Stuff You Should Know - Josh and Chuck's 2014 Christmas Extravaganza!

Episode Date: December 25, 2014

It's that time of year again! Time to get cozy and tuck in with Josh and Chuck as they spread glad tidings and warm Christmas cheer. Tune in to hear about Letters to Santa, A Christmas Story, mulled wine and more neat stuff. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Just a Skyline drive on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. On the podcast, HeyDude the 90s called, David Lacher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show HeyDude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use HeyDude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to HeyDude the 90s called on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the Christmas Podcast. I'm Josh Clark, there's Charles W. Shuckers Bryant and guest producer Noel is with us today. Yeah, we got a Jerry stocking though hanging over by the fireplace. And I am glad you built that fire, my friend. It's a little hot in here. It gets me in the mood though, you know.

Sure. Christmas spirit. Oh, the Christmas mood, I see it. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You can talk about the mood for that, huh? That too. Yeah, we have like glad tidings and good cheer and warmth and Christmas lights and color

and sugar sprinkles and stuff like all over the place. It's our Christmas. I have to say, my friend, you really know how to set the mood in here. You really go all out. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you very much. Well done.

Glad you feel comfortable. Noel, do you feel comfortable? Noel says yes. Yeah. He has a little, he painted his beard white and is pretending to be Santa. Mine is going white naturally. Yeah. I'm not going to wear it because it might be some gray in there.

Sure. I've made my bed. Now I'm going to lie in it. Does that make sense? Sure. So Chuck, I think we want to say welcome to everybody out there. Yeah. And we hope that you're having a wonderful holiday season so far.

So kick off your shoes, put on your slippers, make some, well make yourself comfortable. Yeah, put on your comfy pants. There you go. As we prepare for our 2014 Christmas extravaganza. So Chuck. Yeah. You have seen the great, great movie, A Christmas Story. Yep.

Not just one of my favorite Christmas movies. It's one of my favorite movies of all time. Yeah. John Huntsman's never seen that. Weird. I thought so too. And disappointing. Yeah, he said he's not a fan of Gene Shepard.

So I guess if you're not a fan of Gene Shepard, you wouldn't like A Christmas Story. Yeah. That's, this is tough to swallow. I know. Like I'm having trouble swallowing right now. Yeah. The hodgeman stuck in your throat. For everyone else out there in the world, besides you, John, A Christmas Story is a

beloved holiday movie. Oh yeah. And it's actually got kind of a cool little backstory to tell you the truth. But it was the movie that wouldn't go away, that would not be overcome. That's right. It's the 1960s. Bob Clark is a writer and director and he's driving a date around and he's flipping the radio around because his date was dull.

Sure. And he comes across writer Gene Shepard's recollections and stories. He's an audio storyteller. A humorist. A humorist. Exactly. He's talking about growing up in Indiana in the thirties and forties and he was smitten with it and apparently was so smitten that he just kept driving until the program was

over and said, you just stay there and be quiet. I'm listening to this story on the radio. Okay. So yes, smitten is a good way to put it in thrall maybe. Sure. But he decided right then and there, I'm going to bring Gene Shepard's stories to the silver screen. That's right.

It took him a little while though because as this article says, and we got this from a christmasstoryhouse.com, Clark was, he was a journeyman director. He specialized in B movies. Yeah. Not many people know this. He made a movie called Silent Night Evil Night. He made another Christmas movie. Really?

Yeah. Not Silent Night, Deadly Night? No. This was called Black Christmas. It's one of those that was released under several titles. Was it ever Silent Night, Deadly Night? No. It was either Christmas or Silent Night Evil Night.

Okay. And then there was another title. And he also did a movie called Moon Runners About Moonshine that Dukes of Hazard was based on. Wow. This guy was all over the place. Yeah. He got a big fat settlement when they released that Dukes of Hazard movie recently.

Nice. Good for him. Like 18 million bucks. That's great. Yeah. So Bob Clark in the 60s becomes enthralled with Gene Shepard and it wasn't until the early 80s that he got to make a christmas story and the whole reason he got to make a christmas story is because he finally made a blockbuster movie known as Porky's.

