The Blindboy Podcast - Prix En Quicksand

Episode Date: January 6, 2021

Why was Quicksand so important in Childrens Cartoons of the 80's and 90's? A hot take that places Quicksand in the dark depths of the American psyche. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Bull a bus you cunning Duncans. Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. How is everybody? I hope you're doing okay. Hope things aren't too tough on you. It's been a tough all week, hasn't it? This is the first podcast of 2021. What a strange year to even say, 2021. It's the first week of 2021 and i think it's fair to say no matter where you live in the world it's a shit week because coronavirus numbers have spiked

pretty high everywhere certainly over in england and in ireland because of I don't want to say number of reasons all right because of a number of reasons coronavirus cases are fucking mad and then we're all gone back into lockdown and people are kind of scared again so for this week's podcast I'm going to try and give you a nice bit of escapism which is which I think is always the best thing to do in that situation before i continue i'm in a bit of a queer scenario so i'm actually unwell at the moment i i'm i'm on antibiotics right now i'm not too bad i'm not too bad i don't i'm a bit under the weather now it's not coronavirus I'm after getting the most strange and specific illness that only I could get

so I have an aggressive infection in my left eye, okay and I've had it for about two weeks but it got really bad this week and it's like I've got lots got really bad this week, and it's like, I've got lots of styes on my eyelid, and it's very painful, and it got so bad that, like, I started to get a little bit of a fever, so I had to ring my doctor and go, what's the crack, and the doctor goes,

you're not allowed to come to the GP, you can't come to my office, because of coronavirus restrictions, we're not doing any face-to-face describe what's wrong to me over the phone so I said look here's the crack up my eyes and he goes oh grand okay give me a prescription for antibiotics so anyway I'm I'm there wondering like like one of the benefits of quarantine and coronavirus for me for the past year has been well at least I'm not going to get sick because I'm not going to see anyone. So not only am I not getting coronavirus, I'm not going to get any sore throats. I won't get a chest infection. I won't catch a cold or a flu.

That was a bonus for me. So I'm like, how the fuck? How the fuck did I get an eye infection how did i end up with an infection on my eye that needs antibiotics if i'm absolutely socially distancing and not contacting other people well here's here's how i did it i managed to get myself an infection on my fucking eye from live streaming too much so when i live stream on twitch i wear i don't wear my plastic bag when i'm on twitch i wear a silent fabric bag on my head okay and basically what happened is that this fabric bag that i was wearing on my head every so often the corner of the fabric of the eye hole was tipping off my eyelid okay and this procedure when i was

live streaming of my fabric bag tipping off my eyelid it it managed to cause bacteria that belongs on my face to migrate to my eyelid and then infect my eyelid. So I'm after getting a fucking eye infection from wearing a fabric bag on my head, live streaming songs. And now I'm on fucking antibiotics. And the mad thing is, I've been wearing a plastic bag on my head for almost 13 years now, and I've never, I've had no complications, the only, a wasp flew into my bag once at a festival, that's it, at a fest, when I'm at festivals, this is where I don't like festivals, when I'm at festivals, I've got a plastic bag on my head. If I'm drinking a tin of cider or a tin of beer, the beer and cider doesn't fully wipe away from the plastic around my mouth

and I'll get chased by wasps, right? Non-stop chase by wasps. And it's one of my least favorite things about the festivals because the wasps are interested in my mouth. So then one day a fucking wasp, I don't know what, I think it was Electric Picnic. A wasp flew into my mouth hole and got trapped between my bag and my skin. And I had to punch myself in the face to kill the wasp before he stung me. So that's the worst.

Out of 13 years of wearing a bag in my head. That's the worst that happened. Until now. Where I now have an eye infection. That needs to be treated with antibiotics. Because I was streaming with a fabric bag. And. I wear the fabric bag for obviously. So when I'm live streaming.

It's more comfortable. The bag is made out of satin. So it's more comfortable to wear a satin bag if I'm streaming for like 3-4 hours. Secondly. Fucking arseholes on the internet. Daz. Angry grown men. Aged 28 and over.

Anytime I'd speak about climate change. And speak about climate change and speak about climate action there was always this cohort of men men who are furious furious that they have one grey pube and like they would go you fucking asshole blind boy

talking about climate change and climate action, and you're wearing a plastic bag, where's your reusable bag for your head? And they wouldn't shut up. And no matter how much I told them, do you know what, my fucking plastic bag, Eamon, my plastic bag, is actually, I reuse it.

