PCPS LIGHT: Darth Vader In the Wisconsin Dells, Kurt Thomas on the Pommel Horse, and Pamela Anderson on Her Own Terms
Unknown Speaker 0:00
Hello and welcome to another light and refreshing episode of PCPs Lite. These are our hiatus episodes that we're bringing to you while we're researching and recording and preparing the next season of episodes. In the past, we've brought you encore episodes during this time when we're doing the heavy duty lifting of producing this podcast. And this time, we thought that we would create something smaller and more manageable for us, so that you still get a little bit of us in real time, but we don't have to do all that heavy lifting, like I just said,
Unknown Speaker 0:31
We're winging it. Yeah, totally winging it. And the funny thing is, like PCPs improv, yeah, it is, and it might be a complete failure.
Unknown Speaker 0:41
Maybe you'll all stop listening. We'll find out. And the funny thing is that this is what we thought when we started this, this podcast, this is what we thought we were going to be doing. We thought that we were so hilarious that we were just going to show up in front of the mics and everything that came out of our mouths was going to be so entertaining that you all show up.
Unknown Speaker 1:02
And we did that exactly one time. We were not funny, and that that I believe that footage still exists somewhere, that audio there, and it's sort of like the video my husband took when I gave birth to my second daughter. I've never watched it, because I just can't. I'm like, I remember enough of how horrible that experience was and how embarrassed I was, and I was yelling such profanities to the doctor and then apologizing, of course, but I was like, also just things I remember that I said, and I I cringe, I don't That's exactly how I feel about that lost first episode that never made it to air. And I remember, as we were recording it, I'm, you know, we're speaking words, and I'm thinking, this is a shit show.
Unknown Speaker 1:52
Not only did we just think we were gonna wing it, but we had, like, nicknames
Unknown Speaker 1:59
I can't see.
Unknown Speaker 2:02
Yeah, because I had
Unknown Speaker 2:05
just heard Randy van warmer on the radio when I had, like, pulled into the parking lot, so I couldn't wait to share my Randy van warmer kind of saying, yeah, yeah,
Unknown Speaker 2:17
it's so embarrassing. So suffice people the the 230 something episodes since then that we spend hours researching and writing, and then, yes, most of our conversations are organic conversations, but we always have something to fall back on. We have notes, and that all of a sudden, research, research, and that felt so much more comfortable to the three of us, and because we're writers at the end of the day, and so that just felt all of a sudden. That's when we, like, hit our groove. We're like, oh yes, we realized that we needed outlines. We needed to create something. So what you hear, like Michelle said, it's very organic, but we plan in advance what we want to bring to the mic, right? So that doesn't really make this whole little PCPs light experiment make a whole lot of sense, does it? But yet, particularly this episode, here we are, okay. So what makes it light? One of the reasons that, or one of the things that is going to make it light, is that these are going to be shorter and we are going to set a timer for each of these episodes, and when the timer goes off, we have to stop talking. That is the rule. Because what happens to us when we come to the table with all of our plan, all of our planning and our outlining and our notes and all the things that we want to say, is we will sit there for hours and we will just keep on talking. And that means more work for Carolyn in the editing booth.
Unknown Speaker 3:42
So in order to make this a true hiatus, we have to keep them short so that Carolyn can both edit these little episodes and come to the mic with all of the research and everything that we do while we're recording. So we're kind of multitasking right now. Okay, so right now I'm setting the timer and go, Okay, so here's what we're going to do today. This is really going to be a throwback for us, because it is going to be an example of what we thought each episode would be, and that was that I was going to come to the recording with a lunchbox, my Hardy Boys lunchbox. You can hear it a little bit. It's a little sonic experience. ASMR, yeah. ASMR, that's my that's the handle of my Hardy Boys lunchbox. In this Hardy Boys lunchbox is like maybe 100 little pieces of paper. I'm serious, and on each piece of paper is like a conversation starter. And we thought that I was going to draw a piece of paper out of this Hardy Boys lunchbox, and we would extemporaneously speak eloquently and hilariously about whatever is on that little piece of paper. So that did not work the first time. We're like, not funny, but we're because this is PCPs light. Thank you for being here again.
