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Episode 18 - Christmas 2024 Special
36 Plays8 days ago
It's Christmas and we're on a war... to give each other "presents"! In this episode, Tam and Heather discuss Canadian Christmas and the experiences they've both have had either through rampant consumerism, interactions with Crown corporations, public relations with the military industrial complex, or experiences with gender thanks to popular media.
We're also releasing this episode a bit over a day earlier than usual so you can enjoy this on Christmas Eve!
If you wish to view what is in the catalogue we speak about, here's the link:
https://archive.org/details/sears-canada-wish-book-1996/mode/2up
We have a Patreon!
https://patreon.com/shawiniganmoments
Shawinigan Moments is written and recorded on the unceded territories of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Stó:lō (Stolo), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) first nations in what is otherwise called Vancouver.
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Transcript
Cybertruck Poem and Community Reactions
00:00:00
Speaker
So I'm going to read a poem to you. You're going to read me a poem? I like poetry. I know. I wrote a poem because I was up to something earlier today. Winter has come and Christmas is near. Tesla has come bearing gifts for all those Cybertruck pioneers. In Vancouver, my truck has finally been delivered, but the pointing and laughing has left me quite embittered.
00:00:24
Speaker
I've tripped to Muskoka on one of many snowy nights. Ten minutes is all it takes to block one's leading lights. A month has gone by since my four-wheel sleigh arrived. Battery goes down real fast and recently has died. Rust has appeared and I know what I shall do. Wrap my truck in vinyl and cope with that too.
00:00:46
Speaker
My truck is now broken and all I can do is cry because Tesla won't return my calls as I didn't keep it dry.
00:00:56
Speaker
ah That's so what inspired that bit of poetry is cyber trucks are being delivered to Canada. I have seen one in person. I like literally drove past one. And um I saw the one that was being delivered to the west end on the flatbed.
00:01:15
Speaker
Oh, being delivered or being towed? ah It was on a flatbed. I have no idea. Is there a difference? It looks like it's its natural home is to be on a flatbed. Yeah, it is an incredibly capable truck. And its autonomous driving abilities is fantastic because it relies 100% on its internal cameras, its advanced onboard computer, and a flatbed tow truck driver.
00:01:44
Speaker
oh So yeah, so there's so I discovered the Cybertruck Canada Facebook group. Oh, yeah. And so this these are the posts that inspired my poem. By the way, I'm not a poet, so whatever. So one of them is like, well, we drove my Cybertruck for 10 minutes today in Muskoka and the headlights were completely blocked by snow. Yeah.
00:02:09
Speaker
Hello, almost one month now from receiving my Cybertruck. I noticed that it loses battery fast. Anyone else notice that? Yeah, if anybody if anybody's ever driven a Prius in the winter time you realize that you no longer have a hybrid you have a gasoline car with like a little bit of a coaster like electric boost because I haven't I have a hybrid and yeah the distance or the total maximum distance I can get out of a tank of fuel is greatly diminished.
00:02:40
Speaker
Yeah, because battery like, but all batteries have this problem, battery performance degrades as temperature lowers. And lithium batteries have a very sharp drop off. So the other thing is, is like people are noticing that bits of rust are already appearing as soon as they get it. Like, apparently, somebody in Vancouver got their Cybertruck delivered has to like, get the rust removed as soon as they receive the truck, which is Yeah.
Rust Issues and Regional Road Conditions
00:03:06
Speaker
You know, this isn't Ontario, like Ontario, I could understand seeing rust, but in Vancouver, like I know we do have brine on the roads, but we don't have that cancer problem that cars and ah in the rest of Canada do. Yeah. But we have really, we do have really harsh road salts, but like, like if they, if they go to Kelowna, which has like really, which has the fucking stuff that's made out of blue dye and cancer, that's just just going to eat like,
00:03:34
Speaker
all up in the undercarriage, right up to the battery. I'm glad that raccoons have a new trash dumpster to best around in. Oh yeah. Cause it's just the soft tonic cover, right? As far as I know. Yeah. So this is just a nice little raccoon habitat. It's a shame that it has the fucking wanting to burst into flames at any minute Tesla battery.
00:03:57
Speaker
Yeah, I don't have anything to say to that. I'm looking forward to seeing one with FSD fly off into like a park one day and cornering or rather wrapping itself around a tree, which is going to happen.
00:04:11
Speaker
Oh, it's not going to wrap around a tree. It has a rigid so like stainless steel frame. It's going to collide with the tree, knock the tree over, and eject the driver out the large windows. Christ. Actually, wait. Unless they fix the the tempered glass, in which case it's going to eject the driver against the windows and then turn them into a Bifur Dolphin scenario.
00:04:36
Speaker
They're going to get extruded out of like any gaps in the panels. I don't like this conversation. Shall we start the show? Sure.
00:04:50
Speaker
Merry Christmas, everybody. Merry Christmas. Ho, ho, ho. Or if you don't celebrate, ah Happy Hanukkah. I think that's the only overlapping holiday of this year. It's Kwanzaa if you celebrate. ah You know what? like I do celebrate Christmas. I've always celebrated Christmas.
00:05:08
Speaker
but Yeah,
Christmas Special: Gifts and Plans
00:05:10
Speaker
this is this is my this is the most interesting time of year for me because I have the highs of enjoying Christmas and the lows of going, oh God, please, for the love of God, can the sun come out? I get a bit of a reprieve with this going back home to visit my family as their ah there are a lot of complaints I have about where I grew up, but the fact that you get a little bit of sunshine in the wintertime is not one of them.
00:05:35
Speaker
Well, I guess I didn't introduce myself. My name is Heather, and I use she-they pronouns. Welcome to Shewinnigan Moments. My name is Tamarack. I am the person who's talking right now, and I use it-its or they-them pronouns. It's our Christmas special. We decided that we weren't going to do a standard Shewinnigan Moments episode, but instead give each other gifts, even though last night I ended up giving you more than one by accident.
00:06:00
Speaker
Yes, she graciously paid for a scotch that she intended to and a beer that she did not. Yeah, I don't know what happened there, but I was like, oh, well, whatever. I'll hit you back with the beer. I'm doing mulled wine for New Year's. I don't want mulled wine now. Yeah, I'm doing it for New Year's specifically because you will be back. That's true. I will be back from the UK by then. I did make some very delicious stew and thought of you because it's completely vegan.
00:06:30
Speaker
Fuck yeah. Yeah. Later. I'm going to bed. Oh, right. Unfortunately, I'm sorry, friend. Well, do we have any news today? I don't think we do. I have something of news if you want me to start. Instead of us running into the news, we're going to be breaking up the segments with random commercials. So I'm going to play this one and I'm going to let Tamara react to this. All right.
00:06:57
Speaker
The new Christmas Lottery Tri-Pack has fun for everyone. For grown-ups, the Tri-Pack contains one super lotto, one provincial, and one book of Ontario tickets. Lots of excitement, and maybe lots of money, too. And for kids at no extra cost with your Tri-Pack, an album of original Canadian Christmas music, especially for children. Because Christmas, as everybody knows, ah really is for children.
00:07:26
Speaker
Okay, I do agree with the final statement there. The lotto pack a little bit you but also I i grew up poor, I totally get it. ah What's on the CD? Oh, no, this is from 1981. So this would have been a cassette toward eight track. Oh, yeah, sorry. What's on the what's on the cassette? Probably a cassette. I have no idea. a Zero idea. So I have collected a whole bunch of commercials for this episode. And I was going through 80s Christmas commercials in Canada. And ah this one is from Ontario from the old GC, I think you call it whatever they held they call the Ontario lottery, whatever. It's
00:08:08
Speaker
really strange to hear them just talk about like scratchy cards for Christmas. Like I've gotten scratchy cards in the mail. I, or rather not in the mail, rather as Christmas gifts. Yeah. I'm not a gambler though. I don't really care for gambling.
00:08:23
Speaker
Oh, my dad was a big, was a big scratch ticket guy. That was always a thing that we got in stockings, even as like little kids get the little scratch tickets and I don't know. Fair enough. You have, so this is, that you get to go first. I think we're going to go um back and forth and that's how we're going to be doing this episode. So I think you have the first item. I believe I do. This is just as a little bonus. This is my stocking stuff for for you.
00:08:49
Speaker
ah for for the 12 days of Christmas I got you 12 bridge strikes in the lower mainland area now I know I know that that gets a little bit old ah you know a bridge strike every day so I thought I would cap it off with one trucking company ah truck or freight forwarding company that wants to get their name off of the commercial vehicle bridge overpass
Chauhan Freight Forwarders and Bridge Strikes
00:09:16
Speaker
crash report ah website.
00:09:19
Speaker
ah Oh, it's from Chauhan. I haven't thought about that company in ages. That happened back in August. So they succeeded. Yeah. Or from the Vancouver Sun, August 4th, 2024, written by Gordon Hoekstra, which is hellvin a hell of a name. Sounds like Czech or something.
00:09:40
Speaker
Yeah, maybe. On May 11th, Choa and Freight Forwarders ah sent a a demand letter basically to the BC Transportation Minister to get their name removed from a website that they set up to basically name and shame companies who strike bridges and overpasses. And the form that this takes Like they claim that this is harassment, it's defamation. ah The form that this takes is a searchable page where you can ah organize them by date, search by carrier, ah see the cause after the fact. You will note that there are no Chauhan overpass strikes since ah December of 2023. That is because
00:10:26
Speaker
their license to operate in British Columbia was completely ah suspended. But the last few bridge strikes, the last three in or less four sorry if ah of the Stanley Park entrance on Georgia Street that we commented about on this show, ah all involved carriers being suspended as part of the disciplinary action.
00:10:48
Speaker
I just find it pretty rich that Cho had had the gall to go and say like, yeah, we want to have our name removed from the list. They're like, oh, no, that wasn't us. It's like your fucking name's on the truck. It's you. Oh, no, they're they're reasoning. Their reasoning is that it's ah is that their drivers have been subject to harassment on the roads, including one incident where coffee was poured on company equipment, which equipment I don't know.
00:11:17
Speaker
no They put it on the hood. ah They've also had members of the public ah verbally abuse their employees at their head office. They they have stated that some of these attacks have or some of these ah some of these incidents have been racially motivated because whenever anybody thinks of truck drivers who they don't like, they usually imagine a brown person. That sucks. I hope people aren't doing that.
00:11:43
Speaker
people harassing Chauhan management and showing up at their front door, non-violently vocalizing their displeasure is good. The name and shame website is working and I hope it continues to work. So there you go. It says here in the January 9th, 2024 letter Chauhan said the latest overpass strike involved an owner operator sub-contracting to the company that had flagrantly disregarded its oversized load policies. Like you chuckle fucks are loading at your trucks.