And this is a single use plastic bag, so when I reuse it, and this is a single use plastic bag, so when I reuse it, that's actually, an environmentally friendly way, to use a plastic bag, but the dads wouldn't listen, they'd go cross eyed instead, so I finally just said,

fuck it, alright so, I'm going to get a reusable, a custom made fabric bag, to shut you the fuck up, and now I've got an eye infection, so that's how my week is going, To shut ye the fuck up. And now I've got an eye infection. So. That's how my week is going.

So it's very hard to ignore a pain. When it's in your eye. Because every time I blink. I'm just reminded of a sharp stinging pain. Do you know what else is annoying. About January 2021. Brexit. We are seeing the about January 2021? Brexit. We are seeing the real impact of Brexit. Brexit's been around for four years now.

And you're kind of like, ah, fuck it. But like, no, now it actually happened. And it's inconveniencing my life. Because I'm recording this podcast now and the computer i'm recording it on is really gone to shit it's completely full up and it's about five years old and i desperately need a brand new computer to record this podcast because it crashes in the middle when i'm recording it which is no crack crashing mid hot take so I bought myself a new computer thank you very much to my patrons bought myself a new computer to record this ordered it

from Germany before Christmas it should be here by now it's not do you know why? Because of Brexit. So, shit that comes from Europe to get to Ireland has to go through England to get here. And now that the Brits decided that they wanted freedom and independence from the oppression of the EU, now anything that we order from Germany goes into England first and is subject to customs checks. So, I'm waiting extra time for my computer basically. Hopefully I'll have it by next week. I hope they sort that shit out. So we're back into quarantine.

Proper quarantine. Like we had last March. We've done it before lads. Alright. We'll be grand. Don't take the piss. Don't take the piss don't take the piss wash your hands don't touch your face sneeze into your elbow you know that crack wear your fucking mask wear your mask when if you must go to the shop wear your mask and don't see people the best way to not get coronavirus is if at all possible don't spend time talking to another person if it can be avoided like when

you go to the shop when you're inside if you're in Duns or Aldi and you're wearing your mask and everyone else is wearing their mask and you're kind of pottering around and you're not talking to people that's kind of low low risk but as soon as you start chatting to someone speaking loudly then that's the dodgy stuff so just stay away from cunts it'll be grand re-watch re-watch mad men you know what i mean i'm watching i'm on netflix watching uh an early 90s australian teen drama called heartbreak high uh because when i was a when i was a kid in the 90s this is what was on television heartbreak high i would have been a child and i used to look at it going wow look at those teenagers they They're so cool.

And now I'm watching it to try and relive feelings of childhood nostalgia. And it's not even that good as a TV show, but it doesn't matter. Because that's not why I'm watching it. I'm watching it because, I don't know, somewhere in the depths of my unconscious. Like, this was on, it was on a channel called Trouble, which was like the teenage version of the children's channel in the early 90s, and they used to play it four times a day, so I would watch it as a child, happy as Larry, comfortable, and when I re-watch it now, certain feelings of comfort and certainty things that we don't have right now comfort and certainty certain feelings of comfort and certainty that I had as a child

in the naivety of childhood I can extrapolate them unconsciously from the process of watching something I watched in my childhood because the memories they hook into your brain in a certain way you consolidate emotional consolidation it's lovely when it happens smells can do it as well but that's the purpose of nostalgia like if you ever wonder what the fuck you know what the fuck is nostalgia it's it's not the longing for something that we enjoyed when we were younger what it is is you're trying to unconsciously visit a pleasant emotion from when you were younger and it's usually something like there's a naivety to childhood and a naivety to being younger it's it's a comfort for me it's comfort I do remember because I had

a happy childhood I do remember being a child watching tv and didn't have any bills to pay had no stress or pressure on me whatsoever no no one expecting nothing and I was taking that feeling for granted and when I watch TV from my childhood I can momentarily revisit those feelings like a type of visual opium that comes from a screen and it's good to be aware of it because you know sometimes I get I get lads I get lads in their 30s, right? Grown men in their 30s. And I'll be on Facebook and I'll post something like, check out this week's podcast. It's about Charles Manson and the CIA.

