corporate dealings until like disney owns the movie rights outright then we'll probably see a renaissance of x-men stuff it's all coming back now because yeah they're good for the fox deal though if this restaurant opened today if it was a pop-up go on hollywood boulevard the line would be 27 hours long yes this would be the most popular thing that has ever occurred you could have a job or eat there yeah it would be like you would you know yeah yeah if you trade if you did shifts if you trade it out with friends yes can you admit this would be like all that was instagrammed about for the first month and a half of opening yeah this this more than any of all the things where we talk about plus it up or whatever

or or an old thing that needs to come back if this were brought back it like it generates as much money as all of the marvel movies do individually this is so this is such a killer this needs to occur right and they probably would update the aesthetic and make it reflect more of the current state of marvel but obviously i would love if yeah i mean i don't know the thing is and i i hate to say this even but i don't know that that disney would open a tacky restaurant version of this anymore. Maybe not. Because, like, the only way I think it's going to open is when it's in Disneyland or California Adventure specifically. It can't open in Florida because of the deals.

So, like, Disney controls it. So, we may get, like, a much more theme. We might dine with Doctor Strange in the Sanctum Sanctorum. There's rumors of a microbrewery coming to California Adventure on the Avengers. Oh, is that right? I saw a rumor that, because they're opening Marvel stuff in California Adventure, that it will be on Avengers West Coast Campus, which includes a microbrewery restaurant. Whoa!

It's there on site. Can you whisper to me off mic where you got this rumor? Disney Tourism. Oh, I don't read that. That's a little trustworthy, though, isn't it? A lot more than Bumper Car Boys. Yeah. If this were a Bumper Car Boys, you'd get the fuck out of here.

Good instincts. Yeah, yeah. I'll send you the link. I swear we had talked about that. Those fucking liars at Bumper Car Boys. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank God it's none of them. So, I mean, look, it wasn't the time and and i am grossed

out by the aesthetic and many of the things that they have but you do a marvel restaurant with puns and stuff today forget it you don't it doesn't even know you're saying that the full like classy disney version absolutely but like on the in the parks but if they did this in that saved by the bell sure the bad version of this would be yes it'd be amazing and people would love it i'm just saying i don't know that disney would let it go now that's my problem i'm just saying that they might not even allow that to happen because of the the prestige of the brand well they're letting go of one billion dollars and uh making a big mistake that's kind of the tragedy of this place is it opened kind of like just maybe a year too soon because i really do think those x-men

movies were huge oh yeah it really does seem like it was just like kind of like this poorly timed and the and the aesthetic of it is obviously still alive in orlando and in the marvel superhero island at islands of adventure and i hope it never changes. I know Jason wants it to not change from being a monument to 1996. It might not legally be allowed to. Well, there's going to be wheelings and dealings if the Fox deal goes through with maybe trading things. So who knows?

Well, hopefully somewhere in the shuffle. Because I think they did a bad job. I wasn't a comic book kid, if I haven't conveyed that and i remember seeing marvel mania in the parks and i just didn't no one they did nowhere had ever done a good job of letting me know why i should care about any of this and i just saw like horrible gaudy colors and uh there was nothing luring me in and yeah probably not till x-men did they figure out um how to reach out to the non-comic reader.

My favorite thing of some of the walk-around characters, other than like the face characters, look like you'd expect them to look, but like the Iron Man suit in like a display case, or if he was walking around, was real puffy. Like it was always so puffy. Like, so like, yeah, they're muscle guys and they're puffy like yes it was always so puffy like so like yeah they're muscle guys and they're puffy that toxic masculinity kind of created like you know even the captain america like he's he's just is disgustingly buffed out like it's yeah it's nuts like it was like this whole like roy like the steroid obsession of these like superheroes were like the pecs that were like like past their

shoulder you know it was just awful yeah and that basically what they did was like oh okay some guys draw them like this so let's make the costumes like this but even on the menu you can see the different art styles where like some of them clearly draw them a lot leaner like runners uh and then some of them it's just so such caricature exaggerated caricatures um i want to talk to the sector keeper real quick because on display um in marvel mania and maybe he has some more information and maybe how this relates to a set of stones this was the infinity gauntlet yes which also had contained six different stones oh yes it's inspired me my final birthday was at Marvel Mania. Oh, you were in the same run as Nick. Yes, I remember seeing you.

You saw me? Yes, happy birthday. Oh, thanks. You guys share the same birthday. Thanks, dude. Oh, my God. Yes. Wow.

