WEBVTT
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Oh, and it's closed. Of course it's closed. Of course
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it's closed. I don't know what I would have expected.
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I read the news, I read the news. I should
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know that it's closed. Hi, folks, James Landwax and how,
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oh how I would love to say that I'm sitting.
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At my customed place at the long boomerang pattern for
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my account of the diner on an old highway twenty three,
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about thirteen and a half minutes from wherever you happen
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to be at this very moment. Love to say it,
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but it can't because, as you know, the diner is gone.
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In all these years, it's always been there. And as
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we've been saying over the last few weeks, first they
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had to close temporarily because there was a gas main brak,
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and then they were doing some excavating and they found
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a huge amount an unquantifiable quantity of grease that had
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been poured into the ground dumped out of the back.
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It's a super fun site now. And then the diner
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just vanished, just vanished. No, the foundations are gone. The
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foundations are kind of we were speculating last week that.
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They took it somewhere to get detailed. You clean it
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up a little bit.
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Or maybe it was sold to a collector, or maybe
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it's gonna reopen down the road or something like it.
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Don't know, don't know. And you know, you might be thinking,
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isn't this just a labored metaphor for your own displacement
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from your house which will be coming in a couple
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of months when you sell it and the inevitable and
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concommon into separation marital thing. Isn't this kind of like
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a long metaphor for that. No, not in the least bit,
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because if it ever came back, then I would have
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to sort of rejigger the actual events of my life
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in order to fit that. So no, no, just telling
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you it's gone. But I had a thought. I thought, well,
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there are two other diners in the area. If you've
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been with me for a very long time, you know
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that there is the Haunted Diner, which generally we would
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visit on October thirty first. It's deep in the woods,
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it's very abandoned. Who knows, maybe there's some sort of
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swap of psychic energy and the good diner went away,
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but the bad and it's character infused the bad Diner,
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and I don't know, maybe agent Cooper is sitting in
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the back having a couple of cops.
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I don't know. That seems a little bit too much
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to ask.
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But there's another diner on the other side of Lake
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La Lac. Now, as you know, the diner is close
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to Lake La Lac, which is French for.
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The lake, So it's lake the lake.
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You know, Minnesota's got ten thousand and fifteen thousand lakes.
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After a while you kind of go for the you
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run out of clever names. Let's just say, you know,
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what's this one? Just not a little lake, all right,
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That's what it is, Lake La Lac. I mean, we
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have a leech Lake in Minnesota. Leech Lake, which I'm
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sure by now is completely surrounded by million dollar vacation homes.
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And you would think that the name would be a
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warning to everybody. It's like Skeeter Lake or lam Prey
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Lake or Shark Lake or something like that. Leech Lake
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just nobody would go into there, wait a little bit
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and then come out with a bunch of suckers stuck
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to you and think, why didn't somebody me? It's kind
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of there built into the name pal I wonder if
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everybody who went and bought a cabin near Leech Lake
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always brings a little container of Morton salt when they
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go out, because that's how you get things to get
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off you. When I was a kid, I did not
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understand Morton salt. I did not understand the whole when
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it rains, it pours thing. I mean, I knew the phrase.
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It's a sort of phrase that you say when bad
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luck has beset you. Oh man, this more bad news. Yeah,
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when it rains, it pours, But that expression of fatalism
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and in sort of defeat, it was appended to this
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little girl in a yellow rainslicker who was walking around
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with an umbrella and pouring salt around, no understanding what
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that meant whatsoever. And of course later I learned that
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what they were advertising was the fact that when it
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gets humid out, the salt will still run freely. I
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guess that was a problem. Also, it has iodine in
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it because people got goiters, and so they put iodine
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in the salt so people wouldn't get goiters. My aunt,
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my grandma, had a goiter when she was younger, and
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my mother told me this. I don't know how it
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came up.
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I just don't.
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I don't think she blurted it out over dinner one night.
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Did I ever tell you your grandmother had a goiter?
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Were susceptible to goiters in this family? Put more salt
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on your corn.
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Anyway? So yeah, So.
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Going back here, oh Leech Lake, right, so you would
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We learned that you would pour salt on the leeches
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if you ever got them, and we would get them
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from time to time when we went to the lake,
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you hated them. But if you'd stopped off at the
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driveway Crown King Leo's one of those chances are you'd
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pick up a little container of salt that you would
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put on your fries, you'd ask for a couple of
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extra cold I could I have? Could I have ten
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packets of salt? Because we're heading to the lake and
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people would understand exactly why Leech's bad this year. Yeah, okay,
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well that's what you get for going to to the
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Leech Lake. So Lake La Lac is one of the
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less distinguished lakes, I would say, in the area, in
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the state, in the country, in the continent. But it's there,
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and it's deep, it's got fish, it's got fishermen. Doesn't
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have a lot of cabins, which makes you wonder why
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it used to be that somebody could have a fairly
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modest cabin and enjoy the lake lifestyle. When I lived
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in Saint Paul, I had a neighbor I think his
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name was Paul. I couldn't understand it what he said.
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He was the most mumble mouthed person I'd ever met
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in my life. Well, well, I can tell you the thing,
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whoever we're going to go up the lake is we
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go up to the lake, we don't get all out
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of there and get out there and young off the dock.
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And he drank a lot. Oh man, I was drinking
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a beer. And his wife was very chipper, and you
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could understand every single phoneme. And she didn't drink. But
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between the two of them, Jacks brought in. Otherwise they
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managed to hold it together. They had they had a cabin.
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Now.
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He worked at the Ford plant, because down the street
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and to the right there was a massive Ford plant
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where they built cars. And Jeff for Paul or whatever
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his name was, you it was Jeff, Yeah, glad to me.
