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

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff you should know Frondhouse stuff Works dot com. Hey,
0:15
Speaker 1: and welcome to the Christmas Podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's
0:19
Speaker 1: Charles W. Schucker's Bryant and guest producer Noel is with
0:24
Speaker 1: us today. Yeah, we got it's Jerry Stocking though, hanging
0:27
Speaker 1: over by the fireplace, and I am glad you built
0:30
Speaker 1: that fire, my friend. It's a little hot in here.
0:33
Speaker 1: Gets me in the mood though, you know, sure Christmas spirit,
0:37
Speaker 1: the Christmas mood. I said, oh yeah, you can talk
0:40
Speaker 1: about the mood for that that too. Yeah, we have
0:44
Speaker 1: like glad tidings and good cheer and warmth and Christmas
0:48
Speaker 1: lights and color and sugar sprinkles and stuff like all
0:53
Speaker 1: over the place. It's our Christmas. I have to say,
0:55
Speaker 1: my friend, you really know how to set the mood
0:56
Speaker 1: in here. You really go all out. Thank you, thank you,
1:00
Speaker 1: well done. Glad you feel comfortable, Nold, do you feel comfortable? Also? Yes,
1:04
Speaker 1: he has a little um. He painted his beard white
1:09
Speaker 1: is pretending to be sand and mine is going white naturally. Yeah,
1:13
Speaker 1: I'm not going a beard because probably beats some great interest.
1:18
Speaker 1: I've made my bed, I'm gonna lie in it. Does
1:21
Speaker 1: that make sense sure, So, Chuck, I think we want
1:25
Speaker 1: to say welcomed everybody out there, and we hope that
1:29
Speaker 1: you're having a wonderful holiday season so far. So kick
1:32
Speaker 1: off your shoes, put on your slippers, make some We'll
1:37
Speaker 1: make yourself comfortable. You put on your comfy pants. There
1:40
Speaker 1: you go as we prepare for our two thousand fourteen
1:44
Speaker 1: Christmas extravagances. So, Chuck, uh, you have seen the great,
1:56
Speaker 1: great movie A Christmas Story. Not just one of my
2:00
Speaker 1: favorite Christmas movies, it's one of my favorite movies of
2:02
Speaker 1: all time. Yeah, John Hodgman has never seen that. Weird
2:06
Speaker 1: I thought so too, and disappointing. Yeah, he said he's
2:09
Speaker 1: not a fan of of Jean Shepherd. So I guess
2:13
Speaker 1: if you're not a fan of Jean Shepherd, you wouldn't
2:15
Speaker 1: like A Christmas Story. Yeah, that's this is tough to swallow.
2:19
Speaker 1: Like I'm having trouble swallowing right now, Hodgeman, stuck in
2:23
Speaker 1: your throat for everyone else out there in the world
2:26
Speaker 1: besides you, John, Um, A Christmas Story is a beloved
2:31
Speaker 1: holiday movie, and um, it's actually got kind of a
2:35
Speaker 1: cool little backstory to tell you the truth. That was
2:37
Speaker 1: the movie that wouldn't go away, it would not be overcome.
2:41
Speaker 1: That's right. It's the nineteen sixties. Bob Clark is a
2:46
Speaker 1: writer and director and he's driving a date around and
2:49
Speaker 1: he's flipping the radio around because his date was dull. Sure,
2:54
Speaker 1: and he comes across writer Jean Shepherd's recollections and stories.
2:58
Speaker 1: He's he's a audio storyteller, a humorist, a humorist exactly
3:03
Speaker 1: talking about growing up in Indiana in the thirties and forties.
3:07
Speaker 1: And he was smitten with it. And apparently, uh was
3:10
Speaker 1: so smitten that he just kept driving until the program
3:12
Speaker 1: was over and said, you just stay there and be quiet.
3:16
Speaker 1: I'm listening to this story on the radio. Okay, So yes,
3:19
Speaker 1: smitten is a good way to put it. Enthralled maybe, sure,
3:22
Speaker 1: But he decided right then and there, I'm going to
3:25
Speaker 1: bring Jean shepherd stories to the silver screen. That's right.
3:29
Speaker 1: It took him a little while though, because, as this
3:31
Speaker 1: article says, and we got this from a Christmas story
3:34
Speaker 1: house dot com. Um g R. Yeah, was just he
3:41
Speaker 1: was a journeyman director. He specialized in B movies. Yeah,
3:45
Speaker 1: he not many people know this. He made a movie
3:48
Speaker 1: called Silent Night, Evil Night. He made another Christmas movie. Yeah,
3:52
Speaker 1: and Silent Night, Deadly Night. Now this was called Black
3:55
Speaker 1: Christmas is one of those was released under several titles.
3:58
Speaker 1: Was it Verse Side Night, Deadly Night? It was Black
4:01
Speaker 1: Christmas or Silent Night, Evil Night, and then there was
4:04
Speaker 1: another title. And he also did a movie called moon
4:08
Speaker 1: Runners about Moonshine that Dukes of Hazzard was based on. Wow,
4:11
Speaker 1: this guy was all over the place. Yeah, he got
4:13
Speaker 1: a big fat settlement when they released that Dukes of
4:15
Speaker 1: Hazzard movie recently. Nice good for him, like eighteen million bucks.
4:19
Speaker 1: That's great. Yeah, So Bob Clark in the sixties becomes
4:23
Speaker 1: enthralled with Jean Shepherd and it wasn't until the early
4:26
Speaker 1: eighties that he got to make a Christmas story. And
4:28
Speaker 1: the whole reason he got to make a Christmas story
4:30
Speaker 1: is because he finally made a blockbuster movie known as
4:35
Speaker 1: Porky's Yep, a teen sex round comedy. Man. That movie
4:40
Speaker 1: was the most mysterious, enticing thing when I was a kid,
4:47
Speaker 1: because it was I was ten years old and it
4:50
Speaker 1: was supposedly just the dirtiest thing that had ever been made.
