Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Adventures in Manila
586 Plays2 years ago
Mark and Steve settle in to talk about the filming of the Duncan 2004 Philippine National YoYo Contest DVD. It was a whirlwind trip to Manila filled with yoyo players, toy historians, strippers, balut, and more good times than you can shake a stick at.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Origins
00:00:00
Speaker
I'm Steve Brown. And I'm Mark McBride. And this is a podcast about that time we made up two whole new styles of yo-yo play and at the time nobody cared and now a few people care maybe.
00:00:36
Speaker
So we got my origin story. We got your origin story. So now everybody knows how we got started. Right. Now I was thinking at one point I was, you know, I was trying to be all anal retentive about this and I'm like, Oh, we should, you know, what's like the next thing that happened to us? But I think it's more interesting for us to just jump around and
00:00:56
Speaker
Like we've got a huge list of stuff that we want to cover and talk about. Let's just jump to whatever kind of leaps out at us.
Philippines Yo-Yo Journey
00:01:03
Speaker
And the last thing that you and I were talking about was the trip to the Philippines that resulted in the Dunkin Philippines DVD. Indeed. Indeed. That was.
00:01:13
Speaker
second part of something which, oh yeah, but well, second half of the Viking tour, we did those two tours back to back. But yeah, the Philippines DVD. And it was interesting because I just rewatched it recently with Jenny, my wife, who is Filipina. And both of her parents emigrated here from the Philippines. But so it was interesting for her watching it for the first time with me because, you know, there was a lot of stuff where she was, you know, we're
00:01:39
Speaker
you know, typical like white guys in the Philippines, right, we're like, you know, shooting like B roll of like jeep knees and jolly B and like all this stuff. And, and it, you know, for us, you know, we have the nostalgia of the trip for her, it was like a completely different sense of nostalgia.
00:01:57
Speaker
Now, it's worth noting though, for a lot of people that may not know their history, the significance of the Philippines is that that's where Yo-Yo's came to America from, and arguably the world.
00:02:10
Speaker
So Uncle Steve's happy, fun history corner here. So in 1928, I believe it was 1928, Pedro Flores kind of first got started with the Flores Yo-Yo Company, Pedro being a Filipino immigrant living in Santa Barbara, California.
00:02:30
Speaker
And he started up the Flores yoyo company and that was technically the first mass-produced yoyo in the United States, I believe. It was also the first yoyo to have a slip string around the axle, which allowed the yoyo to sleep. So we can thank a Filipino immigrant for the fact that yoyos spin at the end of the string, which means we can thank the Philippines for every fucking yoyo trick that exists.
Exploring Yo-Yo Myths
00:02:53
Speaker
And so there's constantly all the rumored history of yoyos that we will get to in this episode, because it plays into at least one of my quests when we were in the Philippines. But there's all these ancient history type stuff that you come up with about yoyos, where they came from, what they were. But all of it is barely, you know,
00:03:22
Speaker
It's barely like a confirmable, except Pedro Flores. That's where yo-yo history starts, functionally. Yeah. I mean, there are like, there are patents going back to like the, I think the 1800s, maybe even 1700s. You know, of all the people like Tom Van Delsen. They have patents in the 1700s?
00:03:45
Speaker
Tom Van Den Elzen, the guy who bought Playmax from Don Duncan Jr. and he's the guy who kind of built up that whole company during the yo-yo boom. He was really, really huge into patent research. So I know that at one point he published a book
00:04:05
Speaker
with like a whole bunch of old yo-yo patents. And there's definitely stuff from the 1800s. I can't remember if there was stuff from the 1700s or not, but like there are like United States patents that go back like really, really far. So there's- So a real quick, like a bridge from our last episodes that with the Vanden Els is that- Yeah.
00:04:30
Speaker
Tom Vannenhausen had Donald Duncan Jr. left Duncan Yo-Yo's, starts his own company Playbacks, and at some point
00:04:42
Speaker
And we should, we should have a full episodes about some of this stuff. I think it's some point to where Hans van and I was in his son convinces him to convince his Tom van and I was into swoop in and save Donald Duncan Jr. Right. So at, at this time, yeah, like when that happened, Hans was, uh, was a yo-yo player who was getting into becoming a yo-yo performer. And this was, he was wearing like the knickers and like the 1920s, like news boy cap and the suspenders and like,
00:05:11
Speaker
That whole he was whole stick. Yeah, the whole stick. I mean, he was he was like a young Dale Meyer Berg at that point plus knickers, which is a fucking amazing look like it's hard to find pictures of him from that time period, but it's so fucking worth digging for them because it's hilarious. The thing that I love, though, is when I moved from Tallahassee to Los Angeles,
00:05:36
Speaker
I went through Arizona. I went through where the headquarters was, and they had the Duncan Family Collection Museum there. Right. Yeah, I remember that.
00:05:52
Speaker
And so they had the Duncan family collection because they yanked it from the National Yo-Yo Museum in Chico, which was like huge drama at the time, too. Like they recalled the entire and they basically were like send us all our shit back. And then it all ended up
Cultural Reflections and Challenges
00:06:10
Speaker
back there. They had it on display. And then me and a bunch of other collectors at the time sent just boxes and boxes of vintage stuff to like replenish the museum collection in Chico. Oh, my gosh.
00:06:22
Speaker
And so I did, I did not know as much as I do now. And so I roll in there on this like cross country road trip that I'm on and, and somehow I roll. I get the address. I somehow got the address for play max. I roll in there.
00:06:42
Speaker
And I go, hey, I'm just some yo-yo guy from Florida. I just wanted to see the things and the collections and the... So they go, the owner's son's here. And I go, really? And Hans walks out. I think that Hans is Donald Duncan Jr.'s son.
00:07:03
Speaker
I don't know about Tom Phan and Allison. And you know, Hans was great. And in retrospect, looking back, if this was a movie in a supernatural, this was a supernatural Harry Potter Avengers movie kind of thing, there was a point where I shook Hans's hand and I just had, years later I was laughing about the fact that I was like, if I could have had that moment where you shake someone's hand
00:07:30
Speaker
and you see all the shit that's gonna happen in like a big flash of just like, you know, the psychedelic 2001 moment where you're just like, whoa.
00:07:41
Speaker
Oh, man. Yeah. So much insane interpersonal drama there. Anyway, we're getting off of. Yes. Oh, so Philippines, Philippines, Philippines. Yes. Philippines and history. So there's Philippines is the source of history. Yeah. I mean, basically like Philippines and Pedro Flores are the reason that yo-yo spin at the end of the string. They are the reason for literally every single fucking aspect of modern yo-yoing. So we owe the Philippines a huge debt.
00:08:11
Speaker
And for those of us who got into yo-yoing, I would say especially like early on, right? So like those of us who got in like at or before the 90s boom hit, that mythology was like, we weren't far off from it. You know what I mean? Like there was still like, you know, we were hanging out with Dale Oliver and we were hanging out with like all these guys who were demonstrators in the fifties who worked with Pedro during like the second run of the Flores yo-yo company.