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Would I don't know what he did whether he put
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on rear view windows or in mirrors or you know
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who's in charge of the little hook assembly that that
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latches your your hood down. I don't know what he did,
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but he worked an assembly line and he had a cabin,
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which is not a good extraordinary at all.
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People would could afford him. Now.
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What they were, of course, was modest. It was a
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ancient rotting screen door and probably an outhouse out back,
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and well water that tasted very much, so much of
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minerals that after you, if you tried to gargle it,
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it would be like, you know, sort of you actually
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sound like somebody was shaking a handful of pebbles, and
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it smelled of fish, and it needed to lick of paint,
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and there were weeds, and the dock was mossy and
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all the rest of it. But it was your place.
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It was your cabin.
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Over the years, these places were sold, just like the
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resorts and turned into much larger establishments for people who
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had money. And so now the whole idea of cabin
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culture in Minnesota has shifted. The demographic has shifted. So
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when a lake doesn't have any cabins at all, you
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gotta wonder what's going on here. On the other side
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of Lake La Lac was what we used to call
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back in the days back in the nineties when we
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were discussing our visits to the diner. Frankly, we were
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broadcasting them out of KSDP and Maple would It was
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the enemy diner. And you may think what exactly constitutes
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an enemy diner, Well, in the sense that they're all enemies,
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that they have the competitors for your dollar, But no,
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it was it was the public radio diner. See, we
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were coming out of them. We were broadcasting the diner
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out of commercial station, and there was another diner that,
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frankly was being run by public radio on the other
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side of the lake. And we really didn't have much
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to do with them. We didn't engage in any battles
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as far as I could tell. Come the fourth of July,
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we might have pointed a few, you know, mortars at
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them and good clean fun.
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But no.
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So I thought maybe maybe I could go over to
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the enemy diner and do something from there, because I'd
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never been there before. No, no, no, it was right
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that i'd been there once. I had been there once,
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and it was really really nice. It wasn't like the
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old diner that you know, had still had the boomerang pattern.
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For Micah count from the fifties and early sixties, with
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the chrome stools and the the uh you know, the
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the phone booth with the accordion doors and the banquettes
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and all the rest of it. No, it was slick,
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it was modern, it was clean. It had some boomerang
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pattern for mica. But it was done ironically. It was
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it was they'd bought a reissue of it and done
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it as sort of an ironic gesture to the real thing.
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Everyone there was perfectly nice, perfectly calm, a little bit
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slow talking, and there was a guy who was a
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classical music expert who was also a chef there, and
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we had a lot of great conversations, a lot of
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great conversations. I remember, you know, trying to stump him. Okay,
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it was a composer who had a love and symphonies,
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but we only hear nine and you know, he'd say, well,
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that'd be Bruckner.
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What do you want to.
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And we'd have conversations about our favorite composers and favorite
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moments of Maller and the rest of us, and debate
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whether or not to if you if you could only
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listen to Maler or Bruckner, who would you choose. And
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there's a phase in my life when I actually said Brookner,
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I greatly regretted. I actually asked Dennis Prager that question.
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And we both settled on Bruckner.
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I don't know what we were thinking. Obviously, it's Maller.
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Maller's more stories. Maller is all over the world. Bruckner
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is great towering mountain ranges, and it's great for nine symphonies.
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But after a while, I get it, great towering mountain ranges.
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You were a strange, strange, pear shaped man in a
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German town who liked little girls.
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I get it. I get it.
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But it's I pulled up to the enemy diner, to
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the public radio diner, and it's closed. It's closed. I
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guess they ran out of money and they closed. And
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interestingly enough that you shut down last week, a little sign.
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Of the door. We have voted ourselves out of business.
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So that's not an option.
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Where am I going to go?
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I think the one place that I haven't even considered yet,
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that's a possibility. It's thirteen and a half miles from
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where I still live, and that would be Chucky Cheese's.
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I know what you're saying.
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Why would you do that well, because technically it is
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a place that serves food. Technically what they serve is food.
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I think it meets all the basic definitions of it.
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It is made of organic material mostly, it can be consumed,
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it can be kept down, it can be metabolized and excreted.
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So in those senses, yes, it is food, but it's
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not really what you go there for. As a matter
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of fact, I think most adults go to Chuck E
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Cheese to simply endure a period of clamorous calamity with
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animatronic rodents and some of the most meretricious pizza they've
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ever had in their life. But to tell you the truth,
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I loved going to Chuck E Cheese and I went
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there once a month. My wife would have a Bunco
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party and I would, Uh. Somehow it just fell into
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a tradition where when wife had Bunco daughter and I
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would go to Chuck E Cheese's. And if you don't
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know what Bunco is, I know what you're probably thinking,
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isn't that what Joe Friday Wasn't he on Bunco Division
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for a while before they should ever known as on Dragonet.
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Joe Friday has a different assignment every week. It was
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it was, it was, you know, it was Tuesday in
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Los Angeles.
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The weather was dry.
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We were out of Bunco, we were out of robbery, homicide,
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we were out of traffic control. Every week, these guys
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get moved around, and I had no idea whether out
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They're just randomly shuffling the cops around to keep them,
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you know, keep them interested, whether Friday had some spectacular
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or his partner had some spectacular cock up every week
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and they'd say, all right, just give him, give him
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Bunco for a couple of weeks. But in the Bunco division, Bunco's,
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you know, that was the department that the police ran
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that dealt with grifters and cheats and frauds. So you
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imagine perhaps all the wives are sitting around and changing
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and exchanging ways in which they can cheat their neighbors.
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You know, how about the fake how about the you know,
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the gilt edged Bible gambit?
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What's that?