4:53
Speaker 1: I wasn't allowed to see it. I wasn't stay have
4:56
Speaker 1: not seen Porkies. You know, it's funny. Watch Porkies and
4:58
Speaker 1: you'll be like, this is pretty team. Yeah, like it's
5:01
Speaker 1: it's body. But it's really not like I thought. It
5:05
Speaker 1: was borderline pornography. That's that's what I took from it too.
5:09
Speaker 1: It's not at all so huge hit. Though it was
5:13
Speaker 1: an enormously yea at one time, for a brief time,
5:15
Speaker 1: it was the best. It was a top twenty five
5:18
Speaker 1: all time grossing movie in the best selling comedy of
5:20
Speaker 1: all time, Wow, but only for a brief window. I
5:23
Speaker 1: think Ghostbusters quickly dwarfed it. And Yeah, so the studios
5:29
Speaker 1: came back to Bob Clark and said, man, do that again.
5:32
Speaker 1: Make a Porky's too, He said, despite John Hodgman's wishes,
5:38
Speaker 1: I'm going to make another movie. First. It's called a
5:41
Speaker 1: Christmas Story, That's what we're gonna call it. I'm gonna
5:43
Speaker 1: base it on Jean Shepherd's stories, Um that we're collected
5:48
Speaker 1: into a book called and God we trust all others
5:50
Speaker 1: must pay cash. And they said, fine, just go do
5:54
Speaker 1: your movie or whatever. And he did. He made this movie.
5:57
Speaker 1: He scouted out um twenty cities, I believe, and finally
6:01
Speaker 1: settled on Cleveland, And one of the reasons he settled
6:04
Speaker 1: on Cleveland was because Jean Shepard grew up in uh Indiana,
6:08
Speaker 1: which is very near Cleveland, and Cleveland had a department
6:12
Speaker 1: store called Higbie's. And Higgbie's said, hey, man, we were
6:16
Speaker 1: around in the forties. Why don't you just go ahead
6:18
Speaker 1: and film some of your stuff in here? And he said,
6:21
Speaker 1: Cleveland it is. Yeah, it's still it's still had that
6:23
Speaker 1: old I mean they had addressed it, of course, but
6:25
Speaker 1: it's still had that old department store look, that classic look. Um.
6:29
Speaker 1: By the way, if you're ever in New York again,
6:32
Speaker 1: go to Macy's Herald Square and ride the wooden escalators, okay,
6:37
Speaker 1: and be prepared to be delighted. Oh really, it's just
6:40
Speaker 1: the coolest thing. Man. I didn't even know they existed,
6:42
Speaker 1: but there would the rails, the steps, the whole thing,
6:46
Speaker 1: the people on them, and they haven't redone them, you know,
6:49
Speaker 1: they're still like it's it's really pretty neat. It sound
6:52
Speaker 1: like the cutting edge new would elevators, No, but it
6:55
Speaker 1: feels like a Higgbie's. Wait, escalators are elevators. Escalators? Yeah,
7:00
Speaker 1: even cooler. It feels like you're at a Higbie's though
7:02
Speaker 1: when you're at macy Seral Square, because it's uh, it
7:04
Speaker 1: just has that old school department score field when you're
7:06
Speaker 1: on those things. Um. They didn't give him much budget
7:10
Speaker 1: for a Christmas story, No, and they didn't expect very
7:12
Speaker 1: much from it either. No. They gave him just about
7:16
Speaker 1: nine screens um the weekend before Thanksgiving, and it made
7:20
Speaker 1: a little bit of money a couple of million, then
7:22
Speaker 1: about four million the next weekend, like six million in
7:24
Speaker 1: its first two weekends. Yeah, and they but they didn't
7:27
Speaker 1: have a big plan to roll it out because they
7:29
Speaker 1: didn't count on it being much, so they didn't roll
7:31
Speaker 1: it out. Grossed about nineteen mill, which of course made
7:34
Speaker 1: the money back and then some. So it was a
7:36
Speaker 1: moderate success as far as uh making the suits happy.
7:40
Speaker 1: But it wasn't some runaway hit until cable TV. Well
7:45
Speaker 1: yeah that's just cable but video as well. Yeah. So MGM,
7:49
Speaker 1: like you said, didn't think too much of this movie,
7:51
Speaker 1: and they actually they sold it to Warner Brothers. They
7:53
Speaker 1: tossed it into a pot of fifty movies that Warner
7:57
Speaker 1: Brothers bought. And after Warner Brothers audit, I guess they
8:00
Speaker 1: had to do with Turner because T n T and
8:04
Speaker 1: had a stunt on Christmas Eve where they ran it
8:08
Speaker 1: twelve times for twenty four hours. They played a Christmas
8:11
Speaker 1: Story back to back and they just, I guess, did
8:15
Speaker 1: it to fill some airtime, and it was just a
8:18
Speaker 1: huge hit. People started clamoring for it, and every year,
8:21
Speaker 1: I believe since, they've had a Christmas Story marathon now
8:25
Speaker 1: on TBS in at some point during the day, Uh
8:29
Speaker 1: forty million people tune in to watch at least parts
8:32
Speaker 1: of this movie. And for good reason. Do you want
8:34
Speaker 1: to know why? Because The Christmas Story is one of
8:37
Speaker 1: the greatest movies ever made. It's really pretty great. So
8:40
Speaker 1: you want to hear some cool facts about a Christmas Story? Uh? Yeah?
8:44
Speaker 1: How about the fact that the part of the Father
8:47
Speaker 1: that was ultimately played by Darren McGavin was originally offered
8:51
Speaker 1: to Jack Nicholson And I shudder at the thought. Can
8:54
Speaker 1: you imagine Nicholson in that movie? Actually I could, I can't.
