Podcast: The Ride - The CityWalk Saga - Sector 18

Episode Date: October 1, 2018

The CityWalk Saga - Sector 18 consists of: Hilton Universal City Hotel Sheraton Universal Hotel 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 18 so close almost there that's you can feel it now when i heard 18 i laughed legitimately because it sounded fake i don't know why i just like oh that's too oh no that's the real number and that voice is mike carlson yes it is and this voice wait he had you introduced him but not me that was you forget scott's name no i was trying to set him up i wouldn't put it past you because we're all getting delirious it's been a long time um i it's a lot of days and i um for

me this is the first time i don't go back and listen to the the podcast so much i so much don't want to hear my own voice but i have been listening to these i think because the pressure's off they're less they're more loose and less fact-based. And I don't feel like I'm getting anything wrong or I'm not as worried about rambling or whatever because we're just talking about these inane experiences. And I was getting pretty delighted around five or six. I wasn't like, oh, this isn't too much. It's like fun and funny how much there are.

And right around 10, 11, I'm getting like this. Oh, now you're hitting the wall. it is too much yeah i mean i've already hit the wall i hit several walls recording them now i'm hitting a listening wall right i listened to sectors two through six in one day just to help mike with the qc'ing and um i was physically tired by the end of the day well i was also writing the descriptions prepping the descriptions and scheduling some posts got very like i had to divide it up because it just gets so uh it gets a little monotonous i also found we've i've had less to like some of them i've had a lot of ideas of ancillary content. And what was the one where I realized I had no ideas of what to tweet?

I think it was the one with like sketchers. Yeah, I did the same thing. It's really thin. Some of them are just thin. Some of them are just thin. But that's, I think, the beauty of the sector division is you don't know. Some of them seem like they're going to be nothing. And then there's so much there.

And others are cursed. Yeah, some of them seem like they're going to be nothing, and then there's so much there. And others are cursed. Yeah, some are barren. But, you know, before we go too much further, we should find out what today's lies in store today. And will it be full of material or a barren desert? Boys, boys, today's sector is Sector 18. The Universal Hotels, Hilton, and Sheraton. Good luck, boys, today's sector is sector 18, the Universal Hotels, Hilton, and Sheraton. Good luck, boys. Well, now I'm interested.

Well, now, Scott. Jason's back, too. The hotels, baby. Yeah. Yeah. I've been looking forward to this one the whole time. And research for this, not a chore. I've done plenty of research in the past um i while i have

not well no i did actually one time for before my birthday aaron got us a room at the universal hilton uh so i was i did stay at that one but uh the sheridan i haven't stayed at but i've spent many a night at these hotels wandering around uh and i And I'm just a hotel fan in general. Jason, I believe you have, with your family, stayed at... I have stayed at both multiple times. Wow. How many times, if I may ask? I think two for the Sheraton and maybe four times.

Really? Yeah. No kidding. And just for the listener, you live within five minutes. Yes. I was going to give a street address. I've walked over to City Walk sometimes. I will.

If you DM me, I will give you Jason's street address. Hey, you stop that. Yes, I live close by. But when my family comes to visit, it feels like more of a vacation for me if I stay with them. Wait a minute though,

but you choose... Are you in the same room as them? No, usually we get connected. I think the one time my mom came out, just because it was their first time out here, and I wanted to make sure they saw everything and we got an early start. Because that's the thing to avoid with me. And I will go hang out with my parents at a hotel if i have my own space within it but being in the same room as them but yeah it's real i think the very maybe the first time

like 10 or 11 years ago when my dad first came out we stayed in the same room but other times that he's gotten like two hotel rooms did you share a beer and was he like i'm proud of you did you have a moment uh i i think well you know we did i did it at the the late great rainforest cafe i think was the first place we had some beers that was the first time yeah i turned 21 when i was out here for school good morning son uh oh yeah we we saw a concert Ben Folds the backstage had just Had his first beer with his grown son With 18 with Louis right

Wait what's that? Louis Is his son's name? I don't know When I hear the name Louis I just get a shiver Oh sorry I think of the great Louis Anderson No other comedy Louis Do you remember where you first had a beer with your dad Or has it not happened

He doesn't drink I see Comedy Louie's. Do you remember where you first had a beer with your dad? Or has it not happened? He doesn't drink. No drink. I see. So not applicable. We have had a sip of wine with him out in California. I mean, literally, I think he put wine in front of us out here and I think he was just being polite and sipped some. So that's as close as it's gotten. Okay. Yeah.

I think I did it at El Torito one time. How old? Hills. A couple years, maybe 22, 23. Something like that. Nice moments. Sometimes we can talk about nice, meaningful things.

Yeah, sure. People like that. I think this one might be a more positive episode in general because we've all had a lot of good times at these hotels i i think the outing that we've had we we did a little hotel bar hop one of my favorite activities to do and uh i think this was one of the most pleasant city walk outings we've had the whole time uh uh partially because uh aaron and lindsey and tomorrow's guest were there. That was a blast. And that, to me, that's kind of the heart of hotels and being cool and fun to explore. Those bars. I've been a noted hotel bar fan for a long time.

I think partially because I've never taken to crowded Silver Lake, Atwater, downtown kind of places. I don't ever understand why do you want to be in a crowded loud bar? Why do you ever want to be shouting over music? It doesn't make any sense to me. And hotels are just naturally soothing, often 75% empty. They're wonderful. They're relaxing and you you also

um as as you've had staycations essentially with your parents when they come into town to even go spend a couple hours in a hotel you get that little endorphin of vacation feeling without even leaving your city and there's there's like there's two it is, I think. There's like, there's two, this is going to sound weird, but there's a level of anonymity at a hotel or discretion, like sort of like, yeah, it's its own little contained, you can kind of disappear, you forget about the outside world a little. You mean like you don't feel like you check your troubles at the door? I think so. That may just be me.

I'm sure there's plenty of people who don't like hotels. Certainly with the- I think a lot of, I can't imagine who hates hotels i know some people seem to gravitate more towards airbnbs which i find a little i don't care i'm fine with it i'll stay in an airbnb don't care for it very utilitarian i also don't like sleeping in someone's bed i don't like it i don't like sleeping in a stranger's bed i know plenty of strangers stay in a hotel but for whatever reason i don't like it. I don't like sleeping in a stranger's bed. I know plenty of strangers stay in a hotel, but for whatever reason, I don't associate that with. Yeah. I think it's become a necessity that people do Airbnb financially,

and that makes sense. It's often a way, especially if you're spending more than a week, if you're spending a long time out of town. And that, to me, also is why just going to a hotel in your city and hanging out there for a while you get that little fix without spending a ton of money right um and maybe a fix you haven't had for a long time probably a lot of us more likely spend a lot of time at hotels as kids because we're with our parents who had money and were willing to splash around right uh not to make

any assumptions but yeah you're a you're a vacation club kind of guy oh yeah yeah we would always stay at hotels in florida we i don't think i i don't think i had a an appreciation for the hotel bar though until i started going to comic-con yeah for multiple days a big part of the culture because like you try to get into big parties and i like once in a while, I like some insane thing. Because on Comic-Con, on occasion, I can sneak in somewhere, and there's acrobats, and the music's way too loud. Yeah, yeah. Maybe it's an open bar. That's fun to see that.

But one of the best traditions of Comic-Con is going to that Hyatt bar. Oh, yeah. It's the Hyatt at the top of the... Well, I usually, I like that. You and I shared a sunset at that high. We had a romantic sunset. Two or three years ago. Staring at John Lennon quotes written on the glass.