Yep. A teen sex romp comedy. Man, that movie was the most mysterious and picing thing when I was a kid. Yeah. Because I was 10 years old and it was supposedly just the dirtiest thing that had ever been made. I wasn't allowed to see it. I wasn't allowed to see it.

I feel to this day have not seen Porky's. You know what's funny? It's like Porky's and you'll be like, this is pretty tame. Yeah. Like it's body but it's really not like, I thought it was borderline pornography. That's what I took from it too. No. It's not at all.

Man. So huge hit though. It was an enormous hit. Yeah. One time for a brief time it was the best, it was a top 25 all time grossing movie and the best selling comedy of all time. Wow. But only for a brief window.

I think Ghostbusters quickly dwarfed it. And well it should. So the studios came back to Bob Clark and said, man, do that again and make a Porky's too. He said, despite John Hodgman's wishes, I'm going to make another movie first. It's called A Christmas Story. That's what we're going to call it. I'm going to base it on Gene Shepard's stories that were collected into a book called, and

God we trust all others must pay cash. And they said, fine, just go do your movie or whatever. And he did. He made this movie. And he scouted out 20 cities, I believe, and finally settled on Cleveland. And one of the reasons he settled on Cleveland was because Gene Shepard grew up in Indiana, which is very near Cleveland. And Cleveland had a department store called Higby's.

And Higby's said, hey man, we were around in the 40s. Why don't you just go ahead and film some of your stuff in here? Yeah. And he said Cleveland it is. Yeah. It still had that old, I mean they had to address it of course, but it still had that old department store look, that classic look. By the way, if you're ever in New York again, go to Macy's Herald Square and ride the wooden

escalators and be prepared to be delighted. Oh, really? It's just the coolest thing, man. I didn't even know they existed, but they were wood, the rails, the steps, the whole thing. Yeah. The people on them. And they haven't redone them.

You know, they're still like, it's really pretty neat. It's not like the cutting edge new wood elevators. No. But it feels like a Higby's. Wait, escalators or elevators? Escalator. Okay. Yeah.

Even cooler. It feels like you're at a Higby's though when you're at Macy's Herald Square because it just has that old school department store feel when you're on those things. Right. They didn't give them much budget for a Christmas story. No, and they didn't expect very much from it either. No, they gave them just about 900 screens the weekend before Thanksgiving. And it made a little bit of money, a couple of million, then about four million the next

weekend. Like six million and it's first two weekends. Yeah. And they, but they didn't have a big plan to roll it out because they didn't count on it being much. So they didn't roll it out. Right. Grossed about 19 mil, which of course made the money back and then some.

So it was a moderate success as far as making the suits happy. But it wasn't some runaway hit until cable TV. Well, yeah. Not just cable, but video as well. Yeah. So MGM, like you said, didn't think too much of this movie and they actually, they sold it to Warner Brothers. So they tossed it into a pot of 50 movies that Warner Brothers bought and after Warner

Brothers bought it, I guess they had to do with Turner because TNT in 1988 had a stunt on Christmas Eve where they ran it 12 times for 24 hours. They played a Christmas story back to back and they just, I guess, did it to fill some airtime and it was just a huge hit. People started clamoring for it. And every year, I believe, since they've had a Christmas story marathon now on TBS. And at some point during the day, 40 million people tune in to watch at least parts of this movie.

And for good reason. Do you want to know why? Why? Because a Christmas story is one of the greatest movies ever made. It's really pretty great. So you want to hear some cool facts about a Christmas story? Yeah. How about the fact that the part of the father that was ultimately played by Darren Mcgabbin

was originally offered to Jack Nicholson. And I shudder at the thought, can you imagine Nicholson in that movie? Actually I could. I can't. I think you would have been pretty great, but Darren Mcgabbin is the greatest. I was actually lucky enough to go to a screening at the Alex Theatre in Glendale, California over Christmas and Bob Clark did a Q&A and Darren Mcgabbin was there right before he died and was old and frail and he got a standing ovation and his wife like helped him stand

up and I think it just wasn't clear to him and she was like, this is for you. This is for you. It's just the sweetest, sweetest moment. Yeah. One of my best Christmas moments ever. That's a nice Christmas moment. It was great. Gene Shepard, he did all the voiceover narration as Ralphie, right?