8:58
Speaker 1: I think you would have been pretty great. But Darren
9:00
Speaker 1: McGavin is the greatest. Um. I was actually lucky enough
9:04
Speaker 1: to go to a screening the Alex Theater in Glendale, California,
9:09
Speaker 1: over Christmas and Bob Clark did a Q and A
9:12
Speaker 1: and Darren McGavin was there right before he died and
9:15
Speaker 1: was old and frail and he got a standing ovation
9:18
Speaker 1: and his wife like helped him stand up, and I
9:21
Speaker 1: think he just wasn't clear to him and she was like,
9:23
Speaker 1: this is for you, this is for you. It was
9:25
Speaker 1: just the sweetest, sweetest moment. One of my best Christmas
9:28
Speaker 1: moments ever. That's a Christmas moment. It was great. Um
9:31
Speaker 1: Jean Shepard he did all the voiceover narration, yeah as Ralphie, right, yeah,
9:37
Speaker 1: it's grown up Ralphie. Yeah. But he also made a cameo.
9:40
Speaker 1: So the old man who says, that's the back of
9:43
Speaker 1: the line where the line starts there, that was Jean Shepard,
9:48
Speaker 1: that was. And Bob Clark also had a cameo as
9:51
Speaker 1: Swede the h the neighbor with a Southern accent who
9:54
Speaker 1: stops spy to marvel at the infamous leg lamp. He goes, oh,
9:58
Speaker 1: you won an award age reward. That was the director.
10:02
Speaker 1: And the kid Grover Dill right, the little toady. Yeah,
10:06
Speaker 1: he actually went on to become the two dollar paper
10:10
Speaker 1: boy in Better Off Dead. I had no idea two dollars.
10:14
Speaker 1: I didn't ask for a dime two dollars. Yeah, and
10:18
Speaker 1: apparently those are the only couple of three movies that
10:21
Speaker 1: he was ever in. Ya know, it's an odd name. Um.
10:28
Speaker 1: Speaking of leg lamp, uh, it was based on a
10:32
Speaker 1: real lamp. UM a knee high logo that was eliminated
10:36
Speaker 1: and the style was of course um. Ruben Freed, the
10:39
Speaker 1: production designer, created the leg lamp. And I wonder if
10:43
Speaker 1: he has any claim on that thing, because those things
10:46
Speaker 1: were sold like crazy now, little ones, big ones, like
10:49
Speaker 1: key chains. I wonder who's making that dough. Hopefully it's
10:53
Speaker 1: going to him. I doubt it. Um probably going to
10:56
Speaker 1: MGM or Warner Brothers. Probably. Yeah, it's not very Christmas Eve.
11:03
Speaker 1: You can pinpoint, even though it's never said, you can
11:06
Speaker 1: pinpoint the month and year when all this action takes
11:09
Speaker 1: place thanks to the little or Finani decoder pin that
11:13
Speaker 1: Ralphie gets. The one he gets is the speed Omatic model,
11:17
Speaker 1: which is the one that was released in nineteen forty.
11:20
Speaker 1: So a Christmas Story takes place in December of nineteen forty. Uh.
11:26
Speaker 1: Many of the exteriors are filmed in Toronto, Toronto except
11:30
Speaker 1: the house the houses in Cleveland, and it's now a museum.
11:33
Speaker 1: I've been there, so you you have. Oh yeah, okay,
11:37
Speaker 1: do you recommend it. I've talked about it before. It's
11:40
Speaker 1: the best thing ever. You go and there's the the
11:43
Speaker 1: original house and you can walk through that's still dressed
11:45
Speaker 1: like the movie, and then down the street that someone
11:49
Speaker 1: bought another house and has a museum um of artifacts
11:52
Speaker 1: and things from the movie. And it's totally a great time.
11:56
Speaker 1: If you're ever in the Cleveland area around Christmas, do it. Okay,
12:00
Speaker 1: it's gonna be busy, but don't go in the summer.
12:02
Speaker 1: You know, you really gotta get that Christmas feeling. But um,
12:07
Speaker 1: a lot of the exteriors are filmed in Toronto because
12:09
Speaker 1: in one scene you can even see one of their
12:11
Speaker 1: red trolley cars in the background, which Cleveland does not have.
12:15
Speaker 1: Oh or Indiana as far as I know. So, Chuck,
12:20
Speaker 1: that's a Christmas story. Huh yeah, I mean, I guess
12:24
Speaker 1: we should say that there were some deleted scenes that
12:26
Speaker 1: never made it, you know, the black bart scene. He
12:29
Speaker 1: shot several of those, including one with Flash Gordon and
12:32
Speaker 1: at the Christmas Story House. You can see clips of
12:34
Speaker 1: those and some of the artifacts and uh, Ralphie, you know,
12:37
Speaker 1: went on to be a big shot producer, Peter. Of
12:42
Speaker 1: all those a lot of those Vince Vaughn um favro
12:45
Speaker 1: movies he's attached to. And uh, I think Vince Vaughn
12:49
Speaker 1: still calls him Ralphie sometimes just to get under his skin.
12:51
Speaker 1: I could see that. Of course, Chuck. It wouldn't be
13:13
Speaker 1: one of our Christmas specials if we didn't talk about
13:16
Speaker 1: booze offer an alcoholic recipe, right exactly. So this year
13:21
Speaker 1: we're doing mold wine. Mold wine is old. Actually. They
13:26
Speaker 1: think that it was developed too keep old wine from spoiling,
13:32
Speaker 1: or when it was about to spoil, to use it
13:34
Speaker 1: up really quick. Yeah, and it gained a lot of
13:37
Speaker 1: notoriety when Charles Dickens put it in a Christmas story.
