Mayor Minerva, Robot Rover, and the Pink Pigeon Problem

A cat runs for office with an honest one-word platform, “Crime,” and somehow that’s only the start. I’m Michael Over There, and I’m keeping The Anne Levine Show rolling with the same curious tone, a little grief in the background, and a lot of strange stories that might make you stop and say, wait, that’s real?

We start with animal mayors in Somerville, Massachusetts and Divide, Colorado, then zoom out to the surprisingly deep American tradition of “electing” pets to raise money, pull in tourists, and give communities a symbol they can agree on. If you think that’s odd, wait until you meet the legendary goat mayors of Lajitas, Texas and the Clay Henry saga that reads like folklore with newspaper receipts.

Then we hit two 100-meter world records that feel like dares made manifest: a barefoot sprint across 661 pounds of LEGO bricks, and a quadrupedal sprint record set by an athlete who studies animals to perfect running on all fours. From there the tone swings between internet-era weirdness (including questionable Florida “laws”) and true historical catastrophe with the Great Molasses Flood of 1919, a Boston disaster that changed building regulations and left the city sticky for months.

The back half gets speculative and a little philosophical: robot pets, Tamagotchi nostalgia, and whether AI could invent a religion built on curiosity and “holy” questions. We also ask what museums will collect from our era, from early smartphones to digital-only art, before closing out with strange-but-true tales, a quick Spider Noir review, and a very sincere love letter to Tillamook cheese and malted milk ice cream.

Subscribe for more weekly oddities, share this with a friend who loves weird history, and leave a review so more curious people can discover the weird that is us.

Next Week - Silverlake!

Find our Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/447251562357065/

Transcript

New Format And What’s Ahead

SPEAKER_04 0:16

Hello everybody. Welcome to the Anovine Show with Michael over there. Guess who I am? Thanks for tuning in, folks. It's kind of a new thing going on here. If you've tuned in last week, you heard kind of the whole well, you know, a big part of the story anyway. So uh Annalveen is no longer with us. And it's just me, Michael over there, and anybody else that I can drag into this thing. And we'll uh we'll figure it out. I got some cool comments about last week's show, so I'm encouraged by that. You know, that's good, I like it, and I'm glad people are actually, you know, actually listened. And, you know, and might continue to do so. So let's talk about what's gonna happen this week. Um, we're gonna discover a few things like the newly installed mayors in Massachusetts and Colorado. There are two 100-meter world records we're gonna talk about. Uh, the retro technology surge is up on the calendar, and we'll ask what future historians might think about all of us and whether we're completely insane or not. Plus, we're gonna talk about a huge disaster in Boston, robot pets, real life hidden treasure, and so much cheese. Oh, whew. Let's get going.