00:08:37
Speaker
So like we were only really one degree removed from that original dude. So that that sense of history was still really close. So we had a lot of questions about it. And it was something that was talked about fairly often. So it was it was like real mythology for us. You know, it was it was it was approachable. It was close enough that we felt like we could get a grip on it. And and yet at the same time, we knew tantalizingly little and
00:09:07
Speaker
There was the overhanging amazing myth, which is yo-yo's were weapons before they were toys. Yeah, they were weapons. All right. It was just something that was specifically designed to be a pain in my ass.
00:09:24
Speaker
I mean, that was literally that's as weaponized as you have ever been. Is that myth coming up to bite me in the ass like every single fucking demo I did? Everyone, everyone, dude, every single I mean, I would be in like a Wal-Mart in Nebraska and some asshole would come up to me and be like, you know, those were originally weapons, right?
00:09:44
Speaker
Like without fail. And yeah, there was always a suspicion where like I bought into it early because nobody told me like otherwise I heard the, you know, the myth when I was however young too and rolled with it. But there's always that side of me, which I went the
00:10:01
Speaker
the physics just don't make sense because whatever goes out is going to come back at you. So I always, it always bugged me, but we heard it all the time and everyone would want to tell you as a yo-yo demonstrator, you know, those were weapons. Yeah. So, so here's the thing about that is like, that was, it was one of those things that bugged the shit out of me. And then I started getting like little glimpses of like old Duncan yo-yo company history.
00:10:25
Speaker
So, okay, back to the history part of this. So in 1931, 32, I think, is when Don Duncan Sr. bought the Flores yoyo company and turned it into the Duncan Toy Company. So that was when Duncan yoyos began.
00:10:43
Speaker
Um, I'm probably getting these dates wrong and like, I know for a fact that they're like lucky and some of these other guys are going to be listening to this episode later and they're going to be fucking cringing and foaming up the mouth. If Hans happens to listen to this episode right now, his head is blowing up. Guess he is turns out he's an amazing history buff.
00:11:02
Speaker
Oh, he really is. Yeah, he is. He knows this. I mean, like Hans is one of those guys who can rattle off patent dates for you. So like he has newspaper clippings. He has talked to he has talked to Pedro Flores is like number one man's daughter in law that's still alive today. Like, yeah, it's amazing. And I'm not exaggerating.
00:11:23
Speaker
So, okay. So early thirties, let's just, there we go. Let's just make it like kind of intentionally vague early thirties. Uh, Duncan, your toy company has started and what happens. And so this is something that I've been able to piece together. So, uh, the early Duncan, yo-yo company, there was a marketing guy named Tom Ives, and I'm going to go ahead on record right now and say, fuck you, Tom Ives, you son of a bitch.
00:11:49
Speaker
So Tom Ives was looking around and realized that most of their demonstrators were Filipino immigrants. And so he decided that in order to make the yo-yo seem more exotic and interesting, he was going to play into this. Tom fucking Ives is the reason he is the asshole who created the myth of the yo-yo as a Filipino hunting weapon.
00:12:15
Speaker
This no good cracker son of a bitch basically weaponized a vague sense of American racism to sell fucking yo-yos. Hold on. You told me once that the story of it being
00:12:31
Speaker
being a weapon could be traced back to Donald Duncan, senior drunk at a bar being hounded by reporters and him dismissively be like, it was a weapon to get him to go away. No, that was a joke that we were saying. We were like, how funny would it be if it turned out that this whole thing.
00:12:50
Speaker
It's like it was like some it wasn't Don Duncan senior we were talking about it being like Dale Like how funny would it be if it was like, you know, what are these old? Demonstrators was just sitting at a bar trying to get wasted because and you know sidebar all the old yo-yo demonstrators from the 50s were like raging alcoholics and Like street fighters like these guys were brawlers But yeah, that was the running joke is we were like how funny would it be if it turned out that it was like Just some guy was like yeah, leave me a fucking load, you know
00:13:18
Speaker
I don't know. It was a fucking weapon. Get out of here. I think we're just, I think we're, I think we're tapping into a strong dynamic. Uh, that's that we're going to see recurring through our, through your, my history. Steve was, wait, was that a joke or was that real? Yes. Oh shit. That was a joke for years. I've been studying that as an actual fact.
00:13:41
Speaker
But so the, and there's actually, so there's one of the, this is a cool piece of history I saw, like you know those embossing like notary stamps for paper? I saw one that somebody had, it may have been at the National Museum in Chico, it may have actually been Hans who had it, but it was Duncan Russell Ives. And that was the original name of one of the incorporated parts of the company.
00:14:06
Speaker
And it was Donald Duncan, senior Jack Russell and Tom Ives. So Tom Ives was like a huge part of the original Duncan Yo-Yo company. He was like the main marketing guy and he's the no good son of a bitch that made up that myth to sell more yo-yos because he knew as soon as it hit the newspapers and then all these Filipino guys showed up to demonstrate yo-yos that dumb ass white America would absolutely fucking believe that.
00:14:33
Speaker
And now it's a fucking textbooks.
Marketing and Mythbusting
00:14:37
Speaker
It's more than the textbooks. We'll get to that because that became the thing that when we were going to go to the Philippines,
00:14:47
Speaker
And I was being sent with a camera to the Philippines to make this DVD to make it. We're going to make a tour video because we were like, hey, it turns out that turns out that videos on things happening, people like to learn and see. Well, and don't forget, too, that there hadn't been a national yo-yo contest in the Philippines, like since the 60s. So this was like the first one in forever. So we wanted to document that as well. Yeah, I was all about like, maybe we could fucking put that.
00:15:15
Speaker
myth to rest. We're going, we're going to the homeland, you know? Yeah. So 2004. Okay. So that was, so at this point we are easily six years into being professional demonstrators. Like I had become a professional demonstrator, stop, become a professional demonstrator and gone back to a real job and you were still like corporate. You had moved to Ohio.
00:15:43
Speaker
Right. So I had gone from working for lofty pursuits, working for Greg to, uh, I spent like a year and change working for a company called team Losi. And then I moved on to working for Duncan toys. So we were both fairly experienced demonstrators at this point. So we were past the whole, like figuring out how this worked and we were well onto abandoning our duties in search of good stories.
00:16:08
Speaker
I was working at a record label. Oh, you were working at Kung Fu Records. I was at Kung Fu Records. They had a change of management and it no longer was the great job that it was. Right. And so I basically called up Steve Brown and said, Steve, I got to get out of here. Let's go on tour. And there was a talk.
00:16:34
Speaker
and you were looking for more videography work specifically like yes you could be there as a demonstrator but you know you were actively you were trying to build your reel at the time because you were looking to get into more film industry work because i'd gotten away from it you know i got away from it so i said look that is what i can do
00:16:52
Speaker
let's get back to doing that. And the pitch was, you and I had come up with the idea that was a Cathay Pacific Airlines had some deal where you could get like unlimited around the world ticket might have been an urban legend. I don't know if we ever actually connected on it. We were going to do a world tour video because videos were cool and nobody had done that yet. And we had thrown that and I tried, we tried to get corporate to sign off on that.
00:17:18
Speaker
Yeah, we tried to get corporate to sign off on it. Funny sidebar. This was also the early impetus of
00:17:27
Speaker
a later project that you and I shot a sizzle reel for that never got off the ground. And it was the idea of you and I traveling around the world and trying. We were going to try and like after we were kind of like over the hill as yo-yo players, we were going to travel around the world and hold fake national contests in countries with no national contest. Not fake. Not fake, sorry.