13:40
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, Christmas, Carol. I still got that on the brain.
13:43
Speaker 1: And uh, that's a largely where it's association with the
13:47
Speaker 1: holidays comes in. I think, sure, I don't like it,
13:50
Speaker 1: do you? Yeah, I don't. I can't do it. They
13:54
Speaker 1: sell it on the streets of Budapest and it is
13:57
Speaker 1: wonderful stuff. Yeah, I tried it. I just I don't
14:00
Speaker 1: like the hotness and I don't like those spices. Just
14:05
Speaker 1: not my thing. You would not like mold wine. But
14:07
Speaker 1: I love wine, yeah, but not mold No. You know,
14:10
Speaker 1: I read this article from like nineteen forty, I think
14:14
Speaker 1: of the New Yorker. It was it's about this bar,
14:17
Speaker 1: the oldest bar in New York, and it was talking
14:19
Speaker 1: about how some of the old timers like would take
14:21
Speaker 1: their mug's vele and put them next to the potbellied
14:24
Speaker 1: stove and heat it up to like coffee temperature and
14:27
Speaker 1: drink their beer like that. So I've never heard of
14:30
Speaker 1: I think back then they were like, I'm cold and
14:32
Speaker 1: I want to be drunk. Yeah, so let's just do
14:35
Speaker 1: those two things, yes, which is what mold wine was too.
14:39
Speaker 1: So with mold wine, you typically want to use like
14:42
Speaker 1: a dry red like maybe a Sara or a z infandel,
14:46
Speaker 1: which I didn't realize we're dry, yeah, okay. Um. You
14:50
Speaker 1: want to add a little citrus, usually fort to fortify
14:53
Speaker 1: it with something like brandy. Um. Other people use port
14:58
Speaker 1: sometimes sport exactly. Uh. And then spices, despite Chuck's tastes, yeah,
15:04
Speaker 1: clove and cinnamon, ginger, nutbag the traditional Christmas drink spices.
15:09
Speaker 1: Uh that I just cloth. I think it might be
15:11
Speaker 1: what ruins it for me. Oh really maybe, and it's
15:16
Speaker 1: just not my thing. So I don't like sancree either. Yeah,
15:19
Speaker 1: I could see that you wouldn't um some spices or
15:23
Speaker 1: some recipes say you might want to sweeten this a
15:26
Speaker 1: little bit, so that's some honey, add some sugar, do
15:29
Speaker 1: something like that. And that's the beauty of muld wine.
15:32
Speaker 1: It's like you can just kind of start with some
15:34
Speaker 1: wine and add a little bit here there until you
15:36
Speaker 1: come up with your own concoction. But we'll give you
15:39
Speaker 1: like a basic muld wine recipe. I think we got
15:41
Speaker 1: it from grape dot com. It sounds like a good
15:44
Speaker 1: place to get a muld wine recipe. Yeah, it sounds
15:47
Speaker 1: like authoritative. So you want to take one bottle dry
15:50
Speaker 1: red wine. I'm guessing a seven fifty Yeah, probably, you
15:55
Speaker 1: want six ounces of brandy. That's a lot of brandy.
15:58
Speaker 1: That is a lot of brandy. Uh So it's getting
16:00
Speaker 1: just better and better by the second. This recipe is
16:03
Speaker 1: one orange slice in the rounds, two lemons sliced into rounds,
16:08
Speaker 1: half a cup of honey. Yeah, three cinnamon sticks refer
16:12
Speaker 1: to our cinnamon episode. Yeah, six whole cloves, one teaspoon
16:16
Speaker 1: fresh ground nutmeg, that's delicious. Uh, and then maybe some
16:20
Speaker 1: ginger if you want. You combine everything in a large sauce.
16:23
Speaker 1: Pain And this is very important, Chuck. You heat it slowly.
16:27
Speaker 1: You don't let it boil. You don't just crank that
16:30
Speaker 1: heat up the high. No, And as it starts to
16:33
Speaker 1: steam a little bit, it's done. You serve in mugs
16:37
Speaker 1: and enjoy. That's right. And I was reading this a
16:40
Speaker 1: bit you sent about the Charles Dickens pub in Worth
16:42
Speaker 1: in England, and they served mulled wine by the glass
16:45
Speaker 1: and it sounded like a really neat thing until I
16:48
Speaker 1: saw that they use a microwave to heat it up. Yeah,
16:50
Speaker 1: it's like man. They take six ounces of Spanish red
16:54
Speaker 1: wine at one ounce of berry cordial, which I'm curious
16:58
Speaker 1: what berry, Yeah, elderberry. I don't know, English berry, I
17:04
Speaker 1: guess um. And they pour it over an orange slice
17:07
Speaker 1: with a cinnamon stick in two cloves. And then like
17:10
Speaker 1: you said, they put the glass in the biker and
17:13
Speaker 1: they ruin the holy experience. The traditional dickensie and microwave, Oh,
17:19
Speaker 1: featured so prominently in Oliver Twist. But hey, at least
17:22
Speaker 1: they're trying. Yeah, and you can try to less know
17:25
Speaker 1: how your mould wine recipe. I think in Oliver Twists,
17:27
Speaker 1: you're right. They placed her may have some more, and
17:28
Speaker 1: he says, well, when you get out of the microwave first,
17:31
Speaker 1: then you can have some more. That was the original line,
17:33
Speaker 1: and Dickens crossed it out, so it won't hurt our
17:37
Speaker 1: feelings if you pause us to go make some mold
17:39
Speaker 1: wine and come back and listen to the rest. So, Josh,
18:07
Speaker 1: let's say your little kid and you want to write
18:12
Speaker 1: a letter to Santa Claus. Are you allowed to do so, sir?
18:16
Speaker 1: And if so, when did that start? Well, it's pretty old.