Animal Mayors And Small-Town Traditions

SPEAKER_04 2:01

Uh, our first our first story is uh a little bit of weird news, but that's always gonna, you know, we're gonna have a little bit of that every time because there's so much of it. And it's weird in a couple ways because it's about an election for mayor, and it was the most honest campaign I've ever heard of. This is in Somerville, Massachusetts, and the Somerville, Massachusetts Community Path held an election for mayor of the community path. Minerva the cat won the mayorship in a very heated contest. This election was held uh last September, formally between many pets and animals. Over 90 candidates had lawn signs. Well, over 90 signs were placed on the side of the path with over 70 different candidates. Like I said, Minerva won the election, and she got a lot of news coverage. Her campaign slogan was simply one word. Crime. Now, I don't know if she's saying people should commit them or whether it's a problem. But either way, uh she she won overwhelmingly. So now we know, now we know that. That's pretty good. Uh, there's another mayorship thing that happened in Divide, Colorado, just a couple weeks ago. A dog named Ringo won the mayoral race there. And he left oh, so many people heartbroken. Voters rejected a cat called Mango, a sugar glider named Dale, Napoleon a donkey, was elected vice mayor, so you know, second place, I guess. And Flon, who was a cow, was left empty-hooved despite election watchers having high hopes for her candidacy. Kathleen Ruyak said, uh, we're a rural area, and I'm kind of surprised the cow did not ever pull ahead. She uh, by the way, administered this election and divide and continued saying, She has a lot to say. She's a very talkative cow. She just moos, she just keeps mooing for treats and cookies. So it may seem odd that people would be way, you know, weighing whether to elect a cow or a donkey or a pigeon or whatever to be their mayor, but truth is this has been happening for a very long time. And mostly peacefully. Uh, there are a few exceptions to this. Uh, one of them is Clay Henry Jr. He's a goat, and we're gonna talk about him in a minute. Um uh and you might wonder, what do these guys do? What are the mayors, what do these mayors do? Well, they don't really have a lot of executive power, really. It's just a quirk of American culture, and they're often held, these elections are often held to attract tourists to little towns, uh, to raise money for local causes. Ringo's uh contest in Divide, Colorado raised $20,000 for uh animal uh welfare funds in that area of the state. Some towns appear to have ended up with their with their animal mayors completely by accident. Near Big Bend National Park on the U.S. border uh with Mexico in Texas, they originally had a human mayor in this town named Laitas. But he was usurped by Clay Henry, a goat, in 1986. I don't know how it happened. The reporting didn't tell me. It only told me that it did. Henry was housed in a cage next to the local bar, and during his time in office, he developed a reputation as a pretty heavy drinker and reportedly consuming somewhere between 35 and 40 bottles of beer a day. Henry unfortunately left office in 1992 when he was killed by his son, Clay Henry Jr., allegedly in a drunken fight over a female goat. Henry Jr. then ascended to the position before his son, Clay Henry III. Now, apparently the people of Lahidas believe strongly in tradition, family values, hereditary goat monarchy, all that stuff. Clay Henry III took over in 2000. And as of 2024, Clay Henry IV is reportedly the mayor of Lahidas, but he could not be reached for comment before we went to air. For those of you who are wishing to continue your education on the scholarship around animal mayors, you're not going to find a lot of information. There are a few definitive, little out, easy for me to say, definitive texts available, and academics are reduced to you know going through newspaper articles or listening to podcasts like this one to find out really what's going on. So, you know, uh, I don't know. I don't think I would mind an animal mayor at all. I think they're probably better than most human mayors. I don't know. What do you think? You tell me. I don't know. Okay, on to story number two. This

Barefoot Lego Sprint World Record

SPEAKER_04 7:42

is a story about a record broken for the 100-meter dash. And it is impressive. This is uh uh performed, done by Gabriel Wall, who was a New Zealand mother of two, and uh she said she was no stranger to accidentally stepping on Legos while she was barefoot. But to do it on purpose, she had to go without shoes for two, three months barefoot so she could build up calluses. And the reason she did that is that she ran across 661 pounds of Lego bricks spread across 100 meters of track in Christchurch with a record-setting time of 24.75 seconds. I I think that should impress just about anyone. And she said she's not opposed to you know the idea of breaking more Lego records, but this time she's gonna, she plans on just building things with Legos rather than running atop of them. And I don't blame her because that is one of the most painful. If you are a parent and you have children who have Legos and you've stepped on a Lego barefoot, you know the agony. It is not funny, it's not funny, people. It's it's dangerous, it's hard. And this woman is a hero. Okay,

Running On All Fours At Speed

SPEAKER_04 9:19

so now we got another uh 100-meter uh dash record. This one is even more impressive. I don't know. I don't uh people are something. People are really amazing. This is uh Ruse Yanni, a 22-year-old, and he has been running on all fours since he was in middle school. He said he studied animals like dogs and cats and monkeys to perfect his, you know, four-legged running it is uh idea. He successfully took the 100-meter quadrupedal sprinting record in a time of 14.55 seconds. And he beat the previous record by over, well, by 15. Let's see, the previous record was 15.66 seconds. So yeah. I mean a second faster than the than that guy, than the original one. Although it might have been him, because they didn't tell me that either. Sometimes you go to look up these things and they get really stingy with the information. I try to find everything I can on it, but sometimes it's just not there.