And most people are like, thanks for that, blind boy. I listen to the podcast about Charles Manson and the CIA. But then you'll get some lad called darren who's 32 and darren will say i don't like your podcasts i prefer things like horse outside why aren't you doing songs like horse outside anymore instead of making podcasts and i don't reply to it but in my head I kind of go do you know what Darren Horse Outside was 10 years ago and you're 32 now according to your Facebook profile so when Horse Outside

came out you were 22 right ok do you know what Darren I don't think you actually want me to still be making songs like Horse Outside I don't think that's what you actually want I think what you want Darren is still be making songs like horse outside i don't think that's what you actually want i think what you want darren is to be 22 again because if i actually did release a song now like horse outside in my 30s you wouldn't even like it nobody would because it'd be fucking

ridiculous because horse outside is about fingering and shifting that was grand when i was in my 20s but not now so darren you want me to magically make you feel 22 again i can't do it you can listen to horse outside and you can feel nostalgia but i can't make you 22 and then then other times i go maybe i should to prove a point i'll i'll release 10 years later, Horse Outside, for the benefit of Darren. Fuck your Honda Civic. I get two day hangovers now. Fuck your Honda Civic. I grow tits if I eat too many Mars bars. Fuck your Honda Civic. My knees are always sore. Fuck your Honda Civic. Should I start thinking about a pension? Is that what you want Darren?

Is that the song you want out of me in my 30s? You don't. You want to feel 22 again. And I can't do it for you. So the theme I want to focus on for this week's podcast is nostalgia. Right? I want to speak about some nostalgic things from our childhood. And I want to elicit some hot takes around them.

Because it's a tough tough week it's stressful I didn't want to come at you with a mental health podcast I want to come at you with some fucking escapism some soothing escapism that will allow you to revisit some lovely childhood feelings of comfort why the fuck not who doesn't like nostalgia and i don't talk about nostalgia that much really as a subject also what i'm interested in is the the kind of the majority of the listener listenership to this podcast is ages 24 and up okay i do have people who listen to this podcast who are in their teens and early 20s but mostly it's people 24 and up so if you're 24 and up i think what's the cutoff for millennial i think the youngest millennials right now are 25 and the oldest are 40 so if you're between 25

and 40 right now in 2021 you're a millennial if you're older than 40 you're between 25 and 40 right now in 2021, you're a millennial. If you're older than 40, you're generation X, I believe. If you're under 24, you're generation Z. Now, you know, what do these things mean? Not much. It just means when you were born. I do have a, I have a theory. And I could be wrong. I have a theory that millennials are the last generation to truly experience nostalgia right like I remember life before the internet okay I remember 2006

when YouTube became a thing all right and in 2006 YouTube and Bebo were around at the same time social media became a thing around 2006 what I remember most about 2006 was people uploading the theme tunes to old cartoons and it was phenomenal the feeling of it was phenomenal like when i was a child there was no internet you just watched the tv you watched cartoons garfield teenage mutant ninja turtles transformers care bears whatever the fuck right but in 2006 when youtube came around one of the first things people were uploading was 90s cartoon theme tune compilation and the feeling i got in 2006 was incredible it's like oh my god here's these theme tunes that i'd completely forgotten about because it's from when I was a child and I've moved on with my life

and I'm now able to revisit all these wonderful, comfortable feelings of childhood and it really encapsulated for me the purpose of nostalgia. Like, even when culture becomes nostalgic, like in the 90s, hip-hop used to sample fucking 70s funk indie music used to reference 70s music in the 2010s music used to reference the 1980s nostalgia tends to be dominated

by when people in their 20s are expressing the popular culture of what they heard or saw when they were children and i think it exists because being 20 is a scary age 1920 is a terrifying age you you society tells you you are now an adult that's scary so we find comfort by revisiting things that remind us of our childhoods and that's what nostalgia does i wonder how generation z are going to do it because they grew up with the internet so how does generation z do nostalgia when from the age of five they can just re-watch everything on their ipad like they don't have distant memories of things they'll never hear again because they can hear it all again whenever they want but the nostalgic the theme of nostalgia that i want to investigate for this podcast because

i have a bit of a hot take around it is quicksand if you grew up watching cartoons in the 90s quicksand and video games and films quicksand was this a really important thing in in cartoons now what i mean is like quicksand is this terrifying swirling pool of sand that as soon as you go near it it'll suck you in right every single fucking cartoon that I watched as a kid, the turtles, the care bears, fucking Ulysses, Heathcliff, whatever the fuck it was, at one point in one episode, quicksand appears and someone gets swallowed into it. And it really was presented to me as this terrifying thing in nature and as a child I used to be terrified of

quicksand like I'd go out there's this place called the Crattle of Woods near Limerick which is just a wooded area and I was scared to go near anything anything muddy looking in case it was quicksand I used to get this deep terrifying feeling in my belly of don't go near that patch of mud don't go near that patch of sand because you'll be drawn towards the center of it like a magnet and sucked into the ground through the quicksand i was terrified of quicksand because every single cartoon i was watching told me that quicksand is everywhere and it's going to suck you in but even the games I'd play as a kid like if I was bored and I was jumping from the couch to the armchair the ground was quicksand and I can't if I fall on the ground I fall into the quicksand same if I was playing

at my friends quicksand was a big feature of my childhood it was it was a real thing that I was playing at my friends. Quicksand was a big feature of my childhood. It was a real thing that I was told to watch out for. It's almost a cliche to say it now, but as an adult, I've never seen Quicksand in my fucking life. Quicksand is not important. I don't think about Quicksand. I don't think I'm ever going to come across it. So why was every cartoon when we were a kid,

why did they all feature quicksand. Like the turtles. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Usually this is how it would work. Like quicksand was used. As. A kind of an. So 80s cartoons.

