February Christmas Party - 10 Months Until Christmas!

[00:00:00] This is a Bramble Jam Podcast.

[00:00:12] Live from the North Pole, it's time for Christmas morning.

[00:00:18] The daily show where every day is Christmas.

[00:00:22] Here are your hosts, Bran, no. That's not true at all. Brand, she had a post the other day on Instagram saying, like, I need some things to listen to on my commute. And I said, I have a suggestion. No, okay. Christmas morning. That is not what happened. So, Scotty, that is all lies. That is how I remember it. Wow. That's all I... Well, anyways. You guys need to work this out off air.

[00:01:40] It's great to have you back, Shannon.

[00:01:42] It is great to be here.

[00:01:44] And I had a great Christmas.

[00:01:46] It went by way too fast.

[00:01:48] It's because you weren't listening but it feels nice, you know, a nice, some people watch like, you know, like meet the press or something on Sunday morning, dumb Christmas morning. What better way to kick off a Sunday morning than with a nice cup of Joe, a little Christmas morning, Christmas party, hearing from Joe Frittin at some point, I hope,

[00:03:00] like a lot of good things going on today

[00:03:02] to kick off the Sunday.

[00:03:04] Scotty, I know we got so much this month.

[00:03:06] I know we got so much from the people time to prepare and do all the things. So like, you know, use your time wisely. Well, how many months is it until August? Oh, August is like next month. Like five? Yeah. Everyone knows, everyone knows that's what it starts. Basically. We've established it. Yeah. We're practically there. I do have a Christmas update for you both though. I went to both

[00:04:20] Lowe's and Hobby Lobby this week. Neither of them had Christmas.

[00:04:24] Not even the Hobby, not even the Hobby Lobby?

[00:04:26] Not surprised. This one's Christmas traditions. Can you give us some sort of classic rock intro? Here we go. Top four Christmas traditions. We got fun and games. How was that? Was that good? Does that work? That was real good. I can honestly say it's not what I expected. So bravo. I loved it. Thank you. I loved it. Thank you. That was fantastic.

[00:05:40] So back at Bramble Fest, 2023 in July.

[00:05:44] I remember it.

[00:05:45] I talked to Rena Saltzman. Hello Scott, Bran and Shannon. As a child, I was really lucky to live across the river from Manhattan. From about 12 to 18, my parents would wake us up in the middle of the night to drive into the city to watch the crews set up the floats and

[00:07:02] the balloons for the parade along Central Park West. In the last 25 years, But a friend of mine takes it one step further and has created what we call Dorky Jewish Christmas, which I think is in its 13th year now. DJX, as it is known, is a full day food and movie fest that takes place in New York City. About a dozen of us meet for breakfast at a diner, of course.

[00:08:20] Then we see a movie, usually about 11 a.m.

[00:08:23] Then we meet for the aforementioned Chinese food lunch and we see a matinee of a movie you had to have a pass showing that you were working. In order to get to the train station, the beat cops on 50th Street would walk me one avenue over and introduce me to the next cop, who would do the same until I reached Grand Central. It became such a tradition that the beat cops would look for me as I was leaving the theater.

[00:09:40] Celebrating Hanukkah is more fun now

[00:09:42] that we have grand babies in the mix.

[00:09:45] Hanukkah, no matter somebody who is such a veteran and no one knows New York like Rena. It was great to hear all of that fun stuff. Yeah, I loved that.

[00:11:00] I can't imagine doing something on a day where I say, and several hours later at 5 a.m.,

[00:11:06] I did this.

[00:11:07] That has never come up in my life. those plastic flying sloshers. There was a round desk with handles on the sides and I remember tumbling down the hills in it because it was very hard to control. I also remember an old aluminum tobaccon which was big enough for multiple kids on it. Old sleds these days, they can be seen as Christmas decorations standing

[00:12:21] up on porches decorated for Christmas with greenery, had manufactured tractors, plows, seed drills, and the production of the farm equipment kept the factory busy from January into the summer when the farmers had already sold their previous crops and they were looking to buy new implements for the spring and fall. And Sam Allen, he was trying

[00:13:44] to think of a way to keep his 300,000 sleds were sold in a year. Up to 2,000 were sold in one single day. Many variations were created after that, including an 8 foot long sled and one with wheels called the Flexi Racer. The factory closed unfortunately in

[00:15:00] 1968 with the rights of the sled selling to really, really nice of her. Shannon, this

[00:16:21] reminded me when I was listening to this last night. But then I would have been a war hero. That's true. That's true. Someone could have thrown it at your head. That's true. That would be a lot worse. I'm sure something like that happened at some point. Not with this flexible flyer though. There's no way you have any head injuries, Scotty. Wow. Well, not at all. Lenora, thank you for sending this. And also, please keep us updated with the restoration

[00:17:43] process as you go through it. I have a. Start there. Well, yeah, that's the... Well, that was the big concern is she's digging a tunnel. At some point, she's going to be under someone else's house. Like, you can't do that. One day you wake up and your house is at a 30-degree angle and you're like, Hey, Mary, did you happen to dig under my house? Well, it's great as she says she started it

[00:19:01] as just building a storm shelter under her house

[00:19:04] and then kind of just kept digging.

[00:19:06] Well, who hasn't started a project? Since the messages are over, we came right back. We kept our promises, you know? Welcome back, everybody. It's the Christmas party. We've had so much fun so far, but I think we've got even more fun ahead of us. Scotty, what's next? Christmas Memories. Can you give us some sort of classic rock musical intro to Christmas Memories?

[00:20:20] We want, we want, Christmas Memories.

[00:20:24] That one didn't work as well.

