December 25, 2014 • 38 mins
It's that time of year again! Time to get cozy and tuck in with Josh and Chuck as they spread glad tidings and warm Christmas cheer. Tune in to hear about Letters to Santa, A Christmas Story, mulled wine and more neat stuff.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to stuff you should know Frondhouse stuff Works dot com. Hey,
and welcome to the Christmas Podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's
Charles W. Schucker's Bryant and guest producer Noel is with
(00:24):
us today. Yeah, we got it's Jerry Stocking though, hanging
over by the fireplace, and I am glad you built
that fire, my friend. It's a little hot in here.
Gets me in the mood though, you know, sure Christmas spirit,
the Christmas mood. I said, oh yeah, you can talk
about the mood for that that too. Yeah, we have
(00:44):
like glad tidings and good cheer and warmth and Christmas
lights and color and sugar sprinkles and stuff like all
over the place. It's our Christmas. I have to say,
my friend, you really know how to set the mood
in here. You really go all out. Thank you, thank you,
well done. Glad you feel comfortable, Nold, do you feel comfortable? Also? Yes,
(01:04):
he has a little um. He painted his beard white
is pretending to be sand and mine is going white naturally. Yeah,
I'm not going a beard because probably beats some great interest.
I've made my bed, I'm gonna lie in it. Does
that make sense sure, So, Chuck, I think we want
(01:25):
to say welcomed everybody out there, and we hope that
you're having a wonderful holiday season so far. So kick
off your shoes, put on your slippers, make some We'll
make yourself comfortable. You put on your comfy pants. There
you go as we prepare for our two thousand fourteen
Christmas extravagances. So, Chuck, uh, you have seen the great,
(01:56):
great movie A Christmas Story. Not just one of my
favorite Christmas movies, it's one of my favorite movies of
all time. Yeah, John Hodgman has never seen that. Weird
I thought so too, and disappointing. Yeah, he said he's
not a fan of of Jean Shepherd. So I guess
if you're not a fan of Jean Shepherd, you wouldn't
like A Christmas Story. Yeah, that's this is tough to swallow.
(02:19):
Like I'm having trouble swallowing right now, Hodgeman, stuck in
your throat for everyone else out there in the world
besides you, John, Um, A Christmas Story is a beloved
holiday movie, and um, it's actually got kind of a
cool little backstory to tell you the truth. That was
the movie that wouldn't go away, it would not be overcome.
(02:41):
That's right. It's the nineteen sixties. Bob Clark is a
writer and director and he's driving a date around and
he's flipping the radio around because his date was dull. Sure,
and he comes across writer Jean Shepherd's recollections and stories.
He's he's a audio storyteller, a humorist, a humorist exactly
(03:03):
talking about growing up in Indiana in the thirties and forties.
And he was smitten with it. And apparently, uh was
so smitten that he just kept driving until the program
was over and said, you just stay there and be quiet.
I'm listening to this story on the radio. Okay, So yes,
smitten is a good way to put it. Enthralled maybe, sure,
But he decided right then and there, I'm going to
(03:25):
bring Jean shepherd stories to the silver screen. That's right.
It took him a little while though, because, as this
article says, and we got this from a Christmas story
house dot com. Um g R. Yeah, was just he
was a journeyman director. He specialized in B movies. Yeah,
he not many people know this. He made a movie
(03:48):
called Silent Night, Evil Night. He made another Christmas movie. Yeah,
and Silent Night, Deadly Night. Now this was called Black
Christmas is one of those was released under several titles.
Was it Verse Side Night, Deadly Night? It was Black
Christmas or Silent Night, Evil Night, and then there was
another title. And he also did a movie called moon
(04:08):
Runners about Moonshine that Dukes of Hazzard was based on. Wow,
this guy was all over the place. Yeah, he got
a big fat settlement when they released that Dukes of
Hazzard movie recently. Nice good for him, like eighteen million bucks.
That's great. Yeah, So Bob Clark in the sixties becomes
enthralled with Jean Shepherd and it wasn't until the early
eighties that he got to make a Christmas story. And
(04:28):
the whole reason he got to make a Christmas story
is because he finally made a blockbuster movie known as
Porky's Yep, a teen sex round comedy. Man. That movie
was the most mysterious, enticing thing when I was a kid,
because it was I was ten years old and it
(04:50):
was supposedly just the dirtiest thing that had ever been made.
I wasn't allowed to see it. I wasn't stay have
not seen Porkies. You know, it's funny. Watch Porkies and
you'll be like, this is pretty team. Yeah, like it's
it's body. But it's really not like I thought. It
was borderline pornography. That's that's what I took from it too.
It's not at all so huge hit. Though it was
(05:13):
an enormously yea at one time, for a brief time,
it was the best. It was a top twenty five
all time grossing movie in the best selling comedy of
all time, Wow, but only for a brief window. I
think Ghostbusters quickly dwarfed it. And Yeah, so the studios
came back to Bob Clark and said, man, do that again.
Make a Porky's too, He said, despite John Hodgman's wishes,
(05:38):
I'm going to make another movie. First. It's called a
Christmas Story, That's what we're gonna call it. I'm gonna
base it on Jean Shepherd's stories, Um that we're collected
into a book called and God we trust all others
must pay cash. And they said, fine, just go do
your movie or whatever. And he did. He made this movie.
He scouted out um twenty cities, I believe, and finally
(06:01):
settled on Cleveland, And one of the reasons he settled
on Cleveland was because Jean Shepard grew up in uh Indiana,
which is very near Cleveland, and Cleveland had a department
store called Higbie's. And Higgbie's said, hey, man, we were
around in the forties. Why don't you just go ahead
and film some of your stuff in here? And he said,
Cleveland it is. Yeah, it's still it's still had that
(06:23):
old I mean they had addressed it, of course, but
it's still had that old department store look, that classic look. Um.
By the way, if you're ever in New York again,
go to Macy's Herald Square and ride the wooden escalators, okay,
and be prepared to be delighted. Oh really, it's just
the coolest thing. Man. I didn't even know they existed,
but there would the rails, the steps, the whole thing,
(06:46):
the people on them, and they haven't redone them, you know,
they're still like it's it's really pretty neat. It sound
like the cutting edge new would elevators, No, but it
feels like a Higgbie's. Wait, escalators are elevators. Escalators? Yeah,
even cooler. It feels like you're at a Higbie's though
when you're at macy Seral Square, because it's uh, it
just has that old school department score field when you're
(07:06):
on those things. Um. They didn't give him much budget
for a Christmas story, No, and they didn't expect very
much from it either. No. They gave him just about
nine screens um the weekend before Thanksgiving, and it made
a little bit of money a couple of million, then
about four million the next weekend, like six million in
its first two weekends. Yeah, and they but they didn't
(07:27):
have a big plan to roll it out because they
didn't count on it being much, so they didn't roll
it out. Grossed about nineteen mill, which of course made
the money back and then some. So it was a
moderate success as far as uh making the suits happy.
But it wasn't some runaway hit until cable TV. Well
yeah that's just cable but video as well. Yeah. So MGM,
(07:49):
like you said, didn't think too much of this movie,
and they actually they sold it to Warner Brothers. They
tossed it into a pot of fifty movies that Warner
Brothers bought. And after Warner Brothers audit, I guess they
had to do with Turner because T n T and
had a stunt on Christmas Eve where they ran it
twelve times for twenty four hours. They played a Christmas
(08:11):
Story back to back and they just, I guess, did
it to fill some airtime, and it was just a
huge hit. People started clamoring for it, and every year,
I believe since, they've had a Christmas Story marathon now
on TBS in at some point during the day, Uh
forty million people tune in to watch at least parts
(08:32):
of this movie. And for good reason. Do you want
to know why? Because The Christmas Story is one of
the greatest movies ever made. It's really pretty great. So
you want to hear some cool facts about a Christmas Story? Uh? Yeah?