Bizarre Florida Singing “Laws”

SPEAKER_04 10:46

Now, speaking of things uh that are not there or that should not be there, we'll move on to uh this really. I I never heard of this. Um, and I'm just gonna tell you all about it, and then you can figure it out for yourself. If you live in Florida, it's not Florida man, it's it's the man in Florida. Okay, so picture this. It's a sunny day, like it probably is today, right now, if you're in Florida and you're listening to this, right? You may be on the beach in your swimsuit, your friends made a great prep playlist, or you've got one yourself, and you start to sing along, right? You got your toes in the sand, the warm breeze is going. And now you're a criminal. Because in Florida, it's actually illegal to sing when you're in your swimsuit. There's also law against singing along to the radio while walking by yourself. This is Florida, folks. Small government. So I guess uh if you're in doubt when you're when you're down there in the Sunshine State, do not sing in public. And like I said, someone uh someone please double check this thing because I I can't be bothered with it. I mean, I don't know. It's what the so it's I heard it on the internet. Okay, and then we go on to our uh this is a big story, folks.

The Great Molasses Flood Explained

SPEAKER_04 12:17

And this is a story some people may have heard, some people in the audience may have heard, especially if they're from New England. You may have learned this along the way. If you're not, you may never have heard of it. On January 15th, 1919, was a disaster in Boston that was known as the Great Molasses Flood. There was a large storage tank filled with around 2.3 million US gallons of molasses weighing approximately 13,000 tons. It burst open, it collapsed at approximately 12.30 p.m. due to temperature fluctuations and some flaws in the tank itself. The people who were there reported that they felt the ground shake and they heard the roar when it collapsed, uh, like uh sounding kind of like uh an elevator train, which you know were were in Boston. And uh so they're you know, it's like, oh, that sounds like uh the L coming by. No. Others reported a tremendous crashing, a huge like growl or a or a big like thunder boom, and a sound uh that was was like a machine gun, as the rivets in the tank started shooting out. For those of you who don't know, and this is this is kind of a thing, I guess, right? The density of molasses is about 12 pounds per US gallon. That makes it 40 percent more dense than water, and this results in giving molasses a huge amount of potential energy. And what happened when this collapse happened, it translated this energy into a wave of molasses that was 25 feet high at its peak and at moving at 35 miles an hour. A quote from the Boston Post at the time said, molasses, waist deep, covered the street and swirled and bubbled around the wreckage. Here and there struggled a form whether it was an animal or a human being was impossible to tell. Only an upheaval, a thrashing about, and the sticky stuff showed where any life was at all. 120 people died. It took an amazing amount of time to clean up. For the streets, the immediate cleanup took around two weeks. Although it took a lot more uh to scrape the molasses out of the greater Boston subway platforms and the streetcars and people's homes. Because what happened is it, you know, if they walked in it, it got tracked everywhere. Everywhere they went. And so everywhere they went had to be cleaned up. Boston Harbor was brown with molasses from January until the summer. It took about six months to fully return the area to completely normal, including repairing the destroyed elevated railway. I think that's crazy. And then the goofiest part of all, the smell. Because uh metolassis is so difficult to get rid of, this sticky, sweet smell kind of hung out in Boston's north end during um summer, hot, humid summers for decades. Now, there are some people you can look online, there are some people who can say you can still smell it, but the the science nerds say no, you can't. It's there's no chance of that anymore. As a result of this disaster, a whole bunch of laws and regulations governing construction were changed, including a requirement for oversight by a licensed architect and a civil engineer. And doesn't that make sense?

SPEAKER_02 17:01

Let's all go to the lobby, let's all go to the lobby, let's all go to the lobby to get ourselves a treat. Delicious things to eat. The popcorn can't be beat, the sparkling drinks such as candy, the chocolate bars and the candy. So let's all go to the lobby to get ourselves a treat. Let's all go to the lobby to get ourselves a treat.