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Oh, you look at the obits, you find a name
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somebody who just died, and then you go around to
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their survivors and you say, Bob ordered this Bible before
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he died, and it's it's good if they're military. It's
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better if they're in the service. Uh No, they did
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not do that. They had this game. So I never
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quite understood which they would make a mark on a
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piece of roll, some dice, I think, and then make
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a mark on a piece of paper, and then drink
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some wine, and then make a mark on the paper
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and drink some wine, and then drink some wine and
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have some nibblely bets and throw the dice and make
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a mark and then and then you know, they might
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drink some wine. And at the end of it there's
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all these pieces of paper with marks on them and
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wine had been consumed. Great fun. It's a hand party,
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that's what it is. But the tradition was was wife
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went to Bunco and I took daughter and we went
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to Chuckie Cheese's and.
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It was, it was, it was, It was marvelous.
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There were actually a few times there in which the
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robot band would perform, you know, which for a six
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seven eight year old is kind of a cool thing.
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And she didn't know how bad the pizza was. As
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far as she could tell, it had the necessary elements
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of salt. And I think there are times a couple
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when I was on a diet and thought I should
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try the salad.
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I don't advise it.
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I would drink coffee at Chuck E. Cheese's, and again
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I don't recommend it, styrofoam cup of something that have
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been sitting on the bunnomatic burner since four o'clock in
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the afternoon. Because nobody drank coffee at Chuck E Jesus
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except me. The parents would usually order a picture of
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beer or something like that, anything to assuage the assault
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that they were getting from the music or the screaming
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kids running around or the games, because that's really, you know,
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the innovation there. It wasn't the robot singing band so much.
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I mean, because if they didn't work, it's kind of
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spooky for a kid who remembers them. Last week. They
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were all working. Last week, they were all sort of
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why are they frozen now? Well, it's a lot like
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First Men in the Moon Deer. They are actually solder powered,
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and when the sun goesway and the sun goes away,
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they lose their strength and they fall inerts in immobile.
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Oh but the games were great fun to play. The
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first one that Dona always went and played was a
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game in which you were encouraged to step on as
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many spiders as possible. I'm not sure this would actually
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go over well today. It encourages nothing but a frenzy
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of death against spiders when they would appear, and somehow
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the matt.
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Below you was keyed to the screen.
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Or something like that if I remember, and so the
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child would have to do this elaborate series of dance
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like you know, like a tap dancer from the Harlem
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night reel or newsreel from nineteen thirty seven. And the
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dexterity required to get all the spiders was pretty good.
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But again, you're teaching hate against You're encouraging hate against spiders,
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and I think spiders are actually pretty cool. I hate
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bugs in general. I think all bugs I could do
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without them. I understand the very important part that they
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play in the ecosystem, but I just don't like them, no, sir,
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Their chittnist bodies and their absolutely soulless blank faces and
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their little feathery legs. By the millions, I detest bugs,
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can't stand them. I think we'd have a really different
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relationship with ants. For example, if they were the size
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of like a beagle, I think we'd have a lot.
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I think we would have gone on a massive planet
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wide extirpation of ants if they were as big as
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a beagle, because that would be just too too, too uncomfortable,
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too horrifying. Frankly, I mean, just imagine you're sitting out
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in the backyard of the beer in a nice summer day,
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and this, you know, Schnauzer sized queen, you know, great
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great benard sized queen with a pendulous, transparent, undulating belly
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full of small little ant fetuses, lands and starts digging.
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You know. A couple of days later, you've.
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Got you know, beagle sized ants crawling around your yard
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looking for stuff, knocking on your door, carrying off your
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boxes of cereal. We would have wiped them.
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Out, We would we wiped them.
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Out anyway, So it did. It was not the most
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moral game, I think, but all of them taught kids
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how to deal with disappointment. Now, if you did well
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with these things, of course you were regarded. You were
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rewarded with tickets. And the tickets, as we all know,
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could be taken up to the front desk where some
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complete teen board out of their mind, probably not looking
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at their phone because it hadn't been invented yet. It
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was two thousand and seven. I don't know what they were.
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Were they looking at were they.
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Just sort of looking at the palm of their hand
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with blank anticipation?
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Possible?
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And you would exchange these tickets for something useless. Here
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00:19:49.119 --> 00:19:53.480
is earrings for your barbie, here's a nerf ball, here's
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a pencil, and they'd walk away happy. And then we
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would also get a little ice cream bar out of
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the machine, which is difficult because it was one of
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those ones where you have to sort of reach into
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the little frozen compartment and pull it out, and if
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it had been pushed in for any reason, it required
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tweezers to get it out. But we did and we
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enjoyed it and it was great fun. Dead and daughter.
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I remember one game in particular that she always wanted
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to play, and I've seen actually versions of this that
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worked for adults. It's this rake. There's all these coins
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00:20:28.640 --> 00:20:31.079
on a shelf, and the shelves are revolving, and there's
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00:20:31.119 --> 00:20:34.400
a rake that keeps raking them in. At some point,
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your coin is supposed to add to the pile so
362
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that all of the coins will come out and you'll
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get not exactly sure how it works, but if you've
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played it, you know what I mean. There are, as
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I say, adult versions, and I would just tell that
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this is the most foolish thing involved. There's no skill.
367
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There's no skill, there's no aptitude, there's no there's no
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coordination here. It's it's just a stupid slot machine for children.
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00:20:55.200 --> 00:20:59.079
But she wanted to play it. Inevitably. There were two
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moments that were great. One while she was off feeding
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that stupid thing or playing it in the ballpit or something,
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I would go over to the pinball machine, because they
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had a pinball machine for the adults, and I would
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00:21:09.279 --> 00:21:11.359
do my best. I can walk up to any table,
375
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pretty much any table.
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And within fifteen.