How about the fact that the part of the Father
that was ultimately played by Darren McGavin was originally offered
to Jack Nicholson And I shudder at the thought. Can
(08:54):
you imagine Nicholson in that movie? Actually I could, I can't.
I think you would have been pretty great. But Darren
McGavin is the greatest. Um. I was actually lucky enough
to go to a screening the Alex Theater in Glendale, California,
over Christmas and Bob Clark did a Q and A
and Darren McGavin was there right before he died and
(09:15):
was old and frail and he got a standing ovation
and his wife like helped him stand up, and I
think he just wasn't clear to him and she was like,
this is for you, this is for you. It was
just the sweetest, sweetest moment. One of my best Christmas
moments ever. That's a Christmas moment. It was great. Um
Jean Shepard he did all the voiceover narration, yeah as Ralphie, right, yeah,
(09:37):
it's grown up Ralphie. Yeah. But he also made a cameo.
So the old man who says, that's the back of
the line where the line starts there, that was Jean Shepard,
that was. And Bob Clark also had a cameo as
Swede the h the neighbor with a Southern accent who
stops spy to marvel at the infamous leg lamp. He goes, oh,
(09:58):
you won an award age reward. That was the director.
And the kid Grover Dill right, the little toady. Yeah,
he actually went on to become the two dollar paper
boy in Better Off Dead. I had no idea two dollars.
I didn't ask for a dime two dollars. Yeah, and
(10:18):
apparently those are the only couple of three movies that
he was ever in. Ya know, it's an odd name. Um.
Speaking of leg lamp, uh, it was based on a
real lamp. UM a knee high logo that was eliminated
and the style was of course um. Ruben Freed, the
(10:39):
production designer, created the leg lamp. And I wonder if
he has any claim on that thing, because those things
were sold like crazy now, little ones, big ones, like
key chains. I wonder who's making that dough. Hopefully it's
going to him. I doubt it. Um probably going to
MGM or Warner Brothers. Probably. Yeah, it's not very Christmas Eve.
(11:03):
You can pinpoint, even though it's never said, you can
pinpoint the month and year when all this action takes
place thanks to the little or Finani decoder pin that
Ralphie gets. The one he gets is the speed Omatic model,
which is the one that was released in nineteen forty.
So a Christmas Story takes place in December of nineteen forty. Uh.
(11:26):
Many of the exteriors are filmed in Toronto, Toronto except
the house the houses in Cleveland, and it's now a museum.
I've been there, so you you have. Oh yeah, okay,
do you recommend it. I've talked about it before. It's
the best thing ever. You go and there's the the
original house and you can walk through that's still dressed
like the movie, and then down the street that someone
(11:49):
bought another house and has a museum um of artifacts
and things from the movie. And it's totally a great time.
If you're ever in the Cleveland area around Christmas, do it. Okay,
it's gonna be busy, but don't go in the summer.
You know, you really gotta get that Christmas feeling. But um,
a lot of the exteriors are filmed in Toronto because
(12:09):
in one scene you can even see one of their
red trolley cars in the background, which Cleveland does not have.
Oh or Indiana as far as I know. So, Chuck,
that's a Christmas story. Huh yeah, I mean, I guess
we should say that there were some deleted scenes that
never made it, you know, the black bart scene. He
shot several of those, including one with Flash Gordon and
(12:32):
at the Christmas Story House. You can see clips of
those and some of the artifacts and uh, Ralphie, you know,
went on to be a big shot producer, Peter. Of
all those a lot of those Vince Vaughn um favro
movies he's attached to. And uh, I think Vince Vaughn
still calls him Ralphie sometimes just to get under his skin.
I could see that. Of course, Chuck. It wouldn't be
(13:13):
one of our Christmas specials if we didn't talk about
booze offer an alcoholic recipe, right exactly. So this year
we're doing mold wine. Mold wine is old. Actually. They
think that it was developed too keep old wine from spoiling,
or when it was about to spoil, to use it
(13:34):
up really quick. Yeah, and it gained a lot of
notoriety when Charles Dickens put it in a Christmas story.
I'm sorry, Christmas, Carol. I still got that on the brain.
And uh, that's a largely where it's association with the
holidays comes in. I think, sure, I don't like it,
do you? Yeah, I don't. I can't do it. They
(13:54):
sell it on the streets of Budapest and it is
wonderful stuff. Yeah, I tried it. I just I don't
like the hotness and I don't like those spices. Just
not my thing. You would not like mold wine. But
I love wine, yeah, but not mold No. You know,
I read this article from like nineteen forty, I think
(14:14):
of the New Yorker. It was it's about this bar,
the oldest bar in New York, and it was talking
about how some of the old timers like would take
their mug's vele and put them next to the potbellied
stove and heat it up to like coffee temperature and
drink their beer like that. So I've never heard of
I think back then they were like, I'm cold and
I want to be drunk. Yeah, so let's just do
(14:35):
those two things, yes, which is what mold wine was too.
So with mold wine, you typically want to use like
a dry red like maybe a Sara or a z infandel,
which I didn't realize we're dry, yeah, okay. Um. You
want to add a little citrus, usually fort to fortify
it with something like brandy. Um. Other people use port
(14:58):
sometimes sport exactly. Uh. And then spices, despite Chuck's tastes, yeah,
clove and cinnamon, ginger, nutbag the traditional Christmas drink spices.
Uh that I just cloth. I think it might be
what ruins it for me. Oh really maybe, and it's
just not my thing. So I don't like sancree either. Yeah,
(15:19):
I could see that you wouldn't um some spices or
some recipes say you might want to sweeten this a
little bit, so that's some honey, add some sugar, do
something like that. And that's the beauty of muld wine.
It's like you can just kind of start with some
wine and add a little bit here there until you
come up with your own concoction. But we'll give you
like a basic muld wine recipe. I think we got
(15:41):
it from grape dot com. It sounds like a good
place to get a muld wine recipe. Yeah, it sounds
like authoritative. So you want to take one bottle dry
red wine. I'm guessing a seven fifty Yeah, probably, you
want six ounces of brandy. That's a lot of brandy.
That is a lot of brandy. Uh So it's getting
just better and better by the second. This recipe is
(16:03):
one orange slice in the rounds, two lemons sliced into rounds,
half a cup of honey. Yeah, three cinnamon sticks refer
to our cinnamon episode. Yeah, six whole cloves, one teaspoon
fresh ground nutmeg, that's delicious. Uh, and then maybe some
ginger if you want. You combine everything in a large sauce.
Pain And this is very important, Chuck. You heat it slowly.
(16:27):
You don't let it boil. You don't just crank that
heat up the high. No, And as it starts to
steam a little bit, it's done. You serve in mugs
and enjoy. That's right. And I was reading this a
bit you sent about the Charles Dickens pub in Worth
in England, and they served mulled wine by the glass
and it sounded like a really neat thing until I
(16:48):
saw that they use a microwave to heat it up. Yeah,
it's like man. They take six ounces of Spanish red
wine at one ounce of berry cordial, which I'm curious
what berry, Yeah, elderberry. I don't know, English berry, I
guess um. And they pour it over an orange slice
with a cinnamon stick in two cloves. And then like
(17:10):
you said, they put the glass in the biker and
they ruin the holy experience. The traditional dickensie and microwave, Oh,
featured so prominently in Oliver Twist. But hey, at least
they're trying. Yeah, and you can try to less know
how your mould wine recipe. I think in Oliver Twists,
you're right. They placed her may have some more, and
he says, well, when you get out of the microwave first,
(17:31):
then you can have some more. That was the original line,
and Dickens crossed it out, so it won't hurt our
feelings if you pause us to go make some mold
wine and come back and listen to the rest. So, Josh,
(18:07):
let's say your little kid and you want to write
a letter to Santa Claus. Are you allowed to do so, sir?