My last clear memory is of Namor's shell. His Kong's shell. Yeah. And that's the stone yes the stone for the sector has appeared yes it's namor's conch shell it was conch boys and look closely it's sitting on a little mechanical bull oh wow i see it now a It's playing a little guitar. Oh, neat. Wow. And it's signed by Chicago trumpet player Lee Lockney. Yes. Yes. And he said something to you, Nick.

Yes. He said, you made the right choice. I made the right choice. I think I did. Ariel would have left you no matter what. You give me great strength. You have completed Sector 17, Gibson Ampli amphitheater and you put the l in it again that's okay it's like you're becoming more human he's probably i think he has to birth the stones

from his throat right that makes a lot of sense he has two left right and they're probably rumbling around right in there marvel man Mania and Saddle Ranch. Yeah. Yeah, we did it. And Victoria Station and Whoppers. Yeah. And Tony Roma's. Country Star and Tony Roma's.

Yeah. There was a lot there. Yeah, we're not getting out of this thing easy. These have been jam-packed sectors. We didn't even talk. Nick, you've been working up around here. That's right. So what are now your experiences before we go?

Oh, sure. Of like, we're living and working and playing, as Jimmy Burford would say. We're working and playing. And we write, our office looks down on the tram tour. Now, who's our, who do you mean? Oh, what's that? Yeah, who do you mean?

We. Myself and my writing partner, Anthony Gio, it's the show we haven't seen him in a while yeah i wish yeah we should get him but uh we they're just a funny instance because you know the tram stops and it's where like they play like the um like jimmy fallon makes a joke about how he wishes jurassic park was i don't know whatever it's like this like there's this like video section but there's that stop is right outside and what happened is a tram stopped and um they were shooting right beside it and so the cast of swat came out and shakes everyone's hand on the on the tram ride they are fucking stoked out of their minds they

can't believe everyone has their cameras out they're shaking hands they're like really being really good about it um but what happens is that tram takes off and there's the tram right behind it that i think they think the same thing is going to happen they come up and swat it's like no of course this was just like a one-time thing so the second tram who has seen everything comes up stops and it's just like the saddest so disappointed it's swat it's she more more and uh kenny johnson sector keeper when you're free and when these when this 19 part series is a giant award-winning smash you need to go make like the cast of swat and go say hi to a tram they'll flip out because you i don't think you're gonna arrive when you are alive again you'll arrive to a world where this was

received unbelievably and where you're a household name and household face I would be so happy as long as God allows it he will he needs you to share your joy just as John Paul II shared his

joy across the papal space bridge you're gonna I think you know we've been you haven't experienced this but the last just as John Paul II shared his joy across the Papal Space Bridge. Yes. You're going to, I think, you know, we've been, you haven't experienced this, but the last couple of years in this country have just been a mess. And I think you, Sector Keeper, might be the key to solving all of it. Oh, I would love that.

Yeah. Either way, you could be our savior or you could be the Antichrist and you could bring about the Antichrist. Yeah. Either way, the problem gets solved. Well, if we all have a belly full of Daddy Yankee's ribs, I think everything's going to be okay. All right. For sure.

Give us a little hint about which direction it's going to go. Great. Yeah, yeah. Maybe if we live each day like it's the last and if we're striving you know, striving for desserts of the quality of Blastars Ballistic Butterfinger Bread Pudding, then

I think it's all gonna be alright. Nick, where can people find you? You can find me on Twitter at Mandernick. Yeah, I do improv with JV, Friday Nights at 11, UCB Franklin. Have you ever seen them?

Oh, you can't. Oh, I'm so, I'm so sorry. No, you can't see improv anymore. He's missed the improv boom in general. Yes. It might be over though. By the time this is over. Yeah. UCB, uh, Gangnam style.

It's all coming back to me. Oh, you're probably seeing the the ucb tv show but and maybe one of the theaters but they have several now oh yeah so you'll get to experience all of those uh the target probably won't quite be done over on western by the time he's uh you're alive but a lot to look forward to no matter what um well we did it we're on the way out only a few more left uh uh yeah nick thanks for being here best of luck to you on the final podcast i forgot to say it oh cool you did it hell yeah uh uh exclamation point lots of zigzags around it marvel style happy birthday oh thanks happy birthday to you yeah thank you yeah thanks birthday, man. We'll be back tomorrow

and we're getting, we're nearing the end. We're working all, we're working the way down and what will happen to our heroes in the last two issues. Odysseus has almost

returned to Ithaca to claim his rightful place. I forgot to mention another one of these desserts real quick. Latverian strawberry shortcake. Very good. See you tomorrow. Thanks for listening real quick. Yep. Latverian strawberry shortcake. Very good. See you tomorrow.

Thanks for listening. Forever Dog. This has been a Forever Dog production. Executive produced by Mike Carlson, Jason Sheridan, Scott Gairdner,

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