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Minutes, I think I can beat it. I can get
378
00:21:18.200 --> 00:21:21.119
a free game, at least I could back in those days.
379
00:21:22.640 --> 00:21:27.519
But the other was ski ball. They had the sweetest,
380
00:21:28.200 --> 00:21:33.960
easiest ski ball I've ever seen. We would play that thing.
381
00:21:34.240 --> 00:21:35.519
We would drop the.
382
00:21:35.440 --> 00:21:36.240
Ball in the center.
383
00:21:36.559 --> 00:21:38.480
We would come away from that thing with.
384
00:21:38.759 --> 00:21:42.640
Just armloads and armloads of tickets. I think there was
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00:21:42.680 --> 00:21:47.680
one time where actually we got two pencils, and we
386
00:21:48.359 --> 00:21:50.839
felt really proud of ourselves every time that we went
387
00:21:50.880 --> 00:21:52.440
and we played and we did well.
388
00:21:52.960 --> 00:21:55.440
Now it took us a while, of course, but.
389
00:21:55.559 --> 00:21:58.920
I just remember us being really good at that, and
390
00:21:58.960 --> 00:22:03.960
it's good that remember it, because I don't know if
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00:22:04.000 --> 00:22:11.400
she does. That's that's parenthood. There's a great, huge amount
392
00:22:11.440 --> 00:22:16.839
of time that you recall, you know, intensely, and they
393
00:22:16.880 --> 00:22:22.920
have no idea. It's the flowers for Algernon thing, in
394
00:22:22.960 --> 00:22:25.400
a way strikes me as a.
395
00:22:26.000 --> 00:22:27.480
Failure of the human brain.
396
00:22:28.119 --> 00:22:31.279
We can remember so much after a certain point, why
397
00:22:31.319 --> 00:22:34.599
not if we had the ability actually to unlock those
398
00:22:35.039 --> 00:22:40.680
early early formative childhood experiences vividly or.
399
00:22:42.279 --> 00:22:42.640
Are they?
400
00:22:43.960 --> 00:22:50.200
Are they there somewhere. I support research that attempted to
401
00:22:50.240 --> 00:22:52.759
do that. Now there's some people who say, no, thank you, Nope,
402
00:22:52.799 --> 00:22:55.000
it was traumatic, don't want it, don't want it, Nope,
403
00:22:55.000 --> 00:22:56.440
don't want to learn could be traumatic.
404
00:22:57.119 --> 00:22:57.640
But I do.
405
00:22:58.440 --> 00:23:03.319
I do absolutely so. To have unlocked in vivid fashion
406
00:23:04.000 --> 00:23:06.079
memories of your parents when they were young, in the
407
00:23:06.119 --> 00:23:08.640
house where you grew up, things that you thought you knew.
408
00:23:08.680 --> 00:23:10.759
Oh you thought you knew the wallpaper. You had the
409
00:23:10.759 --> 00:23:11.640
wallpaper wrong.
410
00:23:12.680 --> 00:23:15.200
I love that. I would anyway.
411
00:23:15.319 --> 00:23:18.440
As I said, we were good at it, and I'm
412
00:23:18.480 --> 00:23:20.880
happy enough not to only remember it but I've got
413
00:23:20.920 --> 00:23:28.519
footage of it. I do. Then they brought in new
414
00:23:28.720 --> 00:23:33.799
ski ball tables, tables, machines, lanes, and all of a
415
00:23:33.880 --> 00:23:40.279
sudden we couldn't play it anymore. Not that they forbade us,
416
00:23:40.880 --> 00:23:46.319
but we were bad at it. Something had happened, something
417
00:23:46.319 --> 00:23:49.079
had been tightened up. Had the cones been made a
418
00:23:49.119 --> 00:23:51.559
little bit taller, had the balls been made a little
419
00:23:51.559 --> 00:23:55.039
bit thicker. Were there any actual regulations to this sport?
420
00:23:58.319 --> 00:23:59.960
Whatever it was, we couldn't do it anymore.
421
00:24:00.079 --> 00:24:01.680
We just couldn't.
422
00:24:01.960 --> 00:24:04.160
We couldn't play, couldn't get a couldn't get a center
423
00:24:04.240 --> 00:24:06.960
hold of save our lives. Everything went bouncing off on
424
00:24:07.039 --> 00:24:09.839
the top, and so we did the smart thing. Of course,
425
00:24:10.319 --> 00:24:11.599
there are one or two things that you can do
426
00:24:11.680 --> 00:24:13.440
in confront like this. You could look at each other
427
00:24:13.480 --> 00:24:15.480
and say, well, there's the circumstances of the nature of
428
00:24:15.519 --> 00:24:17.799
the game has changed. It's up to us to adapt,
429
00:24:17.839 --> 00:24:18.640
adopt and prove.
430
00:24:19.119 --> 00:24:20.400
So let us let's learn.
431
00:24:20.759 --> 00:24:22.960
Let's let's look at this as a problem and figure
432
00:24:22.960 --> 00:24:25.000
out what we need to do. What is it about
433
00:24:25.000 --> 00:24:28.839
our swing that isn't right? When is it about the velocity?