18:21
Speaker 1: Have you heard of this Twitter account tweets of old No,
18:25
Speaker 1: they just take old like newspaper clippings and stuff and
18:28
Speaker 1: tweet them. And so it's not supposed to be funny, No,
18:32
Speaker 1: but it comes off as funny sometimes. Some of the
18:34
Speaker 1: stuff these people said, we're funny, bizarre, random. But around
18:38
Speaker 1: Christmas time they do kids letters to Santa like old
18:42
Speaker 1: timey ones. There are a lot of kids who were
18:44
Speaker 1: not just asking for stuff, they were also asking that
18:48
Speaker 1: like their siblings got nothing, which is hilarious. I was
18:52
Speaker 1: never like that, but apparently no, I wasn't either always
18:55
Speaker 1: like my brother and sister. I was just I wanted
18:57
Speaker 1: us all to have what we wanted right at the
19:00
Speaker 1: very least. You realize that Santa wouldn't would frown on
19:03
Speaker 1: that kind of avarice. You know, I was a good sharer,
19:06
Speaker 1: I guess. Yeah. So. Um. Apparently though, as far as
19:09
Speaker 1: the United Postal Services concerned, all of this started around ninetenwelve,
19:15
Speaker 1: long time ago, when the they that's when they say
19:18
Speaker 1: they started really receiving a noteworthy amount of letters for
19:22
Speaker 1: Santa clause. And as we all know, Santa gets extraordinarily
19:26
Speaker 1: busy around this time of year, so he can't sit
19:29
Speaker 1: down and answer all these letters. So the Postal Service said,
19:32
Speaker 1: maybe there's another idea. Yeah, Postmaster General Frank Hitchcock said,
19:36
Speaker 1: you know what, why don't we write these kids back?
19:38
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna authorize not just employees, but volunteers, regular citizens.
19:43
Speaker 1: You and I could do this, Yeah, you can. You
19:45
Speaker 1: just have to go to your local post office if
19:47
Speaker 1: it's a participating post office, fill out a little personal info,
19:51
Speaker 1: put your fingerprints down right, stand there for a mug shot,
19:55
Speaker 1: and um, and you'll get some letters from children that
19:59
Speaker 1: you can answer in Santa's behalf. Yes, it's called Operations Santa,
20:03
Speaker 1: and it's a pretty neat thing to participate in. I've
20:05
Speaker 1: never done it, but I might try and do it
20:07
Speaker 1: this year. Um. They are now redacted obviously because they
20:12
Speaker 1: want to protect the anonymity of these kids and their
20:15
Speaker 1: families and the addresses, which is pretty smart move. I
20:18
Speaker 1: think in two thousand six is when they started doing that. Um.
20:22
Speaker 1: But yeah, you can write to kids from all over
20:25
Speaker 1: the world, I guess, or at least all over the country. Uh,
20:29
Speaker 1: it is voluntary. As a post office, you don't have
20:32
Speaker 1: to do it, but if you live in a major
20:34
Speaker 1: city there's bound to be a post office. It's participating. Yeah.
20:38
Speaker 1: And um, the USPS says they'll take all charitable organizations, groups, families, friends, whoever.
20:47
Speaker 1: Just come along and fill out your info. Yeah we
20:49
Speaker 1: should have. We should do that one year for house
20:51
Speaker 1: stuff works, okay, and get like the whole company to
20:54
Speaker 1: sort of take part. I'd be neat and um. Since
20:58
Speaker 1: it's territory reaches the new with Pole, the Canadian um
21:03
Speaker 1: Postal Service maintains a postal code specifically for Santa Nice.
21:07
Speaker 1: They use letters in their postal code, so Santa's is
21:10
Speaker 1: H zero H zero H zero, which spells ho ho
21:14
Speaker 1: ho nice ho ho ho. Alright, buddy, I'm glad you
21:46
Speaker 1: stumbled upon this because I had never heard of it,
21:49
Speaker 1: and it is now my favorite thing ever. We have
21:53
Speaker 1: to thank Snopes for this one. Barbara Michelson is just
21:56
Speaker 1: hats off to her. She's almost singlehandedly written in the
22:00
Speaker 1: Snopes website. You know that. Yeah, man, Well, this is
22:04
Speaker 1: the story of the Christmas Pants and it is true,
22:07
Speaker 1: and um, basically it goes like this. Uh, there are
22:12
Speaker 1: is a brother and a brother in law, Roy Collette,
22:15
Speaker 1: and uh Larry Kunkle, great minnesotaan name sounds like a
22:20
Speaker 1: Christmas villain name house, so uh in when did it start?
22:27
Speaker 1: Nineteen sixty four, Larry Kunkle's mom gave him a pair
22:30
Speaker 1: of Moleskin pants and he said, these aren't so good
22:33
Speaker 1: in Minnesota because they freeze and get kind of stiff,
22:35
Speaker 1: and I can't walk. I can't walk. So as a joke,
22:38
Speaker 1: he gave them, regifted them the following year to his
22:41
Speaker 1: brother in law, Roy, and this started what I think
22:46
Speaker 1: is one of the best back and forth practical jokes ever. Yeah.