Unknown Speaker 4:58
All the reasons suck.
Unknown Speaker 5:00
Go, here we go, here we go, Okay, I'm gonna stop for just a second, yeah, only because if we put this video up, you might be mad if I don't tell you that you have something on your chin. I do. Oh, my God, I do.
Unknown Speaker 5:15
It's not a bugger. It was like fuzz or something. My my my French teacher in high school, she would tell she was hilarious, and she would tell stories in French. And on picture day, she comes in and she's talking in French about her picture, and she's, she's like, miming the whole thing. And then she points to her nose, and she goes, yeah, she's memeing. And she points to her and she goes on, boogra Monet Don, my name
Unknown Speaker 5:41
bugra.
Unknown Speaker 5:42
I'm picture day, she was saying that there was a booger on her nose in her school picture, and she only found out like after she got her school picture taken, then she went to the bathroom and she found um, boograh. Nobody told her, No,
Unknown Speaker 5:56
no, I hope they fixed that in the Edit booth before booth in the class pictures airbrushed it maybe or something, not back then. No, not then. That's for our children. You could pay extra to get the pimples out, airbrush the pimples. I did that for my kid. Yes, I'll pay $10 to pretend he doesn't have acne. Oh,
Unknown Speaker 6:18
but then, what does that say to your kid? Right? No, it's terrible. It says, Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 6:24
Okay, are we ready now for the Hardy Yes, your booger is gone. So here's my Hardy Boys lunchbox. I'm opening it right now. Here's more ASMR for you.
Unknown Speaker 6:34
There we go. I'm going to draw right now a topic out of the lunchbox.
Unknown Speaker 6:40
Oh, no. And if it's a bad one, then we're just gonna draw again. Okay. Oh, okay, I like that. Yeah, yeah. All right, here is the topic. Okay, what child star with curly ponytails died tragically of a drug overdose, even though Kristen's mom would tell her it was a car accident. Yeah, that was Aneesa. Aneesa Jones, is that how you say her name? She was Buffy on family affair. Buffy A, n, i s a, a, I think it was 2s and, okay, yes. Or Anissa, we're not sure how to say her name.
Unknown Speaker 7:12
There you go. That was the topic.
Unknown Speaker 7:15
Are you guys glad we didn't do this? Okay, here's another question for you, which million dollar selling toy was not manufactured in a factory, but picked up off the ground from beaches in Mexico. That's the pet rock,
Unknown Speaker 7:32
yes, and it only cost him. Fun fact, because we just shared this on social media. So when I was writing the caption, I did a little research, because I forgot that we talked about this in our 1976 episode. But that pet rock, he spent four cents a rock. And even though the pet rock was only really a money maker for about eight months, nine months, like months, he made millions of dollars because he could sell them for, like, I don't know, I forgot how much it was now, 599 or something. 499 Yeah, but he only spent four cents for each of them. The question is, how did he convince us that we needed one?
Unknown Speaker 8:10
Well, I wonder if the way he convinced us is the same way he was he. He thought of this idea when he was just sitting around with some friends, and they were all he was saying, like, I don't want a pet. I'd rather, like, I don't want to have to feed a pet or play with my pet or pick up after my pet. And so he's, like, it should just, we should just have a rock that can't, you know it's your pet, but you don't have to feed it or anything like that. So probably that was the marketing angle they went with. Like, this is a fun pet you don't really have to take or maybe that was, maybe that was the the pitch to parents like your kids begging for a pet, give him a pet rock. Maybe. So I don't think I had an actual pet rock, like I don't I remember having the branded pet rock. I doubt the branded one this, and I had to have it, you guys.
Unknown Speaker 9:01
But it's learning our mistake from the beginning. Okay, okay, okay, so I'm going through the lunch box right now and recall, remember that we did this before any of our episodes were ever released. Now we have 230 plus episodes. That's a lot of knowledge. There are things now that are considered common knowledge, both to us and to our listeners, but they weren't at the time. And so here's a question in here that is gonna, it's gonna make you mad. It's so simple, but five years ago, it wouldn't have been simple, right, right? What TV theme song, sung by John Sebastian, went to number one in 1976
Unknown Speaker 9:37
I would not have known that five years ago. First of all, we wouldn't have known or John probably was no exactly, and now we feel like he's our godfather. He's our uncle, but we know what song that is. We know that it's the theme from Welcome back Cotter, right? We love it. We, we it's an anthem of our generation. Yeah, yeah. Everybody who listens to this podcast.
Unknown Speaker 10:00
House knows who John Sebastian is. We're going to take credit for that, because we didn't even know who that was. I mean, maybe we kind of knew, like, oh yeah, loving spoonful. Is that who that is? But we It wasn't core curriculum right now. It's core curriculum. Remember, you thought, I thought You thought that, um, boom, boom, Washington saying it, or was that
Unknown Speaker 10:23
I thought bloom sang this song. Lawrence Hilton, Jacobs, yeah,
Unknown Speaker 10:30
Kristen, to to to remember five years ago when we were because it's we're coming up on our five year idea anniversary, the five year anniversary of when I had the phone call with you guys is the end of August, and also Carolyn's wedding anniversary, and that's, that's the five year mark of when this idea bloomed. And the reason, if you remember, is because we, we couldn't stop talking about all of these pop culture moments, but to think about how much we didn't know five years ago, how much we've educated ourselves on all of this research we've done for every episode, the tremendous amount of research this has been like school. I mean, we have taken this seriously, and we have studied as if we're going to be tested on it, which we kind of are when we get in front of the mic, right? We have to, we have to know our stuff, but it is kind of funny to go back and think of these types of questions that we didn't know. We didn't know who John Sebastian was right. I would not have known the answer to that question five years ago. We would have had to think pretty hard, and nor would our listeners, either. There's another question in here that, oh, like, this is the same kind of thing where we were digging up something from the past that was so long varied that people had not thought about it since 1976
Unknown Speaker 11:47
and we were going to bring it to them on a silver platter. But again, this is, this is core curriculum. This Russian gymnast had seven perfect scores and won three gold medals at the Montreal Summer Olympics, and had an entire musical theme named after her. Yes, I know. Right now I'm like, shaking my head, like, right, please, like, but, but at the time, we would have felt really like, important going, I think I know. I think I know who that was. Yeah, nobody had said the name Nadia Comaneci for 40 years before we were pulling it out of the hard press lunch box, probably her husband had Bart Connor.
Unknown Speaker 12:26
Love Bart Connor. That whole Okay, will you help me? You guys? What is the pommel horse move that is named after possibly Bart Connor, but maybe somebody else. It's the planet. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's um, oh my god, okay, but it's like, it's something like that.
Unknown Speaker 12:46
But I was gonna say the Hamill camel, but it's that
Unknown Speaker 12:50
skating, right, right? That's skating, and that's a totally different Olympics and skater, but I know exactly what you're thinking of is right on the tip of my tongue, it's not the BART Connor swing, but it's somebody's name with alliteration on the pommel horse.
Unknown Speaker 13:07
I'm going to the Googles, and then I'm gonna give you guys clues. No, because I'm gonna give you clues. I'm not gonna. I'm gonna. And the reason, the reason this is related to pop culture history, is because I learned it in gym class when we had our gymnastics unit, so this would have been like an 80s era gymnastics thing that we all had to do. And I remember very, very specifically, Mrs. Kilcusky, my gym teacher, saying to all of us, because we were terrified when we walk in and we see the bars and the pome horse, and she's like, I will not make you do anything that I would not do myself.
Unknown Speaker 13:42
Miss. Mrs. Kilkowski,
Unknown Speaker 13:46
okay, I have it. I have it. I'm gonna tell you that it was not Bart Connor and it's not tell you who it was.
Unknown Speaker 13:58
Wait, but didn't you love Mitch Taylor? We talk about one of our episodes, American America. What's the movie? American with Jenny, not Jenny Garth, Jenny Johnson, Jenny, Jennifer Jones. Jennifer Jones, yes, but no, this, but Chris, but Carolyn. Yes, I know it's also Wayne Gretzky's wife. Yeah. Janet Jones. Janet Jones, okay, okay, okay. She okay. It's also a gymnast from the 1976 team, males team, okay, but it's not Bart Connor, and when you hear it, you're gonna go yes, and you're gonna be able to picture it. No, no. Those guys were ladies. Okay, so I'm sorry. I'm just correcting everybody. Okay, 1976
Unknown Speaker 14:42
I don't remember. I might need initials. Can I have initials?
Unknown Speaker 14:46
Hang on one second. Yes, you can American tea. Oh, what? Oh, Ken, Ken, again, Kyle, it's Tom. Kurt Thomas. Kurt Thomas. Is that?
Unknown Speaker 14:58
It is Kurt Thomas.
Unknown Speaker 15:00
Yes. And what did they call and I'm going to describe it, because you're going to, okay, like at the very end, it's the way he gets off. And his legs are like scissored, but then they go up and down. Both of his legs are going like this, yes. And then, if you guys are watching on YouTube, I'm going making my legs go, and then they go, whoop. And they kind of go, whoa. And now, are you just remembering that, Michelle, or is it telling you that I just saw on the Googles? It showed a little clip of it. I was like, okay, that's exactly what I pictured. That's the dismount. And that would be called the Thomas, tuck, the Thomas. It's not alliteration. There's no alliteration in it. Is it flip?
Unknown Speaker 15:40
Very close. It's same letter as flip flops, flop. Oh, it's actually not on the dismount. I'm watching it again. Oh, what? There he goes again. Okay, his legs are gonna go and his legs go up, and then he goes back down. It's called the Thomas flair flare. Thomas flair. Oh, my God. I'm sure I did not. My legs did not go up in the air. I thought it was just the swingy part. Thomas flayer, we just had to hop over it. We just, we
Unknown Speaker 16:11
just had to go around it.
Unknown Speaker 16:15
We didn't do anything on that thing. I don't think. No pummel horse. We did the one where you ran and, oh, that was the vote. We had to do the vote. Oh yes, yes. And bounce the thing. Do you guys remember in the gymnastics unit, in and gem, like you're talking about, and you're but and on, here's the things I remember the most. You had certain things you had to do, like skills that you had to do to get, like a pass and on, on the vault, it was called the squat through. You had to go, and your hands were on it, and you did, like a little toe, yeah, your legs had to go through. And then I remember, on the beam, I know. And then on the beam, you had to do the walk, the dip, Step. Dip, yeah. Dip, your toe down. Point, your toe, yep. On the on the beam. And another thing on the beam is you had to do where you stood up on your tiptoes And you almost like did a pivot turn. Had to go the opposite way. Yes, those are two that I remember. And we did have bars too, but I don't, yeah, we had bars anything. We had to go from the top to the bottom. And so there were some people who were gymnasts, and so they would swing and then let go and grab the bottom. But those of us who are not gymnasts would do this thing where you're, like, you're holding on to the top, and then you put your feet on the bottom one, and then you take one hand and put it on the bottom, and the other hand, and then you put your hip bones on the bottom. Yeah, like, you would do this thing where you're let go of your foot, and then put your hip bones on the bottom. Check the box
Unknown Speaker 17:44
on the parallel bars. Do you guys remember doing anything on the parallel bars?
Unknown Speaker 17:50
Yes, yeah,
Unknown Speaker 17:53
okay, we might have to do some more googling. There's a thing, oh, skin the cat. You had to do, skin the cat. Oh, they're looking at me like, what? But
Unknown Speaker 18:04
both arms are up, and you had to use your core to lift your body over right way to the middle, over to the other way the middle. Yeah, yes. That sounds really hard, too. Oh, my God, I don't have any, like, at that time, I didn't even know I had a core. It just operated. Yeah, it
Unknown Speaker 18:22
was just called stomach muscles, yeah, just my stomach. We didn't call it core. They didn't call it, no. They just called it your stomach muscles. Like, tighten your tighten your tummy. Probably for me, it was like, tighten your big tummy, Schmidt
Unknown Speaker 18:37
or something. Well, the PE teachers were mean, yeah, we talked about that, our trauma PE trauma episode, we could refer to lots of people had really awful stories about really awful PE teachers. There you go. Talk about fireable offenses. Gym teachers should all been, I'm not gonna say all. A lot of gym teachers today would be fired for the things they said and did to us in, you know, 1970 to 1985 basically
Unknown Speaker 19:07
bring us down. Time
Unknown Speaker 19:10
to pull something else. Do one more. Let's do one more, and let's see if it's quite of an engaging conversation again, part of the core curriculum, and I'm we can talk about it again, but it's just showing what babies we were five years ago when we were talking
Unknown Speaker 19:26
what is the biggest selling poster of all time? I'm not even gonna tell you what year, and I probably wouldn't have known that five years ago. I would have had to really think about it. We know Carolyn Well, of course, it's iconic, and one of the only posters my husband owned and was allowed to hang or, I guess he was allowed to hang it up because he hung it up. But yeah, that'd be Farrah Fawcett, yeah. And that's core curriculum, of course, duh. And I think it's interesting how many people were allowed to have the Farrah Fawcett poster. Like, why was Andy allowed to have that it now we do talk in our 1976 episode about how it is.
Unknown Speaker 20:00
Literally, quite chased. I know why, exuding sexuality at the same time? Well, yeah, and we say it. I think one of us says it in that episode, but I'm gonna say it again. I think the teenage boys, or the young boys, were allowed to have it because then the dads were like, I got bedtime tonight, honey. I'm gonna read the bedtime story tonight, honey. You know what? Son, let's go have that talk in your room
Unknown Speaker 20:24
for trouble, for not taking out the trash. But you're I'm gonna go, we're gonna go have that talk in your room. Everything was in son's room. Son, I'll make your bed
Unknown Speaker 20:34
tomorrow for the week. Son, I gotcha. And it was in that liminal space where it can go in the kids room. So it's not like dad is hanging up a sexy poster in the garage that's overtly meant to titillate. Like they always say, that's the difference. Like, what is pornography? The definition of pornography is that it's intended to titillate. I don't know if it was intended to titillate. I don't know. It's so beautiful. It's not, it's beautiful. It's beautiful. And sure, there are some nipples in it, but she can't help that. It's cold, that's right. She just ran, remember? She just ran in and grabbed a bathing suit. It was like, so unplanned. The thing was so spontaneous. The whole photo shoot. It was just crazy. And I want to draw a little comparison to we talked about fair faucet and as a Charlie's Angel. We talked about her as the poster girl. And then we went on and talked about when she was in the burning bed and really brought out her dramatic, you know, skills. And it reminds me of, right now we're seeing Pamela Anderson. I just saw a picture of her with Tommy Lee, like back in, you know, whenever that was 90s. I'm not good with my dates, and then now on the red carpet with Liam Neeson, because she's in the Naked Gun too, and good for her, like I'm just so glad I talk about reclaiming as we did in another episode. But she just really has so much more to offer. And then she than just this image that people allowed on, yeah, Baywatch, or whatever, when she wore her red bathing suit and blopped around, it's just yeah, you know, I'm glad that she was the Tool Time girl originally, remember when she was, that's right, and everything was about her boobs. And, you know, on Baywatch, and you know, she was in Playboy, I don't know how many times, but
Unknown Speaker 22:20
she, she truly. I like how you Carolyn just kind of said reclaiming. We were talking in last week's episode about Monica Lewinsky's podcast called reclaiming. That's really good. She should get Pamela Anderson on, because I've been there was a doc or something. Was that a doc? I watched on Pamela Anderson? Oh yeah, yeah. And that's basically what she's done with the whole like she's gone back to, you know, she gardens. She's redone her grandmother's place up in Canada, really beautiful, very now, not really, she completely doesn't and she is happier. She looks beautiful. She feels more authentic and more fulfilled in her life. And isn't it kind of cute, right now, the holy Anderson little romance going on. It's so cute. Yeah, exactly. Goes back to that intended to titillate thing, like she is reclaiming her place in the world where she's not intended to titillate. I don't have to titillate you all the time, and I've got your that was her role, right? I deserve to be
Unknown Speaker 23:19
on on on your screens like before it would Yes. You know, you almost thought like, Oh, she's only on here because she's got big boobs and jiggles or whatever, like she doesn't have any skills. That's what we were meant to think, and she deserves for us to watch her perform, and because she's a great artist, and good for her, she's got things to say. She's got a lot to say. I couldn't believe this past year, however many months ago, the Academy Awards were but, I mean, she showed up on that red carpet at the Academy Awards zero makeup. I mean, she probably had some, you know, concealer, not concealer, some, like moisturizer or something on. And I just loved it. I loved her look. I loved her beautiful dress. Her hair was still done, and because that's how she now is like, this is I am so, I so want to shed that, that image and that part of my life. And this is how I feel beautiful, and this is how I feel authentic in my own skin right now. And
Unknown Speaker 24:15
that's you like, you know, she kind of has this glow about her, and honestly, like if we are leaning into these things that bring us joy, that fulfill us as individuals, I think there's a
Unknown Speaker 24:31
consequence of that in our the way we look and carry ourselves, and that we have a glow about us. I can't you all see it on YouTube
Unknown Speaker 24:40
showing but online.