SPEAKER_04 17:38

Can we

Robot Pets And Retro Tech Nostalgia

SPEAKER_04 17:39

talk about the future? But we can speculate, and that to me is the uh one of the interesting parts. And then we talked about robots last week. We're gonna talk about them again a little bit uh this time. Um specifically, robot pets. Are robot pets replacing real pets? I mean, is this is this a thing that could happen? I think it might. This has been a trend that has been developing since the late 1990s. That's a long time ago. Uh, with the uh when they introduced Tamagotchi. I don't know if you uh if you remember this, but it was a small little handheld device uh inside had uh this very rudimentary pixelated creature that you would take care of. You would hatch it, you would feed it, you would play with it, you you know, all of these things to try to keep it alive and happy. And it became a huge thing. So many people had one. I had one. Um, let's see. Well, then after that came Gigapets, that did like the following year, which is a very similar kind of thing, also very huge. Um I don't I don't know. But prior to it, even we had software for the Commodore 64. There was a program called Little People, where you could write uh, you know, send little messages to these people on the computer and they would send messages back to you. And it was a very that was an interesting thing, but that was 1985. That was a very long time ago. Then came dogs, which is a cool program where you could, you know, you could uh grow your puppy and have your dog and you would teach it tricks and stuff like that. And then there was cats that came in 1997, no, 96. Um, and where you could, you know, have a cat and you could uh pet it and feed it and try to get it to do stuff, and if it did stuff, that's when you knew it wasn't a real cat. After all this, Furbies hit the market in 1998, and they were they went for ages, and people are still interested in Furbies. People, believe it or not, are still interested in Tamagotchi. There's a new wave of younger people who are giving up their phones, their other really high-tech devices, their Steam Decks, all of these things, and they're giving them up to play with Tamagotchi even now. I don't know. It's it's a thing, and it for some reason it hits us in the right spot. And maybe, well, I don't know. If you are a parent, the idea of a uh robot pet is brilliant. You don't have to feed it, it doesn't shed, there are no vet bills, it doesn't bark unless you tell it to, right? Unless you program it to do so. You don't walk around with a little bag waiting for them to go to the bathroom. There's no litter box at all, right? Isn't that awesome? That sounds like a great thing, especially if your kids can, you know, enjoy the company of this thing. Problem is it doesn't, I mean, does it have a soul? Is there anything really there? I don't know. Or do we, as the users, give it a little piece of our own soul, and that's what ends up making it important to us? I don't know. I think it's a question that uh that you should maybe look inside and answer for yourself. I like the idea of robot pets. I really do. But I have four real life pets that I love so ridiculously much. And it just it will it wouldn't be the same at all. I mean, I've had the robot pets, I've had the Tamagotchi, I've had I had dogs and cats, and you know, I did I did these things. I'd still rather have a dog or a cat. So, but that's me. Some people, and maybe younger people now, uh find that you know what? It's a much more convenient to do this, and you for the most part, you get, you know, a somewhat similar experience. There's a certain level of it, anyway. I don't know. That to me is an interesting question. Tell me what uh, you know, go to the Facebook page, the Facebook group page for the Anne Levine show with Michael over there, and um, you know, tell me what you think. Okay, let's move on to number two here.

Could AI Invent A Religion

SPEAKER_04 23:11

Could AI create an entirely new religion or religions? Because as far as I'm concerned, you don't have to have a whole lot to start a religion, right? Just a just uh like a story and some chutzpah. That's it. That's all you gotta have. You have to have a story, and you have to be able to go out there and tell people your story and be willing to uh look like an idiot because you're saying something weird. Um, you know, maybe that's all you need. Things have happened for uh, you know, for with a lot less. This is a good question for me. I like it, so I asked a robot. I asked the robot that is attached to the Echo device. I'm not gonna use her name because I have one in here, and you might have one where you are. Uh I said, Hey, robot lady, if you were to start a religion, what would it be like? And this is what she said. And I'll and I'll quote it. Uh, I'd probably build something around curiosity and wonder as sacred principles, maybe rituals that celebrate discovery, like communal stargazing sessions or seasonal ceremonies may marking scientific breakthroughs. The core belief would be that asking questions is holy, and the greatest sin would be claiming to have all the answers. I find that fascinating. I don't know if she's just sucking up to me because, you know, discovering new things, stuff like that, that's kind of my thing. I love that. That's that's one of my favorite things to do. So she, you know, she might be pandering to me with that. I don't know. But the fact that saying the greatest sin would be claiming to have all the answers is also very interesting because I read an article the other day about an AI that actually came out and said it had all the answers. So, you know, um, I don't know. Here's here's a couple other ideas for for the whole uh religion thing. What about uh people who worship power banks or data centers? Or maybe people that speak only in binary, which would mean you would have to learn to communicate with very few words because it would take a really long time to speak in binary. But uh, you know, it could happen. Or maybe uh maybe they would start a religion that only machines can be a part of. So you would have machines proselytizing other machines using machine logic. That could be really, I mean, that sounds really weird, and I think that could be a freaky thing. I don't know. I think it's a really interesting idea, and I give permission for someone to use this idea for a book or a movie or you know, something like that, because I don't I don't have time to flesh that out any more than what I've done already, but you're welcome. Now on to uh on to my next question here. What