434
00:24:28.880 --> 00:24:30.839
What is it about the point at which we released
435
00:24:30.839 --> 00:24:35.480
the ball that isn't quite correct. You can do that,
436
00:24:36.319 --> 00:24:37.559
or you can just not play it again and go
437
00:24:37.599 --> 00:24:42.160
stamp in some spiders, which is what we did. I
438
00:24:42.240 --> 00:24:44.960
was reminded of this of actually just now of when
439
00:24:45.000 --> 00:24:47.880
I was playing a candle candlepin bowling with my daughter
440
00:24:47.960 --> 00:24:51.200
in Boston. How actually it was sort of a version
441
00:24:51.240 --> 00:24:52.759
of the ski ball thing, with the size of the
442
00:24:52.759 --> 00:24:54.319
balls and the fact that we didn't know quite how
443
00:24:54.440 --> 00:24:57.359
to throw them after all these years. Real bowling and
444
00:24:57.400 --> 00:25:00.559
candlepin is quite different. Never occurred to us, either of us,
445
00:25:00.599 --> 00:25:03.039
to bring up ski ball, or did we And I
446
00:25:03.079 --> 00:25:09.720
just forgot No, I would have remembered, No, I could. Ah, well,
447
00:25:10.519 --> 00:25:12.799
there's a lot in my mind lately, so it's understandable
448
00:25:12.839 --> 00:25:15.440
if a few things fall through the cracks. So what
449
00:25:15.480 --> 00:25:17.839
have we learned today? We've learned the diner is not
450
00:25:17.920 --> 00:25:20.079
there yet. We've learned that the haunted diner is off
451
00:25:20.119 --> 00:25:22.519
the table until at least October thirty. First, we've learned it's.
452
00:25:22.359 --> 00:25:23.359
Not a metaphor, thank you.
453
00:25:23.880 --> 00:25:26.200
We've learned that the public radio diner has shut down,
454
00:25:26.200 --> 00:25:28.519
and the guy behind the counter, the cook who knew
455
00:25:28.599 --> 00:25:32.319
is Bruckner, is in the wind somewhere we've learned that
456
00:25:32.319 --> 00:25:37.960
I have an un really reasonable and unreasonable but an
457
00:25:38.000 --> 00:25:42.319
overestimation of my fun of chuck e cheeses, and then
458
00:25:42.319 --> 00:25:44.480
I probably chalking a lot of it up to a nice, great,
459
00:25:44.519 --> 00:25:47.920
wonderful formative time of my life, but that there were
460
00:25:47.920 --> 00:25:50.960
things to it, and that we were pretty good. We
461
00:25:51.000 --> 00:25:54.519
were pretty good at something until we weren't. But then
462
00:25:55.039 --> 00:25:56.799
that's just life. So we were saying, you got to
463
00:25:56.799 --> 00:25:58.680
find something else to try and something else to.
464
00:25:58.640 --> 00:26:02.799
Be good at. I wonder what that's going to be.
465
00:26:03.480 --> 00:26:05.839
Well, it's entirely possible that diner will be back next
466
00:26:05.880 --> 00:26:08.200
week unless there's a big sign that says that it's
467
00:26:08.240 --> 00:26:11.680
being redeveloped and new luxury apartments are being built on
468
00:26:11.720 --> 00:26:13.839
the spot, and that maybe I'll.
469
00:26:13.640 --> 00:26:16.079
Move in, maybe I'll have a view of Lake La Lac.
470
00:26:17.240 --> 00:26:17.720
Who knows?
471
00:26:18.119 --> 00:26:18.680
Who knows me?
472
00:26:19.240 --> 00:26:20.400
All I know is that we'll be.
473
00:26:20.440 --> 00:26:22.880
Here next week, wherever here is. And I thank you
474
00:26:22.920 --> 00:26:27.559
folks for joining me. This has been overall conceptually the Diner,
475
00:26:27.799 --> 00:26:43.960
and I'll see you down the road. Ricochet Geez, where
476
00:26:43.960 --> 00:26:46.799
a kid can be a kid Join the conversation,
1
00:00:21.719 --> 00:00:42.119
Oh, and it's closed. Of course it's closed. Of course
2
00:00:42.159 --> 00:00:44.119
it's closed. I don't know what I would have expected.
3
00:00:44.159 --> 00:00:46.600
I read the news, I read the news. I should
4
00:00:46.719 --> 00:00:52.920
know that it's closed. Hi, folks, James Landwax and how,
5
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oh how I would love to say that I'm sitting.
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At my customed place at the long boomerang pattern for
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my account of the diner on an old highway twenty three,
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about thirteen and a half minutes from wherever you happen
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to be at this very moment. Love to say it,
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but it can't because, as you know, the diner is gone.
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In all these years, it's always been there. And as
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we've been saying over the last few weeks, first they
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had to close temporarily because there was a gas main brak,
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and then they were doing some excavating and they found
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a huge amount an unquantifiable quantity of grease that had
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been poured into the ground dumped out of the back.
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It's a super fun site now. And then the diner
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just vanished, just vanished. No, the foundations are gone. The
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foundations are kind of we were speculating last week that.
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They took it somewhere to get detailed. You clean it
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up a little bit.
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Or maybe it was sold to a collector, or maybe
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it's gonna reopen down the road or something like it.
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Don't know, don't know. And you know, you might be thinking,
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isn't this just a labored metaphor for your own displacement
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from your house which will be coming in a couple
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of months when you sell it and the inevitable and
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concommon into separation marital thing. Isn't this kind of like
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a long metaphor for that. No, not in the least bit,
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because if it ever came back, then I would have
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to sort of rejigger the actual events of my life
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in order to fit that. So no, no, just telling
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you it's gone. But I had a thought. I thought, well,
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there are two other diners in the area. If you've
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been with me for a very long time, you know
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that there is the Haunted Diner, which generally we would
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visit on October thirty first. It's deep in the woods,
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it's very abandoned. Who knows, maybe there's some sort of
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swap of psychic energy and the good diner went away,
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but the bad and it's character infused the bad Diner,
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and I don't know, maybe agent Cooper is sitting in
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the back having a couple of cops.
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I don't know. That seems a little bit too much
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to ask.
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But there's another diner on the other side of Lake
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La Lac. Now, as you know, the diner is close
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to Lake La Lac, which is French for.