Cartoons in the 80s and 90s. They always followed a real simple narrative of goody versus baddie all of them so even the care bears fucking what was your one's name jen and the misfits jim and the misfits i used to watch that i used to love it i don't even remember what it's about but it was gem in the fucking holograms it was called gem in the holograms and it was about a group of girls who were starting a band and then there was a rival band called the misfits and they used to make there was music in it i fucking loved it all right i think they made a shit film of it in 2015 but there was all these cartoons when we were

kids they all featured quicksand and because they were made they were listen the cartoons we grew up with they weren't cartoons they were giant advertisements for toys in the 1980s in particular companies like mattel and these toy makers they started to fund cartoons that were being made really animated really uh cheaply in korea and they were just stuck together mad quickly and sold to us as cartoons like transformers is another example they were just giant ads for toys that's all they were and that's why they were so shit and why they were so similar and why they were so lazy but the laziness of this writing is why we arrive at something like Quicksand in every single episode. Because it serves a purpose.

So all these cartoons, Care Bears, Transformers, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Scooby-Doo, Heathcliff, Ghostbusters, Inspector Gadget, Thundercats. You've got goodies versus baddies. specter gadget thundercats you've got goodies versus baddies and at the end of every cartoon about three quarters of the way through there's some type of battle a battle happens and it's a battle between good and bad and in every single one of these cartoons in some episode quick quick sand quick sand is an important part of this battle all right these cheap cartoons that are effectively just giant advertisements to sell us ties in the 80s let's just use the turtles for the example you're watching the turtles it's three quarters of the way through in the second half shredder is the baddie he shows up now the turtles and shredder have to have a battle

then at the start of the battle michelangelo or donatello says watch out there's quicksand and the camera pans and shows you a swirling pool of quicksand. Watch out, there's quicksand. We come away from the quicksand. Now we're back to the battle. Shooting, shooting, fighting. Now it looks like Shredder's gonna fucking win. Oh, fuck. The music is getting scary.

Shredder is winning. Oh, no. Here comes the quicksand. Now Shredder has fallen into the quicksand. You'd think he was gonna win, but he hasn't won because now he's in the fucking quicksand now shredder has fallen into the quicksand you think he was gonna win but he hasn't won because now he's in the fucking quicksand the quicksand has sucked him in this force of chaos has come in and now you thought shredder was gonna lose but he got sucked into the quicksand and now the turtles are winning and everything is okay. And that's how quicksand is used in everything. Even all of those fucking cartoons,

Thundercats, Gem in the Holograms, even if it's in space, they'll end up on a planet and the planet has quicksand. And if they can't, and worst case scenario, it's a wormhole or a tractor beam,

but quicksand. That's always how it's used. Hey, look, quicksand. Forget about it. Then it hey look quicksand forget about it then it comes back to save the day as a force of chaos and what's happening there is quicksand is being used as a really simple writing device a paint by numbers writing device where if you've got a mad story and you want it to seem like it's making sense you use this exact writing device i don't know why they've chosen quicksand as the device but here it is that's known as as planting a gun or it's known as chekhov's gun because there was a short story writer called anton chekhov who is seen as one

of the best short story writers of all time and his style has influenced theater and has influenced uh film making and tv Chekhov's gun basically is I think Chekhov had a quote that said if you show a gun in the first scene of your play or if you mention a gun then that gun has to come back at the very end and shoot someone important and that's what Chekhov's gun is you introduce a random object or thing or character at the very start of something then you never mention it again and at the end it comes back and it completes your story and it's nice because it makes us feel like detectives writing, it never fully tells you the story. It presents you with questions so that you're also solving the story in your own head.