22:49
Speaker 1: For more than twenty years they they would send them
22:53
Speaker 1: back and forth and at first it was just kind
22:55
Speaker 1: of like, ha, here they are again, here they are again. Well, eventually,
23:00
Speaker 1: I think after the first couple of years, Um, it
23:04
Speaker 1: was Larry Kunkle who took the pants, was it collect
23:09
Speaker 1: He took the pants and roll them up and stuck
23:12
Speaker 1: him in a three ft long, one inch diameter pipe
23:16
Speaker 1: and then wrap that up and gave that to Larry
23:18
Speaker 1: Kunkle and said, good luck, here's the pants. Yeah, and
23:21
Speaker 1: so that obviously inspired Oh yeah, brother in law, Yeah,
23:25
Speaker 1: I'm gonna one up you. And it became a game
23:27
Speaker 1: of one upsmanship each year, and eventually, uh, there were
23:32
Speaker 1: some rules. Uh, most notably, the pants could not be destroyed. Yes,
23:37
Speaker 1: they had to. The game was over if the pants
23:39
Speaker 1: were destroyed, they had to remain intact. What were the
23:41
Speaker 1: other rules? There were some that they had to be
23:44
Speaker 1: legal and moral methods. Supposedly they wanted to use junk
23:49
Speaker 1: parts as much as possible, But I don't think that
23:52
Speaker 1: rule panned out all the time, because they clearly spent
23:54
Speaker 1: a lot of money over the years in tuning these
23:58
Speaker 1: pants and various things. Let's let's talk about some of
24:01
Speaker 1: these methods. Um. Like you said, it started out pretty
24:06
Speaker 1: basic stuffing them in a pipe. Then I think the
24:08
Speaker 1: following year wrapping them in wire and giving basically the
24:12
Speaker 1: whole ideas make them super hard on the receiver to
24:16
Speaker 1: get to write, so so he can't give them back
24:19
Speaker 1: exactly because you would win. I guess if you're like,
24:22
Speaker 1: I just can't get these pants exactly. Yeah, and that
24:25
Speaker 1: he would have to keep the pants forever. Um, how
24:28
Speaker 1: about this one one of them had them. I think
24:32
Speaker 1: my favorite one was one of them had them put
24:35
Speaker 1: in a Gremlin car and had the car compounded to
24:39
Speaker 1: a you know when you compound a car to a
24:41
Speaker 1: little time square. Yeah, the pants were inside it compacted Gremlin. Yeah, Gremlin. Um.
24:48
Speaker 1: That was crushed into a three ft cube and it
24:52
Speaker 1: weighed two thousand pounds and it was in the in
24:55
Speaker 1: the glove compartment of the Gremlin when it was crushed. Yeah. Yeah,
24:58
Speaker 1: that was a pretty good one. Uh. It got like
25:01
Speaker 1: even bizarre. Uh. I guess Kunkle had the pants put
25:06
Speaker 1: into its seventeen and a half foot long red rocket
25:09
Speaker 1: ship filled with concrete that weighed six tons. It was
25:14
Speaker 1: five ft in diameter, and the pants were put in
25:17
Speaker 1: there somewhere inside in one of the fifteen concrete filled
25:22
Speaker 1: canisters inside the rocket. Pretty good, not bad. One year,
25:29
Speaker 1: Kunkle had a hard time getting the pants out of
25:31
Speaker 1: an eight foot high tire two ft wide filled with
25:35
Speaker 1: six thousand pounds of concrete with the smarmie note on
25:39
Speaker 1: the outside have a good year, Yeah, terrible yeah um.
25:43
Speaker 1: Another year Collette had to get them had to get
25:49
Speaker 1: the pants out of a station wagon that was filled
25:51
Speaker 1: with This is mind boggling to me, a hundred and
25:54
Speaker 1: seventy generators that were all welded together with the pants
25:58
Speaker 1: located somewhere in the middle, but you don't know where. No,
26:01
Speaker 1: and Collette had to get in there, and I mean
26:04
Speaker 1: these things were welded together because you and you couldn't
26:06
Speaker 1: just like rip this apart, because if you wasted the pants,
26:10
Speaker 1: you lost. So he managed to get it out of there. Five.
26:16
Speaker 1: What was what toy was popular in uh, let's say
26:19
Speaker 1: Rubik's cube. Rubik's cube. So Collette had an idea and
26:24
Speaker 1: made a four ton Rubik's cube in five made of
26:28
Speaker 1: concrete he had baked in a kiln and then covered
26:31
Speaker 1: it with two thousand board feet of lumber. And the
26:35
Speaker 1: pants were inside, and you had to solve the cube
26:39
Speaker 1: and he did so because that came before the generator, right.
26:44
Speaker 1: I love these dudes. So the end of the pants
26:46
Speaker 1: came along in ninety nine and Collette apparently had a
26:50
Speaker 1: buddy in Tennessee who ran a glass manufacturing company and said, hey,
26:54
Speaker 1: you know that scrap class you have, while you melt
26:57
Speaker 1: it down and let's encase the pants in it. Yeah,
27:00
Speaker 1: And the friends said, okay, yeah, ten thousand pounds of
27:03
Speaker 1: jagged glass, uh, and let's go drop it in his
27:06
Speaker 1: front yard. The problem is the chunk of molten glass
27:10
Speaker 1: broke the canister that had the pants in it and
27:14
Speaker 1: just turned them, just disintegrated him. So the pants we're
27:18
Speaker 1: putting to an urn. Instead, the ashes of the pants
27:21
Speaker 1: are put into an urn and given to Kunkle. That year,
27:25
Speaker 1: Collecte conceded defeat yea, along with an epithet that said, sorry,
27:29
Speaker 1: old man, here lies the pants. An attempt to cast
27:33
Speaker 1: the pants in glass brought about the demise of the
27:36
Speaker 1: pants at last, And apparently Kunkle still has that urn.
27:40
Speaker 1: And uh. These are two of my favorite dudes in
27:43
Speaker 1: the world. Now, I can't imagine carrying on a joke
27:46
Speaker 1: like this for that long. They must have worked on
27:49
Speaker 1: this for a couple of months out of the year
27:50
Speaker 1: at least. You know, they probably started on January one,
27:54
Speaker 1: devising the next year. You know, this is great and
27:58
Speaker 1: all true. Somebody should make a movie about that Christmas movie.
28:04
Speaker 1: It's a new holiday classic. Hey, Chuck, you know how
28:29
Speaker 1: people are like, don't you dare write Christmas as x mess?