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The lake, So it's lake the lake.
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You know, Minnesota's got ten thousand and fifteen thousand lakes.
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After a while you kind of go for the you
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run out of clever names. Let's just say, you know,
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what's this one? Just not a little lake, all right,
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That's what it is, Lake La Lac. I mean, we
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have a leech Lake in Minnesota. Leech Lake, which I'm
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sure by now is completely surrounded by million dollar vacation homes.
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And you would think that the name would be a
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warning to everybody. It's like Skeeter Lake or lam Prey
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Lake or Shark Lake or something like that. Leech Lake
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just nobody would go into there, wait a little bit
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and then come out with a bunch of suckers stuck
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to you and think, why didn't somebody me? It's kind
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of there built into the name pal I wonder if
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everybody who went and bought a cabin near Leech Lake
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always brings a little container of Morton salt when they
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go out, because that's how you get things to get
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off you. When I was a kid, I did not
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understand Morton salt. I did not understand the whole when
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it rains, it pours thing. I mean, I knew the phrase.
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It's a sort of phrase that you say when bad
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luck has beset you. Oh man, this more bad news. Yeah,
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when it rains, it pours, But that expression of fatalism
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and in sort of defeat, it was appended to this
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little girl in a yellow rainslicker who was walking around
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with an umbrella and pouring salt around, no understanding what
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that meant whatsoever. And of course later I learned that
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what they were advertising was the fact that when it
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gets humid out, the salt will still run freely. I
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guess that was a problem. Also, it has iodine in
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it because people got goiters, and so they put iodine
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in the salt so people wouldn't get goiters. My aunt,
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my grandma, had a goiter when she was younger, and
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my mother told me this. I don't know how it
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came up.
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I just don't.
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I don't think she blurted it out over dinner one night.
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Did I ever tell you your grandmother had a goiter?
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Were susceptible to goiters in this family? Put more salt
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on your corn.
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Anyway? So yeah, So.
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Going back here, oh Leech Lake, right, so you would
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We learned that you would pour salt on the leeches
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if you ever got them, and we would get them
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from time to time when we went to the lake,
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you hated them. But if you'd stopped off at the
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driveway Crown King Leo's one of those chances are you'd
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pick up a little container of salt that you would
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put on your fries, you'd ask for a couple of
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extra cold I could I have? Could I have ten
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packets of salt? Because we're heading to the lake and
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people would understand exactly why Leech's bad this year. Yeah, okay,
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well that's what you get for going to to the
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Leech Lake. So Lake La Lac is one of the
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less distinguished lakes, I would say, in the area, in
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the state, in the country, in the continent. But it's there,
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and it's deep, it's got fish, it's got fishermen. Doesn't
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have a lot of cabins, which makes you wonder why
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it used to be that somebody could have a fairly
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modest cabin and enjoy the lake lifestyle. When I lived
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in Saint Paul, I had a neighbor I think his
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name was Paul. I couldn't understand it what he said.
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He was the most mumble mouthed person I'd ever met
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in my life. Well, well, I can tell you the thing,
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whoever we're going to go up the lake is we
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go up to the lake, we don't get all out
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of there and get out there and young off the dock.
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And he drank a lot. Oh man, I was drinking
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a beer. And his wife was very chipper, and you
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could understand every single phoneme. And she didn't drink. But
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between the two of them, Jacks brought in. Otherwise they
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managed to hold it together. They had they had a cabin.
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Now.
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He worked at the Ford plant, because down the street
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and to the right there was a massive Ford plant
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where they built cars. And Jeff for Paul or whatever
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his name was, you it was Jeff, Yeah, glad to me.
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Would I don't know what he did whether he put
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on rear view windows or in mirrors or you know
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who's in charge of the little hook assembly that that
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latches your your hood down. I don't know what he did,
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but he worked an assembly line and he had a cabin,
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which is not a good extraordinary at all.
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People would could afford him. Now.
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What they were, of course, was modest. It was a
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ancient rotting screen door and probably an outhouse out back,
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and well water that tasted very much, so much of
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minerals that after you, if you tried to gargle it,
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it would be like, you know, sort of you actually
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sound like somebody was shaking a handful of pebbles, and
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it smelled of fish, and it needed to lick of paint,
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and there were weeds, and the dock was mossy and
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all the rest of it. But it was your place.
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It was your cabin.
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Over the years, these places were sold, just like the
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resorts and turned into much larger establishments for people who
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had money. And so now the whole idea of cabin
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culture in Minnesota has shifted. The demographic has shifted. So
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when a lake doesn't have any cabins at all, you
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gotta wonder what's going on here. On the other side
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of Lake La Lac was what we used to call
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back in the days back in the nineties when we
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were discussing our visits to the diner. Frankly, we were
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broadcasting them out of KSDP and Maple would It was
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the enemy diner. And you may think what exactly constitutes
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an enemy diner, Well, in the sense that they're all enemies,
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that they have the competitors for your dollar, But no,
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it was it was the public radio diner. See, we
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were coming out of them. We were broadcasting the diner
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out of commercial station, and there was another diner that,
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frankly was being run by public radio on the other
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side of the lake. And we really didn't have much
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to do with them. We didn't engage in any battles
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as far as I could tell. Come the fourth of July,
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we might have pointed a few, you know, mortars at
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them and good clean fun.
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But no.
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So I thought maybe maybe I could go over to
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the enemy diner and do something from there, because I'd
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never been there before. No, no, no, it was right
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that i'd been there once. I had been there once,
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and it was really really nice. It wasn't like the
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old diner that you know, had still had the boomerang pattern.