00:17:54
Speaker
We were going to hold official national yo-yo contest in countries that didn't currently have one just so that we could win it. And we were going to see how many national titles it would take for us to finally get like entry into finals for the world yo-yo contest. And now you help run the world yo-yo contest.
00:18:13
Speaker
And now I help run the world yoga contest. So really I could just like, I could just totally slide us in and be like, fuck it. I'm making this happen. So we were trying to float this idea to Duncan of buying us like these open ended plane tickets that we had like heard rumors about.
00:18:27
Speaker
And the idea is that like you, me and maybe like one other person, we're just going to go and like travel the world, hunting down yo-yo players all over the place, filming every bit of it. And then, you know, see what we could get off of it. And it sounded like a great idea to the people who weren't going to pay for it, which is us. Well, let me let me let me give a little
00:18:48
Speaker
little sage advice to all the kids out there. Most shit in the world and wonderful careers happen when you convince somebody with money that your dream is a good idea. Yeah. I mean, here's the thing is it was exactly the right kind of bullshit for us to try and pitch to the people with the pocketbooks. Um, but the fact that they said no was also not surprising at all. But they didn't really say no completely. They said, eh,
00:19:14
Speaker
They didn't. And what ended up coming out of that is that then we started pitching more focused international trips. Because the thing is, is at the time, Duncan was trying to get a lot more international distribution to directly compete with Playmax, who had very much locked down everything outside of the US. So with things like the Philippines, the Philippine CBD happened partly because we were able to get distribution in the Philippines.
00:19:43
Speaker
So we were able to stack multiple reasons for us to be there. We were there for the first national contest since the 60s. We were there. I was doing meetings with the distributor. I was also doing promotional appearances in various places to help promote the new Dunkin' Yoyos being available in the Philippines.
00:20:03
Speaker
And we were filming this content that then we'd be able to monetize later as a commercial DVD release. So once we were able to start stacking these things up, then we were able to start getting budget and approval. And that's how we got the Philippines. That's how we got the Viking tour DVD. That's how you guys ended up doing the samurai tour after I left Dunkin.
00:20:25
Speaker
but like that's how all of those dvds kind of came to be as it was out of this initial idea of us just traveling around and being like roaming yo-yo players and then we were able to kind of refine that down how much time that we have between viking and philippines because
00:20:41
Speaker
It wasn't much because like 2004 was, I mean, if I'm not mistaken, like that was like my last year with Duncan. Yeah. No, they were, they, it was, it was, I think that we booked them back to back. Like I think that we went to the Viking as I remember it came back just long enough to like shake the jet lag and then hopped on a plane to the Philippines.
00:21:05
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, that sounds I mean, when I was when I was working for Duncan, like it was not at all uncommon for me to do like Melbourne Toy Fair in Australia, shoot to the Philippines for a couple of meetings, shoot to Japan for Japan nationals back to the Philippines for some demos and then home. And then they would expect me in the office like 9 a.m. on Monday morning. So like I'm if you remember us booking these things like back to back with like a week in between, that sounds pretty
00:21:35
Speaker
That sounds pretty, pretty likely. How did we get there? I don't even like that. Like it's now now now it's just a fog of and then we were in the Philippines.
Ethical Dilemmas in Marketing
00:21:46
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's so funny looking back at this stuff because you remember the boldest parts, you remember the broadest strokes, but like the mundane things of like, I don't remember flying to the Philippines. I don't remember flying to Australia. I don't remember flying to Japan. I don't remember, you know, these were like 20 hour flights and stuff. And I remember nothing of the travel, but I remember like,
00:22:09
Speaker
I remember landing in the Manila International Airport for the first time and coming off of the plane and and just being like, holy shit. The Philippines, not this trip, but a prior trip was the first time I'd ever been in a, you know, like, quote unquote third world country. I did not understand until that moment the actual gap between like half and have not. No way. What was that like?
00:22:37
Speaker
It was, it was really, I was really unhappy about, like I, after that very first trip, we went, I went to the, the Duncan flew me out to meet with like this new distributor, Benkey trading. And they were trying to, they were bringing in Duncan to actively compete with like the magic yo-yo, not magic yo-yo, hyper.
00:22:59
Speaker
No, was it was smarty and it was smarty and it was super yo, super yo yo. That's what it was. It was super yo yo because and it was like a rebranded version of the anime. So strangely enough, this is all covered.
00:23:15
Speaker
in the DVD. It is missing. But what's not covered in the DVD is the very first time I went, I met met with the distributor before they'd even brought product in. And, you know, they set up some demos for me and I was like hanging out with the local players and stuff. And when I got home, I tried to convince Duncan to drop the whole thing. No way. Yeah. Because it was horrifying to me that we were trying to sell yo-yos to kids who couldn't afford shoes.
00:23:46
Speaker
Like I had that massive, massive wave of culture shock where I mean, yeah, there are people in the Philippines who can afford this kind of frivolous bullshit, but there is a more that can't. And the first, you know, when I was like, you know, they were like, hey, you know, come out of the hotel and, you know, take a left and go down a couple of blocks and we'll meet you at like this coffee shop or whatever, and then we'll we'll go for the day.
00:24:13
Speaker
And when I would step out of my gigantic air-conditioned gilded fuckin' Holiday Inn Manila, and then there's like a family of 12 living under a fuckin' overpass like 10 feet from the entrance of this hotel, like I was stepping out into that every day and walking through that every day and then trying to sell fuckin' $20 yoyos to kids.
00:24:36
Speaker
And there was something about that whole thing that was just so disgusting to me. And I was, I was fucking shook. I was really like, like I said, this was my first time experiencing this. And like, I grew up poor and I grew up broke, but I didn't grow up like 10 of us living under a fucking tree. You know what I mean? Jacksonville broke is different than Manila broke.
00:24:58
Speaker
Yeah, very, very different. And so like, I mean, I was, I mean, like this really, this rattled me to my core. Like I, I suddenly realized like, I'm very small and I don't understand the world. And I went back to the office and I tried to talk them out of it.
00:25:14
Speaker
Uh, and, uh, I mean, in retrospect, like that was definitely some like knee jerk white savior bullshit on my part, but it was like, I mean, I was, I was distressed. I was really fucked up by that whole first trip. You know, I made some amazing friends and I really fell in love with the Philippines, but I was also just like,
00:25:36
Speaker
I don't understand how you go into a place like this and try and sell like luxury toy items. Like this is really the, I could not get my head around the dichotomy of it. And, and all of our like marketing past that, like I was, I remained really, really uncomfortable with it. Wow. That's interesting. Cause when we went there, you had definitely been there before. Cause you knew, you knew that you knew at least some of the guys.
00:26:03
Speaker
Yeah, I knew Edmond and Edmond and Mimi and Jay and Chris Makita. Those were the guys that we had kind of, you know, words like our initial like Dunkin' Crew Philippines. I can't remember if I met, I think I met Ernest for the first time on one of the earlier trips, Ernest Khan, who's now on the Caribou team.