And if so, when did that start? Well, it's pretty old.
Have you heard of this Twitter account tweets of old No,
they just take old like newspaper clippings and stuff and
(18:28):
tweet them. And so it's not supposed to be funny, No,
but it comes off as funny sometimes. Some of the
stuff these people said, we're funny, bizarre, random. But around
Christmas time they do kids letters to Santa like old
timey ones. There are a lot of kids who were
not just asking for stuff, they were also asking that
(18:48):
like their siblings got nothing, which is hilarious. I was
never like that, but apparently no, I wasn't either always
like my brother and sister. I was just I wanted
us all to have what we wanted right at the
very least. You realize that Santa wouldn't would frown on
that kind of avarice. You know, I was a good sharer,
I guess. Yeah. So. Um. Apparently though, as far as
(19:09):
the United Postal Services concerned, all of this started around ninetenwelve,
long time ago, when the they that's when they say
they started really receiving a noteworthy amount of letters for
Santa clause. And as we all know, Santa gets extraordinarily
busy around this time of year, so he can't sit
down and answer all these letters. So the Postal Service said,
(19:32):
maybe there's another idea. Yeah, Postmaster General Frank Hitchcock said,
you know what, why don't we write these kids back?
And I'm gonna authorize not just employees, but volunteers, regular citizens.
You and I could do this, Yeah, you can. You
just have to go to your local post office if
it's a participating post office, fill out a little personal info,
put your fingerprints down right, stand there for a mug shot,
(19:55):
and um, and you'll get some letters from children that
you can answer in Santa's behalf. Yes, it's called Operations Santa,
and it's a pretty neat thing to participate in. I've
never done it, but I might try and do it
this year. Um. They are now redacted obviously because they
want to protect the anonymity of these kids and their
families and the addresses, which is pretty smart move. I
(20:18):
think in two thousand six is when they started doing that. Um.
But yeah, you can write to kids from all over
the world, I guess, or at least all over the country. Uh,
it is voluntary. As a post office, you don't have
to do it, but if you live in a major
city there's bound to be a post office. It's participating. Yeah.
And um, the USPS says they'll take all charitable organizations, groups, families, friends, whoever.
(20:47):
Just come along and fill out your info. Yeah we
should have. We should do that one year for house
stuff works, okay, and get like the whole company to
sort of take part. I'd be neat and um. Since
it's territory reaches the new with Pole, the Canadian um
Postal Service maintains a postal code specifically for Santa Nice.
(21:07):
They use letters in their postal code, so Santa's is
H zero H zero H zero, which spells ho ho
ho nice ho ho ho. Alright, buddy, I'm glad you
(21:46):
stumbled upon this because I had never heard of it,
and it is now my favorite thing ever. We have
to thank Snopes for this one. Barbara Michelson is just
hats off to her. She's almost singlehandedly written in the
Snopes website. You know that. Yeah, man, Well, this is
the story of the Christmas Pants and it is true,
(22:07):
and um, basically it goes like this. Uh, there are
is a brother and a brother in law, Roy Collette,
and uh Larry Kunkle, great minnesotaan name sounds like a
Christmas villain name house, so uh in when did it start?
(22:27):
Nineteen sixty four, Larry Kunkle's mom gave him a pair
of Moleskin pants and he said, these aren't so good
in Minnesota because they freeze and get kind of stiff,
and I can't walk. I can't walk. So as a joke,
he gave them, regifted them the following year to his
brother in law, Roy, and this started what I think
is one of the best back and forth practical jokes ever. Yeah.
(22:49):
For more than twenty years they they would send them
back and forth and at first it was just kind
of like, ha, here they are again, here they are again. Well, eventually,
I think after the first couple of years, Um, it
was Larry Kunkle who took the pants, was it collect
(23:09):
He took the pants and roll them up and stuck
him in a three ft long, one inch diameter pipe
and then wrap that up and gave that to Larry
Kunkle and said, good luck, here's the pants. Yeah, and
so that obviously inspired Oh yeah, brother in law, Yeah,
I'm gonna one up you. And it became a game
of one upsmanship each year, and eventually, uh, there were
(23:32):
some rules. Uh, most notably, the pants could not be destroyed. Yes,
they had to. The game was over if the pants
were destroyed, they had to remain intact. What were the
other rules? There were some that they had to be
legal and moral methods. Supposedly they wanted to use junk
parts as much as possible, But I don't think that
rule panned out all the time, because they clearly spent
(23:54):
a lot of money over the years in tuning these
pants and various things. Let's let's talk about some of
these methods. Um. Like you said, it started out pretty
basic stuffing them in a pipe. Then I think the
following year wrapping them in wire and giving basically the
whole ideas make them super hard on the receiver to
(24:16):
get to write, so so he can't give them back
exactly because you would win. I guess if you're like,
I just can't get these pants exactly. Yeah, and that
he would have to keep the pants forever. Um, how
about this one one of them had them. I think
my favorite one was one of them had them put
in a Gremlin car and had the car compounded to
(24:39):
a you know when you compound a car to a
little time square. Yeah, the pants were inside it compacted Gremlin. Yeah, Gremlin. Um.
That was crushed into a three ft cube and it
weighed two thousand pounds and it was in the in
the glove compartment of the Gremlin when it was crushed. Yeah. Yeah,
that was a pretty good one. Uh. It got like
(25:01):
even bizarre. Uh. I guess Kunkle had the pants put
into its seventeen and a half foot long red rocket
ship filled with concrete that weighed six tons. It was
five ft in diameter, and the pants were put in
there somewhere inside in one of the fifteen concrete filled
(25:22):
canisters inside the rocket. Pretty good, not bad. One year,
Kunkle had a hard time getting the pants out of
an eight foot high tire two ft wide filled with
six thousand pounds of concrete with the smarmie note on
the outside have a good year, Yeah, terrible yeah um.
(25:43):
Another year Collette had to get them had to get
the pants out of a station wagon that was filled
with This is mind boggling to me, a hundred and
seventy generators that were all welded together with the pants
located somewhere in the middle, but you don't know where. No,
and Collette had to get in there, and I mean
(26:04):
these things were welded together because you and you couldn't
just like rip this apart, because if you wasted the pants,
you lost. So he managed to get it out of there. Five.
What was what toy was popular in uh, let's say
Rubik's cube. Rubik's cube. So Collette had an idea and
made a four ton Rubik's cube in five made of
(26:28):
concrete he had baked in a kiln and then covered
it with two thousand board feet of lumber. And the
pants were inside, and you had to solve the cube
and he did so because that came before the generator, right.
I love these dudes. So the end of the pants
came along in ninety nine and Collette apparently had a
(26:50):
buddy in Tennessee who ran a glass manufacturing company and said, hey,
you know that scrap class you have, while you melt
it down and let's encase the pants in it. Yeah,
And the friends said, okay, yeah, ten thousand pounds of
jagged glass, uh, and let's go drop it in his
front yard. The problem is the chunk of molten glass
(27:10):
broke the canister that had the pants in it and
just turned them, just disintegrated him. So the pants we're
putting to an urn. Instead, the ashes of the pants
are put into an urn and given to Kunkle. That year,
Collecte conceded defeat yea, along with an epithet that said, sorry,
old man, here lies the pants. An attempt to cast
(27:33):
the pants in glass brought about the demise of the
pants at last, And apparently Kunkle still has that urn.