So when you see Treader drowning in the quicksand, you get a little buzz because you go, Oh, the quicksand, I remember that. And you feel as if you solved that little mystery. Like the absolute originator of Chekhov's gun in American cartoons for me is Scooby-Doo because every episode of Scooby-Doo all right they're trying to solve a mystery and at the end they reveal someone's identity and then you go ah it was the groundskeeper all along so they introduce a character at the very

start you see them for two seconds you forget about them and then at the end they take off the mask and it was them all along that's Chekhov's gun Scooby-Doo really abused that for children's cartoons but then it became quicksand for fucking everything and the Chekhov's gun is not to be confused with another writing device called a MacGuffin I would say that Chekhov's gun is modernist and the MacGuffin is postmodernist. So the MacGuffin is when you introduce an object into a story and it has no purpose whatsoever other than to drive that story. So it's kind of cynical. With a Chekhov's gun you're kind of going

ah the gun at the start and now it's after shooting him at the end that's got meaning because it's a gun but a MacGuffin doesn't have any meaning a good example of that would be the briefcase in Pulp Fiction in Pulp Fiction Pulp Fiction is a film

that's made of three or four unconnected stories and the thing that connects them all is this briefcase full of light. So fucking John Travolta and Samuel L Jackson are two gangsters and they have a briefcase and we don't know what's in the briefcase and they won't tell us what's in the briefcase all we know is that when it's opened it presents a glowing light so it's it's very important whatever is in the briefcase we don't know what it is but the whole point of the briefcase in pulp fiction is that it's meaningless tarantino wants us to know it's meaningless all the briefcase

does is it connects all the stories together. And that's known as a MacGuffin, which is a really cynical Chekhov's gun. But quicksand in cartoons as kids was used as a Chekhov's gun. You see it, you forget about it, and then it saves the day.

So I'm asking, why the fuck quicksand? Who told the people making cartoons that quicksand was a thing why quicksand where did it come from what is fucking quicksand why as an adult do i feel lied to because in the world of cartoons quicksand was a very very big deal it was a big obstacle that people had to face all the time and we i never saw no i don't see quicksand well ladies and gentlemen i have a roaring hot take as to why and how quicksand became so important in films and cartoons before we get into that it is time for the Ocarina Pause. Right?

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at 8 30 you can come chat to me live like the podcast subscribe to the podcast and please if you can afford it if you can afford a pint or a cup of coffee once a month please become a patron of this podcast patreon.com forward slash the blind buy podcast okay quick send sand why why do i think quicksand became so culturally significant in the cartoons of our childhood why well i've got a bit of a roster for you because i've been obsessing about this and researching it and thinking about it so most of us know the excessive use of quicksand from 80s and 90s cartoons but from the research that i've been doing quicksand was a huge part of american kind of trash cinema well not even trash america american cinema and tv from the 1920s onwards, peaking in the 1950s. Quicksand was a huge feature in a lot of films, and it was used in the exact same way.

It was used as a Chekhov's gun. Quicksand was introduced in these battles of good and evil as a force of chaos to resolve conflict. And the cartoons that we were watching that were being made in the 80s and 90s the writers of those were simply being nostalgic for the 50s and 60s because when they were looking at films in the 50s and 60s quicksand was being used quite a lot and then the people in the 50s and 60s who were using quicksand as a Chekhov's gun device in their films they were being nostalgic for the films of their youth in the 20s and 30s so quicksand has existed as as a nostalgic circle going all the way back to the 1920s to the earliest earliest days of Hollywood so what's going on

there here's my personal theory here's my personal theory because again like I said quick quicksand is is is not a big deal in real life quicksand isn't a fucking big deal i mean let's look at what quicksand is in real life away from fucking films or cartoons what is quicksand in real life the closest thing to quicksand in real life is custard right quicksand is what's called a non-newtonian fluid it's a strange it's both a solid and a liquid at the same time if you want to make some quicksand right now get yourself a cereal bowl fill it halfway with water and then fill it halfway with corn flour or custard powder okay and when the corn flour and custard powder mixed mixes together equally in your little bowl put your hand on it you'll be able to slap the corn flour or the

custard as if it's solid but if you let your your hand rest your hand will sink and it'll get stuck so a non-newtonian fluid i don't know what the fuck it is because i don't know anything about physics but basically it's both a solid and a liquid at the same time so you could you can walk across quicksand or you could walk across the swimming pool of full of custard but once you stop you sink and as soon as you sink it becomes almost impossible to pull yourself out and quicksand in the wild it can happen with mud and it can happen with sand usually something like an underground spring of water um finds itself mixing with sand so that you you could be walking along a sandy area or on a beach or on a coast

and you think you're on solid ground but then as soon as you stop you sink and the more you sink the harder it is to get out and the harder you pull to get out the more you get stuck and this is a real thing That's quicksand and it exists. Does it kill that many people? Not really. It's, you know, it's a bit of a freak accident if you get caught in quicksand. So how did quicksand end up in Hollywood