00:26:25
Speaker
but like he was like you know just this tiny little kid and like what was I can't remember if it was the DVD trip or if it was a prior one but I would come downstairs in the morning and he would just be hanging out in the lobby waiting for me to appear.
00:26:39
Speaker
And then he would just follow me around all fucking day long. So the thing about earnest comment, the very tiny, very tiny story that I always remember about him later. So the thing, this issue about earnest, is it completely Anglo looking like, like he's, he's very fair skinned. Yeah. Very fair skin. No accent speaks.
00:27:01
Speaker
like, total English. And afterwards, he, he moved to the States, great guy. Oh, man, this, this will surely be another episode in the future, where we were doing, after the Billy was classic, the BLC of a few years, we did like a late night rock and roll show.
00:27:21
Speaker
that we called the pocket circus. And at some point I was doing a routine, which I'll, and I'm literally wearing fishnets and like little panties, much like Frank and Furter from Rocky Horror is one of the joke bits. We have photos of this that we can put up in like in the show notes or something afterwards. We'll find some, we'll find some photos surely. Nice.
00:27:44
Speaker
And again, this is a rock and roll show. It's all fun. It's rock and roll comedy. You know, we've got these great skits and I get down and, and Ernest was one of the yo-yo guys that had come out to show and he's just like, so, uh, look at pretty. And I remember this, like, again, here's a guy with no accent. You would never know that he was not from Sacramento. Right. And he's like, but he, but he said, you looked very comfortable in those, uh,
00:28:14
Speaker
I was like, how are you comfortable in those stockies? Wait, what? Wait, what? The only thing that gave him away, the only thing that gave him away that he was, again, you would be like, oh, it's earnest, obviously, but like, comfortable. God, that's amazing.
00:28:35
Speaker
I love there is nothing in this world that I love more than like meeting people from other countries who speak perfect, fluent English. But but they put the accent on the wrong parts of the words like like go to Singapore. It's amazing. Everyone there literally speaks better English than most Americans, you know. But the inflection on the words is closer to Mandarin.
00:29:00
Speaker
So like, it's, it's, I mean, their grammar is impeccable, but the intonation on the words is just a little off. And it's amazing. It is, it is like the most, it is like listening to fucking music. It is so beautiful. I love it. So you know what I love going back to English is so Edmond, MS San Antonio was our, was our point man. He was our handler. He was, he was our, he was our guy. He was the guy in the Philippines. Yeah. Spoke great English.
00:29:27
Speaker
And he said that he learned speaking English in the Philippines because they had so many different dialects and sub-languages of Tagalog that when he started doing all of his demonstrating,
00:29:43
Speaker
and Yo-Yo worked in the provinces, that English was the common language. And that's actually how he got all of his practice and learned his English, was that was the Pan-Filipino language, which I was just very surprised by. One of the things that I've come to learn from being married to a Filipino woman is that one of the primary exports from the Philippines is doctors and nurses to America.
00:30:07
Speaker
And it's really, really common for people to go to med school with the express goal of moving to America and getting a job in the healthcare industry. There is a metric fuck ton of Filipino nurses in the United States.
00:30:22
Speaker
just an insane quantity. And it's because it's a really, it's a stable, really good paying job. And it's a great way for you to get here, immediately have work, and then not only be able to support yourself, but be able to send money home and afford to like, you know, save up enough money to bring your family to the US with you. So I mean, that's like a, it's not,
00:30:48
Speaker
It's weird, but it's not surprising to me that so many people there would would speak English, you know, because they are they're doing that with the express goal of eventually moving here. So we showed up and they we had about a short week before the contest at the end of the week. So yeah, it was very fast. Like the timeline for all of this was real short. And so we had some demonstrations. We got to meet with the head of
00:31:16
Speaker
indigenous games and activities. And that was the guy who we were going, that I, we got introduced to him early in the week. And I just was like, this is the guy that's going to be able to tell us if fucking yoyos were weapons or not.
00:31:30
Speaker
Right. Yeah. It was like an indigenous games society and their express goal was to preserve the history of actual indigenous Filipino games and toys and martial arts and all kinds of different skills that were indigenous to the area because the Philippines as a country had been conquered and
00:31:54
Speaker
occupied multiple times. Um, so there, there was kind of like a, like a forced melting pot kind of action. It got all this shit from these other cultures, but they were trying really hard to also preserve like what had come before. So we were running around doing some demos. They were drumming business, like they were drumming the contest. They would be at the, um, the big mall on the last Saturday that we were there.
00:32:19
Speaker
And it was a huge, it was like a huge, gorgeous mall with all kinds of luxury stores.
Cultural Performances and Production Challenges
00:32:26
Speaker
And again, to the whole divide between have and have nots in the Philippines, I was still a heavy smoker at the time. And so I would disappear frequently to run outside and smoke a cigarette.
00:32:38
Speaker
And, um, there was, you know, a shit ton of like poor ass kids that they wouldn't let in the mall because they didn't have like shoes. They were just like running around in like shorts, right? There's, you know, there's, there was broke ass kids that were, you know, kind of running around in that part of town, but like they wouldn't let them in the mall because they didn't want a bunch of kids with no shirts, no shoes running around in the mall.
00:33:00
Speaker
So I would go outside on my smoke breaks. And I'm sure this was driving you and everybody else nuts that I was disappearing so frequently throughout the day. But part of what I was doing is I was going out there and then I was doing little shows on the sidewalk for all the kids that couldn't come in.
00:33:16
Speaker
No way. Yeah. And like giving out. And I was, I was totally like, you know, we had brought like a ton of yoyos to promo and like giveaway and prizes and all this stuff and all and everything that I could possibly skim off of that. I was filling my pockets with and giving away to these kids on the street.
00:33:36
Speaker
Here's the thing, the director in me goes, motherfucker, you're supposed to tell me that that would have been actual good fucking footage. It would have been great footage, but I also would have gotten in so much fucking trouble for it. So I was just like, I'm just going to do this. I'm just going to quietly do this. The whole fate of that DVD was that we went there to do this kind of pseudo documentary
00:33:58
Speaker
and really be kind of a player thing and be again kind of a skate video exciting type thing ended up really just with a bunch of talking heads. Yeah, it was not like so like the like you go back and you look at the Viking tour DVD and that's like an extended skate video. You look at the Philippines DVD and it's mostly a documentary and also it appears there was a yo-yo contest in there somewhere.
00:34:21
Speaker
You want to know why? Did we not get any good footage from the contest? No, we shot this whole thing and we got back and then it was pointed out that we do not have any rights and thus cannot use any music that was shot in any demos. Okay, so here's a reveal. We should save this for the end, but I'll blow it down on the DVD. All of the freestyles for all of the winners
00:34:49
Speaker
Yeah. If you watch the if you watch the DVD, again, it's talking heads. And then we have this long section where like almost like in one shot, we show all like all of the like first, second, third place, like first place, second place, third place being revealed. Right. If you hit the remote, it jumps to Easter eggs of all of their freestyles. There's more Easter egg footage on that DVD than actual footage. Oh, shh.
00:35:19
Speaker
We weren't legally allowed to do it. So Duncan was like, you can't do it. I was like, fuck, but I put it on. So I was just like, you know what, these kids, man.