Yeah, he's grown up Ralphie. Yeah, but he also made a cameo. So the old man who says, that's the back of the line where the line starts there. That was Gene Shepard. That was and Bob Clark also had a cameo as Swede, the neighbor with the southern accent who stops by to marvel at the infamous leg lamp. He goes, oh, you won an award? Yeah, a major award.

Yep, that was the director and the kid Grover Dill, right, the little toadie. He actually went on to become the $2 paper boy in Better Off Dead. I had no idea. $2. Yeah. Didn't ask for a dime. $2. Yeah, and apparently those are the only couple of three movies that he was ever in.

Yeah. Yano Aenea. It's an odd name. Yeah. Speaking of leg lamp, it was based on a real lamp, a knee-high logo that was illuminated and the style was, of course, Reuben Fried, the production designer, created the leg lamp. I wonder if he has any claim on that thing because those things are sold like crazy now. Sure.

Little ones, big ones, like keychains. Yeah. I wonder who's making that dough. Hopefully it's going to him. I doubt it. It's probably going to MGM or Warner Brothers. Probably. Yeah.

It's not very Christmassy. No. You can pinpoint, even though it's never said, you can pinpoint the month and year when all this action takes place thanks to the little orphan Annie decoder pin that Ralphie gets. Yeah, great scene. The one he gets is the Speedomatic model, which is the one that was released in 1940. So a Christmas story takes place in December of 1940. Many of the exteriors are filmed in Toronto, Toronto.

But the house, the house is in Cleveland and it's now a museum. I've been there. So you have? Oh, yeah. Okay. Do you recommend it? I've talked about it before. It's the best thing ever.

You go and there's the original house and you can walk through that's still dressed like the movie and then down the street, someone bought another house and has a museum of artifacts and things from the movie. Yeah. And it's totally a great time. Yeah. If you're ever in the Cleveland area around Christmas, do it. Okay.

It's going to be busy, but don't go in the summer, you know, you really got to get that Christmas feeling. But a lot of the exteriors are filmed in Toronto because in one scene, you can even see one of their red trolley cars in the background, which Cleveland does not have. Or Indiana. Wow. As far as I know. So Chuck, that's a Christmas story, huh?

Yeah. I mean, I guess we should say that there were some deleted scenes that never made it. You know, the black Bart scene, he shot several of those, including one with Flash Gordon. And at the Christmas story house, you can see clips of those and some of the artifacts. And Ralphie, you know, went on to be a big shot producer. Oh, yeah. Peter Billingsley. Peter Billingsley.

Yeah. A lot of those Vince Vaughn fevro movies he's attached to. And I think Vince Vaughn still calls him Ralphie sometimes just to get under his skin. I could see that. Of course. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new I Hard podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road.

Ah, okay. I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. Yes. I promise you. Oh, God.

Seriously. I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep. We know that Michael and a different hot sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide

you through life step by step, not another one, kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking this is the story of my life. Just stop now. So tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster?

Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? You'll leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing

on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Chuck, it wouldn't be one of our Christmas specials if we didn't talk about booze. Offer an alcoholic recipe. Right, exactly. So this year we're doing Mold Wine. Mold Wine is old.

Really they think that it was developed to keep old wine from spoiling or when it was about to spoil to use it up really quick. Yeah, and it gained a lot of notoriety when Charles Dickens put it in a Christmas story. I'm sorry, Christmas Carol. Right. Still got that on the brain. And that's largely where its association with the holidays comes in, I think. Sure.

I don't like it, do you? I love it. Yeah, I don't. I can't do it. But they sell it on the streets of Budapest and it is wonderful stuff. Yeah, I tried it. I just, I don't like the hotness and I don't like those spices, just not my thing. You would not like Mold Wine then.

Yeah, but I love wine. Yeah. But yeah. Not Mold. No. You know, I read this article from like 1940, I think, in The New Yorker. It's about this bar, the oldest bar in New York. And it was talking about how some of the old timers like would take their mugs of ale and

put them next to the pot-bellied stove and heat it up to like coffee temperature and drink their beer like that, which I'd never heard of. I think back then they were like, I'm cold and I want to be drunk. So let's just do those two things. Yes. Which is what Mold Wine was too. So with Mold Wine, you typically want to use like a dry red, like maybe a saurat or a zinfandel.