And uh. These are two of my favorite dudes in
the world. Now, I can't imagine carrying on a joke
like this for that long. They must have worked on
this for a couple of months out of the year
at least. You know, they probably started on January one,
(27:54):
devising the next year. You know, this is great and
all true. Somebody should make a movie about that Christmas movie.
It's a new holiday classic. Hey, Chuck, you know how
(28:29):
people are like, don't you dare write Christmas as x mess?
People are very offended by that, They are very offended
by it. Well, it turns out it's not so offensive
to write Christmas as x mess. And if you do
write Christmas is x mess, you should pronounce it Xmas.
You should pronounce it Christmas. And there's pretty good reason why. Yes,
(28:49):
there is a good reason, because it isn't an x
and it is not meant to take the Christ out
of Christmas. Right, never was. And we have our friends
at the Straight Dope reaturing Cecil Adams to thank for
this one. That's right. What is it, Josh? Well, that
X is the Greek letter kai. That's right, c h
I and kai. When you see it uh spelled out
(29:12):
in a word, you're supposed to pronounce it the sound
like Christmas or christ that's christ. Yeah. So for a
very long time, I think, even before the Middle Ages,
that term or that X was used to abbreviate Christ.
That's right. It's not a new thing. No. So if
(29:32):
you if you write X and then m A S,
what you've just done is taken the abbreviation for Christ
and substituted it for the Christ and Christmas. So it's
still Christmas and there's still Christ in Christmas as far
as that X is concern. And that's the straight dope.
(30:18):
It's a chuck. We're gonna finish with a Christmas story,
that's right. I didn't realize this, but the guy who
wrote UM, the gold standard classic Wizard of Oz directed Porkies, right,
Frank um l Frank Baum. He also wrote a long
Christmas epic story called UM The Life and Adventures of
(30:42):
Santa Claus. Yeah. It was long, wouldn't it. Yeah? Very
I mean there's a book link thing. Yeah, but it
basically tells the story of Santa Claus. And we're going
to read When the World Grew Old. It was a
chapter from that, and basically Santa Claus has spent his
whole life. Is this a set up? Yeah, if you'l
if feel indult, course, So Santa Claus has he was
(31:05):
found in the woods as an orphan and raised by Ac,
the god of the woods um and he proved himself
to be Santa Claus, doing all the Santa claus E
things he's famous for. But now he's become an old
man with white hair and a white beard and huge
cheeks that are still jolly. But he's he's at his deathbed.
(31:27):
Oh man. And um Ac goes to the other immortals,
gods of the woods and the rivers and all of
that stuff, Kings of the gnomes and all people like that,
and gathers him and says, look, man, this guy. If
there's ever been a human being who's earned immortality, the
gift of immortality, it's this guy. He loves kids, he
(31:48):
makes toys for him every year. He's just a great humanitarian.
He created like the Christmas as we understand it. Now,
let's give him the mantle of immortality. So they talk
about it and debate back and forth, and they finally agree,
and they go to Santa Claus's deathbed and they bestow
him with immortality. And this picks up the next morning
(32:10):
when Santa wakes up after thinking the night before that
he's going to die when the world grew old. The
(32:33):
next morning, When Santa Claus opened his eyes and gazed
around the familiar room which he had feared he might
never see again, he was astonished to find his old
strength renewed, and to feel the red blood of perfect
health coursing through his veins. He sprang from his bed
and stood where the bright sunshine came in through his
window and flooded him with its merry, dancing rays. He
(32:54):
did not then understand that what had happened to restore
him the vigor of youth. But in spite of the
fact that his beard remained the color of snow, and
that wrinkles still lingered in the corners of his bright eyes,
Old Santa Claus felt as brisk and merry as a
boy of sixteen, and was soon whistling contentedly as he
busied himself fashioning new toys. Then at came to him
(33:17):
and told of the mantle of immortality and how Claws
had won it through his love for little children. It
made Old Santa look grave for a moment to think
he had been so favored, but it also made him
glad to realize that now he need never fear being
parted from his dear ones. At once he began making
preparations for making a remarkable assortment of pretty and amusing playthings,
(33:38):
and in larger quantities than ever before, For now that
he might always devote himself to this work, he decided
that no child in the world, poor or rich, should
hereafter go without a Christmas gift, if he could manage
to supply it. The world was new in the days
when dear old Santa Claus first began toy making, and
one by his loving deeds, the mantle of him tortality,
(34:01):
and the task of supplying cheering words, sympathy, and pretty
playthings to all the young of his race did not
seem a difficult undertaking at all. But every year more
and more children were born into the world, and these,
when they grew up, began spreading slowly all over the
face of the earth, seeking new homes, So that Santa
Claus found each year that his journeys must extend further
(34:23):
and further from the Laughing Valley, which, by the way,
is in the North Pole, and that packs of toys
must be made larger and ever larger. So at length
he took counsel with his fellow immortals, Larry King and
the others. How his work might keep pace with the
increasing number of children, that none might be neglected. And
the immortals were so greatly interested in his labors that
(34:44):
they gladly rendered him their assistance. Ak gave him his
man Kilter, the silent and swift, and the nook Prints
gave him Peter, who was more crooked and less surly
than any of his brothers. And the Ryle Prince gave
him Nuter, the sweetest temper rile ever known, And the
Fairy Queen gave him Whisk, that tiny, mischievous but lovable
(35:05):
fairy who knows today almost as many children as Santa
Claus himself. And Larry King gave him suspenders. With these
people to help make the toys and to keep his
house in order to look after the sledge and the harness,
Santa Claus found it much easier to prepare his yearly
load of gifts, and his day began to follow one
another smoothly and pleasantly. Yet after a few generations his
(35:26):
worries were renewed, for it was remarkable how the number
of people continue to grow, and how many more children
there were every year to be served. When the people
filled all the cities and lands of one country, they
wandered into another part of the world, and the men
cut down the trees and many of the great forests
that had been ruled by act, And with the wood
they built new cities. And where the forest had been
(35:47):
were fields of grains and herds of browsing cattle. You
might think the master woodsman would rebel at the loss
of his force, but not so. The wisdom of ac
was mighty and far seeing. The world was made are men,
said he to Santa Claus. And I have but guarded
the forests until men needed them for their use. I
am glad my strong trees can furnish shelter for men's
(36:09):
weak bodies and warm them through the cold winters. But
I hope they will not cut down all the trees,
For mankind needs the shelter of the woods in summer
as much as the warmth of blazing logs in winter.
And however crowded the world may grow, I do not
think men will ever come to Bersey, nor the great
black forests, nor to the wooded wilderness of Brass, unless
(36:30):
they seek their shades for pleasure, and not to destroy
their giant trees. By and by people made ships from
the tree trunks and crossed over oceans and built cities
and far lands. But the oceans made little difference to
the journeys of Santa Claus. His reindeer sped over the
waters as swiftly as over land, and his sledge headed
from east to west and followed in the wake of
the sun, so that as the earth rolled slowly over,
(36:53):
Santa Claus had all twenty four hours to encircle it
each Christmas Eve, and their speedy reindeer enjoy these wonderful
journeys more and more so year after year, in generation
after generation and century after century, the world grew older,
and the people became more numerous than the labors of
Santa Claus steadily increased. The fame of his good deeds
(37:14):
spread to every household where children dwelt, and all the
little ones loved him dearly, and the fathers and mothers
honored him for the happiness he had given them when
they too were young, and the aged grandsires and grand
doms remembered him with tender gratitude and blessed his name.
(37:36):
The end, well, not the end, the end of that chapter.
So that's it. That's our Christmas show. Chuck Christmas to you.
Merry Christmas, buddy. Happy Holidays to everyone out there. On Dasher,
on Dancer, on Donner, on Blitzen, we have comment and
Cupid and Cracking and the Cracking and Cathula that's right,
(38:01):
and Rudolph upfront. Happy holidays everybody. We'll see you next year.
For more on this and thousands of other topics, is
it how stuff works dot com
Welcome to stuff you should know Frondhouse stuff Works dot com. Hey,
and welcome to the Christmas Podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's
Charles W. Schucker's Bryant and guest producer Noel is with
(00:24):
us today. Yeah, we got it's Jerry Stocking though, hanging
over by the fireplace, and I am glad you built
that fire, my friend. It's a little hot in here.
Gets me in the mood though, you know, sure Christmas spirit,
the Christmas mood. I said, oh yeah, you can talk
about the mood for that that too. Yeah, we have
(00:44):
like glad tidings and good cheer and warmth and Christmas
lights and color and sugar sprinkles and stuff like all
over the place. It's our Christmas. I have to say,
my friend, you really know how to set the mood
in here. You really go all out. Thank you, thank you,
well done. Glad you feel comfortable, Nold, do you feel comfortable? Also? Yes,
(01:04):
he has a little um. He painted his beard white
is pretending to be sand and mine is going white naturally. Yeah,
I'm not going a beard because probably beats some great interest.
I've made my bed, I'm gonna lie in it. Does
that make sense sure, So, Chuck, I think we want
(01:25):
to say welcomed everybody out there, and we hope that
you're having a wonderful holiday season so far. So kick
off your shoes, put on your slippers, make some We'll
make yourself comfortable. You put on your comfy pants. There
you go as we prepare for our two thousand fourteen
Christmas extravagances. So, Chuck, uh, you have seen the great,
(01:56):
great movie A Christmas Story. Not just one of my
favorite Christmas movies, it's one of my favorite movies of
all time. Yeah, John Hodgman has never seen that. Weird
I thought so too, and disappointing. Yeah, he said he's
not a fan of of Jean Shepherd. So I guess
if you're not a fan of Jean Shepherd, you wouldn't
like A Christmas Story. Yeah, that's this is tough to swallow.
(02:19):
Like I'm having trouble swallowing right now, Hodgeman, stuck in
your throat for everyone else out there in the world
besides you, John, Um, A Christmas Story is a beloved
holiday movie, and um, it's actually got kind of a
cool little backstory to tell you the truth. That was
the movie that wouldn't go away, it would not be overcome.
(02:41):
That's right. It's the nineteen sixties. Bob Clark is a
writer and director and he's driving a date around and
he's flipping the radio around because his date was dull. Sure,
and he comes across writer Jean Shepherd's recollections and stories.
He's he's a audio storyteller, a humorist, a humorist exactly
(03:03):
talking about growing up in Indiana in the thirties and forties.
And he was smitten with it. And apparently, uh was
so smitten that he just kept driving until the program
was over and said, you just stay there and be quiet.
I'm listening to this story on the radio. Okay, So yes,
smitten is a good way to put it. Enthralled maybe, sure,
But he decided right then and there, I'm going to
(03:25):
bring Jean shepherd stories to the silver screen. That's right.
It took him a little while though, because, as this
article says, and we got this from a Christmas story
house dot com. Um g R. Yeah, was just he
was a journeyman director. He specialized in B movies. Yeah,
he not many people know this. He made a movie
(03:48):
called Silent Night, Evil Night. He made another Christmas movie. Yeah,
and Silent Night, Deadly Night. Now this was called Black
Christmas is one of those was released under several titles.
Was it Verse Side Night, Deadly Night? It was Black
Christmas or Silent Night, Evil Night, and then there was
another title. And he also did a movie called moon
(04:08):
Runners about Moonshine that Dukes of Hazzard was based on. Wow,
this guy was all over the place. Yeah, he got
a big fat settlement when they released that Dukes of
Hazzard movie recently. Nice good for him, like eighteen million bucks.
That's great. Yeah, So Bob Clark in the sixties becomes
enthralled with Jean Shepherd and it wasn't until the early
eighties that he got to make a Christmas story. And
(04:28):
the whole reason he got to make a Christmas story
is because he finally made a blockbuster movie known as
Porky's Yep, a teen sex round comedy. Man. That movie
was the most mysterious, enticing thing when I was a kid,
because it was I was ten years old and it
(04:50):
was supposedly just the dirtiest thing that had ever been made.
I wasn't allowed to see it. I wasn't stay have
not seen Porkies. You know, it's funny. Watch Porkies and
you'll be like, this is pretty team. Yeah, like it's
it's body. But it's really not like I thought. It
was borderline pornography. That's that's what I took from it too.
It's not at all so huge hit. Though it was
(05:13):
an enormously yea at one time, for a brief time,
it was the best. It was a top twenty five
all time grossing movie in the best selling comedy of
all time, Wow, but only for a brief window. I
think Ghostbusters quickly dwarfed it. And Yeah, so the studios
came back to Bob Clark and said, man, do that again.
Make a Porky's too, He said, despite John Hodgman's wishes,
(05:38):
I'm going to make another movie. First. It's called a
Christmas Story, That's what we're gonna call it. I'm gonna
base it on Jean Shepherd's stories, Um that we're collected
into a book called and God we trust all others
must pay cash. And they said, fine, just go do
your movie or whatever. And he did. He made this movie.
He scouted out um twenty cities, I believe, and finally
(06:01):
settled on Cleveland, And one of the reasons he settled
on Cleveland was because Jean Shepard grew up in uh Indiana,
which is very near Cleveland, and Cleveland had a department
store called Higbie's. And Higgbie's said, hey, man, we were
around in the forties. Why don't you just go ahead
and film some of your stuff in here? And he said,
Cleveland it is. Yeah, it's still it's still had that
(06:23):
old I mean they had addressed it, of course, but
it's still had that old department store look, that classic look. Um.
By the way, if you're ever in New York again,
go to Macy's Herald Square and ride the wooden escalators, okay,
and be prepared to be delighted. Oh really, it's just
the coolest thing. Man. I didn't even know they existed,
but there would the rails, the steps, the whole thing,
(06:46):
the people on them, and they haven't redone them, you know,
they're still like it's it's really pretty neat. It sound
like the cutting edge new would elevators, No, but it
feels like a Higgbie's. Wait, escalators are elevators. Escalators? Yeah,
even cooler. It feels like you're at a Higbie's though
when you're at macy Seral Square, because it's uh, it
just has that old school department score field when you're
(07:06):
on those things. Um. They didn't give him much budget
for a Christmas story, No, and they didn't expect very
much from it either. No. They gave him just about
nine screens um the weekend before Thanksgiving, and it made
a little bit of money a couple of million, then
about four million the next weekend, like six million in
its first two weekends. Yeah, and they but they didn't
(07:27):
have a big plan to roll it out because they
didn't count on it being much, so they didn't roll
it out. Grossed about nineteen mill, which of course made
the money back and then some. So it was a
moderate success as far as uh making the suits happy.
But it wasn't some runaway hit until cable TV. Well
yeah that's just cable but video as well. Yeah. So MGM,
(07:49):
like you said, didn't think too much of this movie,
and they actually they sold it to Warner Brothers. They
tossed it into a pot of fifty movies that Warner
Brothers bought. And after Warner Brothers audit, I guess they
had to do with Turner because T n T and
had a stunt on Christmas Eve where they ran it
twelve times for twenty four hours. They played a Christmas
(08:11):
Story back to back and they just, I guess, did
it to fill some airtime, and it was just a
huge hit. People started clamoring for it, and every year,
I believe since, they've had a Christmas Story marathon now
on TBS in at some point during the day, Uh
forty million people tune in to watch at least parts
(08:32):
of this movie. And for good reason. Do you want
to know why? Because The Christmas Story is one of
the greatest movies ever made. It's really pretty great. So
you want to hear some cool facts about a Christmas Story? Uh? Yeah?
How about the fact that the part of the Father
that was ultimately played by Darren McGavin was originally offered
to Jack Nicholson And I shudder at the thought. Can
(08:54):
you imagine Nicholson in that movie? Actually I could, I can't.
I think you would have been pretty great. But Darren
McGavin is the greatest. Um. I was actually lucky enough
to go to a screening the Alex Theater in Glendale, California,
over Christmas and Bob Clark did a Q and A
and Darren McGavin was there right before he died and
(09:15):
was old and frail and he got a standing ovation
and his wife like helped him stand up, and I
think he just wasn't clear to him and she was like,
this is for you, this is for you. It was
just the sweetest, sweetest moment. One of my best Christmas
moments ever. That's a Christmas moment. It was great. Um
Jean Shepard he did all the voiceover narration, yeah as Ralphie, right, yeah,
(09:37):
it's grown up Ralphie. Yeah. But he also made a cameo.
So the old man who says, that's the back of
the line where the line starts there, that was Jean Shepard,
that was. And Bob Clark also had a cameo as
Swede the h the neighbor with a Southern accent who
stops spy to marvel at the infamous leg lamp. He goes, oh,
(09:58):
you won an award age reward. That was the director.
And the kid Grover Dill right, the little toady. Yeah,
he actually went on to become the two dollar paper
boy in Better Off Dead. I had no idea two dollars.
I didn't ask for a dime two dollars. Yeah, and
(10:18):
apparently those are the only couple of three movies that
he was ever in. Ya know, it's an odd name. Um.
Speaking of leg lamp, uh, it was based on a
real lamp. UM a knee high logo that was eliminated
and the style was of course um. Ruben Freed, the
(10:39):
production designer, created the leg lamp. And I wonder if
he has any claim on that thing, because those things
were sold like crazy now, little ones, big ones, like
key chains. I wonder who's making that dough. Hopefully it's
going to him. I doubt it. Um probably going to
MGM or Warner Brothers. Probably. Yeah, it's not very Christmas Eve.
(11:03):
You can pinpoint, even though it's never said, you can
pinpoint the month and year when all this action takes
place thanks to the little or Finani decoder pin that
Ralphie gets. The one he gets is the speed Omatic model,
which is the one that was released in nineteen forty.
So a Christmas Story takes place in December of nineteen forty. Uh.
(11:26):
Many of the exteriors are filmed in Toronto, Toronto except
the house the houses in Cleveland, and it's now a museum.
I've been there, so you you have. Oh yeah, okay,
do you recommend it. I've talked about it before. It's
the best thing ever. You go and there's the the
original house and you can walk through that's still dressed
like the movie, and then down the street that someone
(11:49):
bought another house and has a museum um of artifacts
and things from the movie. And it's totally a great time.
If you're ever in the Cleveland area around Christmas, do it. Okay,
it's gonna be busy, but don't go in the summer.
You know, you really gotta get that Christmas feeling. But um,
a lot of the exteriors are filmed in Toronto because
(12:09):
in one scene you can even see one of their
red trolley cars in the background, which Cleveland does not have.
Oh or Indiana as far as I know. So, Chuck,
that's a Christmas story. Huh yeah, I mean, I guess
we should say that there were some deleted scenes that
never made it, you know, the black bart scene. He
shot several of those, including one with Flash Gordon and
(12:32):
at the Christmas Story House. You can see clips of
those and some of the artifacts and uh, Ralphie, you know,
went on to be a big shot producer, Peter. Of
all those a lot of those Vince Vaughn um favro
movies he's attached to. And uh, I think Vince Vaughn
still calls him Ralphie sometimes just to get under his skin.
I could see that. Of course, Chuck. It wouldn't be
(13:13):
one of our Christmas specials if we didn't talk about
booze offer an alcoholic recipe, right exactly. So this year
we're doing mold wine. Mold wine is old. Actually. They
think that it was developed too keep old wine from spoiling,
or when it was about to spoil, to use it
(13:34):
up really quick. Yeah, and it gained a lot of
notoriety when Charles Dickens put it in a Christmas story.
I'm sorry, Christmas, Carol. I still got that on the brain.
And uh, that's a largely where it's association with the
holidays comes in. I think, sure, I don't like it,
do you? Yeah, I don't. I can't do it. They
(13:54):
sell it on the streets of Budapest and it is
wonderful stuff. Yeah, I tried it. I just I don't
like the hotness and I don't like those spices. Just
not my thing. You would not like mold wine. But
I love wine, yeah, but not mold No. You know,
I read this article from like nineteen forty, I think
(14:14):
of the New Yorker. It was it's about this bar,
the oldest bar in New York, and it was talking
about how some of the old timers like would take
their mug's vele and put them next to the potbellied
stove and heat it up to like coffee temperature and
drink their beer like that. So I've never heard of
I think back then they were like, I'm cold and
I want to be drunk. Yeah, so let's just do
(14:35):
those two things, yes, which is what mold wine was too.
So with mold wine, you typically want to use like
a dry red like maybe a Sara or a z infandel,
which I didn't realize we're dry, yeah, okay. Um. You
want to add a little citrus, usually fort to fortify
it with something like brandy. Um. Other people use port
(14:58):
sometimes sport exactly. Uh. And then spices, despite Chuck's tastes, yeah,
clove and cinnamon, ginger, nutbag the traditional Christmas drink spices.
Uh that I just cloth. I think it might be
what ruins it for me. Oh really maybe, and it's
just not my thing. So I don't like sancree either. Yeah,
(15:19):
I could see that you wouldn't um some spices or
some recipes say you might want to sweeten this a
little bit, so that's some honey, add some sugar, do
something like that. And that's the beauty of muld wine.
It's like you can just kind of start with some
wine and add a little bit here there until you
come up with your own concoction. But we'll give you
like a basic muld wine recipe. I think we got
(15:41):
it from grape dot com. It sounds like a good
place to get a muld wine recipe. Yeah, it sounds
like authoritative. So you want to take one bottle dry
red wine. I'm guessing a seven fifty Yeah, probably, you
want six ounces of brandy. That's a lot of brandy.
That is a lot of brandy. Uh So it's getting
just better and better by the second. This recipe is
(16:03):
one orange slice in the rounds, two lemons sliced into rounds,
half a cup of honey. Yeah, three cinnamon sticks refer
to our cinnamon episode. Yeah, six whole cloves, one teaspoon
fresh ground nutmeg, that's delicious. Uh, and then maybe some
ginger if you want. You combine everything in a large sauce.
Pain And this is very important, Chuck. You heat it slowly.
(16:27):
You don't let it boil. You don't just crank that
heat up the high. No, And as it starts to
steam a little bit, it's done. You serve in mugs
and enjoy. That's right. And I was reading this a
bit you sent about the Charles Dickens pub in Worth
in England, and they served mulled wine by the glass
and it sounded like a really neat thing until I
(16:48):
saw that they use a microwave to heat it up. Yeah,
it's like man. They take six ounces of Spanish red
wine at one ounce of berry cordial, which I'm curious
what berry, Yeah, elderberry. I don't know, English berry, I
guess um. And they pour it over an orange slice
with a cinnamon stick in two cloves. And then like
(17:10):
you said, they put the glass in the biker and
they ruin the holy experience. The traditional dickensie and microwave, Oh,
featured so prominently in Oliver Twist. But hey, at least
they're trying. Yeah, and you can try to less know
how your mould wine recipe. I think in Oliver Twists,
you're right. They placed her may have some more, and
he says, well, when you get out of the microwave first,
(17:31):
then you can have some more. That was the original line,
and Dickens crossed it out, so it won't hurt our
feelings if you pause us to go make some mold
wine and come back and listen to the rest. So, Josh,
(18:07):
let's say your little kid and you want to write
a letter to Santa Claus. Are you allowed to do so, sir?
And if so, when did that start? Well, it's pretty old.
Have you heard of this Twitter account tweets of old No,
they just take old like newspaper clippings and stuff and
(18:28):
tweet them. And so it's not supposed to be funny, No,
but it comes off as funny sometimes. Some of the
stuff these people said, we're funny, bizarre, random. But around
Christmas time they do kids letters to Santa like old
timey ones. There are a lot of kids who were
not just asking for stuff, they were also asking that
(18:48):
like their siblings got nothing, which is hilarious. I was
never like that, but apparently no, I wasn't either always
like my brother and sister. I was just I wanted
us all to have what we wanted right at the
very least. You realize that Santa wouldn't would frown on
that kind of avarice. You know, I was a good sharer,
I guess. Yeah. So. Um. Apparently though, as far as
(19:09):
the United Postal Services concerned, all of this started around ninetenwelve,
long time ago, when the they that's when they say
they started really receiving a noteworthy amount of letters for
Santa clause. And as we all know, Santa gets extraordinarily
busy around this time of year, so he can't sit
down and answer all these letters. So the Postal Service said,
(19:32):
maybe there's another idea. Yeah, Postmaster General Frank Hitchcock said,
you know what, why don't we write these kids back?
And I'm gonna authorize not just employees, but volunteers, regular citizens.
You and I could do this, Yeah, you can. You
just have to go to your local post office if
it's a participating post office, fill out a little personal info,
put your fingerprints down right, stand there for a mug shot,
(19:55):
and um, and you'll get some letters from children that
you can answer in Santa's behalf. Yes, it's called Operations Santa,
and it's a pretty neat thing to participate in. I've
never done it, but I might try and do it
this year. Um. They are now redacted obviously because they
want to protect the anonymity of these kids and their
families and the addresses, which is pretty smart move. I
(20:18):
think in two thousand six is when they started doing that. Um.
But yeah, you can write to kids from all over
the world, I guess, or at least all over the country. Uh,
it is voluntary. As a post office, you don't have
to do it, but if you live in a major
city there's bound to be a post office. It's participating. Yeah.
And um, the USPS says they'll take all charitable organizations, groups, families, friends, whoever.
(20:47):
Just come along and fill out your info. Yeah we
should have. We should do that one year for house
stuff works, okay, and get like the whole company to
sort of take part. I'd be neat and um. Since
it's territory reaches the new with Pole, the Canadian um
Postal Service maintains a postal code specifically for Santa Nice.
(21:07):
They use letters in their postal code, so Santa's is
H zero H zero H zero, which spells ho ho
ho nice ho ho ho. Alright, buddy, I'm glad you
(21:46):
stumbled upon this because I had never heard of it,
and it is now my favorite thing ever. We have
to thank Snopes for this one. Barbara Michelson is just
hats off to her. She's almost singlehandedly written in the
Snopes website. You know that. Yeah, man, Well, this is
the story of the Christmas Pants and it is true,
(22:07):
and um, basically it goes like this. Uh, there are
is a brother and a brother in law, Roy Collette,
and uh Larry Kunkle, great minnesotaan name sounds like a
Christmas villain name house, so uh in when did it start?
(22:27):
Nineteen sixty four, Larry Kunkle's mom gave him a pair
of Moleskin pants and he said, these aren't so good
in Minnesota because they freeze and get kind of stiff,
and I can't walk. I can't walk. So as a joke,
he gave them, regifted them the following year to his
brother in law, Roy, and this started what I think
is one of the best back and forth practical jokes ever. Yeah.
(22:49):
For more than twenty years they they would send them
back and forth and at first it was just kind
of like, ha, here they are again, here they are again. Well, eventually,
I think after the first couple of years, Um, it
was Larry Kunkle who took the pants, was it collect
(23:09):
He took the pants and roll them up and stuck
him in a three ft long, one inch diameter pipe
and then wrap that up and gave that to Larry
Kunkle and said, good luck, here's the pants. Yeah, and
so that obviously inspired Oh yeah, brother in law, Yeah,
I'm gonna one up you. And it became a game
of one upsmanship each year, and eventually, uh, there were
(23:32):
some rules. Uh, most notably, the pants could not be destroyed. Yes,
they had to. The game was over if the pants
were destroyed, they had to remain intact. What were the
other rules? There were some that they had to be
legal and moral methods. Supposedly they wanted to use junk
parts as much as possible, But I don't think that
rule panned out all the time, because they clearly spent
(23:54):
a lot of money over the years in tuning these
pants and various things. Let's let's talk about some of
these methods. Um. Like you said, it started out pretty
basic stuffing them in a pipe. Then I think the
following year wrapping them in wire and giving basically the
whole ideas make them super hard on the receiver to
(24:16):
get to write, so so he can't give them back
exactly because you would win. I guess if you're like,
I just can't get these pants exactly. Yeah, and that
he would have to keep the pants forever. Um, how
about this one one of them had them. I think
my favorite one was one of them had them put
in a Gremlin car and had the car compounded to
(24:39):
a you know when you compound a car to a
little time square. Yeah, the pants were inside it compacted Gremlin. Yeah, Gremlin. Um.
That was crushed into a three ft cube and it
weighed two thousand pounds and it was in the in
the glove compartment of the Gremlin when it was crushed. Yeah. Yeah,
that was a pretty good one. Uh. It got like
(25:01):
even bizarre. Uh. I guess Kunkle had the pants put
into its seventeen and a half foot long red rocket
ship filled with concrete that weighed six tons. It was
five ft in diameter, and the pants were put in
there somewhere inside in one of the fifteen concrete filled
(25:22):
canisters inside the rocket. Pretty good, not bad. One year,
Kunkle had a hard time getting the pants out of
an eight foot high tire two ft wide filled with
six thousand pounds of concrete with the smarmie note on
the outside have a good year, Yeah, terrible yeah um.
(25:43):
Another year Collette had to get them had to get
the pants out of a station wagon that was filled
with This is mind boggling to me, a hundred and
seventy generators that were all welded together with the pants
located somewhere in the middle, but you don't know where. No,
and Collette had to get in there, and I mean
(26:04):
these things were welded together because you and you couldn't
just like rip this apart, because if you wasted the pants,
you lost. So he managed to get it out of there. Five.
What was what toy was popular in uh, let's say
Rubik's cube. Rubik's cube. So Collette had an idea and
made a four ton Rubik's cube in five made of
(26:28):
concrete he had baked in a kiln and then covered
it with two thousand board feet of lumber. And the
pants were inside, and you had to solve the cube
and he did so because that came before the generator, right.
I love these dudes. So the end of the pants
came along in ninety nine and Collette apparently had a
(26:50):
buddy in Tennessee who ran a glass manufacturing company and said, hey,
you know that scrap class you have, while you melt
it down and let's encase the pants in it. Yeah,
And the friends said, okay, yeah, ten thousand pounds of
jagged glass, uh, and let's go drop it in his
front yard. The problem is the chunk of molten glass
(27:10):
broke the canister that had the pants in it and
just turned them, just disintegrated him. So the pants we're
putting to an urn. Instead, the ashes of the pants
are put into an urn and given to Kunkle. That year,
Collecte conceded defeat yea, along with an epithet that said, sorry,
old man, here lies the pants. An attempt to cast
(27:33):
the pants in glass brought about the demise of the
pants at last, And apparently Kunkle still has that urn.
And uh. These are two of my favorite dudes in
the world. Now, I can't imagine carrying on a joke
like this for that long. They must have worked on
this for a couple of months out of the year
at least. You know, they probably started on January one,
(27:54):
devising the next year. You know, this is great and
all true. Somebody should make a movie about that Christmas movie.