Yes. But I'm more referring to the low level or the first level. The lobby bar. Thank you. The lobby bar. Where the old comics pervs hang out in cabbages. Old comics writers and artists are just hanging out there and you go and get a little table

and that's a nice tradition of Comic-Con for the last, God, maybe seven years now I've been going down eight years. Where the legends

and the riff-raff can meet and mingle. Yeah, it's pretty actually cool. But it's, yeah, it's great. Yeah,

and I totally agree. I had more fun at that. Comic-Con, it's so strange all that, the kind of jostling to get on the list, and are you on the list, and no, you should be in this line,

and then you get in there, and there's nowhere to move. I remember the first time I went to Comic-Con, there was a bunch of that, and there was a party at the Hard Rock Hotel down there. Oh, that's impossible. Four knocks, lockdown. Yeah, yeah, seventh hard rock uh episode uh where i reference hard rock uh we're gonna keep climbing them up but it was whatever this party was was promised to be star studded then wait till you when you were mingling with the top tier

talent in hollywood up there and the one recognizable figure was wolf from american gladiators is that the correct name or was he named like coyote or something he's a real sweetheart oh really like the nicest guy pa or i was an audience page which became like a catch-all for do anything so you knew on the american yes wolf was very all the all the gladiators were were nice that's good you didn't get to have a beer with wolf though wolf didn't say he was proud of you no we had some late nights i think that might have been the latest i've ever spent on a studio lot as i spent 21 hours straight on the sony lot geez

and how much did you get paid for that day did you get over i think i did get over okay you did get over time because it was double time if it's 21 hours. It was definitely double time at a certain point, but it was writer's strike filler. And so they were churning stuff out. They were throwing money at these reality shows. Right after that, the arena was converted into, I believe, the set for My Dad is Better Than Your Dad, which is, as I say that out now at least such a bad taste in my mouth that that was a tv show you find that offensive i mean i yeah fine everyone's dad has their good qualities

we shouldn't be judging dads one second one against each other yeah no give him a break you imagine being in that scenario where that phrase comes out of your mouth and you mean it awful yeah what would it like if we we If we were all If we If things had gone The wrong way On our night of Hotel bar drinking And we were all

Shouting that At each other Oh yeah Yeah that would Really have devolved What a nightmare Let's try it Let's put all of our dads

At an official truce Right now They're at a truce Yeah I agree So Where were we going With all that

Wolf Comic Con Hotel bars Hotel hotel bars affection for hotels great spots room to breathe oxygen to the brain and we did a little tour of both of them and maybe we should go in the order that we that we hit them up sure now is okay not to question the sector keepers logic right but uh i i have, obviously, with talking about these places and them being part of the CityWalk saga. Would you really consider these part of CityWalk? Well, yeah, I mean, it's part of the resort overall. So it is, I, you can make an argument either way. If CityWalk is just in the boundaries of that map, but on the map, are the hotels sort of indicated or no?

I don't think they're on the map. I forget. If they're not on the map. Not in like an Alaska and Hawaii kind of thing in the corner. They're not, yeah, they're not just separate. I mean, probably not technically on CityWalk because they're not connected to the street. But I guess the further we question this we would be robbing the sector keeper of strength right and he needs that he's almost there

not kicking him no that would take strength away okay let's put him up on a pedestal the sector keeper is wonderful yeah the hotels are wonderful i'm glad to be talking about them so but if you are leaving cityWalk, actually, we started our journey around the globe, like around the park, and then we went kind of back the far way to the east of the property, but now we're going all the way back to the west. So if you're leaving the theme park

and you go from the fountain, you have to walk on side streets or through this weird pedestrian bridge to get over to the Hilton. And the Hilton's the one more atop the hill. It's higher up and it's the more recently added hotel.

It was added in the 80s and the Sheraton is... I'm really putting a T on Sheraton because it's confusing because you're Sheraton. Yeah, I don't see anything from this hotel chain. Oh're not you're not an heir no benefit yeah oh sorry to hear that tried but it's no one's gonna try yeah you've tried to claim you're a long lost child of the sheraton family yeah that didn't work claiming i was db cooper's son didn't work uh you know you gotta try some cons to get ahead in this town.

I gotta see if I can claim that I'm, if I started claiming I'm Scott Starwood to try to get Starwood rewards points. Oh, well, you know, the family keeps growing. The Starwood family keeps growing. At the very least, that's a good professional wrestling name. Ooh, yeah.

Scott Starwood, the heir to the Starwood hotel chain. So anyways, this one was added. This is the second hotel added at Universal. It was added in the 80s. And to really get it into my wheelhouse, I want to talk about the architect of this hotel because I think this place is beautiful.

This is like exactly my aesthetic. It's steel and big brass poles and those like that super reflective glass uh and giant atriums it just makes me multiple atriums yes there's so many there's so many atriums and that walk that you can do kind of the way you end up entering because the official entrance is on the other side like closer to the freeway into the hill that's where the cars enter from but as a pedestrian you get to go through all these weird empty ballrooms i mean i'm sure they're not always empty but um but when but typically late at night there's no weddings going on or anything but like yeah amazing grand event spaces and chandeliers huge chandeliers lift drivers very easy to confuse the lift drivers

of where the hotel lobby or where they should pick you up yeah because if you type in at least this used to be the case i was up there once and called for a lift and the button the like pin drops when you look up sherton or universal hilton it drops by the ballrooms it doesn't drop by the lobby okay very confusing so yeah i think you're in trouble getting there and then we when we picked up a lift on the way back um the lift driver said so you guys from out of town oh no we were just hanging out at the hotel okay are you like visiting friends from out of town no, we were just hanging out at the hotel. Oh, okay, are you like visiting friends from out of town? No. So what were you doing there?

Oh, we were just like at the bar. Oh, really? So they have a good bar? Is it like, what is it like, you know, like good prices? Is it kind of cheap? No, absolutely not. Way more expensive than it would be at a regular bar. Oh, silence, rest of the ride.

It is a little hard to explain but as we'll get to uh that is not an uncommon thing to do for the sheraton bar or at least it didn't used to be wait what do you mean it used to be a big haunt for people to hang out including one notable luminary who will we'll get to but uh i think a lot of people famous denizen of this of the sheraton and the sheraton i think a lot of people would go, the articles I read seem to indicate that people would go and watch games at the bar. It seemed like it was really

happening. Yeah. Let me talk about another luminary for a second. William Pereira is the architect of the Universal Hilton. And let me just list some of the other things that he, or perhaps his firm, it might not all be literally this man, butiam william perera one of the great architects we talked about john jurdy who built city walk he's one of those figures i've i've looked up and found very cool

to read but you just like some of these people you look at their works and your jaw drops how could this all have been the same person and his is one of the craziest the main one the main feather in his cap the lax theme building which is that central jetson's pod right that lax that's cool which at one point had a disney alien bar on the counter yes yeah um which that thing is like the only pleasant aspect of lax it's like the only thing that makes you okay with being there that you get to see this cool bizarre piece of architecture uh um uh i think i believe there was a beck tour where he used that a picture of that as a backdrop oh i'm sure i mean that is so much shorthand in pop culture i feel like this is shorthand for you're in la now here's the weird the weird airport for this weird city of stars and celebs you know yeah it gets you in the state

that la is a little bit kooky it's like you just landed in a ufo you're not going to recognize you landed in the ufo i'm getting confused by my own point here some of these celebs do seem like aliens am i right fellas if uh if there's any truth to men in black and black too sure uh some of the other things this guy's built the the geisel library named after uh dr seuss this crazy abstract like brutalist library at ucsd in san diego where aaron went if anybody knows this offhand what i'm talking about, it looks like an Escher painting. It's totally insane.

The Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco, also this guy. Big famous San Francisco Pyramid. The Disneyland Hotel was this guy. The original Carthay Circle was this guy. Not just a theme park, but the real restaurant

that is now... Yes. Oh, yeah, it was a theater, not a restaurant. The original place that restaurant that is now... Yes. Oh, yeah, it was a theater, not a restaurant. The original place that now is like the main landmark at California, but it's sorely needed. The original architecture was by this guy. Also built CommuniCore at Epcot. Really?

Yes. And I get a pretty Epcot-y vibe from this universe. Yeah. It definitely seems like a lost pavilion and a very tall one at that. So this guy, indelible influence on theme park world and theme park architecture, and did awesome stuff in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. Also built most of Irvine and Newport Beach, like almost every primary building in those weird cities.

So if his works are Beck albums albums what would that did this hotel universal uh carthay was like early cool one out of the gate that's mellow gold uh lax theme building just like primary classic so that's odelay right bizarre experimental one is the geisel library and that would be midnight vultures right um and then i don't know the acoustic ones or maybe maybe those are just like more functional buildings those are just like the right low-key stuff you build people inside calm and uh that's that's irvine is uh the whole of irvine is just sea change yeah yeah yeah okay oh too sad for me sea change oh that's true that's a breakup album yeah beautiful album art though you never want to uh return to sea change a little too uh you don't like actively put it on i'll go in just on lost

cause once in a while but i don't do the whole one yeah that's the one little bit of like but boy that one gets yeah that gets grim i don't know i um i don't know did i i don't do the whole one yeah that's the one little bit of like but boy that one gets yeah that gets grim i don't know i um i don't know did i i don't know that william perera built a prison or anything but maybe that would be changed if he ever constructed a prison um oh but you know also beck doing pretty great work here later in his career i thought colors was cool he's he has like singles recently and you know beck staying relevant decades in just like william pereira the final building this guy built and it was opened after his death but the last one that he worked on fox plaza the biggest skyscraper on the 20th century fox which of course nakatomi plaza right from diehard how about that also this guy insane that list is so crazy that really is crazy stay in relevant just like beck

just like beck yeah uh i would love to keep doing these architect these architects as albums this is a real wheelhouse for me and thanks for setting me up sure but anyway but we're talking about um the hill i don't know which becca it's like just a random becca this is um the information one foot in the grave right yeah it's like one of the it's in there i don't know what came after midnight vultures what was before midnight vultures did it also start with mutations mutations i always confuse those too because they're back to they're like back to back aren't they yeah and he was kind of going back and forth of like acoustic one electric one and then it all kind of melded in the middle it all kind of melded although the one has a very distinct

like kind of abstract weird cover and the other is just a picture of him if i'm remembering correctly yeah that's true yes it's just kind of a cool GQ photo. And we have now established that we know about one band past 1981. And Aerosmith. Oh, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is kind of where we started in the 70s. So we'll compare Aerosmith to the works of Bob Gurr. We'll do that whole cross-section at some point.

Look out for that chart on our Twitter. But let's talk about the stuff inside the building we had an excellent night at one of the probably the grandest atrium in all of the in all of the hilton which i've seen referred to as just the atrium bar but i also saw menus calling it 21 and over very catchy but the sierra cafe is that the sit-down restaurant with the buffet okay so and that is i mean i've been to the bar before but i've eaten at the buffet my mom and stepdad love buffets so when they checked in and saw there was a seafood buffet and a breakfast buffet we but we hit up both with the last time they visited wow and i think that is an interesting

part of that this hotel i mean universal studios hollywood caters to a large international tourism crowd so like i just remember the first day we went to that breakfast buffet and there's like all the american breakfast go-tos and then there was like baked beans and like cooked tomatoes for the british tourists and then there was also like pork shumai and this is the first and only place i've ever had jellyfish salad so i think those were some of the more uh geared more towards the asian population yeah and it kind of tasted like gummy worm salad it didn't have a huge flavor it had more of like a soy sauce flavor it was just kind of gummy strange but it was a strange mix and then at night it at least on the weekends very

decked out like giant sculpture filled with shrimp multiple prime rib carving stations like it's it's a lot it's very intense you're going to your happy place yeah just remembering how was it do you remember it was pretty good i i am more of a you know i like to sit and i like buffets in theory but sometimes the quantity over quality right can be a little overwhelming but it was a fun experience you can't control the quality of each food that way usually so like half the stuff is okay or even more sometimes depending on the buffet yeah and we didn't but we did not eat there we ate in the lounge bar um and which you know there's nothing much to talk about food wise there you guys split a pizza i had a burger it's just a lot largely basic stuff but we need to talk about

jason's oh yes which uh you knew this would be discussed yeah absolutely half the show yeah yeah uh so i was looking at i mean they had a lot of interest it was a surprisingly large menu for a lobby bar and not that pricey i mean still more expensive than the quality you get but a little marked up but um not the worst you ever found in a hotel but i was hungry but not that hungry and sometimes when that happens i like to just have dessert so i walked into the bar and got the dessert menu and just ordered the apple strudel uh right with the ice cream does it come with ice cream on it yeah and it was delicious uh giant slice of apple strudel, big thing of vanilla ice cream, and then some sort of like, I don't know if it was a condensed milk sauce,

but there was a very sweet like cream sauce on top. Milk sauce. Milk sauce. So we all, of course, had a nice laugh. And Jason had dessert. You know, ha, ha, ha. We were all eating. You know, not that what we're eating is some gourmet,

perfectly nutritious thing. It's just bread and cheese. Yeah. Someone had a Caesar salad. Someone had like some bites, small bites from the appetizers. So I just, just, you know, to ask what your day had been like, uh, I said, what, what else have you eaten today? Like what, like, Oh yeah.

So like, cause you were saying you were full. So I said, well, what's been the meals today? So if you would, wouldn't mind repeating what you ate on Friday. I had lunch with a friend of the show, Marissa Strickland. Sure. I had some sort of breakfast sandwich at a cafe. It was, like, bacon, egg, and cheese and, like, braised greens. Pretty standard stuff.

Pretty standard, tasty. So, it's like your breakfast. You know, it's a place with avocado toast on the menu all day. Kind of one of those cafes. Right. And then to say what your next meal was. I was a little hungry when I got home and stuck in traffic for a while. And I just had some cookies and milk as a snack.

Uh-huh. So breakfast. Breakfast sandwich. Lunch. Cookies and milk. Cookies and milk. Dinner. Apple strudel.

Apple strudel. And a big piece of ice cream. And a vodka soda. And a vodka soda. And a vodka soda. With a few limes. Now, I decided to ask another question that everyone, I think, would want to know. I said, what kind of milk are we talking here? And you said...

Whole milk. Because the current thinking is that whole milk is better because it it usually I believe it's it's more protein. It makes you feel more a little more protein, a little more milk fat in there. You go. It's going to fill you up and trick you into eating less. That's why it's recommended for babies. And what are you dunking in the milk oh those ones that you get at like supermarkets that are like kind of a chewy sugar cookie with like a chunk of icing on top like

neon icing on top and they were neon icing specific because this sounds like a thing yeah but also already kind of a soft cookie so to already kind of a soft cook yeah because the chocolate chip didn't it disintegrate instantly and frosting cookie huh i just will only i feel like i do something with a chocolate component chocolate chips warios absolutely if i dunk cookies in milk once every four years but this is a is this a frequent occurrence for you? Uh, yes, but I usually have chocolate chip in the house. I see. And when we say frequent, six times a month? Frequent cookies and milk?

Yeah, how often a month, how many times a month are you indulging in cookies and milk? Well, sometimes I'll just have a cookie when I'm just puttering around the house. But that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking when you make a sauc. Sitting down with cookies in the milk. A saucer. Literally making a meal of it. Maybe like, oh, making a meal of it. Usually before, like, after dinner or before bed.

Maybe like a handful of times a month. Five? Five. Yeah, sure. Six? Five, six sounds reasonable. And do you- If I have cookies in the house, I'll probably have a cookie every day, though.

That's fine. I get that that makes there's something different about doing the setup creating the little santa display that is the that is the difference that's what i'm wondering because this was definitely uh i was looking at what i was in the house and i didn't really feel like having a girl bar and i was like oh some cookies and milk because we were also trying to figure out when to meet up i wasn't sure when I was going to eat again, but I didn't. Right. I'd had a very salty lunch, so I wanted something more sweet. And is it a tall glass of milk? No, usually like a rocks glass size.

What's a rocks? Oh, like a little whiskey glass or something, basically? Yeah. And then do you end up using all the milk for the cookies or do you end up drinking? No, I drink what's left. Yeah. But is there a lot left?

Usually. Okay. So it's not like you're completely submerging the cookie in each time you're going in for a bite. No, I'm pretty light dunk. So light. Okay. So it's a light dunk and then you're just finishing the glass. A light dunk or one or two and then I'm just finishing the glass and I'll usually have some water with it too.

Okay. But let's also, the other meal revelation, because since earlier in the series, there was... Are you talking about the hot dogs? There was the hot dog revelation. Yeah, right. And the hot dog situation was recapped and in such a way that it made it seem

almost a little more reasonable than when it came up for the first time on the show. And you almost made it. I almost made it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Until you explained. And then I shared a trick that Mike knew of. It's like, if you want to microwave a hot dog, the way to do it is you wrap it in a wet paper towel.

So it kind of de facto steams it. And I accidentally added on. So if you need something quick and you're in a rush. Yes. And I didn't think that's, I still don't think that's so weird. Sometimes you plan your day wrong or like you're running late. And Yes. And I didn't think that's, I still don't think that's weird. Sometimes you plan your day wrong or like you're running late.

And you, so we'll just. But you're running late, so, oh God, I have almost no time left. Better cook this hot dog in the microwave really quickly.

if you want some protein and you want something hot. So are you eating, so then you throw it in a bun. Do you have buns on hand? We actually didn't even get into this. that's usually, no, because I usually have...

I always buy bread. Okay, so just a regular slice of bread. Yeah, a regular slice of bread. I mean, this is the worst detail to me. As a child, I hated hot dog with regular bread. You don't buy hot dog buns? No. Well, the hot dog buns are the lowest form of bread.

A pack of hot dog buns is like 99 cents. Yeah, I know what he's saying there. So I usually will get like a sourdough or a potato bread or a wheat bread. Okay, the quality thing makes sense to me, but doesn't it like, am I the only person who like those things have always been, they cancel each other out. I didn't used to like it either when it was like wonder bread but if it's slightly it's a bit if it's a better bread um you can also butterfly it you can butterfly the hot dog cut it down the middle flatten it and make like a sandwich oh oh i see what you're saying for some reason i've always just like cut up pieces of hot

dog i don't like splitting it down the middle. Yeah, it's less fun. If you go to like a beer hall sort of German restaurant, some of their sausages, they'll butterfly and put between two slices of thick sourdough bread. That's really tasty. You knew the verb offhand. The butterfly, the hot dog. To butterfly it?

Yeah, I don't think that's a crazy term to know. You do home butterflying, but if you don't have time, you just wrap it like a dumpling in a paper towel well and when i was younger i briefly experimented because i saw this on this food network when you experimented in college uh my experiment was trying to cook hot dogs and butter uh-huh and it is very good it was like a a comfort food episode of one of the but you don't really do that anymore because hot dogs or sausage

are usually... There's enough grease in them. They won't stick. Don't really do it anymore. But have you at home... Once in a while do it? Butter... No, not really.

I don't really... It's too... It's too much. Hmm. Okay. Well, I think I'm out of questions for now. I think we can go back

to the hotels. Yeah. And I feel a little bad that this is a bit of an inquisition. You're literally in the corner of the room and we're all pointing yeah and asking the first hot dog revelation was one of my favorite parts of the saga and there was more meat on the bone i just

something to me about if you're in a rush the quick hot dog well hey if you're eating hot dogs there's no bone to worry about it's just meat you mainly eat hot dogs six times a month because of convenient you know part of it is i i really rarely buy raw meat i i yeah i rarely buy i'll buy deli meat yeah deli meat or i usually had pepperoni or salami growing up grew up in heavy heavily italian uh neighborhoods i don't think i ever went to a jewish deli until i was I usually had pepperoni or salami growing up. Grew up in heavily Italian neighborhoods. I don't think I ever went to a Jewish deli until I was like in high school. My conception of a deli was like an Italian deli. When was the last time you bought Scrapple?

I don't think I personally have ever bought Scrapple. Oh, okay. And not, I think there's one or two butchers in LA that'll do it. Let's keep it that way. The next time we have some kind of live appearance or something, I want a fan to bring Jason Scrapple as a gift for all of the episodes we've given you. Which is another East Coast thing. Pork roll.

Or Taylor Ham, as it's sometimes called. Yeah, but those names are not fun. I want fans coming with either soaps or Scrapple. Scrapple is usually a raw loaf, so be careful with that. Oh, you don't have to eat it. Get it fresh. Get it fresh. Get the Scrapple fresh hours before the show.

I just want to see the exchange. Yeah. Although you're going to be tempted if free Scrapple comes your way. Well, I'm going to want to cook a big meal for everyone, you know. When we're doing these shows. For all the fans. No, for you guys at least so if you guys that's a live show i like is jason cooks scrapple and hot dogs for

everybody and we don't talk about theme parks at all live show that is the one thing i've been asking when it comes to live shows more labor please more preparation required now you cater our live shows our fans bring the ingredients and that's good yeah that makes sense i guess that's true um anyway the whole the universal hilton right go back to this yes uh yeah what what else is there to say about this the um several uh television episodes filmed up there there was a beverly hills 90210 season one episode called the Spring Dance and the Spring Dance took place at the Universal Hilton. It's mainly a darkened ballroom so you don't get

to see a lot of that sweet architecture but you see the fountain outside while Gabrielle Carteris shows up and you can, with the view of the valley behind them, you get a sense of how this was the height of luxury in 1991. Also this is where jerry and george stayed in the two-part episode the trip where they come to la which of seinfeld

i probably didn't say seinfeld jerry and george stay there in the you know the quest to find kramer that ends up leading to the wait is that separate from when they get the tv show i'm not totally sure to try his luck in la and then he gets for a people think he's a murderer yeah but that has nothing to do with i can't remember getting of the jerry show anyway point is they show an exterior shot of the universal hilton which makes me happy to see i'll skip the rest of the episode i just want to see that lobby but then it goes to jerry in the room and there's a window and there is an ocean view in the window but there would not be no ocean view at the universal hilton this was an egregious error on the part of the makers of

seinfeld and the show is dead to me forever now no more seinfeld ever again no more seinfeld for me i feel like these hotels are used a lot in filming, especially Universal-owned stuff, because it's easy to coordinate. I feel like I've seen at least the Sheraton in an episode of The Office or two. Oh, perhaps. Because you can also dress these as hotels in anywhere USA.

Yes, true. If it's just a ballroom or a generic kind of lobby. And it's right in the backyard of Hollywood, and I don't want to skip around too much but this does seem like a perfect opportunity to take us well first of all let's take the outside elevator down the parking garage to the sheraton so here's how it works you exit the hilton through like halfway to the the ballroom part of the hotel coffee yes you exit at a pretty arbitrary unlabeled point and you go to just a very minimal elevator bank and you press the button and you wait for a very long time but then you get in a glass elevator with a beautiful view

with the same view that the 90210 gang got um i i really honestly am recommending this you and that takes you down the parking garage and that's a fun little ride i think you guys are with me that um especially glass elevator rides or like little bonus rides outside of parks i like when they're like when they show up in hotels. I like when they're in malls. It gives me a little ride fix without paying an admission. Yeah, I would completely agree with that. Yeah.

And I like going between the hotels. I think they, it's not labeled well, but if you're staying at the Sheraton, you can, in theory, get up to the theme park without waiting for the shuttle bus that runs between all of them,, in theory, get up to the theme park without waiting for the shuttle bus that runs between all of them, the two hotels, and then City Walk and the theme park.

You can take that glass elevator up, walk around the Hilton property, and then take that pedestrian footbridge up the block to the theme parks. It's a little bit, when I was first out here and my dad stayed at the Sheraton, it was a little bit of a like how do we they said

like oh there's an elevator and you go up and there's a path and in florida since it's a full resort property there's signs there's kind of some pathways like that at universal florida little kind of hidden but then every 10 feet there's a sign there needs to be like some expressway though from these hotels to city walk proper they might run shuttles but that's not everyone's right but like yeah we'll make it a little bit more like orlando where you can just walk i mean obviously they have more space there but they're they just built that big thing over lancashire the big walkway in the last year or two to make it easier to get from the metro to the tram there's got to be a version of that that's like your express walkway right into city walk because getting from city walk and the parks to the hotels is downright dangerous very i do we there's a real

sector question do we talk about this now or maybe we save it for tomorrow i think this is part of the i think tomorrow yeah without the sector keeper here to make the ruling, it's a little tougher. But if he was here, he might cough and have us move on down to the Universal Sheraton. And if you're going to go, if anybody does this path that we're describing, you go get a drink at the Hilton, then take the glass elevator downstairs it's the best way to arrive at the universal sheraton because you get to see that beautiful view the flickering lights of uh van eyes or something i don't know but then you really get to land on this like perfect 60s mod hotel this place opened in 1969 and it was called the hotel of the Stars. And you can feel this 60s height of luxury as you can with the 80s in the Hilton.

You're traveling a little bit back in time. You go a couple decades back. And that's the thing I like about these two hotels. It's a similar vibe to Disney World where if you do a pass of hotels, you can feel the eras that they were all built in and you're in totally different themes and it's like a much lighter version of that but if they were two hotels cut from the same cloth i wouldn't like it nearly as much as super 80s hotels super

60s hotel i have to give them credit because they've redone these hotels a number of times i feel like even in just the last 10 years uh although the one time i stayed at the hilton that led to a very funny sort of bit of business where the elevators were being redone so they had employees running the elevators like an old style hotel with walkie-talkies like you had to like someone had to call up and get like someone was downstairs and there would be a person there and they would radio down to one of the other it was very confusing and then that was the same year i think both my parents visited like six months apart um and and i was like god i hope the elevators are fixed and and they were they did they turned it around pretty quickly but it was very odd because you think like oh old

style hotels with hotel operators this is much more like a guy who works at the front desk usually and he's just like pressing the button and the override and going like i'm going out to this drops it off okay i'm going back down like because only half the elevators were working i disagree they should have stuck with this I want a guy on every floor. I want operators. That really makes me feel like now we're in like a 30s hotel situation. It was a little, I don't know. It was a little bizarre.

I want you to be the elevator operator. I want a bellhop uniform. Lobby boy. Lobby boy's here. Grand Budapest. Oh, yeah, totally. And it's not a walkie-talkie you answer a little like dixie cup string phone oh yeah it has to go all the way up the 40 floors of the hotel

but the sheraton when my family first stayed there were like yeah it's pretty nice but they had let it fall off a little but they've really restored that lobby done a good job really good keeping with the times however i'm not super pleased with, I don't know exactly what it was like in the 1990s, but while I did have a good time at that bar, they are no longer paying homage to the primary epicenter fact about the Universal Sheraton. The most famous resident.

This was so fun to find out. The Universal Sheraton, highly associated for many decades with the actor Telly Savalas. Telly Savalas. TV's Kojak. Lived there for like 20 years. He died there. He died in this hotel on the third floor, on a third floor suite.

93 or 94? It was in 94. He died. This is what's crazy. He died in January 1994. You know what else was in January 1994? The Northridge earthquake, which did substantial damage to the Universal Sheraton.

So this place, which through the 80s and 90s was beautiful and teeming with life because of the constant presence of telly savalas walking around the lobby playing pool with people walking around with slippers say hey baby what's happening he was like the heart of the hotel and then he died and then the life went out of it yeah and then and then the earthquake, maybe Telly's Falls' death in some cosmic way triggered the Northridge earthquake. God was too sad. Yeah, he stopped holding the lines together.

Yeah, the phone lines. And it seemed like he was very friendly to guests. People would come up to him and talk to him. It seemed like he would shoot pool and gamble on Sportsgate. Yes, he was just hanging around the bar. come up to him and talk to him. It seemed like he would shoot pool and gamble on sports gate. Like, yes, he was just hanging around. I found one quote from his obituary where a friend said the following, he could be eating a sandwich,

you know, putting something in his mouth and someone would come over and slap him on the back and say, how you doing? He'd say delightful. Which is wonderful. Sounds so fun and full of life as opposed to like you hear the stories about like late in life dean martin sitting at hamburger mary's hamburger mary's

yeah on sunset really he was there yeah and it seems much sadder well or why my a friend of mine has a story where he was at the coppola winery where and he was there on a weekend where Francis Ford Coppola himself was walking around and you might think he's in his element he's at his wine place he's probably more invested in that these days than the movies and you might think wine's flowing he's boisterous boisterous guy you could come up to him and say I just want to say godfather greatest thing apocalypse now and hey put her there shake your hand he just my friend just said you know you inspired me to to be a writer and to do the creative stuff that I do and he just stared didn't look away stared at him while all this was said and then walked away didn't

acknowledge him or say anything just stared daggers as if to say you are dirt to me man how awful how heartbreak to meet you to sell someone you're you're my hero and then get hard dissed but in the universal sheraton you could walk up to telly savalas whether or not you loved selly savalas or only slightly knew who he was and he'd say how you doing baby we're in telly town now how awesome so cool the coppola thing i mean that's not even an irish goodbye that's like a full-on sicilian goodbye like that's like an irish goodbye but there's more more of a threat of menace behind it oh i should mention my friend was slaughtered in his hotel that night oh okay well you know didn't make it there's disrespect

possibly at franc Francis's orders. Yeah. You can only assume. I'm trying to think of another equivalent of like where like a famous person was hanging around

and they were just like the greatest. They would hold cord or something. Yeah. Is there such a thing? The closest thing I can think of

is Lemmy Kilmister from Motorhead would be at that rainbow bar and grill on Sunset a lot if he wasn't on tour. And like you could buy him a drink and you know like that was his hangout yeah well i mean it's not we can we can establish ours it's

it wouldn't be that rare to find us at the uh burbank holiday inn that's true yeah but the crystal view lounge yes uh we were there one night we closed it down and it it's not open terribly late there was maybe five other people in it and we met some very a very nice listener yeah there's like no one in this bar and except like us and maybe maybe erin and lindsey and of all the places one person was like oh hey weird right this is the the dream is well i don't want to i guess i don't want to change it from the crystal view lounge because that's a perfect name but yeah if it got if it the name got changed to the ptr crystal view lounge and there was a booth name for us sure that weird booth with a

very low ceiling where you're kind of trapped that i want i want that whole uh part of the the boy hey we know the bartender he's he's our he's He's our friend. I want to be the Telly Savalas of the Burbank Holiday Inn. And I also want to get very large and shave my head. Yeah, I will be living there by 75. I think we can make the booth happen. Yeah.

I think also like... How about this? Just if you work at a restaurant or a bar in the Los Angeles area or Orlando area, will you name a booth after us? Can we have multiple booths at multiple places?

Or design sandwiches. Sure. That's a good way to get us to show up somewhere. Yeah. Name a booth after us. We'll be there. And offer a special of a butterflied hot dog. Cookies and milk.

With a side of cookies and milk. Note on the menu, prepared in a napkin and then i guess you couldn't do a butterfly that was prepared in a napkin well you could have either you would want to do it after it's complicated yeah yeah the jason one and the jason two yeah uh if i this this is reminding me of the one of the times my family visited um and we're staying i guess we were insane at hilton but we went to um my dad always wanted to go to spago in beverly hills and we went and who was walking around shaking hands but wolfgang puck himself whoa it was great he was so nice he was so charming shook our hands gave every he's like oh you know oh yes just here just checking

in uh and he gave out like a little slice of pizza he gave us some little like a muse bush sort of thing and uh it was just a delightful like experience how often do you get to go to like a celebrity chef's restaurant and they're there yeah and yet we went into the bubba gump and the actor who played bubba gump was nowhere to be found no no what's his name i yeah williamson uh i think i can look at maybe we know who he was if he would put in a little facetime and what i guess wait he didn't play bubbaump. He played Bubba. Oh, so I'm also calling out Tom Hanks. Tom Hanks, you should be at Bubba Gump's far more frequently, and the other actor should be as well.

They should be at a booth shaking hands. They can cover more ground. They can do double duty. One can go into one room. The other can go into the other. Tom can hang out in the gift shop. They can divide and conquer i think you can for sure find dennis haskins at that save by the bell hop up pop up i would imagine

well now that dimples is gone sure america's first karaoke bar you know what we actually what we forgot to say is that so the reason telly savalas was here was was hanging out at the sheraton was because he filmed kojak on the Universal lot, and I think he lived much further away. He was like, let me just start staying up at the hotel, because we film late, and then I can just pop back in in the morning. He loved it so much. I saw it in an interview where he talks about why he loved hotel living,

and one of the things was, you know, I come downstairs while the maids go clean up after sloppy telly. I go back in, everything's sparkling clean. Sloppy telly. Sloppy telly. I love it so much. It was so, and so he loved it so much, he just moved in, and in fact, raised his children up there.

He moved his mother several floors up. The whole Savalas family was living in the hotel. And then one time, he's hanging out in the bar and one of the owners or something is bemoaning the fact that there hasn't been enough business in the bar lately and how do we drum it up and he says why don't you call it telly's and before you know it it is officially telly's bar and then he's walking around telly's bar how cool and you could walk up asking to play pool he would play pool um and then and then unfortunately he passed away but uh you know but but stayed there was living there when he passed away and on the third floor outside the door there was a sign that to ward off potential

intruders that said no one can enter without permission from the king so neat wow telly savalas running around they need a new celebrity to live and raise his or her children there yeah that's the thing that's missing i don't know who it is uh well i mean you got pole with garland. To me, Garland is like TV legend royalty. Right. Gregarious guy. He's a guy who you can walk up to. Yeah, he loves to man up to people. Sure.

I feel like your whole relationship formed from him just pointing at you and saying, you're funny. He's what an inviting man. Yeah, that's true. If there was ever a person who should be yeah yeah i i would really like if you planted this well he'll come back on the show and we'll present it to him i think yeah that he should live we have a plan it's an old hollywood it's a spin on an old hollywood classic living in a nice hotel sure but i also would like him to shave his head bald like telly

so that's a that's a probably an aspect of it that he's got to follow we should say he's gonna crank the drinking way oh yeah oh my gosh more unhealthy to make this this entire okay this thing work for our younger listeners telly savalis was a tv detective named kojak he was also blow felled in on her majesty secret service and i believe nominated for an oscar for his role in the bird man of alcatraz uh dirty dozen robert osborne back in action over here yeah my uh one of my neighbors used to work in the gift shop at the sheraton universal and they i mentioned it too that i've been up there at the bar and they were like you know

telly swallows used to live out like yeah we yeah there at the bar and they were like, you know, Telly Savalas, you used to live there. I'm like, yeah, we talked about Telly. And I said, did you know any other stars that would come? And they're like, well, you know, I never even saw Telly, but everyone knew he was there. I never got a chance to meet him. But they said, the one that I remember is a guy stayed there and his last name was Toma. Do you guys know about the one season tv show toma no no okay toma was uh based on the biography and story of a real life detective who had a 98 conviction rate

he was like this super cop and he wrote this book and he consulted on like the story of his life and the show starred let me see tony mustaine and susan strasberg and tony mustaine played david toma and he said he was only going to do it for one season and they they didn't believe him they thought that was like finesse that was him like trying to get more money for the next season but at the end of the first season he's like no i'm walking and the show was doing well so they're like well i guess we gotta recast him they recast him with an actor by the name of robert blake and then they redid the show entirely got rid of the full except main character is good detective and that became beretta whoa and that ran for a number of years and strasbourg the actress stayed i'm not

sure if the actor no i think they replaced the whole case it was just but it was home i became beretta like same idea it was the same cameraman and makeup person yeah and same state of text yeah and then a lot of the writing staff would go on to write episodes of the Rockford Files. Filmed at these hotels. Yeah, and stuff like that. And then later in life, Robert Blake would go just a few miles away to not murder his wife at Vitello's Italian Restaurant. Vitello's Italian Restaurant.

Yes. Located in beautiful Studio City. Yes. Wow. What great... So, I'm sorry. The actor who played Toma. No, the real-life Toma. The real- city. Yes. Wow. What great... So, I'm sorry. The actor who played Toma... No, the real-life Toma.

The real-life Toma, whose website says... The website commemorating him is very... Wait, so Toma stayed at the hotel? Toma stayed at the hotel. But not regularly? I think while they were filming either the series or the 90-minute movie pilot.

So, wait a minute. So, you asked if there are any other celebrities that ever stayed at the hotel, and Toma was the... Toma was the only one that my neighbor had remembered meeting. That's so interesting that that's the memory. There had to be other celebrities. Of course there were other celebrities. But Toma was the one that left the impression. The real-life David Toma.

Did the maids go clean up after sloppy Toma? Sloppy Toma. the top of their head the real life david toba did the maids go clean up after sloppy toba um i also clearly if toba had been on the case robert blake wouldn't have gotten oh my gosh yeah because tomah would have been right there too if tomah was still staying at the hotel do you know that i was there the day that robert blake was arrested and taken to prison because he lived in Hidden Hills, the skated community, very close to where I grew up in Woodland Hills. And my dad picked me up from school one day and was like much more hurried than usual. I got in the car and he's like, get in, get in, get in.

They're arresting Robert Blake. It's happening today. And we waited outside of Hidden Hills where the big police presence and helicopters and stuff and then we watched the car go you watched robert blake get taken away taken away from the luck the luxurious gated community hidden hills wow and your dad was just like i want to see this yeah because my dad in general like like to watch car chases uh uh like if there's ever a car chase and it's passing by our and he'd go okay so just any criminal activity this made it more tantalizing because it was robert blake uh-huh uh-huh any like thought about on the day of the bronco chase he was like

do we go to one of the overpads we try to catch uh well which that was a big thing in la in general like a lot of people i mean if you watch the footage people are heading to those overpasses and putting up signs and it was definitely he was doing the math of a wonder okay so he's heading east how far would we have to go could we intersect yeah yeah that's kind of my that's kind of did you ever do anything like that um did he make a citizen's arrest ever no no citizen's arrest he uh uh i did go i did attend the oj trial one day. I forget if I've said that on this podcast. I don't think you have said that. I watched, he took me outside the LA courthouse because he was a lawyer and he knew where and when these things happened.

And we watched Shapiro and Cochran head in for the day. Wow, really? And then from there, we went to a very dry trial. There was a copyright dispute between our favorite musicians brian wilson and mike love who were suing each other in what a day yeah honestly one of my most cherished childhood memories and i wore the only i wore a little suit i had a little green suit like a gray like olive green like a chair would be made out of so i'm in a little green like a crushed velvet green suit it was not unlike what the winners of the masters tournament

are given i was wearing i think that's why i liked it i was wearing a master's jacket i was nine years old and i had to see robert shapiro and then sit in a boring there was just nothing but jargon until like you know 17 minutes in the like and help me ronda among the other uh anyway affidavit blah the rest of it was just all jargon looks like we're all little weirdos on this podcast you know what this is making me want to say my dad is better than your dad hey wait a minute no it happened i became a monster no just because he wanted to fight crime i just hadn't thought about it for long enough to know my dad's the best dad he took me to see mike love sue brian wilson i'm trying to think about what else like staying at

both these hotels which which they're both nice i think it's interesting now because it's very clear now i think it's very clear. Now I think it's very clear as opposed to 10 years ago. They seemed much similar to me. Now it seems like the Hilton's catering to like families and stuff and the Sheraton is a little more like, yeah, this is cool.

There's like music in the lobby. There's an oppressive hip fragrance being pummeled, pummeling you. It's this weird, like, it's a study. It's kind of like a library came to life after closing. But it smells, it's very fragrant, although when I went to use the bathroom,

it's closer to, like, the room hallways, and that has a much more pleasant, soothing scent pumped into it. But they're really pumping in that hotel. Yeah, it's weird. Well, I guess it's not weird pumping in that hotel yeah it's weird i get well i guess not weird but like it's trying to make up for the fact that there's no newer hotel there because universal in orlando they've built newer hotels and hard rock is the hip hotel and even you know

whatever the uh cabana bay is like a cool retro throw but like so the 80s hotel has to be like where the cool or no wait we were saying the i'm saying the the one built in the 80 that tends to be more families okay so the 60s one is the one now that has to take over a little cooler but neither of them are too kid oriented and this is something that i kind of like because i feel like as a kid even i sort of didn't like when hotels were super cutesy there was something interesting about the feeling of i left all of the cat left alice in wonderland and mickey mouse and everything and now i'm in just this this dull like bit i'm in nakatomi plaza right actually it made me feel more it made me feel like an adult especially when my parents started giving me getting us our own key cards

and stuff well i don't what the thing is i think with the kiddie hotels is that no one i'm assuming nothing we went into and most i'm sure there's not even a good version of this but maybe like lego land or something all the kiddie hotels probably also felt cheap yeah like as a kid going to that whatever the star wars hotel is going to be because they're going to pump money into it like that's going to be like amazing so like that type of kid experience which of course now it's for adults too but but kid kid hotels like that there was a defunct land on the uh nickelodeon universe hotel in orlando which looks like a nightmare like shit yeah i want to vomit at every every every picture of that place is just uh an aesthetic barf yeah so it's like you can't even as a kid you kind of recognize what like dog shit is sometime like not all the time but like you can feel the detail or

you can feel condescending to the child yeah yeah yeah it's talking down to you yeah absolutely to do it and it pales in comparison when you're in a fully enveloped themed kids environment where there's a lot of money behind it to then go into a place with just kind of like a plywood Mickey is super lame. Right. And you can tell. Kids are smart. So less kid stuff in these hotels. Unless you're going to jack up the theming. Unless it's a fully themed Harry Potter hotel.

Which is obviously what they should do and i wonder why they're talking about i'm sure they've been talking about it but i don't know why they haven't done it it's weird i think it's weird in general that there has not been a third hotel no hotel built since um bizarre the 80s they are trying to build a gigantic wing onto the hilton and thank god and the concept art it looks like the old it still has an epica it looks like the the other tower at the contemporary Which I was worried was going to not be The cool 70s vibe

But I like that new tower I stay there yeah the Bay Lake Tower I like it a lot And it does feel like the next evolution It feels copacetic with the contemporary They're trying to build a third hotel Rumors we've heard There's a lot going on and

especially scott do you get the universal evolution mailings do you know any the neighborhood mailings i got letters that were about like how they were changing the freeway yeah so they i mean because universal is built so close to residential streets and like the the freeways they whenever they want to do like big work they have to send out information about it and present it to the, like, the city council or the neighborhood groups and all that sort of thing, and it's changed so much. Every, it's because, like, the, the local NBC affiliate is, is on the Universal backlot now, as is, like, the Telemmundo headquarters and there was talk about building apartments on the back lot closer to barham that got scrapped and then there's talk about yeah now there's talk

about building the hilton extension just recently in 2018 there's talk about building a 31 story tower by the sheraton and then there's land cleared by the frankenstein garage that they're like this is going to be the third hotel and this is going to be over there as we pointed out but it's going to be 75 stories tall you built if you build up and then yeah you'd have to move a lot of earth i mean the thing with universal city is you're competing with uh nature and gravity because it's a hill it's a mountain earthquake damage yeah it's uh yeah it's i think they're a little bit in a corner and it's interesting to think about the future of of universal hotels and that kind of seems like a closing point however i'm going to backtrack

instead because there's something more important to talk about which is we were getting a bar or we were getting a bar we were at the sheraton bar and as you mentioned a lot of music being pumped into the place and we've been i've been pointing the finger at you a lot jason now it's moving to mike all right bring it on uh we didn't even talk about how my waiter owned my ass yeah oh i was gonna bring that up oh yeah okay oh well he yeah you finished your apple apple strudel and then he came around and said so round two yeah like it was like do you want another drink eddie's like do you want another apple strudel and the table just lost it we all love great timing very pithy great pithy delivery take it off guy was very impressed yeah you're not on your podcast game what is this a live podcast the, here in the Hilton? A very good idea, by the way.

We'll try to make it happen. But anyway. So, Mike getting owned. Lots of music being pumped into this bar. But it was one particular song where you pointed up as if to the speaker and looked around like, ah, here we go. And the song that you did that for was green days good riddance time of your life parentheses time of your life you that of all the music that was playing and this was a lot of throwback 90s there was once there were there were songs we were commenting on but the one that made

you go oh yeah was time of your life yeah. What are you talking? You enjoy the song time of your life? I mean, look, I was being a little funny, but I mean, the song I think is a good song. I think that it's certainly been overplayed and overused over the years. It was overplayed two weeks after its release. I never, also because I think that was when i was graduating from middle school so it was used at yeah all any yeah any event tangentially related to that as well as the finale of seinfeld the clip show the seinfeld clip show right yes that preceded the finale yeah um i think that i don't put that song on but when i hear it i go there we go there it is light up here we go i liked it yeah it's this

everybody get ready it's time of your life i mean i wasn't like i didn't i didn't jump out of my seat and pump my fists i think i put one single finger in the air correct from the couch i think that's what i did but to me that to me is more reaction it was that whatever that song would ever merit time of your life do you also like vitamin c friends forever no no time of your life is heads and shoulders above vitamin c i think i disagree i think time of your life sucks really it's an awful i think this is more about you hitting time of your life than me just putting sort of innocuously maybe we weren't we should add on to directly in front of us was also a tv playing hd telemundo on mute so that's what if

you looked away from the conversation you could look at it and occasionally the little mute logo would pop up on screen like every two minutes sure yes what are you saying about that i just thought that was an interesting visual to go along with the audio of you going time of your life. I liked Muted Telemundo far more than Green Day's Time of Your Life. Yeah, I mean, I get it that it's very overplayed, but it's overplayed like Smooth or if Smooth had come on and we all... Well, Smooth's a better song. Smooth is a better song and... Smooth's a better song than Good Riddance.

Absolutely. Let me think about this. There's no question. Hold on a second here. Smooth is cool. That's Let me think about this. There's no question. Hold on a second here. Smooth is cool. That's a karaoke jam for me. You get the room. I don't.

You would clear the room with a Good Riddance. What about Livin' La Vida Loca? Yes. I've Livin' La Vida Loca. These are dynamic songs. These are fun songs. This is our coming of age. If we made a coming of age movie.

I think, though, even though Smooth was one of the biggest songs of all time i think culturally uh good riddance made more of an impact so i'm gonna give the edge to good songs that make impact often are shit it depends what we're talking about though i mean because a lot like you can argue there's merit in something that's very popular oh no very often and there's nothing that makes me happier than when a very popular thing is very good. But I'm just, I like your music taste overall a lot. I think we have a lot in common. You're shocked by the Green Day. Well, yeah.

I mean, look, I wasn't, again, when the finger went up, I wasn't saying number one song of all time. I think, though, I am amused to hear it. I do like it. I do think Nimrod is a pretty good underrated Green Day album overall. That is the album for which that means. You were also holding your fluorescent beverage that looked like wiper fluid. I honestly thought that's what I was going to get hit for right here, not the Green Day.

But the drink, though. Yeah, so there's a big menu of drinks, because I had a Manhattan and maybe just like a whiskey at the other hotel and then they have a whole list of drinks and i wasn't expecting them to have fun stuff on this menu i was thinking it was gonna be you know gonna be stuffy a bunch of brown liquids what am i drinking shit right but they have fun like like i have the picture of the menu here and they have stuff like a hermosa cocktail they have uh different types of margaritas they have a bayou zinger they have something called the corpse reviver i mean that's fun like theme park shit it's a little scary

though a little scary i agree um but at the top of the menu they have something called the transformer which has to have been added when the ride i assume this can't be on the menu forever and i didn't know what to order we were trying to decide and i said well that's got the most fun name and i and the most ingredients it doesn't but i you have to believe me here when i say i did not look at the ingredients i did not think i was in for a mickey's fun wheel style multi-layered multi-colored cocktail you picked it purely based on the name purely based on the fact there was a top and it was exactly what they want do you yeah and i did it i've played right

into their hand oh the jerry mcguire yeah i was like i know the transformers i'm not even that big of a fan of the transformers trance there's no transformer shit in this apartment if it had been the good riddance time of your life oh my god i would have gotten if it was good riddance cocktail gotten eight of them parentheses time of your life i my god i would have gotten if it was good riddance cocktail gotten eight of them parentheses time of your life i would have gotten it uh but transformers so when she came by i was like ah transformers and then i think she like kind of laughed i think she thought that was funny or she like she was a little judgy of us all night i think well because we tried to go in telly's uh cabana there was a little oh they do still name the cabanas after telly and it was empty and we said

can we sit here and they said yes for 150 which i think scott and i were there years ago and a same similar thing happened like this place is not packed why is there a little tented off area in this bar yeah that's for 125 what you get is a curtain around you're not even a curtain it's like a bed sheet. It's a bed sheet, a white bed sheet. A bed sheet once used by Telly Savalas. Hopefully cleaned since then and now just strung around the table. That's also, these hotels, when it's not busy, they're not terribly expensive hotels.

So you're practically almost at a room if you're paying for that cabana, I feel like. We may as well, yeah, for $150, we should have gotten a room and you're paying for that cabana i feel like we may as well yeah for 150 we should have gotten a room and brought the drinks up there it would have been probably i mean there's if you went on hotwire or something you could have probably gotten an express deal that was like 98 from the lobby yeah you can hotel tonight a room for less than the cabana but the transformer so the transformer is pearl vodka beefeater gin uh uh cruisin cruzan rum fresh sweet lemon squeeze sweet and sour mix touch of grenadine with a float of de cooper blue cura curacao thank you i can't pronounce any of the words apparently so they brought it and i was delighted because we got ourselves you know a rainbow cocktail in a tall glass yeah and it tastes like candy and i swear i didn't know it was that i knew it was going to be

something a little more touristy sugary but you are you just like i can feel it uh metaphysically to these kinds of drinks but it didn't do you in right did you feel okay the next day not like our experience at howl at the moon well i had like three drinks over six hours and it was like and this one was very sugar this was a very lightweight this was not a howl at the moon uh trough of liquor of blue disgusting liquor how'd that end up working out for you uh the howl at the moon yeah our how our how the moon experience two days ago oh yeah did we not talk about that i don't think we did well we've had some action-packed sector so we haven't really done it god i can't keep track of anything anymore oh it was horrible it was bad yeah i felt that was like the worst hang i wouldn't even feel like i was drunk i just

had a hangover because it was just pure syrup it was pure syrup it's really it's an equivalent to if you just had a bucket of maple syrup which is potentially a dinner that jason has had that before and hey i felt worse i felt worse after the wetzel skydiving margaritaville than i did after oh that's an interesting sickest in the whole day maybe we'll talk about that tomorrow yeah yeah what how what made us the most ill that's almost a more important category Yeah, that's a good category to add. Yeah. So...

We'll post a photo of that fun drink, though. I would recommend that drink. Wait, didn't you end up, like, sleepwalking or something? Yeah. Oh, was that... Oh, at the... At the moment. Didn't you, like, blackout sleepwalk or something?

The problem is that I've been doing this a lot lately, and this is a side note, is that I keep... Lindsay has has she insists on blackout curtains that are true to truly keep the room like completely black so if i wake up at an odd moment in my cycle in my rem cycle i will my brain will start to invent places that i am wait Wait, but you've had those curtains for years. You told me this story years ago that this happened to you. Well, we really should be wrapping up.

But yes, that is true. When she had the curtains in her old apartment, she would find me in the corner of the room in the middle of the night. Like the fucking Blair Witch Project. Like the Blair Witch Project. She would wake up and I would be standing in the corner and she'd be like hey uh what and i'd be like i'm just bathroom i'm just trying to and then because like it was so dark in there that i couldn't

you couldn't navigate i couldn't navigate and my brain thought i was still sleeping and this is what happens so my brain since there's no light whatsoever starts inventing an area that i'm in you know what i think is happening i know this this is this is what happens. So my brain, since there's no light whatsoever, starts inventing an area that I'm in. You know what I think is happening? I know this is one of these odd problems. You don't even know the source of it. You're doing bizarre things that don't track. I think it's clear that all this time you were being haunted by the sector keeper.

He was trying to send you messages. He was calling out to you. Because he knew that this was coming down the pipe like eventually it was our destiny to meet him and for us to go on this journey it's a good point and and for sure that was him haunting you on howl at the moon night because we didn't invite him so he's too young too young he couldn't have come but we should have gone on like in all ages not or gone or not gone at all We shouldn't ever exclude The sector keeper

That's what he was trying to tell us And he's been speaking to you For apparently like a decade So it's kind of like Star Trek 3 Or Ant-Man and the Wasp Or like yes I guess if you want to use

Something that happened In the last year Instead of the last You must 35 years Which is what I We all like to reference more yeah but i'm gonna go back to telling some bones was possessed by spock after spock put his consciousness in him

at the end of wrath of khan and he said when he said remember so that's sort of what i what's been happening to me i've had a conscious child ghost consciousness inside of me that's been that's exactly it out yeah huh what if one of us you know would be a bummer to find out is like what if one of us like triggered his death what if there was some butterfly effect kind of scenario i i know i didn't as a child in 1994 yeah i'm not saying that i like went up with a knife and jabbed this kid or something or but like what if some you know what might have happened you know he died in the fountain and maybe i was in line at jody maroney and i was the one person that made the line a little too long so he said mommy mommy let's go

play in the fountains instead and that's when he died like i don't know i think that might be the case i think we may be looking back like if we went and looked at photo albums of our whole lives, we'd see the Sector Keeper constantly in all of them. Wow. That's very possible. Huh. That's something to really think about leading into tomorrow's episode. Mm-hmm.

Because what happens tomorrow? I mean, do we, we don't know how this is going to play out. We've been assuming the whole time that his spirit gets set free and that things go without incident. But also, I don't know how this is going to play out We've been assuming the whole time That his spirit gets set free And that things go without incident But also I don't know We're dealing with forces we don't even understand We might find out things about ourselves About him

About our guest We'll certainly find out things about the parking garages Thankfully There's a lot to that We're telling you right now Let's just hype who the guest is thankfully yes there's a there's a lot we're telling you right now and i you know what let's let's just hype it who the guest is well the most electrifying man in podcasting entertainment what now why don't we leave it at that now we don't say who it is yes you have to get

with those clues okay yeah this is the ultimate challenge um yeah talking garages and a man who's been a co-worker of ours and various guys sure yeah would you guess uh so i mean a lot to look forward to tomorrow a lot of loose ends are going to be wrapped every single loose end will be perfectly wrapped up of this dense sprawling game of thrones-esque right epic that we've been uh we've been building but before tomorrow we have to wrap up today and there it is the sector stone the sector 18 stone it is falling what is it is it it wait a minute hey it's telly it's sloppy telly shake like his head and smiling real big ah there's a little glimmer. A little light is hitting his dome there. He's got a mouthful of sandwich.

Yeah, he's a little drunk. A little drunk. A little wet. Like a good drunk. But you know what? He's drinking a transformer. I do feel like that even if we bothered him with that mouthful of sandwich, he'd still play around a pool with us.

Yeah. I agree. He was not one to turn down a game of billiards. But the stone is the exact size of a billiards ball, so we got to make sure it doesn't land on the table. Oh, yeah. Yep. Do you think, sorry, so side note here,

he was bald, and when he would have a cue ball, does anybody go, hey, the ball's like you are, Telly, and he'd go like, aha, so funny. Do you think that would happen? I think that's where he might draw a line. Like, he would let friends go away. guy at the pool table if they did that crack the q and f stab you down the middle impale a couple of guys he the guy who made the crack and the guys who laughed and then and then throws everybody out the window they all land in the pool and then he says that's

what happens if you mess with telly baby and then everyone would just clap that was in the hotel that didn't get beat up yeah great because they got to they got to see it was like seeing kojak live man which would have been a great stunt great stunt show universal studios with actual telly and he was there yeah big missed opportunity that's our plus up of just like the 80s of universal studios in general uh anyway i guess we made. We're at the end of the episode. I guess that's another turning point, a fork stuck in the road. I feel like having to wrap this up, it's like time is grabbing us by the wrist and directing us where to go. Wow.

Just like the Keeper. It's all tying together, as will it all tomorrow. All right. See you tomorrow for the grand finale. Bye. Bye. Forever. Bye. Forever Dog. This has been a

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