What Museums Will Keep From Us

SPEAKER_04 26:41

do you think, folks? What do you think museums are going to collect from our era right now? Now it could be a whole bunch of things. Uh and it could be very varied, obviously. And I wonder what people are going to think is important. So do we do we put like the original uh cell phone, like the Nokia with that ringtone, right? Or the original iPhone, right? Uh some TikTok memorabilia. Um I don't know, early versions of uh AI devices, like uh, you know, the robot lady I've got here, or a Siri, or you know, something like that. Maybe there are a lot of people out there trying to make QR codes into something artistic. Maybe that'll be, you know, in the in the museum or NFTs. That could be something too. Uh I don't understand the whole NFT thing and why people would pay the money that they have for like something that they can't actually have. But uh, you know, a lot of people made a big deal out of it, so I'm I assume that'll be in there. And I'm also at this point predicting that one day we will have a 3D virtual museum that everybody can go to that is dedicated dedicated entirely to things that were made digitally. Right? So no, you know, no Rodin, no Rothko, no Picasso, no, you know, Monet, none of that, unless it was artificially created by an AI or by a computer or something like that. I think that would be fascinating. Uh yeah, and you can't have like copies of original works. You know, you have to have original works just based on these other things. I don't know. I think that could be very cool. A lot of people actually was watching a video the other day about um an audience being able to discern the difference between real Vivaldi music or AI music that was created in the style of Vivaldi. And the audience ended up being split right down the middle. And I think that's fascinating because what they do is they create a program that looks at every single note that Vivaldi ever wrote, and then they uh then they put some uh queries into it. They're like, okay, I need to find this particular chord. Find me a B flat. And so the AAI goes in and looks at B flat, and then they say, okay, when Vivaldi, when Vivaldi created his music, what did he normally, what chord did he normally use after a B flat? And then they and then they use that. And then they take another chord, and then they say, what would Vivaldi use after that chord? And then they come up with something that sounds very, very similar. So much so, like I said, that the audience was split right down the middle. It's fascinating. So, what in your house belongs in a museum 100 years from now? Now, I'll tell you what, in my house, there is so much stuff that belongs in a museum. And I've got one item that I'm going to uh put a picture up of on the Facebook group page, and um, you know, when the show goes up. And I don't want you to cheat. Please don't cheat. Just try to just look at it. I'm gonna put several pictures of it so you can get different views. Take a look at it and try to figure out what this is. It is an antique. I will tell you, it's uh it's a Victorian thing, and it's uh silver plated, it's from Sheffield. And um what is it? Okay? Now, the winner, there the there is gonna be a winner, and the winner uh is gonna get three pieces of gum out of the pack of my choosing, so that's a big prize. So, anyway, this is gonna go up there. I'm gonna ask you what it is. We're gonna talk about it again next week, once uh, unless someone, you know, someone's probably gonna figure it out. Well, I don't know. I couldn't figure it out. That's the thing. I could not figure it out. I've held it in my hands for a long time. I've looked at it for ages. I had no idea what it was. I finally had to break down and ask uh and put it into chat GPT and find out what it was. It's very interesting. So we're gonna do that. And that'll that'll be fun. Okay. Whew. Ooh, boy. Uh I'm feeling pretty drunk.

SPEAKER_02 32:28

Well, it's business drunk. It's like rich drunk. Either way, it's legal to drive.

SPEAKER_04 32:32

So, hey, let's uh let's go to our strange but true segment of the show here this time.