Yum. Which I didn't realize were dry. Oh yeah. Okay. You want to add a little citrus, usually you fortify it with something like brandy. Other people use port sometimes. My big port. Yeah.

Port. Exactly. And then spices, despite Chuck's tastes. Yeah. Clove and cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, the traditional Christmas drink spices that I just... Clove, I think it might be what ruins it for me. Oh really? Maybe.

It sticks out for sure. And then it's just not my thing. So I don't like Sainte-Grie either. Yeah, I could see that you wouldn't. Some spices or some recipes say, you might want to sweeten this a little bit, so add some honey. Yeah. Add some sugar.

Do something like that. And that's the beauty of Mold Wine. It's like you can just kind of start with some wine and add a little bit here or there until you come up with your own concoction. But we'll give you like a basic Mold Wine recipe. I think we got it from Grape.com. That sounds like a good place to get a Mold Wine recipe. Yeah.

Sounds like authoritative. Yeah. So you want to take one bottle dry red wine. Yep. I'm guessing a 750. Yeah, probably. You want six ounces of brandy. That's a lot of brandy.

That is a lot of brandy. So it's getting just better and better by the second this recipe is. One orange sliced into rounds. Two lemons sliced into rounds. Half a cup of honey. Yum. Three cinnamon sticks. Refer to our cinnamon episode.

Yeah. Six whole cloves. One teaspoon fresh ground nutmeg. That's delicious. Yeah. And then maybe some ginger if you want. You combine everything in a large saucepan and this is very important, Chuck. You heat it slowly, you don't let it boil.

Yeah. Don't just crank that heat up to high. No. And as it starts to steam a little bit, it's done. You serve it in mugs and enjoy. That's right. And I was reading this a bit you sent about the Charles Dickens Pub in Worthing, England. They serve Mold Wine by the glass and it sounded like a really neat thing until I saw that

they use a microwave to heat it up. Yeah. It's like, man. They take six ounces of Spanish red wine, add one ounce of berry cordial, which I'm curious what berry. Yeah. Elderberry. I don't know.

What? English berry. I guess. Yeah. And they pour it over an orange slice with a cinnamon stick and two cloves and then like you said, they put the glass in the microwave and they ruin the whole experience. The traditional Dickensian microwave featured so prominently in Oliver Twist. But hey, at least they're trying.

Yeah. And you can try too. Let's know how your Mold Wine recipe goes. I think in Oliver Twist, you're right. They serve him and have some more and he says, well, let me get out of the microwave first. Yeah. Then you can have some more. That was the original line.

Yeah. And Dickens crossed it out. So it won't hurt our feelings if you pause us to go make some Mold Wine and come back and listen to the rest. So, Josh, let's say you're a little kid. And you want to write a letter to Santa Claus. Are you allowed to do so, sir? And if so, when did that start?

Well, it's pretty old. Have you heard of this Twitter account, Tweets of Old? No. They just take old like newspaper clippings and stuff and tweet them. No. And so it's not supposed to be funny. No. But it comes off as funny sometimes.

Gotcha. Some of the stuff these people said were funny, bizarre, random. Yeah. But around Christmas time, they do kid's letters to Santa like old timey ones. Oh, neat. There are a lot of kids who are not just asking for stuff. They were also asking that like their siblings got nothing. Yeah, sure.

Which is hilarious. I was never like that. But apparently, no, I wasn't either. I was like my brother and sister, I was just, I wanted us all to have what we wanted. Right. And I just realized that Santa would frown on that kind of avarice, you know? That was a good sharer, I guess. Yeah.

So apparently, though, as far as the United Postal Service is concerned, all of this started around 1912. Yeah. Long time ago. When the, that's when they say they started really receiving a noteworthy amount of letters for Santa Claus. And as we all know, Santa gets extraordinarily busy around this time of year. So he can't sit down and answer all these letters.

So the Postal Service said, maybe there's another idea. Yeah. Postmaster General Frank Hitchcock said, you know what, why don't we write these kids back? I'm going to authorize, not just employees, but volunteers, regular citizens. Yeah. You and I could do this. Yeah, you can.