as the go-to terrible thing that can happen? And this is what's been racking my brains. And then that got me thinking about California. And quicksand was actually quite a bit of a deal. Quite of a big deal. And something that was dangerous. To people in California. In the late 1800's. Okay California Los Angeles that's only like

like California only became a place with a lot of people living there around 1849 because of the gold rush so California was this giant empty space of land where indigenous people indigenous native american people lived there but not in gigantic numbers they were there was indigenous people living there quite a lot but not like the millions of people that eventually came to live in california so california the spanish colonized this then the mexicans had it and then the americans and mexicans had a war and i believe in 1849 california became part of america and also what happened in 1849 is somebody discovered gold in california and when that happened there was this massive influx

of people from all over america traveling as far west as possible this is american frontierism now in 1849 america wasn't it was america as a young country was just states over on the east coast but the west was this vast expanse where colonizers hadn't colonized yet as such so when gold was struck in 1849

hundreds of thousands of people immediately headed to California to go to the mountains and try and strike it rich and find gold and it became known as obviously the california gold rush but also the california dream it was the ultimate realization of the american dream that california in 1880 1890 is where you go to to find gold in the mountains and to have your life changed overnight to become an absolute millionaire overnight if you find gold and lots of people tried it and it was horrendous for the indigenous people of california there was many

genocides the indigenous people of california were completely wiped out for the indigenous people of california there was many genocides the indigenous people of california were completely wiped out for the capitalistic greed of the california dream and the gold rush so if you're a prospector a poor prospector who goes to california in we'll say 1860 or 1850 and you're determined to find gold to like the thing is too with the land in california you prospectors literally went there and they staked the claim it was so big they just said this here is mine and they didn't have to ask anyone they just said this bit of land is mine they staked the claim and if you were determined on finding gold and looking over at a mountain and so much of this was desert looking over at a mountain and deciding i'm going over there to

look for gold or i'm going over to this riverbed here and i'm gonna pan for gold on this river if you were someone like that in 1850 quicksand was actually a real threat like where people were panning for gold um like there's areas of the of california where suddenly you'd get a you'd get a big shitload of rain right so you'd be at the bottom of a mountain up around sierra nevada and it would rain and then all of a mountain up around Sierra Nevada and it would rain. And then all of a sudden the rain would cause, there'd be ravines that are only rivers when it rains. So when it rains, this ravine becomes a river. And what it does is it washes all the sediment down from the mountain down the river. So if you're panning for gold, you're like, fucking fantastic, it's raining.

I'm going to pan for gold. you're like, fucking fantastic, it's raining, I'm going to pan for gold. But the rain used to also disturb the earth and the sand and used to create pockets of quicksand. So for the average person out on their own or in a small team trying to pan for gold in California, quicksand was an unknown terrifying thing that could suck you into the ground and if you were there with your partner and all of a sudden they start sinking into the ground and some unknown force and you don't know what it is and all you know is your you know your your greed for gold and your

your california dream you're looking for this gold and then all of a sudden someone starts sinking into the ground and you're like what the fuck is happening it looks solid, the ground looks solid but he's sinking, what's happening and you watch your friend die and get sucked into the earth and you've never seen

anything like this before in your life because you're not from California you've just arrived there this year to pan for gold and you just watched your friend get swallowed into the earth of what you thought was was flat ground so then you run back to the nearest mining town and you tell everybody you say we were panning for gold and the earth just sucked him up and it becomes this terrifying urban myth and this urban legend you can't trust the hills where the gold are where the gold is because when you pan for gold you'll get sucked into the earth and this is a real thing that's happening so then the myth of the quicksand of the mountains starts to become part of folklore

it starts to become something that people speak about but they're not quite sure of but they know what happens but they don't at the same time but it's also intertwined with this pursuit of gold and greed so this and a lot of these people these could have been Presbyterians, they could have been Calvinists. They would be aware that this search for greed isn't good. They're watching as, like miners used to perform acts of genocide on indigenous people. If they came across an indigenous tribe, they would shoot and murder all these people just to lay stake to the land that they were on for the gold. So they were doing really bad, evil shit.