Unknown Speaker 24:42
But seriously, I think that when you're doing that kind of stuff and living what you feel is like your I don't know your passion, your true self, yeah, yeah, yeah. It comes out. And I also wonder, you know, because she has embraced this no makeup thing. So.
Unknown Speaker 25:00
Card, and she has sold when I don't mean sold in a bad way. What I mean is she's embraced it, and she's putting it out there front right. This is who I am now. And I just wonder, in addition to her being her true self and wanting to live that way, I wonder if she had to do something so drastic to make people pay attention to her without looking at her bruise, like maybe if I go completely clean face, no fake eyelashes, I'm not that person. Because, truthfully, she could have, nobody goes out there without makeup. I mean, we do, but I mean celebrity on the red carpet. Nobody does that. Nobody, not on the right No, not on the red carpet. And so if she did do that, how much would she have to shout to make people listen to her words? Yes, and so maybe by doing this, she's saying words, please pay attention to my words. And I wonder if she consulted, you know, publicists or PR people, to say, how do I make people listen to my words? And
Unknown Speaker 25:58
it's working, and we love speaking of her, to her, her, I don't think it's that recent. It might even be a year or more old, but her, her cookbook is beautiful. Absolutely, didn't even know she had a cookbook. Yeah, it's all it's books that's like cookbook, plus other stuff, like, you know, right? Like, beautiful photographs, and it's like, on her farm, that's so great. I mean, 25 years ago, when I purchased a cookbook by Pamela Anderson, nope. I mean, I would have been like, how does she know about cooking? This is ridiculous. Now I'm like, I might have to go look for that cookbook. Well, and she wasn't relatable to us. You know, like we were. We couldn't put ourselves in the same category as her. We put her in a category as for men, right? She's not for us. She's for men. She doesn't have anything to do with me. Oh my god, now we relate to her. Now we are the same, right? You and I think that's what she wanted. She's like, I'm one of you. Please regard me as such, yes, yeah. And now we'll be called, that's right, I was going to tell you, it's called I Love You by Pamela Anderson, recipes from the heart. And it was actually just this past October, like October 2024, so, and it's absolutely beautiful. Wait, wait, you guys just Google it. You know what? We're going to put a link in the book this week too, because the photographs are beautiful. Our books.org
Unknown Speaker 27:20
shop. And I just want to remind everybody that this is one way that you can support us. We have this little shop on bookshop.org, it's a it's a platform that supports independent booksellers and which also helps support authors. And so when we have a little collection there, if you buy using our links, then we get, in addition to giving money to independent bookstores, we also get a little bit of money, so this is a way that you can help support us.
Unknown Speaker 27:47
Great idea. Yeah, supporting authors. Let's not forget Miss Kristen. I mean, it was only a few weeks ago you guys, that we had a party of a lifetime, and I just want to thank Kristen for letting Michelle and I be a part of it, because it was one of the highlights of my summer. And how is all of that going Kristen sales and stuff? So just to recap the book launch party that I had for the Scott Fenwick diaries on July 22 it was so freaking fun,
Unknown Speaker 28:21
so fun. And you may have seen highlights of it. If you're on our social media, I posted a highlight reel. You guys. You guys, the pop culture Preservation Society posted a highlight reel. It was a book signing like no other there. We didn't just do a reading, Michelle and I did readers theater, and then we this is connected to the book. I promise you. This is connected to the book. And then we decided to do a karaoke version of the lonely goat herd from The Sound of Music, without practicing, right? Without practicing. It is comedy at its finest,
Unknown Speaker 28:58
funny. Let's just say that the three of us, when we have an idea like that, no matter when it actually comes to fruition, no matter how much we realize, oh, this might not have been a good idea, we commit to the bit. We go all in. The three of us and we, we sang and yodeled and danced. I think at one point I was skipping in place. I don't know where that came from. We, we, yeah, we
Unknown Speaker 29:25
go home. This
Unknown Speaker 29:27
was a couple I had had a couple little plastic things of wine, but it only probably was one glass by then. So yeah, we were, I don't need wine, though, to act like
Unknown Speaker 29:38
we use it to bring us down a little bit from that, but that was so fun. Kristen and what else? What is there any other book news we need to let our listeners know about, or we need to know about there. So I am very, I was very, very busy. I'm not very, very busy right now, but I was incredibly busy the day after the book launch. Then I got in the car and I drove to Chicago for a book festival. And that was super, super fun. And.
Unknown Speaker 30:00
Then I got in the car, and I almost drove all the way home, but I couldn't make it, so I had to stop in the Wisconsin Dells. And that's a story in and of itself. I'm not sure if, if you don't follow me on social media, just if you've never been to the Dells before, I'll just give you the highlights. So I can't make it all the way home to Minneapolis, I stop in the Dells, which is like a carnival atmosphere, and then, yeah, it's like, I don't know how to describe our slides. Lots of water slide hotels. So many water slides, duck boats on the river and yeah. And so I get a hotel room, and I walk across the parking lot to a restaurant, and on the front sign it says train delivered food. I'm like, What in the hell is train delivered food? Well, it turns out that, yes, indeed, inside this restaurant is a train, and your burger is like sitting on top of the train, and as it goes by, you grab your burger. So I and the people, it's super funny. The servers wear shirts that say, sorry, I too did.
Unknown Speaker 30:59
There's some good wordplay. I'm I'm there. Sorry, I tooted, but I could, it was like a two hour wait to sit at the train table. So, so I went to the bar. So I sat at the bar, and I ordered a drink from a Storm Trooper, and then for 75 cents, you could pay Darth Vader 75 cents, and he would turn on a laser show. I do not know what. What is the intersection of trains and Star Wars. I don't know what's the name of this place. It's called buffalo fills and then after
Unknown Speaker 31:29
like, Buffalo Bills, but it's buff, no, yeah, but, oh, but also, that has nothing to do with Star Wars, okay, no, no. I don't know why Darth Vader was charging people 75 cents for the laser show. I don't know. Why was the Stormtrooper there at the bar. I don't know. I have no idea. And then I went back to my hotel, and three Amish ladies get off the elevator carrying ice buckets, and I'm looking at them going, can they drink? Amish people, Amish people can't water. They can have ice water, ice in their coke. That is a lot of ice bucket. Can they have coke? I don't even know, maybe someone had an injury from like the
Unknown Speaker 32:06
buggy.
Unknown Speaker 32:09
So then I come home from the Wisconsin Dells, and I'm supposed to get on an airplane to go to a book event, to a book signing event at a little tiny bookshop in Northern California. And there was, and I was so excited about this, you guys, I have to tell you, this bookstore is so adorable. It's teeny weeny, and it's in this idyllic setting. And I was so excited. And there were people in Northern California who were like, waiting for me to come, and I just had this feeling in the back of my head that something was wrong. Something is wrong. And so I keep checking in with the owner of the bookstore, and she says, everything is fine, but still I have this feeling in the back of my head. So finally, I'm like, Kristen, just ask her the questions that you're worried about. I said, Do you have the books?
Unknown Speaker 32:52
I mean, that's telling that is the most you have the books. And I it took 30 seconds. There was a reply in my inbox, and before opening it, I could see it was paragraphs long, and I'm like, This is not good if there are paragraphs long, and the first line says, I feel like I've failed you.