You just have to go to your local post office if it's a participating post office, fill out a little personal info, put your fingerprints down, stand there for a mug shot, and you'll get some letters from children that you can answer on Santa's behalf. Yes. It's called Operation Santa. And it's a pretty neat thing to participate in. I've never done it, but I might try and do it this year. They are now redacted, obviously, because they want to protect the anonymity of these

kids and their families and the addresses, which is a pretty smart move, I think in 2006 is when they started doing that. But yeah, you can write to kids from all over the world, I guess, or at least all over the country. It is voluntary as a post office. You don't have to do it. But if you live in a major city, there's bound to be a post office that's participating. Yeah.

And the USPS says they'll take all charitable organizations, groups, families, friends, whoever, just come along and fill out your info. We should do that when you're for how stuff works and get the whole company to sort of take part. Yeah, that'd be neat. And since its territory reaches the North Pole, the Canadian Postal Service maintains a postal code specifically for Santa. Oh, nice.

They use letters in their postal code, so Santa's is H-0-H-0-H-0, which spells ho-ho-ho. Nice. Ho-ho-ho. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay. I see what you're doing.

Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man.

And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Uh-huh. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy.

You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces.

We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips?

Is that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever

you get your podcasts. All right, buddy, I'm glad you stumbled upon this, because I had never heard of it, and it is now my favorite thing ever. We have to thank Snopes for this one. Herbert Mickelson is just hats off to her. She's almost single-handedly written the Snopes website. Do you know that? Yeah.

Man. She's good. Well, this is the story of the Christmas pants, and it is true, and basically it goes like this. There is a brother and a brother-in-law, Roy Colette and Larry Kunkel. Great Minnesotian name. It sounds like a Christmas villain name. Old man, old man, Kunkel's house.

So when did it start? 1964, Larry Kunkel's mom gave him a pair of moleskin pants, and he said, these aren't so good in Minnesota because they freeze and get kind of stiff. And I can't walk? I can't walk. So as a joke, he gave them, re-gifted them the following year to his brother-in-law, Roy. And this started what I think is one of the best back-and-forth practical jokes ever. Yeah, for more than 20 years, they would send them back and forth.

And at first it was just kind of like, haha, here they are again. Here they are again. Well, eventually, I think after the first couple of years, it was Larry Kunkel who took the pants. It was Colette. Oh, was it Colette? Yeah. He took the pants and rolled them up and stuck them in a three-foot-long, one-inch diameter

pipe. Yeah, man. So he tied them up and gave that to Larry Kunkel and said, good luck. Here's the pants. Yeah. And so that obviously inspired a, oh yeah, brother-in-law? Yeah. I'm going to one-up you.

And it became a game of one-upsmanship each year, and eventually there were some rules. Most notably, the pants could not be destroyed. Yes. They had to, the game was over if the pants were destroyed. They had to remain intact. What were the other rules? There were some that had to be legal and moral methods. Right.

Supposedly they wanted to use junk parts as much as possible, but I don't think that rule panned out all the time because they clearly spent a lot of money over the years in tooming these pants and various things. Yeah. So let's talk about some of these methods. Like you said, it started out pretty basic, stuffing them in a pipe. Then I think the following year, wrapping them in wire and giving, basically the whole idea is make them super hard on the receiver to get to.

Right. So he can't give them back. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Because you would win, I guess, if you're like, I just can't get these pants. Exactly, yeah. The other guy would win. And that he would have to keep the pants forever.

How about this one? One of them had them, I think my favorite one was one of them had them put in a gremlin car and had the car compounded to a, you know, when you compound a car to a little tiny square. Yeah. The pants were inside a compacted gremlin. Yeah. A 1974 gremlin that was crushed into a three foot cube and it weighed 2,000 pounds and it was in the glove compartment of the gremlin and it was crushed.

Yeah. Yeah, that was a pretty good one. It got like even bizarre. I guess, Kunkel had the pants put into a 17 and a half foot long red rocket ship filled with concrete that weighed six tons. It was five feet in diameter and the pants were put in there somewhere inside in one of the 15 concrete filled canisters inside the rocket. Pretty good.

Not bad. One year 1982, Kunkel had a hard time getting the pants out of an eight foot high tire, two feet wide, filled with 6,000 pounds of concrete with the smarmy note on the outside, have a good year. Yeah. Terrible. Yeah. Another year, Colette had to get the pants out of a station wagon that was filled with,

this is mind boggling to me, 170 generators that were all welded together with the pants located somewhere in the middle. Yeah. But you don't know where. No. And Colette had to get in there. And I mean, these things were welded together and you couldn't just like rip this apart because if you wasted the pants, you lost.