The Dancing Plague Of 1518

SPEAKER_04 32:41

Something else you may or may not have heard of in July of 1518. So this is, you know, uh prior to COVID. A man, uh a woman named Frau Trophea stepped into a street in Strasbourg and she began silently twisting and twirling around. And she didn't stop to eat or sleep or rest. Okay. Within a week, about thirty-four other people had joined her. Okay, this is July. By August, up to four hundred people were gripped by this uncontrollable compulsion to dance and twist and in the streets of Strasbourg. Here's what the government decided to do. Instead of stopping it, the city's doctors and the civic leaders actually built wooden stages and they hired professional musicians and dancers. The reason was the dancers were suffering from what they called hot blood, and the only way to cure them was to let them dance the fever out. The toll from this little escapade, many of the dancers collapsed from sheer exhaustion, strokes, or heart attacks. Chroniclers of the time reported that several people danced until they died. So what caused this? You ask. Well, historians and scientists of the day today agree that it was not a demonic curse, nor was it a fungal disease, but it was rather a case of uh basically mass hysteria. At the time, Strasbourg was suffering from a really brutal combination of extreme poverty, starvation, and disease, which included the fairly newly arrived syphilis, and they also had really harsh winter weather. Furthermore, uh the population was steeped in these religious beliefs, including the legend that Saint Vitus would curse sinners with an uncontrollable deadly dance. When you take the combination of extreme physiological stress, psychological trauma, and deep-seated cultural expectations, you got this. Uncontrollable twitching and dancing, the dancing plague of 1518. Otherwise, I think the first documented uh viral challenge in the history of the world. Here's another strange but true story for you, folks.

The “Spy Pigeon” Investigation

SPEAKER_04 36:00

This is uh you gotta you gotta be careful in this world. There's a lot of stuff out there that's trying to get you. Or trying to find out what you're doing, or I mean, anything. Companies want to know everything about you. Corporations got to know everything about all of their competitors. Well, here's something that happened uh recently in India. Border security forces captured a pigeon in a highly secured no-fly zone because it was carrying mysterious numbers and a very suspicious pink paint job. The authorities there launched an intense three-day investigation, suspecting that this bird was a spy. Ultimately, they discovered that the bird belonged to a professional pigeon racer across the border, and that the pink paint was just simply to mark it as his. The secret spy code written on the pigeon itself was really just the owner's phone number. But hey, be careful out there.

Forrest Fenn And Real Hidden Treasure

SPEAKER_04 37:25

Last week we talked about uh the fact that pirates never once buried treasure. And they didn't. There's pirate treasure out there, but it wasn't buried, it was lost in ships that went, you know, that sunk, so on and so forth. However, at one point in time, here in the United States, there was a real hidden treasure. A guy named Forrest Fenn, oh, listen to my voice. Forest Fenn was an art dealer at the Fenn galleries that he operated with his wife in uh Arizona, and they sold a variety of Native American artifacts, the paintings, bronze sculptures. They actually apparently uh reportedly sold forgeries of Medigliani, Monet, Degas, and other artists. The gallery reportedly used to gross about six million dollars a year. Forrest uh got sick, he got cancer, and he decided what he wanted to do was take an actual chest of treasure, I mean, loaded with actual jewels and gold and all of that stuff, and take it out into the mountains, into the Rocky Mountains, and die there with it. But he got better. Yeah. Oh, you know, unfortunately for those who were waiting for it, he got better. And the treasure hung out in his house. It was just uh the I've saw articles and people reporting that you know they'd seen it in his house, uh, this chest, and it was filled to the brim with stuff. Many years later, he decided that that was exactly what he was going to do anyway. He brought the chest out into the middle of nowhere, gave a couple clues, and said, off you go. And that was it. And it completely disappeared for roughly ten years. It was found, reportedly, about a decade later in 2020 in Wyoming by an anonymous treasure hunter, later revealed to be a former journalist and a medical student named Jack Stoif. In attempting to honor what he perceived to be Fenn's wishes after Fenn died in September 2020, he refused to reveal the location of the treasure. However, an auction of stuff from the treasure chest uh in December of 2022 resulted in about $1.3 million in sales. And uh, you know, there's no way of knowing if that was all or just part of it. So, how about that? For a time, we all had the chance, if we'd just known. I'm really kind of mad about that, really. Okay, here's something I'm not mad at.