This was the Wild West. So what I'm trying to get at is that I'm guessing that within the folklore of California and the gold rush, and you have to remember this is 1850, 1860 up to 1900 so not that far away within the folklore of the California gold rush comes this uniquely

American terror which is yes you can become rich overnight but up in the mountains you get sucked into the earth your pursuit for greed can suck you into the earth and no one knows what the fuck this is and then at the at the end near the end of the california gold rush right so go the gold rush started off with people panning for gold which is like i said the gold

is in the sand up in the mountains and when the rain happens it washes the gold down via these ravines and then you're ready to pan for the gold as it comes down miners started to figure out a more aggressive way to get the gold out of the soil and out of the sand and out of the mountains they started to develop a technique known as hydraulic mining so now they're not waiting for rain to wash into the ravines what they're doing is they're creating culverts and they're finding lakes and pools and they're diverting massive gallons and gallons thousands of gallons of water down towards areas where they think there's gold or if they see a mountain or a hill that they

think there's gold in what they do is they get these these big long hoses and like the way you you'd put a garden hose into the ground or put a garden hose into you know you'd shove you know your hose in the garden as a kid for the laugh so you decide to put the hose into the grass and then everything around you fills up with water they started to do this thing called hydraulic mining for gold where they would shove gallons and gallons of water at incredibly high pressure into mountains and into hills and it would basically cause the whole thing to crumble with water so everything around you is flowing mud and flowing sand and a consequence of that then obviously is fuck tons of quicksand because what you've done is you have all this dry dirt of California and this dry sand and now you've injected the whole landscape with water to find gold so you can't trust where you

walk you don't know is this solid ground or am I going to get into quicksand and if I'm on my own will I drown in the quicksand on my own so within the culture of the California gold rush quicksand was a genuine real thing that was killing people and it was killing them while they pursue insane amounts of gold and wealth and then what happens in california when the gold rush ends you end up with the next thing after gold was oil all around los angeles there was tar pits tar pits are also things that suck you in as you you try and pursue your fucking oil in california you can go into a tar pit so everything about the landscape of California

punishes you by dragging you into the earth if you are too greedy in the late 1800s whether it be looking for gold or looking for oil and getting sucked into a tar pit and you know what's

underneath the ground? Hell so these prospectors wouldn't have had science so if you if you're a prospector who whose family comes from fucking scotland and you're a presbyterian or a calvinist or whatever the fuck you're probably going to assume that your quest for wealth that some people are getting so greedy that they're being sucked into hell why wouldn't you think that so this uniquely american california dream irrational fear starts to develop around quicksand and the pursuit of greed and wealth. And then after the oil in California, in the early 1910s,

gold isn't a thing anymore. Oil is still a thing, but the new gold in the 1910s becomes fame. Because what happens in the hills of California, Hollywood starts to set up around 1910. Now this is only 30 years after the gold rush so the folklore of pursuing wealth and being sucked into the earth still exists in the folklore of California so now in all the early Hollywood films, for some reason, it's like, put in some quicksand. What's the bad thing that can happen in this scene?

Oh, put in some quicksand. Have them sucked into the earth. And they don't know why they're doing it. It's part of Californian folklore, which goes back to the hydraulic mining, or goes back to panning for gold, where quicksand is a real terror and a real threat. Now it's found its way into the folklore of Hollywood filmmaking, and it never really leaves.

But it always exists whenever there's a tantalizing resource that's there to be exploited. And with Hollywood, that resource is the riches that come with fame so anytime within California culture where you can earn a lot of money or a lot of something overnight quicksand pops up as the thing that drags you down to fucking hell and that's that's why I think quicksand became a trope in hollywood films it's the fucking gold rush 30 years previously and then then i found when i was doing this research i found out this other fact and it's not connected but i think it's ironically beautiful so by the 1950s which was peak quicksand

in American films in particular the film Tarzan the Tarzan films around the 50s they all had a scene involving quicksand and someone being pulled out of quicksand using a vine Hollywood used to portray quicksand on

on films they wouldn't use actual sand so they wouldn't get sand that's kind of suspended in water because sand didn't look like sand on camera so instead to make Hollywood quicksand in the 50s they used to use this substance called vermiculite and vermiculite is like it's like a type of volcanic mineral that you find down in mines it's like a volcanic mineral that's really puffy and shiny and they used to mix vermiculite with water and that's how they would create we'll say quicksand in the films in the 50s but ver miculite the mineral was also fool's gold which i find really intriguing let's so when lads were panning for gold

in the 1860s up in the california mountains and if they thought they found gold but got it wrong it was always one of two things it was either this thing called perlite which was like a shiny rock or not perlite sorry um pyrite they either found pyrite which was a shiny rock known as fool's gold or they found this stuff vermiculite which has got a shiny gold color and remember when i was saying when they were shoving the hoses into the mountains they'd make the mountain explode and they referred to all this soil as pay dirt it meant here's a bunch of dirt that i can gather around but there's probably enough gold in there to pay my wage so sometimes they'd take what they thought was gold but it was actually this vermiculite stuff this shiny golden volcanic material that came out of the mines