It's a new holiday classic. Hey, Chuck, you know how
(28:29):
people are like, don't you dare write Christmas as x mess?
People are very offended by that, They are very offended
by it. Well, it turns out it's not so offensive
to write Christmas as x mess. And if you do
write Christmas is x mess, you should pronounce it Xmas.
You should pronounce it Christmas. And there's pretty good reason why. Yes,
(28:49):
there is a good reason, because it isn't an x
and it is not meant to take the Christ out
of Christmas. Right, never was. And we have our friends
at the Straight Dope reaturing Cecil Adams to thank for
this one. That's right. What is it, Josh? Well, that
X is the Greek letter kai. That's right, c h
I and kai. When you see it uh spelled out
(29:12):
in a word, you're supposed to pronounce it the sound
like Christmas or christ that's christ. Yeah. So for a
very long time, I think, even before the Middle Ages,
that term or that X was used to abbreviate Christ.
That's right. It's not a new thing. No. So if
(29:32):
you if you write X and then m A S,
what you've just done is taken the abbreviation for Christ
and substituted it for the Christ and Christmas. So it's
still Christmas and there's still Christ in Christmas as far
as that X is concern. And that's the straight dope.
(30:18):
It's a chuck. We're gonna finish with a Christmas story,
that's right. I didn't realize this, but the guy who
wrote UM, the gold standard classic Wizard of Oz directed Porkies, right,
Frank um l Frank Baum. He also wrote a long
Christmas epic story called UM The Life and Adventures of
(30:42):
Santa Claus. Yeah. It was long, wouldn't it. Yeah? Very
I mean there's a book link thing. Yeah, but it
basically tells the story of Santa Claus. And we're going
to read When the World Grew Old. It was a
chapter from that, and basically Santa Claus has spent his
whole life. Is this a set up? Yeah, if you'l
if feel indult, course, So Santa Claus has he was
(31:05):
found in the woods as an orphan and raised by Ac,
the god of the woods um and he proved himself
to be Santa Claus, doing all the Santa claus E
things he's famous for. But now he's become an old
man with white hair and a white beard and huge
cheeks that are still jolly. But he's he's at his deathbed.
(31:27):
Oh man. And um Ac goes to the other immortals,
gods of the woods and the rivers and all of
that stuff, Kings of the gnomes and all people like that,
and gathers him and says, look, man, this guy. If
there's ever been a human being who's earned immortality, the
gift of immortality, it's this guy. He loves kids, he
(31:48):
makes toys for him every year. He's just a great humanitarian.
He created like the Christmas as we understand it. Now,
let's give him the mantle of immortality. So they talk
about it and debate back and forth, and they finally agree,
and they go to Santa Claus's deathbed and they bestow
him with immortality. And this picks up the next morning
(32:10):
when Santa wakes up after thinking the night before that
he's going to die when the world grew old. The
(32:33):
next morning, When Santa Claus opened his eyes and gazed
around the familiar room which he had feared he might
never see again, he was astonished to find his old
strength renewed, and to feel the red blood of perfect
health coursing through his veins. He sprang from his bed
and stood where the bright sunshine came in through his
window and flooded him with its merry, dancing rays. He
(32:54):
did not then understand that what had happened to restore
him the vigor of youth. But in spite of the
fact that his beard remained the color of snow, and
that wrinkles still lingered in the corners of his bright eyes,
Old Santa Claus felt as brisk and merry as a
boy of sixteen, and was soon whistling contentedly as he
busied himself fashioning new toys. Then at came to him
(33:17):
and told of the mantle of immortality and how Claws
had won it through his love for little children. It
made Old Santa look grave for a moment to think
he had been so favored, but it also made him
glad to realize that now he need never fear being
parted from his dear ones. At once he began making
preparations for making a remarkable assortment of pretty and amusing playthings,
(33:38):
and in larger quantities than ever before, For now that
he might always devote himself to this work, he decided
that no child in the world, poor or rich, should
hereafter go without a Christmas gift, if he could manage
to supply it. The world was new in the days
when dear old Santa Claus first began toy making, and
one by his loving deeds, the mantle of him tortality,
(34:01):
and the task of supplying cheering words, sympathy, and pretty
playthings to all the young of his race did not
seem a difficult undertaking at all. But every year more
and more children were born into the world, and these,
when they grew up, began spreading slowly all over the
face of the earth, seeking new homes, So that Santa
Claus found each year that his journeys must extend further
(34:23):
and further from the Laughing Valley, which, by the way,
is in the North Pole, and that packs of toys
must be made larger and ever larger. So at length
he took counsel with his fellow immortals, Larry King and
the others. How his work might keep pace with the
increasing number of children, that none might be neglected. And
the immortals were so greatly interested in his labors that
(34:44):
they gladly rendered him their assistance. Ak gave him his
man Kilter, the silent and swift, and the nook Prints
gave him Peter, who was more crooked and less surly
than any of his brothers. And the Ryle Prince gave
him Nuter, the sweetest temper rile ever known, And the
Fairy Queen gave him Whisk, that tiny, mischievous but lovable
(35:05):
fairy who knows today almost as many children as Santa
Claus himself. And Larry King gave him suspenders. With these
people to help make the toys and to keep his
house in order to look after the sledge and the harness,
Santa Claus found it much easier to prepare his yearly
load of gifts, and his day began to follow one
another smoothly and pleasantly. Yet after a few generations his
(35:26):
worries were renewed, for it was remarkable how the number
of people continue to grow, and how many more children
there were every year to be served. When the people
filled all the cities and lands of one country, they
wandered into another part of the world, and the men
cut down the trees and many of the great forests
that had been ruled by act, And with the wood
they built new cities. And where the forest had been
(35:47):
were fields of grains and herds of browsing cattle. You
might think the master woodsman would rebel at the loss
of his force, but not so. The wisdom of ac
was mighty and far seeing. The world was made are men,
said he to Santa Claus. And I have but guarded
the forests until men needed them for their use. I
am glad my strong trees can furnish shelter for men's
(36:09):
weak bodies and warm them through the cold winters. But
I hope they will not cut down all the trees,
For mankind needs the shelter of the woods in summer
as much as the warmth of blazing logs in winter.
And however crowded the world may grow, I do not
think men will ever come to Bersey, nor the great
black forests, nor to the wooded wilderness of Brass, unless
(36:30):
they seek their shades for pleasure, and not to destroy
their giant trees. By and by people made ships from
the tree trunks and crossed over oceans and built cities
and far lands. But the oceans made little difference to
the journeys of Santa Claus. His reindeer sped over the
waters as swiftly as over land, and his sledge headed
from east to west and followed in the wake of
the sun, so that as the earth rolled slowly over,
(36:53):
Santa Claus had all twenty four hours to encircle it
each Christmas Eve, and their speedy reindeer enjoy these wonderful
journeys more and more so year after year, in generation
after generation and century after century, the world grew older,
and the people became more numerous than the labors of
Santa Claus steadily increased. The fame of his good deeds
(37:14):
spread to every household where children dwelt, and all the
little ones loved him dearly, and the fathers and mothers
honored him for the happiness he had given them when
they too were young, and the aged grandsires and grand
doms remembered him with tender gratitude and blessed his name.
(37:36):
The end, well, not the end, the end of that chapter.
So that's it. That's our Christmas show. Chuck Christmas to you.
Merry Christmas, buddy. Happy Holidays to everyone out there. On Dasher,
on Dancer, on Donner, on Blitzen, we have comment and
Cupid and Cracking and the Cracking and Cathula that's right,
(38:01):
and Rudolph upfront. Happy holidays everybody. We'll see you next year.
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