00:12:13
Speaker
yeah like even if it's a subcontractor you're still like it's still you like you're still on the hook for it so if you're not providing the supreme court case over that yeah if you're not providing the necessary oversight to ensure that your subcontractors are behaving appropriately then No, also, they said that that one like that was one of the last ones, right, where they're like, they use this as a reason to avoid the band. But like, the other the other 123456 bridge strikes on their on the website, and there were many more before this website was created, those were not subcontractors.
00:12:56
Speaker
That was all them. I wonder if they're actually back in business or not, because um I was looking into them um after the most recent incident at the most recent incident, Stanley Park, which did not involve them and their website still running. It shows a video of one of their trucks driving through, I think in Langley somewhere. Like it's first of all, their website is fucking atrocious because I think it's like 10 megabytes or something that because they have a full motion video that's in like 1080p right on the front page that just automatically plays.
00:13:26
Speaker
So there's that problem. But like, they're still showing themselves as in business. They have photos of their trucks, you know, showing that they operate out of Surrey, which they do. They still have like a full on business. It's very strange. it's i remember If I remember correctly.
00:13:43
Speaker
The photos show their Surrey location, which has shuttered. However, they still operate a division of their company in Alberta and their truckers here are still licensed to do commercial driving in Alberta. So they do so.
00:14:00
Speaker
Yeah, what I remember is, and I may be incorrect on this, is like the niece or some relative of Chauhan's Alberta operations tried to say that, oh no, it's a separate company, even though that she like works between the two companies all the time. And it's like, yeah, sure. Yeah, sure, sweetie.
00:14:20
Speaker
But yeah, I was surprised when I looked at the, at the website, how many of the most recent ah bridge and overpass strikes that the transportation ministry has just, just suspended the carriers. Holy shit. Okay. I wasn't, I'm sorry for interrupting you on this, but I just noticed here, yeah, that video that's on their front page is eight megabytes, nine megabytes. Sorry.
00:14:43
Speaker
man, when the media on my like portfolio website where I do, like, I make games, right? Uh, when that portfolio website, when the media is summed up to like two megabytes of like web video, I was like, oof, this site's getting a little heavy. Man, there's so many trucking companies too. I'm just looking through the list here and there's just like, Johan comes up the most, which is the reason why they got their ass suspended.
00:15:08
Speaker
i and no i'm I'm actually going to push back on that. That's not why they got their ass suspended. like They precipitated a step up of enforcement. If you look at the last few, those were all ah like they all got suspended as a result of like their collisions.
00:15:25
Speaker
That's fair, yeah. And a bunch more had also been suspended. And a lot of these, these were like their first time, or like they were fairly major companies. Like the outrage around Chauhan specifically did spike kind of A, this website, B, a step up of enforcement. And I actually really liked this website now that I've found it, because this is the kind of transparency in like the, these sort of like bureaucratic enforcement mechanisms that we really should have in more things.
00:15:54
Speaker
I agree. Beyond the naming and shaming, which is just fucking priceless. I think for individuals, I'd be careful about naming and shaming them depending on the context, but absolutely for companies. I have a suspicion about how they handle how they handle individuals, because there's a couple of numbered companies on here. And I suspect that's like Bob, whatever is like and his truck limited sort of thing. Yeah. So anyway, like that makes sense. I know someone that could also be rental trucks.
00:16:24
Speaker
So like if you have a carrier license, like you have, or rather not a carrier license, you have like this type of license to drive such vehicles. Um, that can also happen as well with the numbered companies. Like it's a truck that's owned by somebody and then they rent it out, which is actually something that does happen. Yeah. There's also a couple of these that are blank, interestingly enough. And I wonder if that's, that and might be a situation where it is specifically named or whatever.
00:16:46
Speaker
Yeah, to be fair, if you have like, even with that, like looking up who the driver is for these owner operator companies is really easy to do. The owners of Cho Han got docked almost immediately. Anyway, so that's my stocking stuffers for you. Oh, that was a stocking stuffer. Cool. I guess that was the news. Yeah, it's very news shaped. So that's why it works. Uh, so yeah, uh, on, onto the presence. what What do we got under the tree, Heather?
00:17:16
Speaker
Well, if that's the case, I'm going to play another commercial and then I'll lead into what I have for me. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas. Ebenezer Scrooge. Oh, I like Christmas. Just not all the money people spend on gifts. So this year I've seen to it that gifts are priced so low even I'd buy them. Ebenezer. Scrooge approved prices only at Canadian Tire. Scrooge approved prices. It's my little gift to everyone. What a nice gift Ebenezer. Yes, doesn't cost me a cent. Canadian Tire lets you give like Santa. And save like Scrooge.
00:17:54
Speaker
I, those commercial, that particular commercial, excuse me, uh, does stick in my mind real well. Cause I remember the Scrooge commercials for Canadian Tire. So all before my time. Yeah, that's fair. So one of the things that is tradition with Santa in North America is his relationship with the military.
00:18:18
Speaker
Uh, yes. Yeah. So we're going to talk about a little bit, I'm going to briefly talk about the NORAD Santa Tracker just because I think it's kind of fun.
NORAD's Santa Tracker Origins
00:18:28
Speaker
And it's an excuse to talk about this. Strap it listeners if you've never heard of this. Yes. One of the earliest reports of Santa in the military in North America was in 1948 when on Christmas Eve, the United States Air Force gave a report to the Associated Press that an unidentified sleigh was detected coming from the North Pole.
00:18:48
Speaker
Yes, as you know, a the listening devices that were set up to spy on the communists needed to spy the greatest communists of them all, the old fat man in the sleigh with his reindeer giving free toys away to children. So the the interesting thing is that that this event in 1948 is actually not the start of this. It was like a one-time event. But let me play a clip from 1968.
00:19:15
Speaker
This is Colonel Herb Stiles inside the NORAD Combat Operations Center near Colorado Springs, Colorado. Since noon today, when our radar first picked it up in the vicinity of the North Pole, we've been tracking an aerial object making its way across Canada and the United States. At first, our radar station in Alaska reported the object on the radar scope at Dearhorn Road, and that the pilot was a jolly fat man. Aboard his strange craft is a load of brightly wrapped packages We've scrambled a Canadian and an American jet interceptor to fly alongside this object and ensure it's safe passage. At first the vehicle was slow moving, but as time has passed its load has become smaller and it's picked up speed. Roger 28, we've received the track and now have it on display here.
00:20:04
Speaker
keep we're getting reports now that satta seems to be in many places at once it's not that our radar station is playing tricks on us it's just that santa will visit boys and girls throughout north america before the sun comes up santa's on his way safely escorted through our defense radar lines by jet interceptors under the control of the north american air defense command from all of us at noad mary So the really funny thing is that it cuts off at the end and that's when I believe the war on Christmas started.
00:20:33
Speaker
Ah, yes, I see. You know, there there is an alternate timeline that Diefen Baker ruined where a Santa Claus could have had a twinned Avro arrow escort through North America. I wonder what happened with that. and Maybe we've discussed this before. So.
00:20:54
Speaker
What's the origin of the NORAD Santa Tracker? It's kind of funny. In 1955, Sears, Roebuck & Company of the United States made a misprint on its advertisement, providing a telephone number to call and speak to Santa. You'll see this ad that I just shared with you here. Hey, kiddies, call me direct on my telephone. Just dial M-E-2-6681.
00:21:18
Speaker
Call me on my private phone and I'll talk to you personally anytime or night, or come and visit me at Soy, at Sears Toyland. At Soy's Toyland. Yes. Santa Claus. So this was published on November 30th in what I assume were a bunch of newspaper ads. And immediately after, what was then Con-Ad or Continental Air Defense Command. No, Rad was not a thing for another three years.
00:21:44
Speaker
started to receive calls to its red line, which was a link between the facility in Colorado Springs, Colorado to a strategic air command. So initially when they started getting all these kids calling into this line, that was otherwise super important for, you know, making certain there's no nukes flying towards the United States. and That's a topic for a completely different episode. So the kids are flooding the line. And so what were they supposed to do? Well, what they did is they would just give Santa's location at random places. But eventually one of the kernels realized that it would make an excellent public relations like opportunity. So they made it so CONAD was working hard to protect Santa from those who did not believe in Christmas.
00:22:28
Speaker
got to turn it into anti-communism pretty much again once again the big red guy giving giving away toys to children for free somehow you spin that into uh anti-communism so it was once again considered a one-off thing and this case they were just forced to do it but the following year they had inquiries sorry why were they forced to do it was it because they misprinted the number as the rest year as just printed it and they couldn't stop the kids from calling in. So they just went, no, we can't be like, you know, rude about it. We got to at least kind of embrace it. Right. Yeah. But what happened the next year is like, again, they were only going to make it a one time thing. The press kept poking them. It's like, are you going to do it again? And they realized that no, we should probably do this every year.
00:23:16
Speaker
As you know, justifying our or existence, I don't know. So I didn't want to go into much into the research of this because I'm trying to make this fun. We can talk about NORAD in some future episode. We kind of touched base on when we talked about the Abrero. But in 1958, upon CONAD becoming NORAD or the North American,
00:23:34
Speaker
air space defense, it didn't change its name until 1981. So it was air space, not aerospace then. It incorporated Canada becoming a partner. And at the same time, the whole NORAD Santa Tracker became very sophisticated. So in 1960, NORAD's command post and Sunnyabare in Quebec, which is now a part of Lange, which is I can't even remember where Longay is located. They would post updates including details about like the Royal Air Canadian Air Force's assistance to Santo when apparently he had to touch down around Hudson's Bay to deal with like a broken sled. Yeah. So little things like that would come out.
00:24:11
Speaker
And so as time has progressed, the NORAD Santa Tracker has gained popularity and would be like included in news reports, weather reports, and that sort of thing. I remember as a kid watching it on TV and on Christmas Eve and being excited that Santa was coming because, you know, the military he was tracking his goddamn sleigh. Also same.
00:24:34
Speaker
You don't realize how fucked up it is to tell you're older and you're like, wow, that's this is bad. This is not okay.
00:24:44
Speaker
Yeah. And so it has become available online. You can go to norad santa.org and it has like fancy things like 3d graphics. There's also a telephone number you can call and for once I'm going to read off a telephone number. It's a country code 1 877. Hi, norad.
00:25:04
Speaker
Actually, not yeah if you go to the NORAD Santa website, it has the phone number on there and gives country it in indicates that you can call this internationally because they say plus one. It's also staffed by volunteers who managed to work even through a government shutdown in 2018. So Donald Trump can't even crush this though this whole NORAD Santa thing.