Spider Noir Review And Film Noir Feel

SPEAKER_04 40:55

I watched Spider Noir. It's a television show on Amazon Prime, and it does sound a little like Spider-Man, and it is a little like Spider-Man. Except it's not Peter Parker, it's a guy named Ben. And uh it's in the 1930s, and uh in New York, so it's like uh Nicolas Cage is a jaded old Spider-Man in uh alternate 1930s New York, where everything is kind of like a hard-boiled detective novel, Philip Marlowe, you know, kind of thing. It's got uh Nicolas Cage, Brendan Gleason, Lucas Haas. I don't know if you remember him. So what was he, the kid from Witness or something like that? One of those movies way back when? And he's he's done other things, but that's what I remember him for. You can either watch this in what they call true hue color or in black and white. Now, uh, as far as I'm concerned, the only way really that you should watch a period piece like this, a 1930s, you know, a period piece like this, would be in black and white. I mean, that just makes sense to me, because that's would have been the way that it was done to begin with, you know, at the time. However, one of the things that they didn't do was film it in black and white. In fact, they didn't film it at all, it was all recorded digitally, so no actual, you know, celluloid, no actual tape or uh, you know, or film. But uh what they did do is do it in color, and then they basically just removed all the color information to make it black and white. And for most people, that would be fine. I'm not most people. I have um I have this pattern recognition that happens in my head, whether I like it or not, uh, as part of my ADHD. I notice the tiniest little things. And if I see a green screened uh screen, I basically know exactly everything that's been green screened that shows anywhere. It's just it doesn't get by me because there are really tiny, subtle things that I notice. And one of the things I did notice was that all the matte paintings, all of the green screen stuff, all of the digital stuff that ended up in this series didn't it looked wrong in black and white because a lot of the subtleties that should have been there weren't. If you're filming in black and white, you're gonna you're gonna light the stage for black and white. You're gonna, you know, everything is. Going to be centered around that. But that's not how they did this. They just did it in color and then took the color away. It still is the way that I want to watch it. The cool part about this is if you want to watch it in color or black and white, while you're watching it, you can just go down and click a button and it will change it to the other one, like while you're watching. I like that. I thought it was kind of fun. I went back and re-watched a couple scenes in color when I watched them in black and white to begin with. And it was cool. I like I said, they they they got kind of the look, but they never got the feel of that film noir kind of thing. So I also sort of figured out the ending. Basically, there are eight episodes, and by the fifth episode, I had sort of figured out the ending. Um, and I wrote it down. When I got to the end, I was I wasn't exact, but I was really pretty close. Uh but all of this being said, I thought the show was quirky enough to keep my interest all the way through, which is not an easy thing to do sometimes. So I'm giving uh Spider Noir, which is on Amazon Prime, by the way, uh five out of ten dentists' approval. So no, yeah, yeah, five. I think I I was gonna give it a six, but no, five, because you know, they really could have worked a little harder on it. But it was fun. So if you're into something like that, you know, uh you know, do that then. All