00:35:28
Speaker
It's all Easter egg footage. It's all Easter egg footage. We did it anyway, which is totally illegal, except that there's no DVDs left. Now it just exists on YouTube with none of the Easter eggs except the Balut at the end.
00:35:46
Speaker
They put that on. Yeah. And rewatching that, I felt bad because to me it felt like a shitty white dude food shaming. Balut is a snack food in the Philippines that is basically like an unfertilized duffin. It is a fertilized egg.
00:36:07
Speaker
fertilized duck embryo. So basically it's like a dead chick in an egg. Hard boiled. Hard boiled and you crack it open and salt it and you just eat this fucking dead duck embryo. And it is
00:36:25
Speaker
It doesn't look like you should do that. It really it looks like something from like late 80s, early 90s like Screaming Mad George, Nightmare on Elm Street, like weird kind of like practical horror movie effect kind of thing.
00:36:42
Speaker
I mean, it's a perfectly egg shaped baby duck that you just salt and like bite into. It is not pretty. It's not pretty. So we should. But we're jumping ahead, man. We got it like so.
00:36:56
Speaker
What did we do when we got there? Because like I said, that was the last day. That was after the contest. Yeah, that was the last day that was after the contest. So the, I mean, when we first got there, like, I mean, we were just, we were running around and we were trying to set up all of the interviews that we needed to schedule because we, part of, you know, like part of the deal is that Ingsoc was going to give us, you know, all this like interview time and everything in exchange for us giving them stage time at the contest.
00:37:23
Speaker
So that's, that's a fun thing that's on the DVD is that you see bits and pieces of like different, like, there's like tenickling on there and there's like, you know, these like kind of stick fighting and like, there's all this like very like indigenous.
00:37:40
Speaker
So you've got like the two poles on the ground. It's kind of like double Dutch, but with poles. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which is, you know, my daughter, my, my younger daughter, uh, Flora is actually learning to Nickling right now to do a performance at our local Filipino cultural center. Uh, so that was kind of like a funny, like full circle to like see this old footage. And then, you know, an hour and a half later, my mother-in-law shows up to teach my daughter how to do it.
00:38:08
Speaker
I just loved the head of, the head of indigenous games, like this, like 50, 60 something, like 60 something year old guy. And he just, and he was the number one guy in the martial arts demos that he was all about like the stick fighting demos that just get it up there. And I think that he got his, his, his staff, like his interns to
00:38:35
Speaker
to take the classes with him, because they were just dragged up there to show off how to beat somebody with a stick. And it was this old man front and center showing you the moves. Yeah, he was a badass too, man. He was not pulling punches. The things that I remember of that, we popped in, we did the different interviews, we did some media. They actually pulled me in front of the camera a couple times. But really, that whole week was a bit of a fog
00:39:03
Speaker
I mean, it was a, we didn't have enough time, honestly. It was one of those things that I think, especially because, you know, we were like back to back with like another trip. Um, we just didn't have a lot of time. And so like what, what realistically should have been like a two or three week shoot at the minimum, like we did in like nine days. Oh, we weren't there nine days. We were there like less than a week. It was like, well, maybe a week. I think we went like Monday to Sunday kind of thing.
00:39:32
Speaker
No, it was a little longer than that. We were there for like, we were there for like, I mean, we were there at least a week and then like a couple of days. I remember though that we were, some of that was, some of that was travel time. Cause then that's the other thing to remember is that if you're, if you're trying to get anywhere in the Philippines, don't fucking make any plans, pal, because you're going to be in traffic for like six hours.
Unexpected Adventures and Cultural Misunderstandings
00:39:54
Speaker
There was a point where,
00:39:57
Speaker
you decreed that we were all gonna go out for massages. And we ended up at a massive spot. I, when you said we're going out for massages in the Philippines, I immediately was thinking clandestine. I know, you were not thinking, yeah, you were not thinking massage. I was thinking a massage. I was like, this is gonna be amazing. Like, you know how expensive a massage is at home? It's gonna be like nickels here. Like, fuck this, let's do it. Let's get them every day. You were like, don't worry, it'll be cheap. I'm just like,
00:40:25
Speaker
you were telling me that we're going to go out for cheap massages in the Philippines. Like, I know now in retrospect, in retrospect, you were probably, you were significantly more correct about how that could turn out. But somehow you guys found a place that looked like
00:40:46
Speaker
It looked like a gym. It was giant with beautiful glass and plants and stuff like that. How did you even find that? How did we get there? I mean, it was all Edmunds. It was literally me just being like, this is what I need. And he was like, I'll find it.
00:41:04
Speaker
And like he was just I mean, he was the best man. Yeah, that dude is awesome. I keep saying was like I just haven't talked to him in a while. Like he's not dead or anything. No, he's still kicking around. I just haven't talked to Edmund in a while. He's he is not past tense. Just as a clarification there. Yeah, no, I mean, that was you know, we did a lot of we partied hard on a lot of those tours.
00:41:32
Speaker
You know, we did, like we were out, we were hitting the bars every night. Like, I mean, you know, I was drinking the beers. You were drinking your grapefruit juice. Like we were, we were doing karaoke. That was the thing. The karaoke. How, how the hell is karaoke? That was something that I learned about the Philippines. Turns out the karaoke was venerated in the Philippines. I don't know. It's a national pastime or something.
00:41:57
Speaker
I don't know, but one of my, so Jack Rinca, who is from Jacksonville, so he and I were friends through high school and stuff, he's half Filipino, his dad is the Filipino half, and I remember going over to his house in high school, and his dad busting out his little karaoke machine, and his dad had the thickest, gnarliest,
00:42:23
Speaker
fresh off the boat, like burly fucking Filipino accent. And then he could sing Beatles songs and sound exactly like John Lennon. Like, like to the point where, like, if you were not in the same room, you thought his dad was just listening to records and then you walk in and you're like, son of a bitch, how is that voice coming out of your fucking mouth?
00:42:47
Speaker
Amazing. And I saw that and we saw that all over the Philippines and it was just one of those things where it was like, not only were they, you know, not only were these people like great singers, but they were dead ass perfect impersonating the full voices of the singers that whose songs that they were singing. It was incredible. So I remember when we were going to, we decided to take
00:43:11
Speaker
the gang out and go to a Filipino strip club. And as we were walking there, I remember just walking by like a row of bar type with just, you could see the karaoke coming out of the windows and just be in like the lights and every, just the level that they took it to, which was really hilarious because
00:43:36
Speaker
coming from America, the strip clubs were a big to do. And karaoke was this like little thing in the corner. And there was the opposite. The karaoke was amazing. He went to the strip club and it was just like, the girls like would walk up and down and it was, you know, and then like, it was incredibly lackluster and uninteresting. So what we didn't understand is that so in the US, the whole point of the strip club is the strip club.
00:44:06
Speaker
in at least the place that we went to in Manila, the strip club was essentially just a front for the brothel. Well, no, I would say this way, the fact that the, the strip clubs are lackluster because exactly that in the States, it's like a, it's a faux brothel. It's where you want, like, you can't really go to a brothel, but there you just go to brothel. So we did not, we did not understand that until it was too late.
00:44:36
Speaker
So there was the night that we go.
00:44:39
Speaker
We're going to the strip club. We got to go to a strip club in Manila. And we roll in there and I feel like. I feel like we need to clarify also that like literally and and and I know that this sounds implausible, but this is actually the way that we thought at the time. None of us really gave a shit about strippers. This was 100 percent the kind of stuff that we did because we were like, I'm almost positive. We'll get a good story out of this. And we did.
00:45:08
Speaker
Like we would, we did the dumbest, most ridiculous shit just because we were like, I'm positive. We're going to get a good, if we go a strip club in Manila, like literally just think about that sentence. Remember that time we went to a strip club in Manila, that alone.
00:45:24
Speaker
Yeah, nothing happens in the lobby of the hotel. Nothing happens in the lobby of the hotel. So so every time we were traveling, we would constantly like seek out, you know, like what's what are the weirdest situations we can put ourselves into and see if we can get a story out of this. So it was also but a lot of it also was in the other direction, too, where I remember multiple cases and these like multiple stories where
00:45:51
Speaker
Oh, the dumb Americans coming to town. But but it's yo-yo guys. So we're all buddies. We're all friends. And you got this this good buddy and he's coming to town. They're just going to fuck with you. Yeah, they just want to fuck with with their buddy from out of town. And so we go to the strip club.
00:46:12
Speaker
And it's kind of lame. It is. It was really kind of lame. Like we're sitting in like the big main area and there's like, you know, the walkways and these girls are like walking up and down these. And I swear to God, it looked more like a shitty fashion show because they're just bored as hell, dead eyed walking up and down this thing. And we're like, this is not spicy at all. Like this is ridiculous.
00:46:34
Speaker
because we're expecting, I'm expecting, again, we're in the, we're in like Southeast Asia where the laws are, there's no laws, it's donkey shows and crazy shit, you know? Yeah. I'm like, I'm like, when am I going to get hit with a ping pong ball shot from somewhere inappropriate? Like what, you know, like that's, that's what we were aiming for, right? We were like, what's, you know, let something wild is going to happen. No, it was boring as hell. And so we're like, we're talking to our buddy that we were there with.
00:47:02
Speaker
And we're like, dude, this is fucking boring. And he's like, oh, well, you got to get a private room. And we're like, what? OK. All right. Great. Let's do that. If that's where it gets crazy. That's where it gets crazy. And again, like, you know, neither of us had any actual interests in like trying to hook up with a stripper in the Philippines. Like this is not what we were there for. Your interest seemed to be to show off because I remember I remember after this after the massage while you're like,
00:47:30
Speaker
I'm taking my boys out for a massage kind of thing. It's a big spender. In retrospect, it was probably 40 bucks. So Steve was showing off. Steve's like, oh.
00:47:42
Speaker
I'm taking my boys to the private room of the strip club now. I was like, dude, I'm on the Duncan expense account. Let's do this, man. Like I'm going to be able to write this off as dinner for three people when I could take 20 to a strip club. Like, I mean, you know, like great. So I'm going to pause for a second here and say to our friends.
00:48:03
Speaker
we are going to intentionally omit names and stuff not because we've forgotten about you or don't love you but if we have some of these stories if we have a cleared with you you may not want to tell so if you don't hear your name it's not because we forgot and don't love you we're trying to protect the innocent.
00:48:21
Speaker
If you don't hear your name in one of these stories that you know damn good and well you were there, that is just us gifting you plausible deniability. So we get the we get the private room. And then what happens is when you get the private room, like several of the strippers like immediately are like, I'm going to make some money off of these assholes. And so then they pile into the room with you.
00:48:41
Speaker
And they have this was the thing that blew me away like just the weirdness of it was the parade that you're talking about the fashion show catwalk that they do when they're not doing that they was sitting off on the side in a little glass room where with numbers on their bikinis where you would just be like
00:49:02
Speaker
because it was a fucking brothel and we did not understand that because we were morons and that's not what we were looking for. Like we in our head had this idea of the way that American strip clubs work. You go in, there's girls dancing, they try and sell you on a lap dance.
00:49:20
Speaker
You paid $17 for a watered down well drink. And then, you know, you and your buddies fucking leave. Like, and then you go get breakfast somewhere. Like, that's it. That's how it works in the US. We did not understand where we were or what we were doing.
00:49:35
Speaker
So you say, we want a private room. We go upstairs and they go like, what girls do you want? And so we all had to like walk over to the glass, the fishbowl and be like number eight, number 12, whatever. And I remember just to be like.
00:49:51
Speaker
like tell me tell me the the you know mama saw and just be like i guess number seven you know like or whatever okay and then like this is the this is the point where the whole thing immediately turned gross right so like this is the point where we're like you
00:50:08
Speaker
And then it's like, I'd like the number seven and the number 14, please. Like immediately just felt fucking disgusting. Like I'm pointing to a human being referring to them by number and saying, come over here and lavish your attention on me. Like just not like we, we immediately, like you could kind of feel us being like,
00:50:29
Speaker
How far are we going to take the joke tonight? You know, but we did have to take it too far because this, they, they, they take us up to the private room and I'm using the air quotes type stuff. It's just a fucking karaoke room. It's fucking karaoke. 100%. It was, yeah, it was just a karaoke room. So we get, we basically just got our own karaoke booth. Couple of, couple of women in bikinis who were just like Americans. Let's see how much we can milk these dumbasses for. They, and I remember they give us the karaoke room.
00:51:00
Speaker
These girls started on the karaoke. They're so fucking excited about the karaoke. They did not give a shit. Like they, we roll up in there and they're like, Oh, Hey, how's it going? You know, they got like their arm around you. They got their arm around me. And as soon as we get in, they got microphones in their hand and they're like,
00:51:18
Speaker
And I immediately just launch into it. And you and I, I remember this moment where like the two girls are like belting out some like Whitney Houston shit. You and I look at each other. We're like, that's the story we were looking for.
00:51:36
Speaker
You know, and then and then we start ordering drinks and then that's where they started ordering drinks. They started ordering. Praise came in. Oh, my God. Literally, this is where it all went fucking sideways. Every girl ordered a tray of drinks to the point where I thought that that was like the drink minimum. I thought that they were like, that was the getting a private room. The way you paid for it was the tray, like the tray of drinks. And they were all the same drink. Like you said something like somebody said
00:52:06
Speaker
like one drink and you had a tray of them. I think I ordered a Sprite and there was seven Sprites. That's how I assumed there was just like a seven drink minimum per person. I guess. I don't know. But like, yeah, it's one of those things where, yeah, let's get some drinks in here. And then like every available surface was covered in beverages.
00:52:24
Speaker
And it was just like, what the fuck? So I of course, like start drinking because I'm like, yes, let's do this. You being the guy who doesn't drink and the sound mind and body guy are like, I'm just going to casually sip this Sprite and see what kind of fucking dumb, shittery happens in here. And it did not take long for the dumb, shittery to commence.
00:52:48
Speaker
We're in there with our friends. There is, I remember there being about, I remember there being like five, six of us. Then again, we're going to remove the names for plausible deniability, but there are, you know, our buddies are there and. And I'm definitely, I'm definitely trying to do the big shot thing, right? I'm just like, yeah, let's get more drinks. Let's get where I got it. Don't worry. You're trying to be the big spender in the Philippines and the
00:53:13
Speaker
just like, Oh yeah, the cash conversion is wonderful. I am rolling. Oh, I was such a idiot. And we each have a like, basically they just like plant a girl that's going to pretend to be your girlfriend for like a couple hours. Cause again, if you were actually like,
00:53:33
Speaker
out there to get laid, you would have just gone up to the brothel. So this was the, I want to pretend like you like me mode. And so, and my girl, the girl that I had, she was, we were sitting there together and she goes, guess how old I am? And I went, no.
00:53:55
Speaker
Oh, oh, oh, oh, no. No, no, please don't even. Oh, no. Oh, I mean, I am. Yeah, I mean, that's the thing is like I had I was not like every so often that she would like put her arm around me or put her like hand on my leg and I would immediately be like, nope, yeah, we're not doing that. Like, and so I got up and like stumbled down the hall to go to the bathroom and she tried to follow me and I was like,
00:54:24
Speaker
straight up just like shoved her into like another room and then like the bathroom and shut the door. Like I was, I was not, I was not there to be touching on anybody. Yeah. And that was, so we were there. Again, like what else were we doing? What else can we do? We sat there like these, you know, pretty ladies and bikinis sitting on our laps and there wasn't even nudity in this place.
00:54:48
Speaker
There was even nudity. I saw, I did not see a nipple, did not even see a bare breast, like nothing. It was just like, and again, we were just there for the story. So we were fine with that. So then finally, like we hit the point where I would have liked to see the nipple. I would have liked to see a little nudity. I mean, I'm down for the stories, but I mean, dude, beautiful women. It's still like, they were, they were, they were good looking. Oh yeah. They were great. And they were fun to hang out with. Like they were, you know, they were funny. Like they were, it was a good time.
00:55:18
Speaker
But, you know, all good times must come to an end. And then they weren't OK with that. They were saying, hey, you guys, we should go out for breakfast. We know a great place to go get breakfast. And at that point, you and I are like, no, I think we're just going to I think we're just going to bounce. Hey, breakfast. And I remember everybody coming to me with fucking puppy dog eyes be like, especially, especially one of our friends who is like, oh, can we
00:55:45
Speaker
No strays. We are not taking anybody home. But here's the thing is that all sounded well and good until the check came. And that was when that was when everything went fucking sideways. Because this point things are closing down. They're like, the night is over. Night is over. Closing down. Here's your bill. And they bring it in. And we're sitting there with like, you know, like flashlights, like trying to read this thing and trying to like, we're going to like scratch paper and we're trying to do the conversion.
00:56:15
Speaker
You were, because at this point, Steve is like, oh yeah, it's time to set up. And Steve's like, oh, I got it. Come over here. Like, bar Steve. Like, waves the gentleman over to him with a piece of paper.
00:56:30
Speaker
So the check comes, I'm trying to figure out the conversion. I finally do figure out the conversion and I'm like, Oh, I'm going to have to put it on my card. And they're like, no cards cash. And I'm like, I don't have that much cash on me. And then a very large guy came into the room. I was like, Oh, Oh, what have I done? And so the dude takes me by the arm forcefully. Cause he, at this point, at this point though, let me pause because like I'm dad at this point. And so everyone was looking at me and puppy dog guys.
00:57:00
Speaker
Our friends are still having fun. Again, one guy is just loving it. He's just super happy that he's given the attention. And you kind of lean over and be like,
00:57:12
Speaker
the big man says I have to go with him. The big man, I got to deal with this. And I'm like, what? Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, never, never follow someone to a second location. So, so the dude takes me by the arm, leads me outside and walks me down the street to an ATM to pull cash out.
00:57:31
Speaker
And they're like, our friends are like, so Steve's ghost is Steve coming back like, yeah, you'll be fine. Yeah. Yeah. You're like, Oh yeah. Yeah. It's totally, it's totally fine. So I, I am drunk.
00:57:45
Speaker
Right. So I am drunk. I'm walking down the street and I'm mentally and this is pre smartphones. And this is easily this is easily four, three, four or five in the morning. Like this. Yeah. Yeah. This is I am in no shape to be thinking right now. And so what I'm doing is I've got this huge dude who has an arm. And when I say he has his hand wrapped around my arm, I mean, it physically wrapped all the way around my arm with
00:58:12
Speaker
inches to spare like this dude is like the biggest man in the Philippines he's the Filipino Hulk he's fucking enormous he could wreck so he's got his hand you know fully wrapped around one of my arms and is walking me down the street to this ATM so while we're doing this I'm like how much money do I have in my checking account right now I don't know I don't know and and I'm also mentally going what is my pin number I don't know I don't know
00:58:42
Speaker
Like I am filled with gin and tonic and have nothing else apparently in my head at that moment. So I'm like, I'm like, uh, two, four, uh, two, uh, two shit. So like we're getting closer, closer to the ATM. I am starting to sober up very quickly in the moment. You left out of the context.
00:59:05
Speaker
You left under the context of, uh, I got to go to the ATM and they said that there's a close one. So he's going to walk me to the ATM. Yeah. And you left. We have no idea how far this close ATM actually is.
00:59:22
Speaker
Right. So I'm, I'm walking down the street and I mean, it was probably like a block or something, but like, man, in my head, like that was the, you know, I was, I was like, dude, that was like full on death row March. You know what I mean? Like I was walking the green mile, like to my inevitable doom.
00:59:40
Speaker
And so we get to the ATM and I realized that I cannot remember my pin and have no concept of how much fucking money is in my check. I don't know if it's going to work. I don't know. I don't know what to do. So the only thing I can do at that point is I pull out the Duncan credit card that I had because for whatever reason, I could remember the pin for that. And so I did a cash advance on a corporate credit card.
01:00:12
Speaker
Which let me just say, I paid that back immediately upon returning home. But I had to pull out like $600 as a cash advance on a corporate credit card to pay off. I mean, it was terrifying.
01:00:27
Speaker
No, it wasn't $600, it was 600 pesos. No, 600 pesos is like 55 cents. This is the problem is that they screwed us. I don't think it was 600 bucks. I don't think you can get that out of an ATM at once, but it was somewhere around like three or $400. It was way more than it should have been because we were dumb drunk Americans.
01:00:52
Speaker
But there was, I don't remember the numbers, but no. It was several hundred dollars because it screwed me badly when I got home and then had to like reimburse Duncan for that out of my own pocket. And because by this point, the rest of us had been sitting there, they're starting, our buddies are starting to look at us and be like, is Steve coming back?
01:01:14
Speaker
And so, we're like, oh yeah, yeah, no, let's come back. Gotta think. So you come back, and they're like, Steve's back, cool. And you're just like, yeah, see? Yeah, this is you throwing your big money around. We're good, mama's son's cuz. We're out face, high-fiving the girls. You sure we can't come with you? No kind of thing. And you and I are looking at each other like sweat on brow.
01:01:38
Speaker
Yes, and we're out of here. And we're like, in the end, you're like, I was like, are we fucked? And you're just like, the conversion comes out to be like, it's about 200 bucks. It was more than 200. It was probably closer to like three or four, but it was still like, we absolutely got, I got screwed on that for sure. So, okay, so here's the thing. So I get the money, I get the cash out of the ATM and I like, I pay the dude and then he just kind of looks at me and I've got like a few bills left and I just,
01:02:07
Speaker
Give him the rest of it. He just tucks it in his pocket and walks me back. And like, by this point, I was like very nearly sober. Like I had very quickly lost fully half of the alcohol in my system to just pure terror sweats.
Contest Success and Relaxation
01:02:23
Speaker
And so we get back and then, you know, of course, you know, everybody's like, all right, yeah, we're going out for breakfast.
01:02:28
Speaker
And what had seemed like a good idea before, when I was very drunken in the moment, no longer seemed like a good idea. So this whole, like, let's go out for breakfast thing, while I will admit I was hungry as hell at that point, I wanted to be done with the women that we had met at this establishment. I have to admit, this is the vague, like, if one of our buddies there said, no, we did go out to breakfast with those girls,
01:02:57
Speaker
I would believe that too, because I feel like I held the line for a while on like, we can't take strays home. The only thing that I remember after that is I remember us stopping at like a street cart and getting hot and Semada.
01:03:14
Speaker
which are these amazing Filipino rolls that have butter and sugar and melted cheese on top. And it is the greatest drunk food ever because it's just hot, buttery deliciousness. But I distinctly remember being like, it's time for this to be fucking done. I need to get out of here because now I'm getting the terror.
01:03:37
Speaker
The next day was rough because like we got back to the hotel and then we basically had time to like shower, get some breakfast and then fucking start filming. No way. We really did that the night before the contest. I don't think it was the night before the contest. I think it was the night before we were doing the interviews at Inksoc. Okay. Sounds about right. So it wasn't, it wasn't like, it wasn't like a super heavy day, but we should not, we should not have done that. I should not have been drinking.
01:04:04
Speaker
For sure. Like for you, you were just like, well, I'm just tired and full of Sprite. You know, for me, I was like hung over. It was bad. So then we had the contest, which went fine. Like, I mean, you know, everyone did a good job. It was a great time. The contest went great. Um, Benki trading did a really good, I mean, honestly, they did the bulk of the organizing. Like we were really there to kind of be like, Oh, you know, here's like the scoring matrix and here's the, this and
01:04:31
Speaker
you know, we provided some of like the general details of like, these are, you know, this is how you, you know, organize the divisions and whatnot, but they ran the actual event. Um, I think I, I think I was one of the judges, one of the judges, they had an MC that was terrible guy. Yeah. Just local guy who didn't know anything about yo-yoing or yo-yos and ignored all of the notes we gave him.
01:04:58
Speaker
Like we gave him a bunch of notes on stuff and he fucking ignored every bit of it. And just like was like, if it's funny, if you go back and watch the DVD, you could absolutely tell that dude is just making shit up. And I remember I think it was that night, but it was definitely like, if not that night, then like one of our, the last night after all those things we said, then we'd been gone.
01:05:22
Speaker
Again, by this point, you and I have been on the road for weeks, months, kind of thing. And I remember going like, guys, let's just watch a movie in the hotel room. And so it was like our usual gang were like, we're just going to watch a movie on a laptop in a hotel room. Yeah. Let's just get some snacks and like relax. And I went with and Philip and Edmund, they're like, oh yeah, we could just go grab a movie from the black market across the street.
01:05:57
Speaker
So you stayed, you stayed at the hotel room. I went across the street with, with Phillip Edmond and I think couple, like maybe a couple of our other boys. And, and yeah, it was like classic mall with all the movies that were still in the theater on DVD. And they go, what do you want to watch? Or like Dodgeball.
01:06:23
Speaker
So, we got fucking Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, Dodgeball, which was still in the theaters at this point. I still have that DVD. I was wondering where the fuck that came from. I didn't realize that came from that trip. I still have that DVD and a stack of other, like, bad, shaky, hand-cam bootlegs. That was probably guy in the fucking mall.
01:06:47
Speaker
Yeah, they're in a case in the car that I leave in the van because we've got like a DVD player in the van for the kids. And so there's like a handful of these movies, like tucked away and like the very back of this DVD case. And I was wondering where that came from. We got we went there, we got, you know, got snacks, just loaded up on snacks in dodgeball. And
01:07:10
Speaker
came back and that's when Philip, that's when Philip stopped at a street vendor to grab some Balut and we get back to the hotel and we're setting, you're setting up your laptop and this is like a VCA encoded thing. So like the resolution was probably like, you know, 400 by 200 when all said done. Oh yeah, this is terrible.
01:07:31
Speaker
And Philip, in his niceness, wants to eat his balloon, but turns out the way that you eat the way that he eats balloon is like in a hard-boiled egg. You know, you crack the shell and then salt and pepper the shit out of it. And he's like, oh, I don't want to spill it everywhere. So I'll just go in the bathroom to contain the salt, which will surely spill from this thing. And so he slips away in the bathroom. And it's like a fucking drug dealer at a party where like people are slipping away to do something in the bathroom.
01:08:00
Speaker
And you go, what's he doing in the bathroom? And I go, I got some balut from a street vendor. And you're like, balut. I must witness this balut. And you run in there with your camera. And I run in there and I immediately regretted it.
01:08:18
Speaker
That was the footage that showed up, that was the Easter egg footage of the video that's on the DVD video of you running around the corner to witness Phillip eating the balloon and you go, ah! And he's just sitting there with, you know, for him, it's just like, oh, it's a snack, it's fine, like what? And you're like, ah!
01:08:37
Speaker
Yeah, it was, it's, uh, I don't know what I expected, but it was so much worse. So much worse. And it like, it had this like kind of like pickled death sort of smell to it. Like, Oh man, it was, I don't even know how to describe it. It's just, it's one of those things that like, I mean, honestly, I had the same response to that as I had to durian.
01:09:00
Speaker
Like it's just one of those things where I was like, who the fuck eats this and why? Durian definitely showed up. Durian showed up in like Misadventures by the time we got to Malaysia and Singapore. I didn't do Malaysia and Singapore with you though. That was after you left. Yeah, that was after I left. Stories for another time. Yeah.
Interview and Conclusion
01:09:21
Speaker
So, yeah, so we got we got through the event, we got through all of the interviews and everything like, man, it was a it was a wild trip. I definitely acted like a fucking idiot for a solid chunk of that. But we got the footage we needed. The contest went off great. People had a really good time. And in the end, we did the we got to ask the fucking head.
01:09:44
Speaker
of indigenous games in the Philippines. Were yo-yos a weapon? And he goes, maybe. That son of a, I know that was the worst. That was like, here we were. Finally, we were going to like, we're going to quash this bullshit for fucking once and for all, blah, blah, blah. You know what? I need the definitive answer. Where was the yo-yo ever used as a weapon? And he's just like, I don't know.
01:10:14
Speaker
Well, you know, our, our history has been rewritten by all the different people that have conquered us at different times. So you son of a bitch. Oh God. I remember being so pissed like that day. Like I remember just like watching that and watching that happen. And it was just like, Oh fuck man. Are you kidding me?
01:10:40
Speaker
I'm Steve Brown. And I'm Mark McBride. And this has been YoYo Player, a podcast about the modern history of yo-yoing from two guys who helped make it. See you next time.