00:25:26
Speaker
well it This is a deep state. Yeah, it's also like ah it's also like an international military program. so I had a question that popped in my mind as I was looking into the whole NORAD thing. If NATO dissolves, is this tracker going to go away? Well, NATO and NORAD are separate. Yeah. But how fast would Santa have to go to deliver presents to the children of the world?
00:25:52
Speaker
Oh, ah just absurdly fast. So so a mathematician, is or I believe this is a mathematician, his name is Arnold Pompos. He's at Purdue. And he says, Santa would have to travel a total of 160 million kilometers in 34 hours to visit 800 million children spread across 200 million homes. So there's your first part.
00:26:13
Speaker
To do this, Santa would have to travel at, and I think this is an average speed of 4,705,882 kilometers per hour. Okay, so way faster than sea. So no, no, no, no, no. It's still slower than sea. Kilometers. This is per kilometer. So like I did work that out because I wanted to know what this was in Cliven to see. So that's 1,307 meters per second.
00:26:36
Speaker
which is very much a mere fraction of that, because like, see, this is like zero point zero zero zero zero four percent of C. OK, so ah ah reasonable might light the atmosphere on fire, but I'm going to talk about that in a moment because I wondered that myself. The fastest any human made object has gone is the Parker Solar Probe, which launched last year in 2023. It is currently traveling at six hundred and thirty five thousand two hundred and sixty six kilometers per hour.
00:27:06
Speaker
which is mind boggling speed that can get you to the moon in like 30 minutes. Yeah. But yes, you're correct. I wondered about that if an object so as large as a sleigh went by you at 4.7 million kilometers per hour. I'm pretty certain that you would definitely get vaporized if you're within like, I think you could be kilometers away and still get like ah at a minimum a first degree burn if you even if you're like,
00:27:30
Speaker
if you're able to feel the effects. If you're directly next to it as it goes by, like a high-speed train sort of situation on a platform, I think you would die. Yeah, you'd probably just get pulverized by the pressure wave. That or the heat. Yeah, yeah. There's no way. So if we could harness Santa's magic skills to make an object go that fast, we could get to Mars in just around a day at its closest point.
00:27:58
Speaker
Neat. That's how fast Santa's going. So thank you, Erno Pompos, for telling me how fast Santa's going. Yeah. And ah if you could get an object to go that fast, you wouldn't need to worry about cold fusion because you'd probably be fusing air the normal way.
00:28:15
Speaker
And not just air. I mean, also everything passes by. But everything was like a five kilometer radius is just being turned into plasma.
00:28:29
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And then when he stops the shockwave of him stopping, cause that's also an acceleration, then lights the atmosphere on fire and everyone dies. The Santa would also need like a, what do you call it? Like a inertial damper in order to actually achieve this, because the G forces you would exhibit like experience from like going 4.7 million kilometers per hour from house to house to house to house would be enough that you would definitely become a pancake.
00:28:56
Speaker
With the first within the first house like no. Yeah, have but i I I assume that I assume like any reasonable person that Santa's a magical being his mad his slaves magical and reindeer magical That's why they're a poor pulse. So that's why I'm focusing on the very much not magical boys and girls who he's visiting at relativistic speeds
00:29:19
Speaker
oh I have a weird question. How many calories would that be if you if if he had to drink one cup of milk and one cookie? buts Let's find out here. Well, that's obviously how he's powering this. So one chocolate chip cookie has 488 calories. If you're a coward, not how I make them.
00:29:39
Speaker
Did your parents... and One cup of milk is 103 calories. Okay. So multiply, let's just say 500 calories per house but like by 200 million. Because I'm a vegan, and I'm literally just got this out of my fridge, ah one cup of Earth's own oat milk, original flavor, the best kind. I'm starting this with oat milk now. ah One cup is 130 calories.
00:30:05
Speaker
Okay, so slightly more than dairy milk. Yes. Well, good to know if you get the vegan houses. So let's just split the difference and say 115 calories is what it's going to be in the milk. We'll just say 500 calories because we don't know exactly the cookie overall. Multiply that by 200 million. That's an absurd amount of calories. there's You wouldn't even be able to like, you would probably consume a lifetime's worth of of calories just by doing one evening.
00:30:33
Speaker
Did your parents also leave out, like, carrots for the reindeer and stuff? Good question. I am just trying to think about that. I don't think so, but maybe. ah We left out milk, we left out some cookies, and we left out carrots for the reindeer. And my parents would give the Well, they they if you have children listening, this is the point where you should have them tune out for a little bit.
00:30:57
Speaker
The reindeer aren't real. They gave the carrots to the dog to nibble on and ate some of the cookies and drank, I think they dumped the milk actually and then left it like that. I think you're the reason why Norad exists for tracking Santa because you don't believe in Christmas. I mean, I do believe in Christmas. It's just Santa's, Santa's not, Santa's not real in the sense of a person, but Santa's real in the sense of the spirit of giving that is harbored within all
Holiday Experiences vs Material Gifts
00:31:25
Speaker
of us.
00:31:26
Speaker
I'm going to cry myself to sleep tonight because my friend told me that Santa is not real. The real Santa is your is your community around you, your friends and family enjoying the holiday spirit, sharing what they have, and most importantly, each other and your time. I guess. Well, anyway, I hope you enjoy my gift of making you ruin my belief in Santa and also of Norat.
00:31:53
Speaker
Okay, you can you can get your kids to tune back in, now it's safe. Yeah, Tam loves Santa. I do love Santa. i i like The concept of Christmas, I actually really like ah how it it often ends up being a consumerist like festival of just buying garbage you don't want you don't really need from like Amazon now. like that This just sucks.
00:32:16
Speaker
I buy my nibblings, books, and educational stuff. And then I buy them little fun things, but I try and buy them fun things I know will last. That's the way I approach it. But with everybody else, it's like, you'll get, well, in your case, I gave you some scotch yeah to share with me. And, uh, when I see my, the rest of my family at Christmas, I will probably just partake in alcohol and food because that tends to be the way that I prefer my adult relationships with my family. Slightly tipsy.
00:32:48
Speaker
Yeah. But that's my gift to you. Hi, honey, I'm Paul. Hey, honey, I'm home in the living room, Nikki. Hey, very nice. The elves did a terrific job. Tell elves I bought everything at Shopper's Drug Mart. Mrs. S. Claus went to a store for Christmas? Frankly, Shopper's Drug Mart had a much better selection than you. Ho, ho, ho. You want ho, ho? Look, tree lights, trimmings, cards, wrapping paper, and all at very low prices. Does the world know about this? It does now, sweet patootie.
00:33:21
Speaker
Do you recognize that voice by any chance? I have definitely heard it somewhere but I can't for the life of me pin it down. That's B. Arthur of the Golden Girls. She was doing Shoppers Drug Mart commercials when I was growing up and I always remember this because I would say to my grandmothers like oh my god that's the Golden Girl.
00:33:42
Speaker
Wow. Yeah. So just a wild thing. So I was like, as again, I was like going through these commercials and I went, Oh, that's right. Bea Arthur used to do commercials for shoppers. Drug Mart. I don't even, she's not even Canadian. Interesting. I mean, you got to get work where you got to get work. And yeah, interesting. In any event, um, it's your turn. Uh, what I've got for you is the open question of Canada's sovereignty over the North Pole and the Arctic Ocean bore broadly.
00:34:12
Speaker
It hasn't been a problem for the longest time over who ah actually owns the geographic North Pole, ah like where territorial waters extend out into the parts of the map that are often, like New Zealand, not even included. But as the climate continues to change,
00:34:31
Speaker
The once-fabled Northwest Passage is actually like a viable waterway now for international trade, which allows a person to circumnav or circumvent having go if you're in Europe and trying to get to most of the big economies and in Asia and the Pacific.
00:34:47
Speaker
it's a lot faster to go through the Northwest Passage. The reason it hasn't historically happened, of course, is because the Northwest Passage has always been just under ice constantly, or with so many icebergs that you get titanic almost immediately. But usually the problem was is you get a little bit into a clear part of the passage, and then the ice freezes around you. And then you have the same fate as Henry Hudson.
00:35:15
Speaker
ah where you eat half your crew and then wander off into the snow blindly and freeze to death. Never to be found. Never to be found, but you do get a bay named after you sometimes. So this has been an ongoing thing with mostly Russia and the United States ah seriously jockeying for staking out their territorial waters in the north. But Canada has also been a participant since, like Russia, we have some of the northernmost islands of any country.
00:35:44
Speaker
One thing that we can lay claim to is having the northmost, consistently inhabited part of the world. Clip one, please. Is that an alert or a callowith we're talking about? A callowith's fairly south. Are we talking about an alert? ah We are talking about some and we're talking about another secret location, a closely guarded Canadian secret. ah Roll clip one, please.
00:36:11
Speaker
yeah And we're here to tell you, we survived in the past. And without delay, we're going to have a team that, we always like that. No,
00:36:38
Speaker
What was that? that was a commercially familiar That was a commercial that rolled through the mid 90s or the the late 90s and early 2000s that is seared into my soul for Canada Post's ah now 40 year old letter writing program where if a kid was to write a letter to Santa and address it without any stamps, you don't need to stamp it, I don't even think you need to envelope it, ah but if you send a letter in Canada to Santa Claus, North Pole, HOH, OHO, Canada, from anywhere in the world actually, as long as you cover postage out of your country,
00:37:18
Speaker
you will get back, if it arrives in time, a letter from Santa. And this is a thing Canada Post has been doing for 40 years. And my parents actually got us to do this almost every year, like throughout my childhood.
00:37:33
Speaker
I remember having sent letters to H-O-H-O-H-O. Did I say that 20 times? H-O-H-O-H-O, yes. H-0-H-0-H-0, yes. I'm sorry, yes. And i I remember getting letters back. I didn't do it every year, and obviously I stopped writing to Santa, but I do remember later reading about the This is where the children should probably leave once again, where volunteers would read and write back. and These would be like, you know, I think Canada Post had a scattering of ah volunteers, like even those HO, HO, HO, which it's going to go to Montreal, I think is actually where, or Quebec somewhere is where this is actually technically located.
00:38:19
Speaker
Yeah, you know, they would write they would have just volunteers at all of the major cities, just reading and writing the letters. And I've heard of some stories about the letters just being really intense. Sometimes like, you know, kids writing about situations with their parents that seem awfully dire.
00:38:35
Speaker
Yeah, some of those Santa letters could get a little heavy. If you were a volunteer for the Santa letters and received all of my gender one year, I'm sorry. That was probably a lot for you. Thanks for writing back, though. It meant a lot. um I actually have done stuff with Canada Post for Christmas as a child. Oh, do you tell? Yeah.
00:38:58
Speaker
So obviously the Canada Post building downtown does not exist anymore as a Canada Post. It's kind of an office building slash retail space. But you know, at one point it was the hub of all mail in Metro Vancouver. And I would suspect a good chunk of British Columbia.
00:39:16
Speaker
And what we used to do with my elementary school, and I believe we did this in grade three and then in grade six or seven, is we would go downtown and we would arrive with paint and we would get to paint the windows for Christmas stuff. Oh, neat.
00:39:34
Speaker
Yeah, so what would happen is somebody would go and draw the black lines on there. And then we as children would go and paint in the windows based on you know, what seemed to be correct. And I did that twice. And I will say that it's one of my favorite childhood memories, just going with my school or rather with my grade and decorating the windows. And I'm pretty certain we weren't the only school that did this like ah because the building is huge. There are so many windows, but ours were prominently shown on Georgia Street, which is kind of the major so like the main street of the Vancouver City Center. So yeah, that's just one of my favorite things about me and Canada Post growing up.
00:40:21
Speaker
Doing this episode has made me a little reflective and I think I want to convey to any parents out there ah More more than anything. I'd like to convey this to my family if they would ever Listen is that honestly like my favorite memories of Christmas as a kid had nothing to do with this stuff It was all stuff like this like getting the letter back from Santa and definitely my next thing that I have for you.
Canada Post's Santa Letter Program
00:40:49
Speaker
I love shit like this. It's great. We need to do more of this as a society. I agree. like i do i like Whenever I think about Christmas in general, like like when I think about having done that for Canada to Post,
00:41:04
Speaker
I also then remember, like, I don't really reflect on the gifts I received as a child. Like, don't get me wrong, I always appreciated what I got for Christmas. But looking back, you know, the things that always stuck out were the experiences. And one of the things that I have learned in the past 10 years as an adult is I don't need stuff in my life. I don't particularly ask for gifts.
00:41:30
Speaker
I rather have people give me experiences or give me something that I get to enjoy. Like last night, i've been going back to this whole joke about me giving you a drink last night, I got you that drink because that is actually what I prefer to do for gift giving is doing things like that. Yeah, one of my name, one of my neighbors, um who I've actually gotten to know on a first name basis, found out that they were vegan, I gave them chocolate, like vegan chocolate. And those are the things that I like to do. Whereas I remember with a former partner of mine, one year I bought her a
00:42:06
Speaker
photo printer as a gift. And it was that gift that instilled in my mind that I don't need to buy people things. Like she said, like, I'm not going to use this thing. I would rather, you know, do something else with that. So I ended up returning in and we ended, I can't remember what we got after that, but ah we're not together anymore, of course. But that whole experience changed a lot of my mentality around gift giving.
00:42:31
Speaker
Yeah, I think for me, it was one year, I think it was like the second or third year after I'd moved away, where I was living pretty lean, because I was a student and also like having to pay rent. And I got a bunch of like random kitchen gadgets and some other stuff that they thought I needed in a home. And it's like,
00:42:53
Speaker
I eat ramen noodles and mac and cheese guys. like i don't I don't need a bread pan. yeah so like i was like i and like i It kind of got me thinking that like much in the way that you did. like The thing that I value is the time spent with family. um Like hearing grandma talk about life on the farm, the odd old country story, stuff like that. Like those are things that I found meaningful and enjoyable and like that lasted. And like over time just got kind of grossed out with how materialistic some people in my family are that it's all about the stuff like
00:43:35
Speaker
giving each other like these ah huge swathes of gifts of like thousands of dollars of stuff that just ends up going in the garage or going in a closet for the rest of the year and to eternity. The things I would like to have that are physical I can't get anymore like my my grandparents have all passed away. Yeah. And those extend and that's something I can't get get as a gift and that the things that I treasure the most are the memories. They're always going to be there, like friends who have passed away, friends who have disappeared, you know, like lives change and all that. Those are the things that I treasure is like the experiences I had with them. There are a few gifts that I do hold on to, like for dear life. Like for example, this is going to sound really silly, but like one of the last gifts I ever received from my grandfather
00:44:23
Speaker
was a PlayStation 2 game, and was We Love Katamari, and I refused to give up that copy, I will sooner get rid of a PlayStation 2 than getting rid of this copy of this game. um And that's just, as there's no reason like there's no reason for me to keep it, because like I can play that game on a billion different devices, but because it's the last time that I had you know experience with my grandfather that I can physically held, I can't get rid of it. Are you pulling out a copy of We Love Katamari?
00:44:53
Speaker
No, that would be, that would be such a spooky coincidence though. I still, it's like mine's kept sitting in a box behind me for reasons. I can't show you it because it's in the other room. Actually, in my Game Boy. Knocked over a paper shredder. I can't show you it because it's actually in the other room and plugged into my Game Boy. But one year my grandparents got me a Game Boy in Pokémon Blue. And that was a childhood defining gift. But mostly it was like actually come to think of it like most of the video games that kind of defined my childhood came from my grandparents.
00:45:31
Speaker
I just realized something because we were talking about grandparents and gifts. I do have one gift that is memorable for the wrong reasons. Oh. So you and I have an interesting relationship with Catholicism. Ah, yes. And my grandparents, of both my gramps, that's the grandparents, were very devout Catholics. And one year my maternal grandparents gave me a copy of Kevin Smith's Dogma for on DVD.
00:45:58
Speaker
What? Why? Well, I put it on my Christmas list. I didn't think anyone would get it for me. This was back when I was like, oh, Kevin Smith, he's like the greatest and all that sort of thing. I think it's like his movies are fine. Like some of them have not aged well, but in particular, Dogma was a movie that I really liked when I got to see it and I wanted a copy for myself. So I guess my grandparents thought that it was like, you know, a very Catholic friendly movie.
00:46:28
Speaker
Like, I don't know what else to tell you. Like it it is genuinely, I wouldn't say like it's the greatest films of all time or anything like that, but it is a film I can still enjoy to this day just because it's so fucking dumb. yeah buts But but the the other reason why I love it so much is because my grandparents bought it for me for Christmas. Yeah. A similar thing of like kind of inappropriate or at least inappropriate relative to what my parents' expectations were for gifts.
00:46:55
Speaker
ah is ah my grandparents bought me one year of Warcraft 2 to Tides of Darkness. Yeah, it's not a game I would expect. I would yeah, I forget why they decided I would like it. But they just kind of picked it up for me on a whim. I was like, eight, maybe seven. It was barely age for a 78 year old age appropriate. And I played the absolute bejesus out of it. So if you ever wondered why I'd like really like DOS games and stuff like that, that's why.
00:47:27
Speaker
Yeah, that's fair. You can write to Santa. You can still write to Santa. and but well Maybe not still right now because Canada Post is on strike. Yes, you can't write to Santa currently because Canada Post is on strike and we do stand with the workers. So if you want to write to Santa and are upset that you can't, feel free to write to the CEO of Canada Post and complain about it.
00:47:51
Speaker
also here m p Also write to your MP about how a single greedy CEO should not be able to hold Christmas hostage because he doesn't want to pay his fucking workers. That part you can tell your kids. And still in your kids support for unions. Alright, that's my gift.
00:48:08
Speaker
Alright, well let's move on. Your budget's going to love the Christmas savings at London Drugs. For the photographer, the Vivitar 3500 Flash with Zune Bounce hits $79.88, or the 2800 Auto Flash $44.88. Save on TDK video tapes, Beta 750 or VHS 120, only $8.98. The twin pack of TDK SA90 cassettes is only $6.88. From all of us at London Drugs have the greatest Christmas ever.
00:48:39
Speaker
God, I understood all that. I know. This is from like 1983 or something. So Tamarack, we're talking about gifts. I will say as a child, I did happen to enjoy the concept of looking at potential gifts in my future as I was a child and I had childlike desires.
00:48:59
Speaker
So I want, have did you ever get a copy of the Sears Canada
The Sears Canada Wishbook
00:49:04
Speaker
Wishbook? Yes, every year. Okay, so let's talk about the Sears Canada Wishbook and then I have something fun for us too to do. So the first Wishbook was published in Canada in 1952 upon the creation of Simpson Sears. So Simpson Sears was a joint venture between the now defunct Simpsons department store chain and I guess the now defunct department store chain Sears. Yeah, the Sears Canada doesn't exist anymore. And it was intended to compete against Eaton's, which is also non existent. Yeah, it is itself. I want to do an episode on I really because like we have the hockey sweater, which ah means we really should talk about. Is it the hockey sweaters name of the book? Yeah, it's the hockey sweater. So like, yeah, because of the hockey sweater, I'd love to talk about the Eaton's department store chain, but that's way off in the future.
00:49:50
Speaker
So Sears Canada published a book in print right until it closed all stores in 2018. Yes. Now, they made a dubious claim in Wikipedia that the Wishbook iPad version was like the number one app in Canada in 2013.
00:50:06
Speaker
ah That's okay. I used to work in mobile games, so I understand that you can actually, it's very easy to be the number one. ah You just have to pick an extremely niche category to be number one in.
00:50:21
Speaker
Yeah, that's why probably number one in like Christmas shopping guide apps or something like that. I sent you the Wishbook itself because it's actually on archive dot.org for 1996. There is a 1994 copy, but the reason why I chose 96 is well, I cannot confirm this because the 95 copy is for whatever reason only available for sale on eBay. Somebody selling it for like, I don't know, 2030 dollars.
00:50:51
Speaker
This might be the first year that you can make a Wishbook purchase using email. Oh, interesting. We always had to go to, we would bring the like order numbers down to the like ordering department of Sears, this like a weird like side room and you'd pick things up in the gray bags.
00:51:12
Speaker
There was like another company that was similar to this because Sears had this model, but then there was consumers, distributors, I think is what it's called. um And they used to have like these stores where you wouldn't be able to buy anything, but then you would get a catalog sent to you in the mail like every quarter. Yeah. um Kind of similar with this, but the Wishbook I think was sent out sometime in the summer. What we're going to do here is I will announce the pages that archive dot.org announces. And then we'll just base it on that.
00:51:41
Speaker
So if you go to page 24, you'll see object N, which is on the right and then ah just below the two items on the top there. School data bank. Yeah. So I had one of these and this one in particular does not have the feature that I ended up having in my model. My brother and I both had these little devices that worked like this, but it also had an IR communicator.
00:52:08
Speaker
So we could actually send messages between each other. We never got the damn thing to work though. Aw. Yeah. So it was a neat little device. We got a solid clock radio on this page. Like that's the sort of clock radio that that Sony doesn't even make anymore. Yeah. The like just solid brick of plastic, green digital display. Cause this was before like blue LEDs became everywhere on everything, searing your retinas forever.
00:52:35
Speaker
Uh, cause we're in the shit timeline. No, no. Sony's discontinuing though the dream machine, which is unfortunate. no So if we skip ahead to page, page one 20, look at these fits.
00:52:50
Speaker
oh ah I'm not going to lie, I would wear I would wear the outfit on the right, which is marked as C. It's like this jumpsuit. Like I have a jumpsuit already and I wore one when I was out for my month for the show a couple of weeks ago. And it's a solid look. Let me be real here. But like, even if you skip a few pages, the dress is a hot look.
00:53:15
Speaker
Um, the jumper in black is pretty good in red. It's a bit much, but I wouldn't do red. No, absolutely not. Like the pleading on it. why The back on B is really cool. and It's a very nineties thing to have that sort of. Oh yeah. It's like that spider spring. yeah It's a very nineties thing. Yeah.
00:53:35
Speaker
But the but I do like it. So it's it's a really interesting time capsule to see fashion from the mid 90s. Like if you go to page 132, you'll see this um um this other outfit. This is like I'm trying to like describe it's like pants and not quite a blazer, but you get the idea. ah Which one? um So 132. Yeah. And it's a letter A. Oh, yeah. It's like oversized work shirt.
00:54:02
Speaker
Kind of, it looks like. it's It kind of screams Hillary Clinton. Oh yeah, the, yeah, sorry. Okay. A left or right? Oh yeah, that's a good point. um A right.
00:54:13
Speaker
Oh, a right. Oh, yeah. Yeah. When I looked at that, particularly picking the blonde model, like that just that just looks like Hillary Clinton. It does. It's a it's a gray pantsuit, some light pleading, heavy, heavy leg crease and a fitted jacket that's done up with ah all of its buttons to the point where there's no like visible undershirt.
00:54:37
Speaker
And that is definitely the like, Hillary Clinton pantsuit while going to provide emotional support to your husband's hearings for sexual advances done upon an intern. Jesus Christ. That's what that, that's what that suit is sending. The subject of husbands, skip to 194 and just look at the sweaters on the right. Oh, wow. That is 90s. This is, a this is four nineties dads.
00:55:06
Speaker
which you can order for the prices of $89.99 for sweater, $59.99 for that pattern that's on Canadian shit, fleece jacket, and $59.99 as well for Alberta.
00:55:21
Speaker
No, that guy looks like Bob Saget, I'm sorry. That's just Bob Saget. D? Yeah, that's Bob Saget. D, definitely, but like look at, yeah, anyway. Look at D and khaki. Look at D and khaki. It's supposed to be horses, but because it's very small, initially it read to me as like possums or mice, but it's a horse and a cowboy.
00:55:46
Speaker
Yeah, I see what you're getting at. So anyway, that's that that's the dad look that they have and in this book. and there's like I can confirm my 90s dad did in fact look like this. I'm just thinking oh of my father wore them and it definitely lines up. My dad was C. What was yours?
00:56:05
Speaker
I don't really I think mine was like a but to tell you the truth, it's been so my memory is so hazy. But it's just this this is a huge, like, again, a huge time capsule. But what I'm going to do is I'm going to skip on ahead to let's look at the electronics that they were selling then. Here we go. So skip ahead to page 402 and just look on the top left. Oh, hell yeah.
00:56:32
Speaker
DVD. This is 1996. This would have been one of the first. This definitely would have been one of the first to buy a DVD plate. That's like, there's another one for 799, right? Yeah. If you wanted to buy that today, what would be the, that DVD player that you're pointing out for 699 99 is $1,268. Wow. Today. And you're you're looking at that flat panel. That's the one that's on the bottom left. yeah So that is not, it is a 16 by nine display, which is for its time insane to think about in 1996, but yes, you could have bought one from Sears Canada. Yes.
00:57:12
Speaker
is a flat panel, but it's a projector. Yeah, ah yeah they're all they're all projector backs. The other thing about this is like widescreen televisions have been around since the night s like early 90s because Japan had the Muse standard, which they first demonstrated with the Olympics oh when they were in Little Hammer. I can't remember where it was.
00:57:34
Speaker
But in any event, North America didn't really get widescreen TVs until like the mid 90s, so I believe. And DVDs coming out, that's kind of what it is. ah Well, that's what it became. What was really interesting, though, is it says on the bottom right, right at the page with the TV and the two DVD players. Yes, that's good. bonus dvd movie disc. Sorry. I was going to draw your attention to that as well. If you weren't bringing it up. Uh, yeah, if you spend four grand of $1997 for your widescreen TV, you get a free movie. You don't get to pick which movie, but you get a free movie on DVD. Oh, sorry. Uh, the, the bonus DVD is actually on the $799 DVD player. No, it's on both. It says so. it's both dvd and the other one yeah Okay. So if you buy a DVD player, you get a free random DVD.
00:58:21
Speaker
Joy. Good luck. So if you get to skip to 406, we get to see a technology that unfortunately has left us and has made me quite annoyed. Camcorders. Yeah. Camcorders. So they have pages of this and they have so like Sony made them. Hitachi. My dad had a Hitachi camcorder. We had a... Oh shit. we had I think we had this JVC on 408 because this was the year that we got it.
00:58:49
Speaker
Which JVC? There's three of them. I believe it was B. Okay. Yeah, it used VHS-C, which was really useful because you had popped a little tape inside of his ah other tape, and or rather colder, and it would play in your VCR. It was really useful. Mm-hmm. Yeah, no, that feature is really good. And then if you skip to the next page after that, you'll see some other stuff that's a dying breed. You can still find them and not very often. Oh, yeah, mini systemste mini stereo systems.
00:59:16
Speaker
Like, I still have one, but they are still good. Mine has a MIDI disc player in it. That's how cool mine is. They don't really make them anymore. And like, nobody wants a hi-fi setup because everybody just listens to their phones. Yeah, it's all, that's all digital audio on. Honestly, pretty good for their size speakers, but yeah.
00:59:35
Speaker
But like, if you like go to four 18, you'll see like where you can get really sick setups and like you get yourself like a pioneer stereo system. You'd have like, basically you had a rack mount inside of your home, just full of multi-disc CD players and have speakers that were half as high as you are. Oh yeah. Or when I was that age, as high as I was.
00:59:59
Speaker
Yeah, know that that too, you know, and any parents getting angry if we're turning up the volume too high while trying to play the Disney disco tape that your sister had never happened to me in the slightest. Oh, yeah. Yeah, we had we had those for for road trips. We had the weird Disney tapes. If you go to 426, you'll see ah you'll see some very colored plastic on the left. ah Yeah. Bring back the CD players make music players have yellow again.
01:00:28
Speaker
Yeah, they like everything's so boring now. Like, but yeah, that's like all the really cool electronics that we don't get to look at an eye anymore. But I have something in the, in the here that I do think, um, is up your alley more so than mine. So if you go to four, four, four, imagine you're going to, you're going to put this in the video, aren't you? Oh, definitely. Yeah. So we're going to crawl through this catalog.
01:00:56
Speaker
Yeah, these are all the little cameras, a point and point and shoot cameras you can get back in 1986. Some of them are very familiar to me. Keystone is a brand I don't think that exists anymore. But I remember seeing those cameras. there is If you scroll ahead, there's this piece of shit film format called the Advanced Photo System, otherwise known as APS. You can have like different size photos for each, like whenever you take a shot.
01:01:21
Speaker
It was just kind of a way of like Fujifilm and I think Kodak made APS as well, where you could like basically get locked into another technology instead of using 35 millimeter. Yeah, unfortunately. Yeah. And the other annoyance with it was that if you have one of those cameras now, you can't really use them because nobody makes that film.
01:01:42
Speaker
Yeah, pretty much. like that's the that That was always the problem with ah with weird film formats, is that 35 mil and like kind of the the like standard film strip film had been around for so long and were so entrenched, and also the quality of them had gotten so good, that there's like there's no reason to change.
01:02:06
Speaker
I also want to note for anyone else who's into film photography, I think I'm noticing by looking at this, because you can we have two packs of Fuji 200 here. As much as people bitch about film being expensive these days, this is actually the cheapest it's ever been. Like it's $15.99 in 1997 dollars for a two-pack of Fuji 200.
01:02:26
Speaker
Like, I don't know about a two pack, but it's like basically that in today's dollars. I think it's like that for a single role. So like the inflation is not, has been kind to us, uh, film photographers. Considering it was dead for, well, not completely dead, but largely dead for a good 15, 20 years. Yeah, exactly. Tam and I are both, and Tam and I both do actually have film cameras. Like.
01:02:50
Speaker
I have a Fed 3 and a Fed 5 because I'm a weirdo who decided to import two cameras from the former Soviet Union. Yeah, like a a good quality like Phoenix 200 roll runs or Kodak Gold runs you 16 bucks. um Yeah, and that's like $16.99 in today's dollars.
01:03:13
Speaker
Yeah, whereas the $16.99 that's being advertised there for two films is $30, roughly. But the other thing that makes Christmas a big deal for us when we were kids is, of course, the toys. Yeah, I remember having to flip through all the way to the back of the book. But the the little pages, and this will be evident on the YouTube when I put this up, but the pages had this ah color coding stripe down them that you could use to flip through it. So once you figured out what the color was for the thing that you wanted, it was very easy to find them.
01:03:42
Speaker
Like, this is exactly this is like a 600 to 800 page book in these ones sometimes. 572. It's 572, this one, but they they got mighty thick. But well as an aside, because I forgot how I got to mention this, page 460. Look on the top left, you'll see someone very notable. Of course. Let's talk about some good guys. Let's talk about the troops.
01:04:11
Speaker
There we go. That's Don Cherry, 1996 Don Cherry with ah blue. Yeah. he's ah He's specifically being pictured there as part of an advert for what you can buy, which is a set of Don Cherry special Windwell hockey gloves for $29.99 or $39.99 for 10 inch and 12 inch respectively. And what makes them Don Cherry special is that they come off very easy.
01:04:39
Speaker
So anyway, I don't want to hang, I don't want to get hung up on that. Don Cherry is an episode we're doing in the future. So we can go to page four, six, six, and we will see here, Barbie. Look at all this Barbie stuff here. Uh, this is the section that I lusted after as a kid. Also you can get a Barbie branded, uh, CD player again, bring back. Oh no. but Yeah, sorry. it It is actually a pretend CD player.
01:05:05
Speaker
Okay. The, uh, the H the Barbie tape player is an actual tape player. yeah You could not get a CD player in 1996 for $20. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. But there's all this Barbie stuff. If you go to the next page 4 68, you'll see, uh, more Barbie stuff. Oh yeah. The Barbie play houses. Like this is, this is a thing where we have regressed as a society. The like doll houses used to be so caught, like so intricate.
01:05:34
Speaker
My sister had a really cool dollhouse that was custom made. I don't know how she ended up with it, but like it was really, really pretty. And now I think about it. The other thing is, is we go to the next page on 470. There's two things here. One, there's Cindy. I had never heard in my life Cindy before, but there's a Sailor Moon doll.
01:05:55
Speaker
yeah You can get Sailor Moon, Sailor Venus, Sailor Mars, Sailor Jupiter and Sailor Mercury. And you can get the Sailor Moon cycle. OK, so I'm going to explain the Sailor Moon cycle to everybody here because you may be thinking, like, I want Sailor Moon. There was never a motorcycle. And yes, you are correct. However, there was at.
01:06:14
Speaker
There is one, there is a motorcycle, and it's written and it's written by ah someone who looks like me. Yes, that's say like that Sailor ah Uranus, and she doesn't count for this because by this point she hadn't come out in North America, so it doesn't matter. However, the reason why... so in In more ways than one hadn't come out in North America. Just shut up.
01:06:34
Speaker
So let me explain you this one because it's funny. So I believe that the existence of this motorcycle for Sailor Moon is only because this was back when Saban instead of Deke almost got Sailor Moon and there is a demo video that out out there showing okay Sailor Moon what it could have been because like at the time Power Rangers was fucking massive, right?
01:06:58
Speaker
And yes, they wanted to have the girl power equivalent to Power Rangers. So this is what Sailor Moon was supposed to be. And so Bon was trying to get the right let's be real, though. It's it's they wanted to have the ah pink aisle version of power. yeah That was the idea.
01:07:16
Speaker
So there would have been an IP acquisition as opposed to bringing the show over. But like if you look at the demo video, it shows like Sailor Moon and their friends riding on sails through the sky. And I believe that's the reason why this most motorcycle exists. And if you're wondering like why I know so much about this particular property, just if you ever get a chance to meet me in the middle of summer,
01:07:41
Speaker
Ask me about my tattoo on my on my left leg and you'll understand immediately how much I know about this show. Yeah, it it was also like formative to my childhood. So in any event, that is that is what I wanted to show you on page 470. But on the right, you'll see baby rearing toys and I want to skip over that because it gets kind of creepy yeah this was the 90s had a lot of really creepy like baby toys baby all gone is one that I remember being especially disturbing uh you would basically pour slop into this doll we'll jump ahead to page 502 because we're going to come back to media and this is where we're going to finish off the wishbook with look at all the movies you can get
01:08:32
Speaker
You can get Mr. Bean for $18 and it has terrible tales. I believe you get three episodes in these ah VHS release.
01:08:44
Speaker
Meaning that yeah, that's pretty normal. yeah And you're spending like $32 equivalent today for Mr. Bean. There's like a box set that you can get that has four tapes. I don't know why you would get that over the other four four tapes on the left. You get three tapes, excuse me. Then there's four tapes available on the left. There's also, you can get the complete Star Trek movie series plus Star Trek generations, which.
01:09:09
Speaker
had just recently come out? I think so. You can get at this point Star Trek The Next Generation gift set. It includes two videos, the pilot episode and the final episode. So you can just get to start with the first episode and then watch the last episode.
01:09:23
Speaker
Yeah, because that would have been like those episodes were long enough that they basically eat like half a tape each. Yeah, they're about an hour. Well, 45 minutes each. So yeah, it would make sense. And then yeah there's other movies here that were interesting. Pocahontas is ah his here. Yeah, we had the entire middle row ah there. ah Babe, Wizard of Oz, Snow White, Pocahontas, Fox in the Hand, all those on VHS. And it just is the absolute piss out of them. And the perfect Christmas movie Die Hard and Die Hard 2.
01:09:53
Speaker
It's in the list here. yeah it it It is actually a Christmas movie. It counts as family viewing, apparently. ah Again, the the first Die Hard is literally a Christmas movie. I genuinely do like Die Hard. I i i have i would i know it's overdone the whole Die Hard's a Christmas movie, but I've been watching Die Hard at Christmas for 20 years. I think it's a perfect Christmas movie. It's just it's a stupid ass movie and I love it. Yeah.
01:10:19
Speaker
Those are all the video stuff, right? And then there there's some more cool toys as we go along. Um, if you see on page fifth, five 16, you can see major red and hot wheels. You go to let page five 18, you'll see Lego technic, which I still think is the coolest stuff ever. And once the, my siblings are old enough, they're getting technic for me because I think that's the cool Lego set. Did you ever have one of those, uh, car play mats?
01:10:45
Speaker
Yes, um my mom actually made me one. She didn't buy it. She made us one. It was actually really cool. Oh, cute. If you go to page 522, you'll see connects. I did have connects. I think yes, I had connect was a truck and you had to make a motor with it.
01:11:00
Speaker
Yeah, they had like all these very interesting like motorized ones and like rubber band powered cars, which is what the drag strip there is. um I had a motorized like dinosaur thing that was really cool. Connects was awesome. It was. It's still around, I think, but like it very much the underrated like Lego Technic, but for kids. Then it felt like younger kids.
01:11:26
Speaker
So if you skip to page five thirty eight, you'll see on the bottom left an air hockey table. That is one gift that my parents bought for me that I think was really cool. And we did use a lot. um I don't know. i It was also kind of abused as we got older because people would put stuff on top of it and it was made out of particle board. So that kind of. Yeah, they're they're not they're not durable. They're meant for very lightweight ah things being on them and low friction.
01:11:54
Speaker
But finally we get to page 548 and we get into games that are electronic. That's right. Ah yes, the tiger toys and the grand toys. So the tiger toys were bad.
01:12:09
Speaker
Yeah, there's there's no there's no saving them. You had like these are actually from Grand. I think Tiger was not in Canada or I don't know what the deal is here, but now there's Tiger laser games over here. Oh, yeah yeah. Yeah, it was mostly grand, like grand ones had just that that shape.
01:12:28
Speaker
Yeah, that damnable shape. I don't all like this. and The thing is, is I don't even know if anyone's managed to emulate them. Like the the thing is, is emulating them would be difficult because they're, they're, they're not, it's not really software. It's, it's kind of just hardware and that's about it and just doing certain things. Yeah. They're like somehow less sophisticated than like the game and watch.
01:12:52
Speaker
Yeah, and that's there's like not much to them. No, and the games are all rehashed. is like they You'll see one here that says Space Jam, and then you see Hunchback and Notre Dame. And like they function no differently underneath. It's just whatever the liquid crystal display is doing. I imagine they might exist in MAME by now. like something Somebody's attempted to emulate them in MAME. But like I don't even to think I've ever figured it out.
01:13:18
Speaker
Apparently, yes, ah Tiger Electronics are on main. Of course they are. Is the R zone on main? I don't know. I had a Power Rangers one that was very transparently just traversing the state machine of this, like, very simple board. Go to the next page, 550, and we finally get to... Yeah, here we go. Now we're going to be talking about video game consoles. So on this page, we see a PlayStation, a Sega Saturn, and a Sega Genesis.
01:13:46
Speaker
Yes. Now, a couple of things I want to point out here, you can see how ancient or rather new the PlayStation was because they only show the old controller without me call it the analog stick. Dual shock. Dual shock. Thank you. But the Sega Saturn actually stood out because if you look at the games that they show here, look at number seven. And do you know why this stands out? now awesome pantrick are going too Yeah. also good. But Sonic Xtreme never got released. Oh yeah, this was the thing that happened because these were printed so far in advance. Yes. Because I think similar things also happened with the with the Dreamcast. Yes. So the story about Sonic Xtreme is, and this is what's fun about doing this this as a Christmas episode because we would never talk about this stuff on on this show otherwise.
01:14:36
Speaker
is Sonic Extreme was a game being made by um Sega of America as opposed to Sega of Japan. And that caused so much internal strife because at the time, the Sony PlayStation was seen as the main competitor to Sega Saturn. And everybody. ah This was a one way dynamic, incidentally. Yes, because like Sega Saturn it depends because in Japan, the Sega Saturn did really well. But Because of like how well the Sony PlayStation was doing internationally, everything was in shambles over in Sega Japan. So the politics of Sega of Japan, in contrast to having Sega of America develop a Sonic game,
01:15:18
Speaker
caused um this game to never get released. There was so much like politicking around whether or not this game could ever exist. There's a demo of it out there. You can get like an alpha or beta build of the game. But yeah, that's it's kind of interesting because if you look down at the bottom, you'll see Sonic Blast.
01:15:35
Speaker
It became Sonic 3D Blast eventually. It was supposed to be released on the exact same day as Sonic Extreme. That's the idea of how fucked everything was. Yeah, this is this was definitely an era of Sega where they were just self-owning at this point.
01:15:52
Speaker
Yeah. Well, you can also see like the 32 X is not even mentioned there. Yeah. Sonic blast did get released on the Sega Saturn eventually. It got released. Sorry, and you know, Sonic got released on the same. I got released on Sega Saturn in in November of that year as well, but they don't list it here. So like everything about Sega, like if you want to know why Sega doesn't exist anymore as a hardware company.
01:16:20
Speaker
Uh, it's this page tells an entire story. Yeah. They, they Japanese company themselves into a near oblivion. Yeah. Uh, I just want to also point out that for 12 nights, uh, solid games with solid game comes with the 3d control pad, which do not try to play nights without it. No, you can't. You really won't be able to do it. so You can, but it's not going to be fun. And do not play the the the remake. I think it's like a remake that's on Wii. Don't play it. It's a bad time. But yeah, it's it's like Knights is an IP that I wish Sega would bring back, but I don't think they ever will. The worst thing about ah the Saturn is basically, as Sega was, basically Japanese company themselves into oblivion, like they trapped a lot of really good games like Knights, like Panzer Dragoon.
01:17:13
Speaker
on their system and like some of them we got good ports of like Panzer Dragoon there's now a modern port that's out on Switch maybe PC by now that like finally got more people actually seeing these like really good games but a lot of them just got stuck there or in the case of Sonic Extreme just never happened Yeah, in fact, if we jump ahead one more page here, we're going to see some more content from for video games. You'll see a Game Boy with the Play It Loud series. and Nintendo was smart. They kept the Game Boy alive for a ridiculous amount of time. And they actually did the Play It Loud series, which was make the Game Boys interesting by giving them different colors. I got a black Game Boy. I kind of wish I got the translucent one because it is cool looking.
01:18:00
Speaker
But like the games that were being released for the Game Boy were always solid. And then you look down at the bottom, you see the Game Gear and the Game of Gear is just cool. It comes with Super Columns and which is just a terrible Tetris clone. It's not that terrible, but it's not great. And Baku Baku, I don't particularly enjoy
Video Game Nostalgia and Personal Gaming History
01:18:20
Speaker
it. Like i I can say an authority. I played almost the entire Game Gear library. I mean, during Covid on Twitch, I played any wow year game that was not an RPG or a sports game. Oh, I did not know this. yeah What did you learn from this experience? um There's one game that made me wish that my hearing impairment was worse.
01:18:43
Speaker
Oh wow. Yeah. I can't remember the name of it. I want to say it was like Chicago Syndicate, but, um, the music was so piercing that I was like, I wish my ear, my wish of my hearing was worse. So I couldn't have to, and I don't have to endure this. It was that bad. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. I got a Game Boy Color, I think in 99.
01:19:04
Speaker
nine Yeah, I got a Game Boy Color and got got Pokemon for it. and that was like The Game Boy was basically a Pokemon machine. I didn't really have any other games for it. But 1996 would have been the year that we got the Super Nintendo. ah But we didn't get those Donkey Kongs.
01:19:25
Speaker
Yeah, no, I didn't. I never had a Super Nintendo growing up. I had an n NES and then I went to it from an n NES to a PlayStation 2. And weirdly enough, when once I had my own money, I would i just bought a Dreamcast because they were no longer making them and I wanted games from it.
01:19:40
Speaker
But I have played most of the games on the right actually like like for me. I'm always been a Nintendo person So like with Game Boy games um I have played all of the games that are on the left except for the Toy Story game and then I look on the right I never had an N64 and I've never really been cool about it, but like I've played cruising USA. I've played pilot wings and wave race in Super Mario 64. But the Super Nintendo, like I got really hooked into it once I was in a university because I went and bought a used one. Kirby Superstar, solid game, Super Mario Kart. It's kind of aged in a weird way, but it's still fun. Tetris Attack. It's aged poorly, but it's also very so like strangely compelling yes because of how like it's it's modern Mario Kart.
01:20:26
Speaker
Boiled completely down to its basics. Yeah Tetris attack solid game Super Mario RPG one of the best games has ever been made one of the yeah 100% agree and then you is a brutal game that I do not recommend anyone place What do you mean? I might be called I might be colored by the fact that the games that I had, like the games that we got, we basically got all the games pretty much that I had ah all up front. We got DKC2, Super Mario World because we got the Super Mario World pack in. Yeah. So it didn't come from the series catalog, obviously. And Mega Man X.
01:21:07
Speaker
i never knows where they free game Those were the three games that I had and like I learned to get very good at all of those. So that's the catalog that I wanted to share with you.
The Rise and Fall of Sears
01:21:21
Speaker
There's all sorts of stuff and ah as that I could talk about.
01:21:25
Speaker
But maybe what I'll do is i'll I'll close off the catalog on explaining how you could order from it. So there was a couple of ways you could do it. Like I mentioned, you could do it by email. It was home at Sears dot.ca. You were able to send email to that. But you could also just call a phone number and you can just order by credit card that way. I don't think you could send your credit card by email and God knows how that would have been in 1996.
01:21:50
Speaker
But that's how you would do it. And then it would either be mailed to your home or you can pick it up at a local Sears store. And Sears used to be prolific. Like I could think of, oh, gosh, let me think about this. Like when Sears was at its peak, there was at least three Sears near where I lived when I was growing up. Yeah, there's there was just the one. Well, you lived in undisclosed part of the province, so yeah i Yeah, I lived in undisclosed part of the province. um but like sears Sears was very prolific for like catalog ordering of things. Up to the point where until 1914, out of the Sears catalog, you could order a house.
01:22:35
Speaker
Yeah, that's right. Because there used to be the railway homes. That's right. But you have to remember that. oh it So that was in the States. So in Canada, you would buy your homes from um the Hudson's Bay Company, I believe, because Sears did not exist as an entity in Canada until 1952. I think that's what I said. But you're correct. Railway homes were a thing that you could buy from Sears in the States.
01:22:58
Speaker
Yeah, and like a lot of like larger items than you would think. You could also order via Sears catalogs. What's unfortunate about Sears, if you think about it, is that they had the catalog game. They understood how to do selling stuff to consumers and getting it delivered. If Sears had played their cards right, Amazon would not be a thing today.
01:23:20
Speaker
Yes, they basically had Amazon's entire business model, just half a century, well, God, almost 70 years ahead of time. There was a time basically what you would do, or at least how it worked in my city, because they didn't deliver is you would place an order by phone or in the store, you would get a call basically from your local Sears to go to the accursed sideroom like side entrance of the Sears and pick up your stuff wrapped in a gray plastic bag basically. And your whole order would be there.
Nostalgia and Personal Reflections
01:23:58
Speaker
And they basically just use this like
01:24:01
Speaker
catalog ordering system within their own stores distribution chain. So it was very cheap to deliver and honestly, fairly ecologically friendly, all things considered.
01:24:13
Speaker
But Sears didn't capitalize on it. And that's how we ended up with Sears being a showroom for Amazon for quite some time. And now Sears is no more in Canada because the last locations closed in December of 2018. I remember going there and buying a bunch of shoes because they were cheap and I have one of those shoes was still left. Yeah, it's it was a very weird thing for me because as Sears was closing down, I lived in I lived.
01:24:37
Speaker
in ah in the Metro town area within view of the Sears in Metro town. So I got to see that, like the Sears sign coming down and that was strange. It's still strange to think about. I don't, I get weirdly uncomfortable walking across that corner of Burnaby. But anyway, that was Sears. Wow. That was a lot more like intense nostalgia than I expected. Flipping through that catalog like literally took me back.
01:25:05
Speaker
That was my goal with this episode and like, thank you so much for that. Honestly, I hope to do this again next year and torture you with more stuff of nostalgia or like more nostalgia torture. This was, this was delightful. Oh crap. I didn't do my job. I think, I think this experience is fairly common for a lot of trans people, um, particularly who had.
01:25:27
Speaker
rocky gender journeys, um or just like rocky journeys like coming to coming to terms with queerness. like I'm an arrow ace. I spent most of my life thinking i was like something was wrong with me, that I didn't want the things other people wanted, stuff like that.
01:25:44
Speaker
I have a very myopic view of my own childhood, and ah legitimately, this has brought a little shining of joy to a quarter of my life that I usually view as
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer: Production and Themes
01:25:55
Speaker
being quite dark. So thank you. Thank you for this. Legitimately. No worries. Well, I don't have anything else to give to you, my friend.
01:26:02
Speaker
I have one more gift for you that's very much in this line, and I'm glad that I did things in this order, because our we definitely had, like, for both of our selections, we were on the same wavelength. ah So if you have another commercial, ah feel free to hit me with it. Oh, hi. Now's the time to buy your favorite Christmas cards. We have ready to buy them. Look for the boxes of cards with this three more symbol.
01:26:25
Speaker
yeah their special envelopes are designed to fit your reading smoothly on their way we be and you save on postage too with books of ten greek more stamps from all poster like for smoother delivery and five cent saved on every stand look for the greet water symbol Are you familiar with the name Arthur Rankin Jr.? I want to say yes, but I don't know. Or Rankin Bass and Animated Entertainment.
01:26:55
Speaker
Ooooh. Y-yep, the wheels are turning. don't Don't Google it. Do not Google it. Roll the clip. No, Charlie! That's why I'm a misfit toy! My name is all wrong. No child wants to play with a Charlie in the box, so I had to come here. Where's here?
01:27:22
Speaker
We don't want. Oh, my God, I have not thought about this. This is the um is this is the same outfit that did like um um Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and all this, right? Like the same. This is from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer in 1964. Rankin Bass Entertainment also did Frosty the Snowman 1969. Santa Claus is coming to town 1970.
01:27:49
Speaker
Here comes Peter Cottontail, 1971. Twas the night just before Christmas, 1974. The year without Santa Claus, also in 1974, etc, etc, etc. All the way up until 2008, a Meiser Brothers Christmas. But I am, of course, talking about 1964, their first one, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, which is a telling based upon a book it's based upon the song and that became a book or children's book and this became a teleplay as i called it produced by then uh videocraft international later rank and bass entertainment produced by arthur ranken jr and this was originally released by nbc who i believe funded this however it's technically cancon who did not know this was cancon
01:28:40
Speaker
Pardon? I did not know this was CanCon. So other than Burl Ives, who played Sam the Snowman, the the person who does the the introduction at the beginning and does the epilogue at the end, and I think sings one of the songs, the entire cast is is played by Canadian actors, and it was all recorded at RCA Studios in Toronto.
01:29:04
Speaker
Huh. The reason for this is radio dramas had basically died out in in the United States. And with it, the voice acting talent that accompanied them, particularly Foley, because this is like animation, like this wasn't a thing so much. It was much more cartoony. Whereas there's a lot of like high quality Foley like it that this is produced or that this was like cast with a bunch of like radio play people it's very evident from the kind of the sound design choices that are made but Radio dramas were still alive and well in Canada and like I even remember listening to radio dramas and CBC while camping as a kid so I don't want that shit easy
01:29:52
Speaker
Yeah, that that shit hasn't died out yet in Canada. So there was a large talent pool to choose from. But most importantly, they had just finished a few years earlier making Tales of the Wizard of Oz, another ah animated television series. So they were a little light on funds. And As will become a trend in animation for the future. This US company sought out Canadians due to their lower labor cost. Yeah, that's normal. I actually was just looking this up and um mentioned the work of Bernard Cohen. He was apparently the supervisor for this. and it Sorry, I don't mean I hope I'm not taking away your thunder. And I didn't know that he was an announcer on a bunch of shows, including Front Page Challenge, which
01:30:42
Speaker
I would love to talk about one day, uh, because, uh, it's the only CBC show that I made an appearance on as a kid. He's also a Vancouverite. Yes. Any, uh, died fairly young, all things considered, like he died at 68. Yeah. He also did voices, uh, for Spider-Man, which I did know as a Canadian, um, made production.
01:31:04
Speaker
ah That's the animated Spider-Man that everybody likes to post memes about and as well as a bunch of other TV shows, but Spider-Man is the one in particular. So ah this entire thing was basically stop motion with puppets yeah and it's friggin adorable. ah While the voice acting and like all the sound was done in in Canada, the stop motion actually was done by a company in Tokyo where they built all the puppets and animated them. And unfortunately, apart from Rankin claiming to, as of 2007, he is now deceased, be in possession of the original an original Rudolph figure.
01:31:47
Speaker
ah None of the puppets were actually preserved. ah That was where the most were that time period. Yeah, this was the first of the Rankin Bass like Christmas like animated puppet like stop motion films. So they didn't really know what the future held for any of these. So yeah, most of the figures were like lost, like production crews would take them, some were just thrown out or destroyed. In 2005, two thousand and five to remaining puppets of Rudolph and Santa were praised on Antique's Roadshow. Oh wow. Yeah, in the States. ah But most of them have been, most of them are thought to be destroyed. And there were like a lot of elves that were, gosh, there's just so many really cute puppets in this thing. ah The Bumble, of course, was the one that I was looking for and I couldn't find any surviving ones.
01:32:39
Speaker
So I'm a huge sicko who likes intellectual property law. One of the interesting things I'm just reading about here, because again, you got I did not know this was Canadian, so I needed to know like who was involved with this, and that's how the Front Page Challenge came out. It says here, in the original production, Billy May Richards, who voiced Rudolph, was credited as Billy Richards since Rankin and Bass did not want to disclose that a woman had done the part.
01:33:02
Speaker
Antony Peters's name was also misspelled, as was the year of copyright notice which used Roman Numelos, listing it as MCLXIV, or the year 1164, and not MCMLXIV potentially weakening the copyright. Wait, they claimed that it was made? In 1164, you know. 800 years before the invention of television.
01:33:28
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. MCLXIV in the little cut, the little thing of the title that they have and on Wikipedia does in fact show the 1166. a but less sixty four the one that i The one that I see here, MCLXIV is 1166 it looks like. we' We're just talking about difference of two years, not a difference of 800.
01:33:55
Speaker
Yeah, it's supposed to be MC. c Oh yeah. Nevermind. Nevermind. It is 1164, uh, MCM LX IV. Yeah. Fun. Yeah. So I don't think genuinely it would have done anything to the copyright technically speaking, but I do find it hilarious that that, that could have happened, you know,
01:34:19
Speaker
I also want to talk about like how I related to this, okay because this actually weirdly relates to the Sears catalog and also the things we were talking about in the Sears catalog with regards to Sailor Moon and things like that. This used to get played fairly readily every year around Christmas time. ah Specifically, there was a broadcast I forget which channel it was on.
01:34:43
Speaker
that would run it quite late on Christmas Eve and as a kid I always insisted on staying up for it because like something something about this like really gripped me as a kid ah such that one year for Christmas, one of the things my parents got for me was the VHS of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, which I made a note to see if my mom still has, because this was such a dear part of my childhood, and like upon reflecting upon it, preparing for this episode, I think I know why. This is a really queer story. like The rendition in this movie of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is very queer,
01:35:29
Speaker
The selection of Island of Misfit toys in particular was one that I picked out of that kind of realization. Everyone is like, they're fine. The toys are fine. There's just something unexpected or different about them. Except for the doll. I have no idea what's wrong with the doll.
01:35:53
Speaker
But yeah, it's ah like it's a very strange, very strangely queer read as possible in this film that I'd like to be a little bit more in depth on. But like like Rudolph goes away from his friends and family, ah comes back different and also hot.
01:36:10
Speaker
ah I did that to my friends and family back home. Going away, disappearing from their lives, coming back hot. Still different though, still a little strange. yeah And attaining acceptance, hopefully. At least
Queer Identity and Family Dynamics During Holidays
01:36:26
Speaker
Rudolph does. i Work in progress for me. But in the meantime, finding that like bunch of weirdos and kind of odd ducks who don't fit in, and like making a making a family out of that. like That shit hit me when I was a kid. And I love it. Yeah, Christmas is definitely one of those times where I where i realized that it's hard to like sometimes you realize you just don't fit in. But even yeah when you don't fit in, people around you do love you.
01:37:03
Speaker
it's It's hard, especially as queer people, it's incredibly hard to fit in if everybody around you is straight, cis, you know. they don't Yeah, they're going they're going through the like expected pattern of life. yeah They're engaging, perhaps, with the consumerism of the holiday, and you're a trans aero-ace non-binary communist. You don't relate to any of this shit. So like it's hard to it's hard to relate.
01:37:32
Speaker
Yeah, and like this has been a struggle for me. I've tried to boil down the holiday back. with family and being like, don't get me nothing. Your gift for me is always the time that I get to spend with you. like yeah ah Slowly that's starting to sink in. and that's That's kind of how it's been for me because like for a number of years I did not see my family for Christmas due to my queerness and also because of COVID getting away that things were rough for a few years. And then COVID happened and then things were just put on pause.
01:38:05
Speaker
And the first Christmas I spent with my family after I had come out was incredibly stressful for me, but it went OK. Yeah. And, you know, like I thank my mother for making it happen and.
01:38:20
Speaker
I do feel hell of a lot more comfortable around my family these days than I did years ago. But there is a little part of me that aches because when I come over, I do not come over with kids. And I often do not come over. Actually, I have not brought a partner over to my parents' home since I've come out.
01:38:41
Speaker
And it's nothing against my parents. it's My circumstances, I'm just not dating anyone but and and and haven't really been in a position to bring someone over. But, you know, and they had my mother has met people I've been dating over the years, but it's and's still awkward for me because, you know, here I am as, you know, as auntie, which is great. I love the children in my life. I love them dearly. there's I cannot express how much I care about them, but they're also not my children.
01:39:08
Speaker
Yes. And so when I go home, you know, the energy I have is just my energy. I don't have the energy of my partner. I don't have the energy of my kids because I don't have that.
01:39:19
Speaker
and it's hard. But what matters to me, though, is making certain that, you know, I contribute to that energy that they get. And that's, that's the reason why i and I'm not heavy on gifts. That's the reason why um I care for more for experiences because I have two photos on my wall from a family wedding from earlier this year, or I'm with my my nibblings. And they matter a lot to me. I went out of my way to make sure and I got a photo with the kids because I wanted that memory of able to meet at any time as I know that I was there. who And hopefully, it's a meaningful and memorable experience for them as well.
01:40:00
Speaker
I think so. I'm pretty confident. My, my nibblings are all either way too young or way too old for this. So they, so they're locked in or they're like too, I have a ways yet to cultivate the, the cool auntie. I guess to kind of like round that out also is if you're a listener and you're in the phase of your life, or maybe you aren't around family.
01:40:26
Speaker
due to, like, not being out to them, not feeling safe, or just got snowed in one year, it happens. It happened to you a couple years ago. Yeah, it happened to me last year, actually. Yeah. It does get better, things can turn around, and my my lesson for you from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is ah family can also be what you make of it. Yeah. um there are people who aren't related to me by blood that I consider more family than even my own brother. So you can find that sense of peace. And it doesn't need to be with necessarily the people that like your birth parents, your biological family, like family, family is what you make
Behind the Scenes of Podcast Production
01:41:10
Speaker
of it. And yeah, if you're alone for the holidays, my heart goes out to you. There are definitely people in your life who care about you and love you. Yeah. I don't think I can put it any better.
01:41:21
Speaker
So, uh, yeah, we put together this little Christmas episode where you can, you can feel like you're hung out with some folks, us, parasocially. Yeah. Please don't show up to my house for Christmas. I'll not only be incredibly upset, I'm going to be very jet lagged.
01:41:40
Speaker
don't show up to my house because I probably won't be here if things go well, or if I'm horrifically snowed in. I i mean, it's weird if you doxxed me, but also I guess mulled wine will be available.
01:41:55
Speaker
if If last year was anything to go by. Yeah, and I guess what we could say is like, I'm comfortable, like, there's always this belief that, you know, everybody on the left doesn't want to say this, and I'm going to be brave and say it right now, Merry Christmas.
01:42:13
Speaker
uh heather is probably ah heather is probably gonna cut it out but i waited an uncomfortably long period of time but merry christmas everybody have a happy new year i hate you uh my yeah sorry my fourth and final gift to you is being the fucking worst
01:42:34
Speaker
ah Merry Christmas dear listeners. Merry Christmas, Heather. I'm sorry I'm like this. The one thing that you won't find in your st stocking is me being any less like this. and I know. I'm afraid. I can't believe we're friends.
01:42:50
Speaker
Yeah, and this this little one little bonus to this episode is usually we release our episodes on Wednesdays. I don't know why we chose Wednesdays, but I'm sticking with Wednesdays because it seems to be the way you chose it. You you decided this. Yes, I believe how it went is you released the first episode on a Wednesday and I stuck to it and then stuck to it. That is the most Heather thing you could possibly do. And I'm pretty sure that's exactly what happened. You know, well, that's how stubborn I am. But anyway, I'm going to break ah for this one episode only is break it out onto a Tuesday. So you all get an episode. This episode will come out on Christmas Eve. I hope that you enjoy this episode. Excuse me, I hope you enjoyed this episode and ah we'll be back in. Mid January, I think that's what we have in our spreadsheet, something like that.
01:43:45
Speaker
Yes, sometime in early to mid-January you will get the final part of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. You'll get to learn all about the founding of it. You'll hear about Hiawatha, a person who is oft mythologized but also is kind of just a mythological being, like very interesting fellow. It'll be great.
01:44:07
Speaker
And if you subscribe to us on Patreon, thanks again for being a patron as well. um That means a lot to us to have people supporting the show. And absolutely we will continue to churn out content, but not slop, not slop. All of these episodes are painfully written, ah sometimes literally because I have wrist problems by humans. We have we have we have made fun of A.I. on the show, but we will not use A.I. on the show. So No, like that's not the point. like I have said it numerous times, some of which have made it into episodes. I don't respect the content machine. We aren't ever going to like rush shit out to just abide by the whims of the YouTube algorithm or whatever. yeah like give us a Give us a rating if you like it. Like and subscribe on YouTube if you want to. Do what you want.
01:45:04
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Like the the the reach given by the algorithm is nothing is nothing compared to what we get out of having patrons. So if you want to support us and you can, please do. If not, enjoy our content. Exactly. We make it to be consumed and enjoyed. And if you want to contact us, mailbag at shawiniganmoments.ca. I think you and I have settled on living at home on blue sky, God. And Uh, yes, we are living in the skeet zone and on, uh,
01:45:39
Speaker
so ah we are showing again moments at blue sky dots, uh, ah social or whatever. We should probably just set up the DNS stuff to be just at Schwinnigan moments.ca. Just assume she went again, moments.ca by then, because I know the process for doing the DNS records and I'm in control of it anyway. So.
01:45:57
Speaker
Yeah, but yeah, uh, we'll be SchwinniganMoments.ca at, or on Blue Sky. And I man the social account and I'm trying to be a little bit more active on the Schwinnigan Moments thing. So I've been, been a little bit, a little bit more, uh, a little bit more posty. All right. Well, Merry Christmas, everybody. Goodbye. Goodbye.
01:46:31
Speaker
Schewinnegan Moments is written and recorded on the unceded territories of the Squamish, Musqueam, Stolo, and Tsawatuth First Nations in what is otherwise called Vancouver.