28:34
Speaker 1: People are very offended by that, They are very offended
28:36
Speaker 1: by it. Well, it turns out it's not so offensive
28:39
Speaker 1: to write Christmas as x mess. And if you do
28:42
Speaker 1: write Christmas is x mess, you should pronounce it Xmas.
28:46
Speaker 1: You should pronounce it Christmas. And there's pretty good reason why. Yes,
28:49
Speaker 1: there is a good reason, because it isn't an x
28:53
Speaker 1: and it is not meant to take the Christ out
28:55
Speaker 1: of Christmas. Right, never was. And we have our friends
28:58
Speaker 1: at the Straight Dope reaturing Cecil Adams to thank for
29:01
Speaker 1: this one. That's right. What is it, Josh? Well, that
29:04
Speaker 1: X is the Greek letter kai. That's right, c h
29:08
Speaker 1: I and kai. When you see it uh spelled out
29:12
Speaker 1: in a word, you're supposed to pronounce it the sound
29:16
Speaker 1: like Christmas or christ that's christ. Yeah. So for a
29:21
Speaker 1: very long time, I think, even before the Middle Ages,
29:25
Speaker 1: that term or that X was used to abbreviate Christ.
29:30
Speaker 1: That's right. It's not a new thing. No. So if
29:32
Speaker 1: you if you write X and then m A S,
29:36
Speaker 1: what you've just done is taken the abbreviation for Christ
29:39
Speaker 1: and substituted it for the Christ and Christmas. So it's
29:42
Speaker 1: still Christmas and there's still Christ in Christmas as far
29:47
Speaker 1: as that X is concern. And that's the straight dope.
30:18
Speaker 1: It's a chuck. We're gonna finish with a Christmas story,
30:24
Speaker 1: that's right. I didn't realize this, but the guy who
30:26
Speaker 1: wrote UM, the gold standard classic Wizard of Oz directed Porkies, right,
30:33
Speaker 1: Frank um l Frank Baum. He also wrote a long
30:37
Speaker 1: Christmas epic story called UM The Life and Adventures of
30:42
Speaker 1: Santa Claus. Yeah. It was long, wouldn't it. Yeah? Very
30:45
Speaker 1: I mean there's a book link thing. Yeah, but it
30:47
Speaker 1: basically tells the story of Santa Claus. And we're going
30:52
Speaker 1: to read When the World Grew Old. It was a
30:55
Speaker 1: chapter from that, and basically Santa Claus has spent his
30:59
Speaker 1: whole life. Is this a set up? Yeah, if you'l
31:02
Speaker 1: if feel indult, course, So Santa Claus has he was
31:05
Speaker 1: found in the woods as an orphan and raised by Ac,
31:09
Speaker 1: the god of the woods um and he proved himself
31:13
Speaker 1: to be Santa Claus, doing all the Santa claus E
31:15
Speaker 1: things he's famous for. But now he's become an old
31:18
Speaker 1: man with white hair and a white beard and huge
31:22
Speaker 1: cheeks that are still jolly. But he's he's at his deathbed.
31:27
Speaker 1: Oh man. And um Ac goes to the other immortals,
31:31
Speaker 1: gods of the woods and the rivers and all of
31:34
Speaker 1: that stuff, Kings of the gnomes and all people like that,
31:38
Speaker 1: and gathers him and says, look, man, this guy. If
31:41
Speaker 1: there's ever been a human being who's earned immortality, the
31:45
Speaker 1: gift of immortality, it's this guy. He loves kids, he
31:48
Speaker 1: makes toys for him every year. He's just a great humanitarian.
31:53
Speaker 1: He created like the Christmas as we understand it. Now,
31:57
Speaker 1: let's give him the mantle of immortality. So they talk
32:00
Speaker 1: about it and debate back and forth, and they finally agree,
32:02
Speaker 1: and they go to Santa Claus's deathbed and they bestow
32:05
Speaker 1: him with immortality. And this picks up the next morning
32:10
Speaker 1: when Santa wakes up after thinking the night before that
32:14
Speaker 1: he's going to die when the world grew old. The
32:33
Speaker 1: next morning, When Santa Claus opened his eyes and gazed
32:36
Speaker 1: around the familiar room which he had feared he might
32:38
Speaker 1: never see again, he was astonished to find his old
32:41
Speaker 1: strength renewed, and to feel the red blood of perfect
32:44
Speaker 1: health coursing through his veins. He sprang from his bed
32:48
Speaker 1: and stood where the bright sunshine came in through his
32:50
Speaker 1: window and flooded him with its merry, dancing rays. He
32:54
Speaker 1: did not then understand that what had happened to restore
32:57
Speaker 1: him the vigor of youth. But in spite of the
32:59
Speaker 1: fact that his beard remained the color of snow, and
33:02
Speaker 1: that wrinkles still lingered in the corners of his bright eyes,
33:05
Speaker 1: Old Santa Claus felt as brisk and merry as a
33:08
Speaker 1: boy of sixteen, and was soon whistling contentedly as he
33:12
Speaker 1: busied himself fashioning new toys. Then at came to him
33:17
Speaker 1: and told of the mantle of immortality and how Claws
33:20
Speaker 1: had won it through his love for little children. It
33:22
Speaker 1: made Old Santa look grave for a moment to think
33:25
Speaker 1: he had been so favored, but it also made him
33:27
Speaker 1: glad to realize that now he need never fear being
33:30
Speaker 1: parted from his dear ones. At once he began making
33:33
Speaker 1: preparations for making a remarkable assortment of pretty and amusing playthings,
33:38
Speaker 1: and in larger quantities than ever before, For now that
33:41
Speaker 1: he might always devote himself to this work, he decided
33:44
Speaker 1: that no child in the world, poor or rich, should
33:47
Speaker 1: hereafter go without a Christmas gift, if he could manage
33:51
Speaker 1: to supply it. The world was new in the days