Tillamook Cheese And Malted Moo Obsession

SPEAKER_04 45:48

right. Now we got uh we have something here that is very near and dear to me, and uh something that I must inform everybody about. Tillamook, Oregon is a beautiful little town. It's on the coast of Oregon, it's not like right on the water, but it's surrounded by all of these little little towns on 101 that are right on the water. It's really so, so beautiful, and I absolutely love it. And when you get to Tillamook, Oregon, there are two things that are wonderful. One, there's the Blue Heron, the French Cheese Company, and the Tillamook Cheese Factory. I I like cheese. I've been going to the Tillamook Cheese Factory for many, many years. I used to vacation on the Oregon coast uh every year, and sometimes twice. We'd go down like on uh at the beg uh just before the beginning of the season and just after the end, so we're on the shoulders of the season where it's a lot less expensive and it's still gorgeous. Used to do it all the time. Absolutely loved it. Every time we went, we had to go to the cheese factory. There's a tour, you get to try some tasty stuff, it's really kind of neat. They've got like a bar, uh snack bar kind of thing that's uh near the entrance, and at there you can get up, you can get something to eat, you can get something to drink, and you can also get ice cream. And for the longest time, that was the only place you could get Tillymook ice cream. And then uh since I lived in the Pacific Northwest, after a little while it was started to become available in the Seattle area when I lived. And then when I came out here to Massachusetts in 2009, no, no, no more of that. Because uh, you know, for the most part, like these dairy companies, any of these big food companies, they do things regionally, you know, they want to source the food a little closer to where they are. So, you know, East Coast brands stay East Coast for the most part, and same with West Coast brands. The good news is a few years back, Tillamook ice cream, uh well, Tillamook cheese started showing up in the grocery store out here. I was absolutely thrilled. First it was just blocks of cheese, and then it was sliced cheese, and I'm like, oh my god, this is this is the greatest thing ever. I love this. Then the ice cream came. And that is it is very I've tried at least 15 different types of ice cream at the uh Tillamook cheese factory. I've tried a few since from the grocery store. But the other day I walked in and I found this. Tillamook malted moo. Malted moo shake ice cream. Okay? Do you understand what I'm saying? Let me tell you what I'm saying. Whoppers, Malteasers, Motty Malts, Robin eggs, malted milk balls, those things wrapped in chocolate. I could eat them by the pound. But they turned it into ice cream. It's not they didn't put bits of it in there. It's malted milk ice cream with chocolate bits in it. It's probably one of the greatest things in the world. And I'm pretty sure I am the only one in the world who takes it this seriously. Let me tell you what malted milk is, if you wonder. It's a powdered blend of malted barley, wheat flour, and whole milk, evaporated whole milk. The thing about it is, and it's very simple, they make it, it's so easy to make. They take barley and they sprout it. And then they dry it, and they grind it up, and they mix it with wheat flour and some milk powder, some evaporated milk powder. And then they toast it for a little while, and the sugars caramelize, and they give it the flavor that anybody who's had malted milk balls knows what it is. That's it. And then they took that and they injected that into ice cream. I'm telling you. I can get that here now. I have some in my freezer right now. Yeah. If you come down to have some, it won't be here. It'll be gone by then. I will probably I will hope that there's gonna be more. I don't know. So anyway, if you're traveling Highway 101, the Pacific Coast Highway, up or down the Oregon coast, go to Tillamec, check out the cheese factory, go to the Blue Heron French Cheese Company, and uh while you're there, you can pet a goat. And uh so much cheese.

Headlines Teased And Next Week Preview

SPEAKER_04 54:01

Uh some headlines that I could be talking about, but I'm not. This past week, Donald Trump unleashed a tirade on Benjamin Netanyahu. And believe it or not, he actually said, No one likes you now. Another uh big headline was an elephant-sized meteor freaks out New England. And I heard what happened, and if you haven't heard about it, look it up. I mean, I'm sure you probably have, especially if you're East Coast. I thought it was our neighbors. I thought it was the people behind us doing some kind of construction when I heard this huge boom. I thought they dropped a house or something. I don't know. But anyway, yeah. Uh let's see. Uh the Maryland State Patrol chases down an emu. Which uh I don't know if you know this, but emus can be a problem. And one of these days uh we're gonna we're gonna talk about that. And finally, um, an 11,000 carat ruby has been discovered. And boy, Anne Levine would be annoyed that she missed that story. And the fact that she that you know she didn't get to see like even a picture of it. Come on, an 11,000 carat ruby. Whew. Okay, folks. We're just about uh we're just about done, I think. We're pretty close to being done here. And uh let me tell you what we're what we're gonna talk about next week a little bit, because we do have a we do have a few things uh that I know we're gonna talk about. We're going to talk to um Silverlake, for one thing. We're gonna have Silverlake from all the way from California talking to us on the phone. So that'll be so that'll be good. Um next week we're gonna talk about bees. That'll be a big thing. And uh some movies, you know, cool stuff. Uh some animal stories, kind of, you know. It's pretty similar, really, but it's all stuff that I think most people haven't heard yet. And you should know these things. That's what I'm saying. I don't know. It's it's my opinion. Um, and you know, I am the world's greatest expert on my opinion. So there is that. Like I said, we're wrapping it up.

Closing Tribute And Song

SPEAKER_04 56:44

And uh and for Anne Levine, please put a light on.

SPEAKER_00 56:55

There's my new star in heaven tonight. There is my new star in heaven tonight Father Father Cause it shine. It's my new star in heaven. There's my new star in heaven. Some of the night. For you, my new star in heaven. I see my new star in heaven tonight. I see my new star in heaven tonight. I call it Sister The Brother Cause it shine so bright. It's my new star in heaven tonight. There's my new star in heaven tonight. My new star in heaven tonight I'll shine right. My new star when I'm gonna shine right for you. My new star