Unknown Speaker 33:13
And it turns out, she had not ordered the books for my book signing,
Unknown Speaker 33:20
so have nothing to sign. There are no books. And I had to remind her I'm like, you know, I live in Minnesota. I don't live in California. I had to buy a plane ticket, I had to get lodging, I had to rent a rental car from Santa. I had to record my dog. And some of that is refundable. Some of that is refundable with a penalty, some of it is not refundable.
Unknown Speaker 33:46
And so I'm nursing my wounds a little bit right now. There's a lesson learned here, and the lesson to be learned is trust your gut. Yes, I was not trusting my gut. I was not listening to the little voice in my head that was like, this isn't this. I don't think that this is going to go the way you think it is because I wanted it so badly. I think I wanted it so badly that I was ignoring my my gut feeling, which is that this isn't, this isn't happening the way you think it is okay. So I pick myself up, I dust myself off. It's all it's fine. I'm fine. Everything's fine. But if you were planning to come to that little bookstore in Northern California, I'm really sorry, but I will be back. I promise you, I will be back, and we're going to go with her next time. Yes, for sure, for sure, that little bookstore, or should we pick a different one? Now, you know, you know what you should everybody should shop there. Please go there. It is really adorable. I probably won't do an event there, yeah, but it is really cute. I can't blame her. I should have listened to my voice.
Unknown Speaker 34:45
But now that we're a few weeks out from the book launch, the book came out on July 22 this is a good time to remind people what you can do to help an author. And the number one thing that you can do besides buying my book or requesting it at your library, the number one.
Unknown Speaker 35:00
Thing that you can do for me now, because I know I lot of you have purchased it because you're telling me,
Unknown Speaker 35:06
the thing that you do now is you get to leave a review online, and that helps me tremendously. And let me tell you why, because there are two ways that people decide what to buy, what books to buy. The first one is what their friends tell them to buy. And the next one is looking at reviews online, wherever you buy books online, even you know the big bad one that I don't like to talk about, but I have to be honest about the fact that I'm dead in the water if I don't sell books in that place. It's a it's a harsh reality that I don't like to talk about, but it is the truth, and you can leave reviews in that big bad place, even if you didn't buy your book there. In fact, it helps me a lot if you do. Here's how this works on the big bad place. If you don't have very many reviews, then the big bad place doesn't show your book to people. But if you get first 50, the reviews are like, all right, all right, we'll show your book to a few people, but they're not the magic number is 100 when you get 100 reviews in the big bad place, they're like, fine, fine, fine. We'll tell people about your book, and then it will pop up in the places where it says, You should also look at this. You should buy this. And so that's what I'm that's what I'm needing right now from my friends and family out there who are reading the Scott Fenwick diaries. If you, if you like it, and have something to say about it, that's how you can help me. I can't believe we haven't hit the timer yet. Did you put it on 3024,
Unknown Speaker 36:32
seconds? Okay, this is gonna be great. We're gonna be talking and it's going to and it's going to be in, the timer is going to go off. Okay.
Unknown Speaker 36:40
So talk, yes. So, yeah. So also, don't forget, there's also places like Barnes and Noble that you can leave good reads, good reads for sure, yep, and tell friends and everybody too. That's another important one. Spread the word. Super helpful to me. It's not like we're telling you to tell them that liver is good. That's our timer. That's our timer. I have to stop talking right now. Okay, telephone,
Unknown Speaker 37:05
I'll get it. That was it. That was it. Miss that sound. I know I do too. I know you guys, that was fun. We pulled it out. We thought we were huge failures when we first started pulling things out of the lunch box. Yeah? I think we pulled it out. Yeah, yeah. All righty, yeah. And you know, who knew we were gonna end up this episode was gonna end up being about panel Pamela Anderson, that's what. That's what's so fun. I love that about these unscripted conversations. Okay, so thank you for putting up with us. We're gonna be doing this for a few more weeks while we get our new episodes ready for you. In the meantime, what happens in the meantime? In the meantime, let's raise our glasses. Let's raise our cans of Pepsi light, our bottles of Pepsi light right
Unknown Speaker 37:48
crack. Menopause moment, seriously, I'm like, what do we do in the meantime? Let's raise our bottles of Pepsi light for a toast courtesy of the cast of Threes Company, two good times, two Happy Days to Little House on the Prairie. Sorry. Cheers, cheers, cheers, bye.