Yeah. So he managed to get it out of there. 1985, what toy was popular in 1985? Let's say Rubik's Cube. Rubik's Cube. So Colette had an idea and made a four ton Rubik's Cube in 1985 made of concrete. He had baked in a kiln and then covered it with 2,000 board feet of lumber and the pants were inside and you had to solve the cube and he did so because that came before the

generator. Right. I love these dudes. So the end of the pants came along in 1989 and Colette apparently had a buddy in Tennessee who ran a glass manufacturing company and said, hey, you know that scrap glass you have? Why don't you melt it down and let's encase the pants in it? Yeah. And the friend said, okay.

Yeah. And he said, okay, we've got 2,000 pounds of jagged glass and let's go drop it in his front yard. The problem is the chunk of molten glass broke the canister that had the pants in it and just turned them just disintegrated them. Yeah. So the pants were put into an urn instead. The ashes of the pants were put into an urn and given to a conkle that year.

Colette conceded defeat. Yeah. And along with an epitaph it said, sorry, old man, here lies the pants. An attempt to cast the pants in glass brought about the demise of the pants at last. And apparently conkle still has that urn and these are two of my favorite dudes in the world now. Yeah. I can't imagine carrying on a joke like this for that long.

They must have worked on this for a couple of months out of the year at least. Oh, sure. You know, they probably started on January 1st, devising the next year. Yeah. You know, this is great. And all true, somebody should make a movie about that. Christmas movie. It's a new holiday classic.

Chuck, you know how people are like, don't you dare write Christmas as X-mas? Yeah. Some people are very offended by that. They are very offended by it. Well, it turns out that it's not so offensive to write Christmas as X-mas. And if you do write Christmas as X-mas, you should pronounce it X-mas, you should pronounce it Christmas. Yeah.

And there's pretty good reason why. Yes, there is a good reason because it isn't an X and it is not meant to take the Christ out of Christmas. Right. And we have our friends at the Straight Dope featuring Cecil Adams to thank for this one. That's right. What is it, Josh? Well, that X is the Greek letter chi.

That's right. C-H-I. And chi, when you see it spelled out in a word, you're supposed to pronounce it the k sound. Yeah. Like Christmas or Christ. That's Christ. Yeah. It's a long time, I think even before the Middle Ages, that term or that X was used to

abbreviate Christ. That's right. It's not a new thing. No. So if you write X and then M-A-S, what you've just done is taken the abbreviation for Christ and substituted it for the Christ in Christmas. So it's still Christmas and there's still Christ in Christmas as far as that X is concerned. And that's the Straight Dope.

So Chuck, we're going to finish with a Christmas story. That's right. I don't realize this, but the guy who wrote the gold standard classic Wizard of Oz. Directed Porkies. Right? Right? L. Frank Baum. Uh-huh.

He also wrote a long Christmas epic story called The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus. Yeah. It was long, wasn't it? Yeah, very. I mean, it was a book-length thing. Yeah. But it basically tells the story of Santa Claus and we're going to read when the world grew old, it was a chapter from that.

And basically, Santa Claus has spent his whole life. Is this the setup? Yeah. Yeah. If you'll indulge me. Of course. So Santa Claus, he was found in the woods as an orphan and raised by Ak, the god of the woods.

And he proved himself to be Santa Claus, doing all the Santa Claus-y things he's famous for. But now he's become an old man with white hair and a white beard and huge cheeks that are still jolly, but he's at his deathbed. Oh, man. And Ak goes to the other immortals, gods of the woods and the rivers and all of that stuff, kings of the gnomes and all, people like that. Yeah.

And gathers him and says, look, man, this guy, if there's ever been a human being who's earned immortality, the gift of immortality, it's this guy. He loves kids. He makes toys for them every year. He's just a great humanitarian. He created, like the Christmas as we understand it now, let's give them the mantle of immortality. So they talk about it and debate back and forth and they finally agree and they go to Santa Claus's deathbed and they bestow him with immortality.