[00:20:26] I didn't think about the different... Russell Noel in Medina, Medina? Medina? That's how he has it pronounced here. I would say Medina, but... Yeah, that's Medina. Eat away. No, it's not your, it's not your dina, it's my dina. It's in Ohio. He went to Ohio. In Medina, Ohio. Medina. Medina. The museum is filled with Christmas movie props and costumes collected.

[00:21:41] Oh my god, I know.

[00:21:43] Shout out to Delilah.

[00:21:45] Love her.

[00:21:46] Sorry, Shannon.

[00:21:47] Everybody grim up. is that on display now is the Santa Claus costume from Miracle on 34th Street worn by Edmund Gwen. I attached a few photos, but I encourage all Christmas fans to head over and check it out at castlenoel.com. Guys, Castle Noel on their website, America's largest indoor year-round Christmas entertainment attraction.

[00:23:05] Wow.

[00:23:05] All those words together.

[00:23:08] Amazing. That's cool. Wow. That's awesome. And I'll be honest, the Grinch costume, boy, that's terrifying looking. Oh, it's so terrifying. I'm looking at the Instagram and so much cool stuff in here. This is very cool. But what is it? Like, how big is it? I know it's the largest, but still, that could be one room.

[00:24:22] I have no idea.

[00:24:23] Yeah, that's true.

[00:24:24] I don't want to get my hopes up.

[00:24:25] I don't like, is almost the size of your house, Scott, right? 40,000 square feet. That's like the west wing of it. The west wing of Scottie's house. If any of our morning people own an RV and want to do a road trip, I don't want to drive,

[00:25:41] but I would like to be shuttled around like it's a tour bus, and we could go to Medina, What? What? We got Christmas TV and movies! What is that? It's the We Are the Champs. It's We Are the Champions, but really bad. We're in progress. We've got Christmas TV and movies. Dang! Dang! Thank you. Okay. We have another entry here from Joe Fulton,

[00:27:00] who's a busy boy lately.

[00:27:02] He's a busy boy this month.

[00:27:04] Boy.

[00:27:05] Well, this one is in his neighborhood. After trying to steal a shot of liquor, he's thrown out. Stumbling around the neighborhood, Henry falls over from the booze, only to be approached by two young children. The girl wants a carriage, a dolly, and a job for her daddy, while the boy, he just

[00:28:20] wants a gun.

[00:28:21] This is Mr. Henry Corwin, normally unemployed, sleigh bells down an alley finding a bag full of empty cans that magically transforms into a sack of gift wrap packages. Overjoyed at his sudden ability to fulfill dreams Corwin proceeds to hand out the presents to the children and during the Christmas Eve service at a mission house. Suspicious that

[00:29:42] Henry stole the gifts the police arrest Henry only to discover that the bag is filled with cans once whether they crawl on horns and knees and wear diapers, or walk with a cane and comb their beards. There's a wondrous magic to Christmas and there's a special power reserved for little people. In short, there's nothing mightier than the meek. Night of the Meek is one of the best episodes of The Twilight Zone. It's a dark but hopeful take on the Christmas holiday with a fantastic performance by Arikarny.

[00:31:03] I give the episode an A+.

[00:31:05] Well, that's my review of The Twilight I always thought it was creepy. Like, I mean, as a kid, I was just like, it's very old style

[00:32:21] creepy. So that makes it creepier, I think, in some ways. was. Brain, does it matter? It does not matter. It doesn't matter, no. Gosh, that's exciting. And then our last entry today, Jessica Trinidad sent us an audio clip about Rankin Bass animated specials and some things she has noticed watching them as an adult. Okay. Hello morning people and Merry Christmas. This is Jessica Trinidad.

[00:33:41] I wanna talk a little about those awesome

[00:33:43] Rankin and Bass specials.

[00:33:44] I loved them as a kid and I was so excited

[00:33:46] to share them with my favorite my absolute favorite of all is in Frosty the Snowman. My sister and I discovered this many years ago when our children were tiny and we laughed so hard that we rerounded and watched it over and over and over again because it was just had us on the floor. Okay

[00:35:04] the scene where they're all like throwing out names for possible ideas for Frosty's name right talking about, I remember distinctly as a child, we would watch it every year and it was a VHS version that they recorded from the TV. So there'd be commercials included. And as a kid, you don't enjoy it as much as you do looking back at it. But at a certain point my parents got rid of their VHS player and got a DVD player. Don't know why. Also, another fun thing to notice if you watch A Year Without a Santa Claus, heat miser, snow miser, you love them. At the moment when they go to Mother Nature and they're trying to get Mother Nature to say, hey, let's it

[00:37:40] snow in Southtown. We're going to give a fan and it's interesting. It's funny and it's fun to watch. What about you, Scotty? I know you love them. I had one of those VHS tapes that Bran was talking about where my mom recorded all the stuff

[00:39:01] on broadcast television for us.

[00:39:04] And I'm a Gen X-er child of the 80s.

[00:39:07] So for a lot of babysitting, Yeah, wasn't it great? That's so good. It's so funny. And if I didn't, oh, darn, man, you tried, Scott. Scottie, as somebody who loves old commercials as I do, do you remember a commercial in the late 80s, a McDonald's commercial, and it has a little song about, hard-nosed Mrs. Hatcher? And it's like this whole song.

[00:40:21] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:40:22] That song randomly comes to my mind on a regular basis stories and Jessica's funny voices, because I just want to hear that over and over again.

[00:41:40] I want her to do my voicemail and like,

[00:41:42] you've reached Scott, or however she does it.

[00:41:45] Yeah.

[00:41:45] I want Jessica to now do a monthly just