and they'd think that was gold but this is what they used to make quicksand out of in the fucking films it's not connected but i just think it's really ironic. It's an ironic connection. In the 50s then in films, Quicksand took on a strange sexual... So, there's actually lads in America now who... Now, they're older lads, they'd be in their 50s. A very small community of people who are into Quicksand pornography. Because when they were kids watching films like tarzan quicksand was used as a sexual thing in the 1950s at the height of mccarthyism and censorship in america you couldn't show sex in the movies so quicksand wasn't being used as a chekhov's gun it was being used in tarzan where

a sex scene scene should be so what would happen is that jane would get trapped in the quicksand and while she's trapped inside there she's moaning and groaning and her sound of trying to break free sounds almost sexual and then tarzan would jump in and try and rescue her and they're both moaning and groaning in the mud and in the 1950s to an audience who had no access to anything remotely sexual this was highly sexualised and as a result you now have quicksand fetishists. But my overarching hot take I suppose is my theory on quicksand fetishists but my overarching hot take i suppose is my theory on quicksand

is that it exists it's an exclusively it exists exclusively in the american psyche as a counterbalance to greed quicksand occupies a space in the american californian psyche which are the puritanical dangers of what happens when when you go too greedy when a natural resource presents itself whether it's gold oil or, quicksand is present as the reminder of something that will drag you into hell. If you search for too much gold you'll be dragged into the soil, if there's too much fame, too much sex, you'll be dragged down to the ground. And then in the 1980s, why does it present itself in children's cartoons because in the 80s children's cartoons weren't children's cartoons they were giant advertisements to sell toys it was a gold rush everything we grew up with

the turtles the transformers he-man all that shit that was a gold rush the corporations were making huge amounts of money we thought we cared about the cartoons. The cartoons were shit. They had paint by numbers, scripts. They were all the exact same. But we went and bought the toys. We all wanted to play with He-Man. We all wanted Turtles and Transformers.

And quicksand needed to exist in there. As this force of a moral balance to almost to exist there in the American psyche to go don't dig for too much gold or you'll drown in the hills and no one will find you you'll drown in the tar pit if you look for oil you know what i mean it's like these kids you're selling them all these toys but effectively what you're doing

is is ultimately dishonest because you're not making good cartoons they're secretly adverts for toys and you're just involved in a new gold rush you're flooding the market with these cartoons. The way a hundred years previously in the 1880s, the fucking prospectors were flooding hills with water. And quicksand is the consequence. Quicksand is what can happen. Quicksand is drugs. It's cocaine. It's addiction.

It's too much sex. It's vice. It's all the bad things that can happen if you're too greedy. And that's what quicksand is. It's a unique American paranoia. So that's my hot take this week. That's my hot take. I was going to talk about all the other shit in fucking, but I don't have hot takes about them.

Electric eels. I do. Listen, I could do a hot take on electric eels and pir't have hot takes about them. Electric Eels. I do. Listen. I could do a hot take on Electric Eels and Piranhas. Piranhas and Electric Eels. Also exist in these cartoons. I've got a separate hot take about them that involves colonialism. Which I don't have time to go into.

I mean what have we got in Ireland? White dog shit. We never made any cartoons. We've got white dog shit that's it when we were children when you were out in the field in the early 90's pretending that the ground was quicksand

chances are what you fell into was white dog shit which was the shit of a dog that was white and it doesn't exist anymore i and and no one knows i can't tell you why i have a few theories number one the eu introduced uh laws into into dog food which meant that dogs stopped shitting white shits number two wheelie bins started to become popular therefore dogs stopped eating rubbish out of bins and maybe eating rubbish from bins in the 80s and 90s is what caused them to shit white shits number three as adults who participate

in society we no longer spend enough time on our hands and knees on the ground to see white dog shit but i don't know well children today aren't going out they're playing with ipads unless they're googling photos of white dog shit so that's what we had in ireland worrying about quicksand and what you needed to be worrying about was white dog shit because i've placed my hand in a few fucking white dog shits in my time as a child. Alright. I thoroughly enjoyed that hot take. I really enjoyed that.

Might have been a bit mad. Something about that was fun. I'm going to catch you next week. I'll see what's... I don't know what the crack is next week. Alright. God bless you all. Have a lovely day. Rock City, you're the best fans All right. God bless you all. Have p.m. You can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game,

and you'll only pay as we play. Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to Rock City at torontorock.com. Thank you. Thank you.