And this picks up the next morning when Santa wakes up after thinking the night before that he's going to die. And the world grew old. The next morning when Santa Claus opened his eyes and gazed around the familiar room, which he had feared he might never see again, he was astonished to find his old strength renewed and to feel the red blood of perfect health coursing through his veins. He sprang from his bed and stood where the bright sunshine came in through his window and flooded him with its merry dancing rays.

He did not then understand that what had happened to restore him, the vigor of youth, but in spite of the fact that his beard remained the color of snow and that wrinkles still lingered in the corners of his bright eyes, old Santa Claus felt as brisk and merry as a boy of sixteen and was soon whistling contentedly as he busied himself, fashioning new toys. Then act came to him and told of the mantle of immortality and how Claus had won it through his love for little children. It made old Santa look grave for a moment to think he had been so favored, but it also made him glad to realize that now he need never fear being parted from his dear ones.

At once he began making preparations for making a remarkable assortment of pretty and amusing playthings and in larger quantities than ever before. For now that he might always devote himself to this work, he decided that no child in the world, poor or rich, should hereafter go without a Christmas gift if he could manage to supply it. The world was new in the days when dear old Santa Claus first began toy making and won by his loving deeds, the mantle of immortality, and the task of supplying cheering words, sympathy and pretty playthings to all the young of his race did not seem a difficult

undertaking at all. But every year more and more children were born into the world, and these, when they grew up, began spreading slowly all over the face of the earth, seeking new homes, so that Santa Claus found each year that his journeys must extend further and further from the Laughing Valley, which by the way is in the North Pole, and that packs of toys must be made larger and ever larger. So at length he took counsel with his fellow immortals, Larry King and the others, how his work might keep pace with the increasing number of children that none might be neglected,

and the immortals were so greatly interested in his labors that they gladly rendered him their assistance. Ack gave him his man kilter, the silent and swift, and the nook prince gave him Peter, who was more crooked and less surly than any of his brothers, and the rile prince gave him neuter, the sweetest tempered rile ever known, and the fairy queen gave him whisk, that tiny mischievous but lovable fairy who knows today almost as many children as Santa Claus himself, and Larry King gave him suspenders. With these people to help make the toys and to keep his house in order to look after the

sledge and the harness, Santa Claus found it much easier to prepare his yearly load of gifts, and his day began to follow one another smoothly and pleasantly. But after a few generations his worries were renewed, for it was remarkable how the number of people continued to grow, and how many more children there were every year to be served. When the people filled all the cities and lands of one country, they wandered into another part of the world, and the men cut down the trees and many of the great forests that had been ruled by Ack, and with the wood they built new cities, and where the forests had

been were fields of grains and herds of browsing cattle. You might think the master woodsman would rebel at the loss of his forest, but not so. The wisdom of Ack was mighty and far-seeing. The world was made for men, said he to Santa Claus, and I have but guarded the forests until men needed them for their use. I am glad my strong trees can furnish shelter for men's weak bodies and warm them through the cold winters. But I hope they will not cut down all the trees, for mankind needs the shelter of the

woods in summer as much as the warmth of blazing logs in winter. And however crowded the world may grow, I do not think men will ever come to Bursey nor the great black forests, nor to the wooded wilderness of Brass unless they seek their shades for pleasure and not to destroy their giant trees. By and by people made ships from the tree trunks and crossed over oceans and built cities in far lands, but the oceans made little difference to the journeys of Santa Claus. His reindeer sped over the waters as swiftly as overland and his sledge headed from east to west and followed in the wake of the sun.

So that as the earth rolled slowly over, Santa Claus had all twenty-four hours to encircle it, each Christmas Eve, and their speedy reindeer enjoyed these wonderful journeys more and more. So year after year and generation after generation and century after century, the world grew older and the people became more numerous and the labors of Santa Claus steadily increased. The fame of his good deeds spread to every household where children dwelt, and all the little ones loved him dearly, and the fathers and mothers honored him for the happiness he had given them when they too were young, and the aged grandsires and grand-doms remembered

him with tender gratitude and blessed his name. And Cthulhu, that's right, and Rudolph up front. Happy holidays everybody, we'll see you next year. I'm Munga Shatikular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find it in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable

happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart Podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation?

If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help and a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts.