In My Footsteps: A Gen-X Nostalgia Podcast

Episode 135: The Goonies Made Me A Writer; Urban Legends 80s Kids Remember; Music From MTVs First Day(3-6-2024)

• Christopher Setterlund • Season 1 • Episode 135

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The Goonies as writing inspiration. Urban legends 1980s kids will remember. What music played on MTV's first day?
Everyone has their origin story, how they ended up where they are or doing what they are doing. In Episode 135 of the podcast, I share my story of how I first got interested in being a writer. It goes all the way back to 2nd Grade, my favorite teacher ever, and a surprising inspiration, the movie The Goonies.
Kids who grew up in the 1980s get ready for some major flashbacks. We go way Back In the Day to look at urban legends that kids from the 80s will remember. Some are silly old wives' tales, some are much darker and serious, and all are in this segment.
At 12:01 am on Saturday, August 1, 1981 MTV made its grand debut. Everyone likely knows the very first video ever played on the channel (hint: Video Killed the Radio Star), however, what came next? This week's Top 5 will look at the rest of Day One and the most-played musical artists during MTV's first 24 hours.
There will also be a brand new This Week In History and Time Capsule centered around the introduction of the pain reliever aspirin by the Bayer company.
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Speaker 01:

Hello world, and welcome to the In My Footsteps podcast. I am Christopher Setterlund, coming to you from the vacation destination known as Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and this is episode 135. We've made it into March. March is coming in like a lion. Hopefully it'll go out like a lamb. But we're going to start it off with all the nostalgia I could possibly cram into one episode. We're going to start it off with my origin story as a writer. As we look back at how the Goonies movie made me a writer. We're going to go way, way back in the day and look at some urban legends of pop culture that all 1980s kids remember hearing about. Pop Rocks and Soda anybody there's going to be a brand new top five as we look at the top five most played artists from mtv's first day in existence august 1st 1981 way too much split ends and there'll be a brand new this week in history and time capsule focusing on the creation of aspirin patented by the bear company all of that is coming up right now on episode 135 of the in my footsteps podcast Comfort food for the Generation X soul. That's a catchphrase that I'm trying to implement more with this podcast as I'm transitioning into being more nostalgia than anything. And this week's episode is going to prove that. So much nostalgia. 80s kids will love it. Well, anyone will love it. Of course I'm going to say that. The countdown is on to spring. Hopefully wherever you are, things are starting to get better weather-wise. The majority of 2024 has just been so gray and cloudy and cold with sleet, snow, cold rain. At least that's how it's been up in the Northeast, Cape Cod. And it's so dreary. And I'm not saying I'm ready to become one of those snowbirds that fly south for the winter. But man, I can see why it becomes so attractive to people. Because unless you love skiing, snowboarding, which I don't really do either... Unless you have those kinds of passions, I don't see the appeal of snow. Except for maybe the first snow of the year and getting a few good photos. I want to take a moment to thank my Patreon subscribers, Leo, Laurie, Mary Lou, and Ashley. For those of you that are thinking about becoming subscribers, the newest bonus episode of the podcast that I do just for Patreon subscribers went up on March 1st. And it's a slice of weirdness and wackiness from my initial impressions blog that I did from 2010 to 2012. And I resurrected last month. For those who are still curious about what those bonus podcasts are like, here's a little clip from the newest bonus episode that went up March 1st. One of the main attractions of my stop at Bearskin Neck was getting to witness this Crocodile Dundee looking guy holding up traffic by repeatedly saying to one car, welcome to Rockport. I say, it's like, dude, they know where they are after the first 10 times you said it. Then this guy was also yelling at a guy fishing to rip him out of the water. I say it was funny, but crazy. If that sort of content appeals to you, but it's not feasible to become a subscriber, you can check out the new Initial Impressions version 2.0 that go up weekly. The link is in the description of the podcast. They're every bit as weird and crazy, including a recent blog post where I talked about how excited I was to get a brand new electric toothbrush. I said, God, I've officially crossed over into middle age. But rather than dwell on feeling old, let's pump in the nostalgia for this episode. Anytime someone asks me about how I became a writer or where my desire to become a writer came from, I mention two things. My second grade teacher and the movie that inspired me to write my first ever story. And I may not remember all the details crystal clear since it's going back almost 40 years, but but I'll do my best to tell the story of how the Goonies movie made me