33:54
Speaker 1: when dear old Santa Claus first began toy making, and
33:57
Speaker 1: one by his loving deeds, the mantle of him tortality,
34:01
Speaker 1: and the task of supplying cheering words, sympathy, and pretty
34:04
Speaker 1: playthings to all the young of his race did not
34:07
Speaker 1: seem a difficult undertaking at all. But every year more
34:10
Speaker 1: and more children were born into the world, and these,
34:13
Speaker 1: when they grew up, began spreading slowly all over the
34:16
Speaker 1: face of the earth, seeking new homes, So that Santa
34:20
Speaker 1: Claus found each year that his journeys must extend further
34:23
Speaker 1: and further from the Laughing Valley, which, by the way,
34:26
Speaker 1: is in the North Pole, and that packs of toys
34:28
Speaker 1: must be made larger and ever larger. So at length
34:32
Speaker 1: he took counsel with his fellow immortals, Larry King and
34:35
Speaker 1: the others. How his work might keep pace with the
34:38
Speaker 1: increasing number of children, that none might be neglected. And
34:42
Speaker 1: the immortals were so greatly interested in his labors that
34:44
Speaker 1: they gladly rendered him their assistance. Ak gave him his
34:48
Speaker 1: man Kilter, the silent and swift, and the nook Prints
34:52
Speaker 1: gave him Peter, who was more crooked and less surly
34:55
Speaker 1: than any of his brothers. And the Ryle Prince gave
34:57
Speaker 1: him Nuter, the sweetest temper rile ever known, And the
35:01
Speaker 1: Fairy Queen gave him Whisk, that tiny, mischievous but lovable
35:05
Speaker 1: fairy who knows today almost as many children as Santa
35:08
Speaker 1: Claus himself. And Larry King gave him suspenders. With these
35:11
Speaker 1: people to help make the toys and to keep his
35:13
Speaker 1: house in order to look after the sledge and the harness,
35:17
Speaker 1: Santa Claus found it much easier to prepare his yearly
35:19
Speaker 1: load of gifts, and his day began to follow one
35:22
Speaker 1: another smoothly and pleasantly. Yet after a few generations his
35:26
Speaker 1: worries were renewed, for it was remarkable how the number
35:29
Speaker 1: of people continue to grow, and how many more children
35:32
Speaker 1: there were every year to be served. When the people
35:34
Speaker 1: filled all the cities and lands of one country, they
35:37
Speaker 1: wandered into another part of the world, and the men
35:39
Speaker 1: cut down the trees and many of the great forests
35:42
Speaker 1: that had been ruled by act, And with the wood
35:44
Speaker 1: they built new cities. And where the forest had been
35:47
Speaker 1: were fields of grains and herds of browsing cattle. You
35:50
Speaker 1: might think the master woodsman would rebel at the loss
35:53
Speaker 1: of his force, but not so. The wisdom of ac
35:56
Speaker 1: was mighty and far seeing. The world was made are men,
36:00
Speaker 1: said he to Santa Claus. And I have but guarded
36:03
Speaker 1: the forests until men needed them for their use. I
36:06
Speaker 1: am glad my strong trees can furnish shelter for men's
36:09
Speaker 1: weak bodies and warm them through the cold winters. But
36:12
Speaker 1: I hope they will not cut down all the trees,
36:14
Speaker 1: For mankind needs the shelter of the woods in summer
36:17
Speaker 1: as much as the warmth of blazing logs in winter.
36:20
Speaker 1: And however crowded the world may grow, I do not
36:23
Speaker 1: think men will ever come to Bersey, nor the great
36:26
Speaker 1: black forests, nor to the wooded wilderness of Brass, unless
36:30
Speaker 1: they seek their shades for pleasure, and not to destroy
36:32
Speaker 1: their giant trees. By and by people made ships from
36:35
Speaker 1: the tree trunks and crossed over oceans and built cities
36:38
Speaker 1: and far lands. But the oceans made little difference to
36:41
Speaker 1: the journeys of Santa Claus. His reindeer sped over the
36:44
Speaker 1: waters as swiftly as over land, and his sledge headed
36:47
Speaker 1: from east to west and followed in the wake of
36:50
Speaker 1: the sun, so that as the earth rolled slowly over,
36:53
Speaker 1: Santa Claus had all twenty four hours to encircle it
36:56
Speaker 1: each Christmas Eve, and their speedy reindeer enjoy these wonderful
37:00
Speaker 1: journeys more and more so year after year, in generation
37:03
Speaker 1: after generation and century after century, the world grew older,
37:07
Speaker 1: and the people became more numerous than the labors of
37:10
Speaker 1: Santa Claus steadily increased. The fame of his good deeds
37:14
Speaker 1: spread to every household where children dwelt, and all the
37:17
Speaker 1: little ones loved him dearly, and the fathers and mothers
37:20
Speaker 1: honored him for the happiness he had given them when
37:22
Speaker 1: they too were young, and the aged grandsires and grand
37:26
Speaker 1: doms remembered him with tender gratitude and blessed his name.
37:36
Speaker 1: The end, well, not the end, the end of that chapter.
37:41
Speaker 1: So that's it. That's our Christmas show. Chuck Christmas to you.
37:45
Speaker 1: Merry Christmas, buddy. Happy Holidays to everyone out there. On Dasher,
37:50
Speaker 1: on Dancer, on Donner, on Blitzen, we have comment and
37:53
Speaker 1: Cupid and Cracking and the Cracking and Cathula that's right,
38:01
Speaker 1: and Rudolph upfront. Happy holidays everybody. We'll see you next year.
38:15
Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics, is
38:17
Speaker 1: it how stuff works dot com