a writer coming up right now. Everyone, when they're little, has a first passion, a first dream, a first thing they want to be, whether that's a firefighter, a ballerina, anything like that, playing sports. Maybe when I was much littler, I had a different dream or a different passion. But whenever anyone asks me about The first passion, the first dream, the first thing I wanted to be, I always say writer. And even though I'm not selling millions of copies of my books, I do have nine published books, not self-published, actual published. Some people don't understand that. They think that I have copies of my book in my trunk that I can just give to them. It's been a long, long road. This chapter with the actual published books... Goes back 12 years. Late 2011, that was when I got the word that my first book was okayed, and I got to work on that, sending it to the publisher. The preceding five, six years were spent writing my own books, my own stories, e-books. This was when they weren't really even a thing. I would come up with ideas, horror stories, children's books, novels about true crime, Anything that my mind thought would be a good story. And then I'd spend months and months writing it, editing it, creating my own covers with my weak graphic design skills. And I'd put them up on Amazon, on the Kindle. If you go to the Kindle store now, you'll see all of my actual published books. Then it's like if you dig deeper below the surface, there's all these older books, 2007, 8, 9. They're like the indie label albums before a musical artist got signed. A couple of years ago, I started re-editing some of those books because my writing skill has gotten a lot better since I wrote those books. I think one of those novels that I wrote, it was probably 100,000 words, but I sent it through Grammarly, if you know that website, grammarly.com. And I think it had something like 2,000 grammar mistakes. Which, good lord, knowing that book has been up on the Kindle store for like 15 years. Before my dalliance into e-books, I wrote poetry slash song lyrics. That was mostly 1998 through like 2005. That was where my writing was at. Pining away for love. Questioning what was going on as my quarter-life crisis took hold. Some of those poems I look back on and I say, oh man, I can see some traces of talent there. Others, it looks like they were written by someone that was in their early 20s, not knowing what was going on with their life. And for most of the 90s, my writing manifested itself in making videos, skits with my camcorder, making radio programs with my friends. It was the creativity. The idea of creating something funny, creating a world, and sharing it with about a dozen people. That's all that I wanted to see it. Even now, some of those videos from my camcorder, they're on YouTube, but they're unlisted because I want to just share them with family and friends. We've backtracked now into the 80s and where it all began. I don't know if I wanted to be a writer. I don't know how the seed was planted. I like the idea of the creativity, creating a world. That's always been part of me. That's why I do the content creation with the YouTube videos. That's why I do this podcast. Like I said at the top of the show, I don't know all the details offhand because it was almost 40 years ago. We're going back to 1985. But I do remember that the seed for my writer... career path started in Ms. Rodriguez's class at South Yarmouth Elementary School on Cape Cod. I don't know if she had us just write things, anything that popped in our head, or something that we wanted to see or do, but I do know that previous summer before I started second grade, I saw the movie that really started everything, and that was The Goonies. If you don't know the movie The Goonies, I'd be surprised, but I'll sum it up. The Goonies are a group of friends, teenagers, early teens, 13, 14. Mostly they hang out, but their adventures they go on, they're kind of tame. That's until they find an old pirate map in an attic of one of their homes. And their homes are in the process of being sold to make way for a country club. So they go looking for this buried treasure to try to save their homes. It has loads of memorable characters, loads of memorable lines. Corey Feldman as Mouth. Sean Astin as Mikey. Jeff Cohen as Chunk in the Truffle Shuffle. Kihui Kwan as Data. And of course, Sloth. I remember being so wrapped up in the adventure. The idea of a group of friends doing these things. They start off on their bikes, but then they end up underground under the town. There are so many memorable moments. The playing of the organ where the rocks start to fall away. Banging on the water pipe so that water fountains are going crazy above ground. Actually finding One-Eyed Willie's pirate ship. All of this seeped into eight-year-old me, into my head. And I think I liked it so much, the Goonies movie, that I wanted to create my own version of it. That's what I did. My first story I ever wrote was called The Goonies 2. And yes, I wrote this before the Goonies 2 Nintendo game that came out in 1987. I don't have a copy of that story. I wish I did. I do remember that the gist of it was me and several of my real friends at the time getting into an adventure where we were under the town on Cape Cod. So you would say it pretty much mimicked the actual movie. I had so much fun, though, being able to put me and my friends into these adventures. I think a lot of it was that I put us in these adventures, but we ourselves, the real people, were actually safe. You weren't in the story. So you could kind of live out these adventures with the fear and the unknown and such, but knowing that you were actually safe. It was kind of off to the races then. After I wrote The Goonies 2 in 1985... The next big adventure of my life was thanks to the movie Stand By Me that came out in the summer of 1986. I had almost forgotten about this until I was kind of doing a little research for this segment. I wrote a similar story. So Stand By Me, if you don't know that story, it's a Stephen King novel about four friends that hike out of town on the railroad tracks to find a dead body. It's another, even though it's set in the late 1950s, early 60s, it's very much quintessential 80s for 80s kids. Interestingly, it's got Corey Feldman in it again. I remember my Stand By Me story. I don't know what I called it, Stand By Me 2 to be original. But where I lived on Cape Cod at the time, we weren't that far from railroad tracks. Granted, I was nine, so I don't think I often walked to those tracks. but I knew where they were. So it made it easier to write a story about me and my friends wandering the railroad tracks. And I'm sure we were looking for some dead body. Maybe I made it a person I didn't like in school. These stories, the Goonies 2, my Stand By Me story, I'm pretty sure I didn't show any of my friends or my teachers. So I don't think Ms. Rodriguez knew that I had my writing dream kind of birthed in her class. That was until my Historic Restaurants of Cape Cod book was released in 2017. I was able to find and reconnect with Ms. Rodriguez as a grown adult. and invite her to the book launch party. And it was at that launch party that I was able to tell a much shorter version of this story here and get her to stand up and have applause to kind of give her her flowers for helping out a student like me. Like I said, I might not be selling millions of copies of my books, But I've worked incredibly hard over the last 15 to 18 years, honing my craft as a writer, getting these books published. And it all goes back to Ms. Rodriguez's class, my love of that movie The Goonies, and then later on my love of Stand By Me. It's amazing how long ago that was, yet how it's still... Pretty clear in my mind. Like I said, I don't have all the exact details, but I know where my love of writing came from, which led to all of this. Everything I'm doing, including talking to you right now, started with the Goonies. I often ask people if what they're doing with their lives right now is what they've always wanted to do, and the vast majority say no. That somewhere along the line, whatever their first dream was, they pivoted from. And that's not a bad thing. Like if you wanted to be a famous football player, famous basketball player, famous singer, those are so rare. For every one that gets to be famous as an athlete or a singer, there's hundreds of thousands that try and fail. So if your original dream that you had, you're not doing, it's not a knock on you. But it does give me a special sort of satisfaction to know that I'm still doing it in some way. Even though there are days that I look at the work I do in one hand and the reward I get on the other hand, and sometimes they don't match up. But then I think of all the people that have supported me over the years and how I feel like I'd be disappointing them if I gave up now. So I won't be giving up anytime soon. But there's my origin story. How the Goonies made me a writer. Maybe some of you should go watch The Goonies. See if it'll make you into writers too. Hopefully my voice in this podcast hasn't given you a headache. But luckily, if you have one, you know you can always grab some aspirin to feel better. And this week in history, we're going back 125 years ago to March 6th, 1899 and aspirin being patented by the Bayer Company. In the world of medicine, there are few substances that have had as much of an impact on human health as aspirin. It was originally derived from the bark of the willow tree and dates back thousands of years when ancient civilizations, including the Egyptians and Greeks, used the willow bark to alleviate pain and reduce fever. However, it wasn't until the 19th century that scientists began to unravel the mysteries of this ancient remedy. In the early 1800s, chemists identified salicin as the active compound in willow bark responsible for its medicinal purposes. However, salicin often caused gastrointestinal discomfort, limiting its effectiveness as a pain reliever. It wasn't until 1897 that a breakthrough occurred when German chemist Felix Hoffman, working for the Bayer AG company, was able to synthesize a stable form of acetylsalicylic acid, the active ingredient in aspirin. This new compound retained the pain-relieving properties of salicin, but with significantly fewer side effects. And it was March 6, 1899, when Bayer AG introduced aspirin to the market, marking the beginning of a new era in medicine. If you were wondering, and I was, the AG in Bayer AG is an abbreviation for the German word Aktiengesellschaft. Boy, that's a long word to pronounce. Which literally translates to Stock Corporation or Shares Corporation in English. So a publicly traded company. Initially, aspirin was marketed as a treatment for pain, fever, and inflammation. And it quickly gained popularity worldwide. Its efficacy coupled with its affordability and accessibility made it a staple in households and hospitals across the globe. During the early 20th century, researchers discovered aspirin's ability to prevent blood clots, making it a vital tool in the prevention of heart attacks and strokes. To this day, aspirin is one of the most widely prescribed medications for cardiovascular health. The success of aspirin shifted the focus of medicine from symptom management to disease prevention. And this paved the way for the development of preventative health care strategies and advancements in drug development and paved the way for the synthesis of other life-saving medications. The affordability and effectiveness of aspirin improved the quality of life for millions of people worldwide. I guarantee most of you listening to this now have aspirin in your medicine cabinet in your bathroom. But still, aspirin is not without its controversies, as prolonged use of it can increase the risk of gastrointestinal bleeding and other adverse effects, prompting caution of widespread use. And the rise of alternative pain relievers, ibuprofen and such, has challenged aspirin's dominance in the pharmaceutical landscape. But it has a long-standing track record of safety and efficacy that goes back 125 years ago to its unveiling by the Bayer AG company this week in history. And now it's time for a brand new time capsule. We're not going back quite as far as we did for the creation of aspirin. We'll go back 25 years ago this week to March 8th, 1999. Let's see what was going on in the world of pop culture back then. The number one song was Believe by Cher. This was off of her 22nd studio album, also entitled Believe. This song was a phenomenon, selling more than 11 million copies, becoming Cher's most successful single ever, becoming Cher's fifth number one single on the Billboard Hot 100, and still to this day being the highest-selling single by a solo female artist. The number one movie was Analyze This, and you could get into the theater with a ticket costing $5.06. This is a comedy starring Billy Crystal and Robert De Niro, with Crystal as a psychiatrist for De Niro's mafia don who suffers a nervous breakdown. This is a great movie. I'm a big fan of it. If you haven't seen it, definitely check it out. It made $177 million on a budget of $30 million and is 69% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. And it was such a success that they had a sequel analyze that. I know for me, I found this movie fascinating from seeing Robert De Niro as serious or scary characters throughout my childhood. To see him in this and in Meet the Parents, it was really a culture shock a bit for me. The number one TV show was Frasier. This is the spinoff from the Cheers TV show, the life of Frasier Crane, who moves from Boston back to his hometown of Seattle to become a radiotherapist. The show was on 11 seasons from 1993 to 2004, and a total of 264 episodes. Frasier Crane, the character of Frasier Crane, think about how long that character has been on television. From Cheers through Frasier and now a reboot of Frasier, you're talking well over 20 years. And although this current season in 1999 was its highest rated, it was a top 20 show for its first nine seasons. And if you were around back then, March 8th, 1999, winter is ending. Maybe you just got a circular in the mail. You need to get some totes to pack up all your winter stuff. Well, you're in luck for now. You can get your totes from Kaldor. Those of you in New England know Kaldor. Jumbo clear totes for $29.99. Some smaller clear totes for $10. These are prices that came from Kaldor's final circular that they ever released. as they were in the midst of a liquidation. Not too long after this date, they began closing all their stores, and all of the Kaldor stores were totally closed by the middle of May 1999. So I thought it would be fun to reminisce a little for you about Kaldor. I can always do a deeper dive at some point in the future. But that'll wrap up another This Week in History, another time capsule. The nostalgia does not stop. as the new top five is another one that I'm excited to share as we go back now to MTV's first ever day on the air and see who their most played artists were on that first day right now. One of my favorite things about this podcast is finding things I hadn't even thought of as a topic or something to talk about and then being able to put it together and share with you. And that's what's going on with this week's top five. Up until a couple of weeks ago, this idea of a topic I never would have thought of. It is the most played artists from MTV's very first day, August 1st, 1981. This is one of those rare top fives that will go in order as we count down from lowest to highest. MTV was launched on Saturday, August 1st, 1981, 12.01 a.m. If you were up at that time, you heard this.

Speaker 00:

Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll. Rock and roll.

Speaker 01:

And then most people know the trivia, the very first video ever played on MTV was Video Killed the Radio Star by The Buggles. This top five is going to give you an interesting snapshot into MTV's playlists, their rotation, and I think also just which musical artists were doing videos, because they weren't really that prevalent in the early 1980s. Because as MTV got more popular, then more musical artists started making videos to get on MTV to get seen and the ball kept rolling. For anyone interested, I got this information from an article on beaconjournal.com. It's literally called MTV's first 100 videos. So I'll link to it in the description of the podcast. So if you want to go and see all the first 100, you can see. Let's get into this list though. As always, there are some honorable mentions. So the honorable mentions for the most played artists on MTV's first day, each of these artists had three videos played. They include Iron Maiden, Styx, 38 Special, Shoes, and Cliff Richard. I would think most of you out there would know who Iron Maiden and Styx are. 38 Special, they had the song Hold On Loosely. Shoes was a power pop band, with their song Too Late being one of the ones played on MTV. Cliff Richard is a British singer and actor, and actually his first hit song came out in 1958, so he was already kind of a legacy artist, even in the early 1980s. I had to look both of those up. When I went through this list and saw those names, I was like, who in the world are they? So each of those five artists were played three times during MTV's first day. So let's get into the top five itself with number five. This band had four videos played on MTV on its first day. That was Split Ends. Their early new wave. The only song of theirs I know is called I Got You. And it's actually, it's a good song and it really reminds me of being very young. They were formed in New Zealand in 1972 and were seen as the first band from New Zealand to gain a wider audience outside of the country. The song I Got You got as high as number 53 on the Billboard Hot 100. The band broke up in 1984 and since then has staged a few brief reunions. But otherwise, their big claim to fame was during this period when MTV just started. Number three on the top five, we have a tie. Two different bands that had five videos played on that first day. First is The Pretenders. They're a British-American rock band. They were formed in 1978, fronted by Chrissy Hynde, one of the original rock front women. Their biggest hit by the time MTV debuted was Brass in Pocket. It reached as high as number 14 on the Billboard charts. Later on, they had several more hit songs. Back on the Chain Gang, My City Was Gone, Middle of the Road, Don't Get Me Wrong, I'll Stand By You. I mean, that's a lot of good songs right there. And it led to them being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2005. Also tied with five videos played on MTV's first day is another Rock and Roll Hall of Fame band, The Who. They were a part of that British invasion in the mid-1960s. Their big hit at this time in the summer of 1981 was You Better You Bet. This was their first album after the death of their drummer Keith Moon. It would take me forever to go through all of The Who's famous songs. I mean, it starts with My Generation in 1965. They got Magic Bus, Pinball Wizard, Won't Get Fooled Again, Baba O'Reilly. I'll try not to go on and on, but you get the point. They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990, and they're considered one of the most important bands ever in the history of music. Number two on the top five with six videos played on MTV's first day is REO Speedwagon. They were a major band in the early 1980s. They were originally formed in 1967 in Champaign, Illinois, and at the time that MTV was debuting, their biggest songs were Take It on the Run and Keep on Loving You. It's interesting because they're not soft rock, but they're not hard rock. So I don't know, they're considered a rock band, but they're in the middle, ballad rock. REO Speedwagon would also have a massive hit with Can't Fight This Feeling in 1984. Their album High Fidelity from 1980, which these songs, Take It On The Run and Keep On Loving You, that were on MTV's rotation that first day, it sold more than 10 million copies. That was their peak of their popularity. Their last Top 20 hit came in 1988, and after that, it was the end, basically, for the mainstream success of REO Speedwagon. But they're still together today and still touring, just with a different lineup. So here we are. We're at number one. Which musical artist was introduced the most by VJs Nina Blackwood, Mark Goodman, J.J. Jackson, Martha Quinn, and Alan Hunter? I'll give you a moment to think about it. Okay, number one with eight videos played on that first day was Rod Stewart. If you had asked me who I thought had the most videos played on MTV's first day, it would not have been Rod Stewart. But at this time, he had tons of big hits. Do You Think I'm Sexy, which was from a few years earlier, was still in wide rotation. His current album at the time of MTV's debut was Tonight I'm Yours. It had the hit song Young Turks on it. And he also had the recent hit song Passion. It's an interesting mix though, isn't it? Of these bands and artists that dotted the landscape of music for MTV's first day. And there were other artists, obviously. There were a hundred videos. I just did the ones that were played the most. Bands like Queen, artists like David Bowie, they were played, just not in the same heavy rotation. And also, it wasn't until Michael Jackson came out with Billie Jean in late 1982 that MTV even started playing any African-American music at all. There you have it. The top five most played artists from MTV's first day, August 1st, 1981. Which of these surprised you the most? And like I said, I will link to the article where I got all of this information from so you can see for yourself. And if you want to go back and play those first 100 songs, be my guest. But coming up right now, I'm going to dive into some infamous urban legends of the 1980s that all of us who grew up then are familiar with. So check these out. Growing up, I think all kids hear the urban legends or old wives tales as they used to be known. Stories of things that happened in the past that you've got to be careful, don't act this way, this might happen. Or stories about famous people, pop culture type stuff. Urban Legend is kind of a catch-all, and this is going to be so much fun as we go way, way back in the day, and I talk about some of the urban legends from the 1980s that I remember. A few of these I researched to kind of jog my memory. A few of these popped in my head immediately. Most of these urban legends I think I was hearing about for the first time around the same time and that I still thought movies were real. If you want to hear more about that, go all the way back to episode three. I did a whole segment on when I found out movies weren't real. This will almost act as kind of a secondary countdown. It's not a top five, but I do have 10 urban legends. And those of you who grew up in the 80s or even 70s or, you know, around that time, all of these are going to be familiar to you. And I'll be curious to know afterwards which of these you most believed was true. So the first two urban legends are kind of intertwined, so I'm going to combine them. First has to do with the child actor Mikey from the Life Cereal commercials in the early 1970s. The actor who played Mikey in the original 1972 commercial was John Gilchrist. This commercial is so famous, it's one of the most famous commercials ever in television. I promise you, you have seen that commercial. Even if you're young in your early 20s, you still know it. Gilchrist was 11 years old in 1979 when this urban legend came to light for the first time. The story was that he had mixed pop rocks, which is a candy, that were little sugary dots. They would kind of pop and fizz and crackle in your mouth. So basically the idea was that if you mixed pop rocks that pop and crackle and expand and such with soda that also has carbonation in it, that it would expand in your stomach. So the story was that John Gilchrist had mixed pop rocks and soda and his stomach had exploded and he died. Gilchrist's mother got a phone call from someone saying, I'm so sorry to hear about your son in 1979. And even though she figured it was just some weirdo calling up about this Pop Rocks and Soda story, she sent her other son to the park to go and check to make sure he was all right. But that story, that story continued into the 80s, even though there was proof that John Gilchrist was alive. The story, the urban legend was that he had eaten Pop Rocks and Soda and his stomach had exploded. The Pop Rocks and Soda side of this urban legend comes from the idea that people thought that Pop Rocks were more of an acid-based mixture with either baking soda or vinegar in it, thus basically saying that carbonation in the candy and carbonation in the soda would just produce so much gas in your stomach that it could cause it to rupture. That myth was tested repeatedly. and shown to be not true, but it didn't stop the urban legend from being everywhere. And it really damaged Pop Rocks, the brand. It was so bad that General Foods pulled Pop Rocks in 1983 due to the sales falling so bad. But don't worry, they are around, and you can get them now if you want at pop-rocks.com. Go ahead, eat them all and drink all the soda you want. I promise you your stomach won't explode. Or will it? Another famous urban legend from the 1980s that I remember was the legend of there being alligators in the New York City sewers. The legend itself was of parents buying baby alligators as presents for their kids as pets and they're cute when they're little. But then when they get bigger, they're not as cute. So they get rid of them by flushing them down the toilet and they go into the sewer. where then they grow super huge and angry and violent. Those stories date way back. Even though this is mostly just an urban legend, it began in 1935 with boys shoveling snow and actually seeing an alligator in the sewer. And it's endured since then. I mean, I can remember going to New York City on a field trip in 7th grade in 1991. And we were still talking about alligators in the sewer. And it all came from one that got there somehow. Here's one that a lot of movie fans will remember. You all remember the movie Three Men and a Baby? I know you probably already know where this is going. The urban legend was that there was a ghost in the background of a scene. There's a scene where you supposedly can see this ghost hiding behind the curtains in the background. And this ghost boy was purported to have died in the loft years before where these scenes were filmed. If you had an old and worn VHS copy of Three Men and a Baby, maybe it would look like a ghost. But in the age of HD and 4K, you can see that it's a cardboard standalone of someone. And what it ended up being was a cardboard cutout of one of the stars, Ted Danson. in Top Hat and Tails. And the irony is, you actually see more of a close-up of that cardboard cutout later in the movie. And yet, somehow, this urban legend persisted forever. It's similar to the urban legend that one of the munchkins hung themselves in the background of a scene in The Wizard of Oz, but it ended up being a wild bird that they had put on the set with some other wild birds to make the forest look a little more spooky. Speaking of movies, another urban legend was that the set of the movie Poltergeist was cursed. This movie was a massive hit from 1982 about a family dealing with spirits in their home. It's got the famous scene where the daughter is pulled into the television. The curse idea comes from the deaths of some of the people that were in the film. Heather O'Rourke, who played Carol Ann, the youngest daughter, she died at only 12 years old in 1989. Dominique Dunn, who played the older sister, she was murdered by a jealous ex not too long after the movie came out. There were other cast member deaths, but those were the two main ones. The origin of the curse comes from Jo Beth Williams, who played the mother in Poltergeist. saying that Steven Spielberg insisted on using real human skeletons in the movie instead of props because they were cheaper to get. Actor Will Sampson, who played the medicine man, actually performed an exorcism on the set at the end of shooting one day. He was one of the other actors who died, though he was in Poltergeist 2. One of the most common urban legends from all time to now is someone who has died actually faked their death and is still alive. The two I remember mostly in the 1980s were Elvis Presley and Jim Morrison. There were rumors forever. There are probably still rumors to this day that Elvis, Jim Morrison, Tupac, that they're all still alive. As soon as Elvis died in 1977, there were stories that he had faked his death. The urban legends were that he faked it to escape the mafia, the supposed slip-ups and mistakes on his tombstone. When Jim Morrison died in 1971, the rumors were that he faked his death to disappear to get out of the spotlight. Interestingly... Even Morrison's former Doors bandmate Raymond Zarek actually put a little bit of credence into that rumor where he would say he wouldn't be surprised if Morrison did it and showed up somewhere later on as an old man. It's like the same rumor behind the death of comedian Andy Kaufman where people think it's the ultimate joke that he faked his death in 1984 and he could still show up even to this day. Just read Weekly World News. I don't know if they still make that. They all say everyone's still alive. More of a simple and harmless urban legend that I'm sure even kids to this day hear is that if you swallow your gum that you've been chewing, it'll stay in your stomach for seven years. Naturally, this is absolutely not true. It's unknown where or when this urban legend began, But the idea is that if gum sticks so well to the bottom of your shoe or to the bottom of a desk in school, that naturally it should stick to your stomach or your intestinal tract. But read any real article, science article, and they'll say if it was true, then in the last 50, 60, 70 years, there'd have been evidence of that somewhere, but there's none. I will tell you though, even though I've known for decades that this rumor is not true, most of the time I end up spitting my gum out. You could swallow it, but it's always like, what if there's a first time that it's true? I mean, there was one alligator in the New York City sewer. Another crazy urban legend that I remember when I was young was the story that Walt Disney had had himself cryogenically frozen. Disney died on December 15th, 1966 at the age of 65. And it wasn't too long after that a reporter for a tabloid newspaper claimed they had snuck into St. Joseph's Hospital in Burbank, California, where Disney was being treated for his illness at the end of life. And the story was this reporter disguised themselves as an orderly, broke into a storage room and saw Walt Disney inside a cryogenic chamber. And there were then rumors of when he was going to be thawed out, with there even being rumors that he was still being kept frozen underneath the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland. Ironically, all-time legend Red Sox baseball player Ted Williams, he actually did have his body and head separately cryogenically frozen. This was done in the hopes of someday, I guess, curing whatever ended up killing Ted Williams, but he was 83 when he died, so he wasn't that young. Here, as we get towards the end of this list, here's an urban legend that I thought was absolutely true. This probably, of all of these, I thought was true, and that was that the Faces of Death horror movies were real. The original movie is from 1978 and is a coroner showing scenes of gruesome deaths, real and reenacted. And partially it's filmed in a documentary style so it makes it seem like it's real. It's sort of like the 1980 horror film Cannibal Holocaust, which that was also purported to be real. So much so that the movie got banned in a lot of places. And I know Faces of Death wasn't real, the sequel wasn't real, Cannibal Holocaust wasn't real, but yet just a few weeks ago I reviewed Red Asphalt, the 1964 Driver's Ed film, and that's got real bodies in it. So it's not out of the realm of possibility that something real snuck into Faces of Death. And we'll end this trip down memory lane through 1980s urban legends with another one that likely most of you have heard. And that was the story that the Phil Collins song in the air tonight was based on true events that he saw. The song is excellent regardless. It came out in 1981. It has probably one of the most famous drum solos in the history of music in it. But it's got this very vivid imagery that if you took literally, it sounds like Phil Collins saw someone drowning and they weren't able to be saved. There's variations where it was someone fell overboard on a boat that Phil Collins was on and they couldn't save the man. There are even some of the rumors where Phil Collins is supposed to invite this person that watched another person drown to his concert so then he could point them out during In the Air Tonight. The true meaning is far different. where he wrote it about the grief he was feeling going through his divorce from his first wife, Andrea Bertarelli, in 1980. So no, Phil Collins didn't see someone drown and watch another man not save them. But which of these urban legends did you think was the most real? Mine was Faces of Death. People told me when I was a kid that it was real people dead. But if you enjoyed this segment, I think I'll do an Urban Legends one for the 70s, for the 90s, in general. So much fun nostalgia. But for now, that'll wrap up episode 135 of the In My Footsteps podcast. I hope you enjoyed all the nostalgia that I laid out for you here this week. I'll keep the train rolling next week with episode 136. Keep on the lookout for new videos on YouTube. I do full podcast episodes up there, partially because Google Podcasts is going away at the beginning of next month, April 2024. And it's transitioning over to YouTube Music, so I'm kind of getting a head start there. But I also do segments from the podcast that I flesh out with cool visuals, animations, images. Go subscribe on YouTube. I'm closer and closer to breaking that threshold where I can monetize my channel. Sure, I'll be making 20 cents a week or something, but still it's something. I could buy a piece of gum that I could chew and swallow and have in my stomach for seven years. If you enjoy my content, you can go become a subscriber on Patreon, have access to the bonus podcast episodes I put up monthly. early access to the YouTube videos that I share on the channel. Go check out Initial Impressions 2.0, the resurrection of my blog that goes over my life that is a Seinfeld episode filled with random wackiness and foolishness. I literally leave a Word document open on my laptop all week. And at the end of the day, I think about what was the weirdest thing that happened to me today or the weirdest, funniest thing I think about. Like I said, I laughed at how excited I got about getting my new, cool electric toothbrush. But if becoming a Patreon subscriber isn't feasible, there are so many ways that you can support me and support my work. Sharing the podcast, telling others about it, going and leaving ratings and reviews, sharing YouTube videos, subscribing to the channel. All these things cost nothing and they do so much to help spread the word about what I'm doing because content creation in general, it's a lot of work. It takes a lot of time. I would say realistically, if I had to put a number on it, I probably spend close to 20 hours a week doing some sort of content creation, editing, marketing. Like I said, at times it feels like it's a treadmill or a hamster wheel that I can't get off. But it's all so much fun and it's flexing that creative muscle. Like I said, I wanted to become a writer from the time I was in second grade. And this is an offshoot of that creativity. Before I get out of here, I wanted to make sure that I wished a special happy birthday to my friend Crystal. She's one of the biggest fans of the podcast. She's actually one, along with my friend Patrick Hines, who hosts the True Crime Obsessed podcast. Those two were the ones that kind of pushed me to start the podcast back up last July after I had gone on hiatus to finish my three books that came out last year. Crystal was also the one that kind of influenced me to start a Patreon page. And so you'll probably hear this before your birthday, but happy birthday and I'll see you at your party. And thanks for being such a great friend. More like family than friend, but you know. Spring is on its way. Hopefully the weather starts to get warmer. Things will start to bloom. The winter blues have definitely been real. Most of 2024 has just been rough. Working twice as hard to get half as far. So just remember to take care of your mental health. It can be so easy to get bogged down in just bad thoughts, bad vibes. This podcast for me is... Kind of a way of dealing with mental health for myself, but also hopefully giving a little bit of sunshine to you who listen. That's another reason why I'm diving more into the nostalgia. The warm and fuzzy feelings, the good old days, quote unquote. Sometimes having even an hour, or roughly an hour, to escape from the world is good. Make sure to lean into the things that make you happy. hobbies, people, certain songs, certain foods, hopefully certain podcasts. I appreciate all of you who listen, all of you who read the blog, watch the videos. That's good for my mental health. I don't need millions of viewers, listeners, but knowing there's dedicated people that enjoy my content, that it's kind of destination listening or viewing, that really makes me feel good Because there are times that I feel like I'm kind of shouting into the darkness and just hoping there's someone around to hear it. But until next time, remember, in this life, don't walk in anyone else's footsteps. Create your own path and enjoy every moment you can on this journey we call life. Because you never know what tomorrow brings. Thank you all for tuning in. This has been the In My Footsteps podcast. I am Christopher Setterlund. You already knew. Talk to you all again soon.

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Christopher Setterlund

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