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For Micah count from the fifties and early sixties, with
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the chrome stools and the the uh you know, the
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the phone booth with the accordion doors and the banquettes
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and all the rest of it. No, it was slick,
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it was modern, it was clean. It had some boomerang
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pattern for mica. But it was done ironically. It was
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it was they'd bought a reissue of it and done
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it as sort of an ironic gesture to the real thing.
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Everyone there was perfectly nice, perfectly calm, a little bit
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slow talking, and there was a guy who was a
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classical music expert who was also a chef there, and
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we had a lot of great conversations, a lot of
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great conversations. I remember, you know, trying to stump him. Okay,
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it was a composer who had a love and symphonies,
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but we only hear nine and you know, he'd say, well,
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that'd be Bruckner.
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What do you want to.
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And we'd have conversations about our favorite composers and favorite
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moments of Maller and the rest of us, and debate
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whether or not to if you if you could only
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listen to Maler or Bruckner, who would you choose. And
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there's a phase in my life when I actually said Brookner,
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I greatly regretted. I actually asked Dennis Prager that question.
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And we both settled on Bruckner.
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I don't know what we were thinking. Obviously, it's Maller.
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Maller's more stories. Maller is all over the world. Bruckner
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is great towering mountain ranges, and it's great for nine symphonies.
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But after a while, I get it, great towering mountain ranges.
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You were a strange, strange, pear shaped man in a
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German town who liked little girls.
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I get it. I get it.
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But it's I pulled up to the enemy diner, to
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the public radio diner, and it's closed. It's closed. I
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guess they ran out of money and they closed. And
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interestingly enough that you shut down last week, a little sign.
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Of the door. We have voted ourselves out of business.
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So that's not an option.
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Where am I going to go?
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I think the one place that I haven't even considered yet,
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that's a possibility. It's thirteen and a half miles from
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where I still live, and that would be Chucky Cheese's.
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I know what you're saying.
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Why would you do that well, because technically it is
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a place that serves food. Technically what they serve is food.
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I think it meets all the basic definitions of it.
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It is made of organic material mostly, it can be consumed,
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00:12:51.840 --> 00:12:57.039
it can be kept down, it can be metabolized and excreted.
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So in those senses, yes, it is food, but it's
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not really what you go there for. As a matter
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of fact, I think most adults go to Chuck E
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Cheese to simply endure a period of clamorous calamity with
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animatronic rodents and some of the most meretricious pizza they've
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ever had in their life. But to tell you the truth,
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I loved going to Chuck E Cheese and I went
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there once a month. My wife would have a Bunco
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party and I would, Uh. Somehow it just fell into
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a tradition where when wife had Bunco daughter and I
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would go to Chuck E Cheese's. And if you don't
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know what Bunco is, I know what you're probably thinking,
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isn't that what Joe Friday Wasn't he on Bunco Division
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for a while before they should ever known as on Dragonet.
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Joe Friday has a different assignment every week. It was
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00:13:51.440 --> 00:13:54.080
it was, it was, you know, it was Tuesday in
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Los Angeles.
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The weather was dry.
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We were out of Bunco, we were out of robbery, homicide,
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00:13:59.320 --> 00:14:02.879
we were out of traffic control. Every week, these guys
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00:14:02.879 --> 00:14:04.879
get moved around, and I had no idea whether out
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They're just randomly shuffling the cops around to keep them,
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00:14:07.240 --> 00:14:10.279
you know, keep them interested, whether Friday had some spectacular
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or his partner had some spectacular cock up every week
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and they'd say, all right, just give him, give him
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Bunco for a couple of weeks. But in the Bunco division, Bunco's,
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you know, that was the department that the police ran
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that dealt with grifters and cheats and frauds. So you
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imagine perhaps all the wives are sitting around and changing
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and exchanging ways in which they can cheat their neighbors.
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You know, how about the fake how about the you know,
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the gilt edged Bible gambit?
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What's that?
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Oh, you look at the obits, you find a name
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somebody who just died, and then you go around to
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their survivors and you say, Bob ordered this Bible before
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he died, and it's it's good if they're military. It's
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better if they're in the service. Uh No, they did
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not do that. They had this game. So I never
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quite understood which they would make a mark on a
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piece of roll, some dice, I think, and then make
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a mark on a piece of paper, and then drink
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some wine, and then make a mark on the paper
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and drink some wine, and then drink some wine and
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have some nibblely bets and throw the dice and make
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a mark and then and then you know, they might
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drink some wine. And at the end of it there's
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all these pieces of paper with marks on them and
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wine had been consumed. Great fun. It's a hand party,
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that's what it is. But the tradition was was wife
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went to Bunco and I took daughter and we went
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to Chuckie Cheese's and.
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It was, it was, it was, It was marvelous.
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There were actually a few times there in which the
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robot band would perform, you know, which for a six
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seven eight year old is kind of a cool thing.
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And she didn't know how bad the pizza was. As
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far as she could tell, it had the necessary elements
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of salt. And I think there are times a couple
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when I was on a diet and thought I should
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try the salad.
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I don't advise it.
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I would drink coffee at Chuck E. Cheese's, and again
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I don't recommend it, styrofoam cup of something that have
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been sitting on the bunnomatic burner since four o'clock in
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the afternoon. Because nobody drank coffee at Chuck E Jesus
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except me. The parents would usually order a picture of
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beer or something like that, anything to assuage the assault
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that they were getting from the music or the screaming
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kids running around or the games, because that's really, you know,
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the innovation there. It wasn't the robot singing band so much.
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I mean, because if they didn't work, it's kind of
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spooky for a kid who remembers them. Last week. They
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were all working. Last week, they were all sort of
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why are they frozen now? Well, it's a lot like
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First Men in the Moon Deer. They are actually solder powered,
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and when the sun goesway and the sun goes away,
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they lose their strength and they fall inerts in immobile.
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Oh but the games were great fun to play. The
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first one that Dona always went and played was a
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game in which you were encouraged to step on as
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many spiders as possible. I'm not sure this would actually
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go over well today. It encourages nothing but a frenzy
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of death against spiders when they would appear, and somehow
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the matt.
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Below you was keyed to the screen.
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Or something like that if I remember, and so the
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child would have to do this elaborate series of dance
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like you know, like a tap dancer from the Harlem
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night reel or newsreel from nineteen thirty seven. And the
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dexterity required to get all the spiders was pretty good.
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But again, you're teaching hate against You're encouraging hate against spiders,
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and I think spiders are actually pretty cool. I hate
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bugs in general. I think all bugs I could do
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without them. I understand the very important part that they
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play in the ecosystem, but I just don't like them, no, sir,
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Their chittnist bodies and their absolutely soulless blank faces and
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their little feathery legs. By the millions, I detest bugs,
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can't stand them. I think we'd have a really different
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relationship with ants. For example, if they were the size
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of like a beagle, I think we'd have a lot.
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I think we would have gone on a massive planet
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wide extirpation of ants if they were as big as
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a beagle, because that would be just too too, too uncomfortable,
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too horrifying. Frankly, I mean, just imagine you're sitting out
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in the backyard of the beer in a nice summer day,
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and this, you know, Schnauzer sized queen, you know, great
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great benard sized queen with a pendulous, transparent, undulating belly
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full of small little ant fetuses, lands and starts digging.
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You know. A couple of days later, you've.
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Got you know, beagle sized ants crawling around your yard
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looking for stuff, knocking on your door, carrying off your
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boxes of cereal. We would have wiped them.
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Out, We would we wiped them.
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Out anyway, So it did. It was not the most
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moral game, I think, but all of them taught kids
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how to deal with disappointment. Now, if you did well
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with these things, of course you were regarded. You were
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rewarded with tickets. And the tickets, as we all know,
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could be taken up to the front desk where some
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complete teen board out of their mind, probably not looking
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00:19:31.759 --> 00:19:34.480
at their phone because it hadn't been invented yet. It
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was two thousand and seven. I don't know what they were.
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Were they looking at were they.
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Just sort of looking at the palm of their hand
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with blank anticipation?
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Possible?
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And you would exchange these tickets for something useless. Here
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00:19:49.119 --> 00:19:53.480
is earrings for your barbie, here's a nerf ball, here's
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a pencil, and they'd walk away happy. And then we
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would also get a little ice cream bar out of
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the machine, which is difficult because it was one of
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those ones where you have to sort of reach into
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the little frozen compartment and pull it out, and if
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it had been pushed in for any reason, it required
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tweezers to get it out. But we did and we
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enjoyed it and it was great fun. Dead and daughter.
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I remember one game in particular that she always wanted
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to play, and I've seen actually versions of this that
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worked for adults. It's this rake. There's all these coins
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00:20:28.640 --> 00:20:31.079
on a shelf, and the shelves are revolving, and there's
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00:20:31.119 --> 00:20:34.400
a rake that keeps raking them in. At some point,
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00:20:34.759 --> 00:20:37.119
your coin is supposed to add to the pile so
362
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that all of the coins will come out and you'll
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get not exactly sure how it works, but if you've
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played it, you know what I mean. There are, as
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I say, adult versions, and I would just tell that
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this is the most foolish thing involved. There's no skill.
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00:20:47.759 --> 00:20:50.400
There's no skill, there's no aptitude, there's no there's no
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coordination here. It's it's just a stupid slot machine for children.
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But she wanted to play it. Inevitably. There were two
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moments that were great. One while she was off feeding
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that stupid thing or playing it in the ballpit or something,
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I would go over to the pinball machine, because they
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had a pinball machine for the adults, and I would
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do my best. I can walk up to any table,
375
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pretty much any table.
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And within fifteen.
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Minutes, I think I can beat it. I can get
378
00:21:18.200 --> 00:21:21.119
a free game, at least I could back in those days.
379
00:21:22.640 --> 00:21:27.519
But the other was ski ball. They had the sweetest,
380
00:21:28.200 --> 00:21:33.960
easiest ski ball I've ever seen. We would play that thing.
381
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We would drop the.
382
00:21:35.440 --> 00:21:36.240
Ball in the center.
383
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We would come away from that thing with.
384
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Just armloads and armloads of tickets. I think there was
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00:21:42.680 --> 00:21:47.680
one time where actually we got two pencils, and we
386
00:21:48.359 --> 00:21:50.839
felt really proud of ourselves every time that we went
387
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and we played and we did well.
388
00:21:52.960 --> 00:21:55.440
Now it took us a while, of course, but.
389
00:21:55.559 --> 00:21:58.920
I just remember us being really good at that, and
390
00:21:58.960 --> 00:22:03.960
it's good that remember it, because I don't know if
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00:22:04.000 --> 00:22:11.400
she does. That's that's parenthood. There's a great, huge amount
392
00:22:11.440 --> 00:22:16.839
of time that you recall, you know, intensely, and they
393
00:22:16.880 --> 00:22:22.920
have no idea. It's the flowers for Algernon thing, in
394
00:22:22.960 --> 00:22:25.400
a way strikes me as a.
395
00:22:26.000 --> 00:22:27.480
Failure of the human brain.
396
00:22:28.119 --> 00:22:31.279
We can remember so much after a certain point, why
397
00:22:31.319 --> 00:22:34.599
not if we had the ability actually to unlock those
398
00:22:35.039 --> 00:22:40.680
early early formative childhood experiences vividly or.
399
00:22:42.279 --> 00:22:42.640
Are they?
400
00:22:43.960 --> 00:22:50.200
Are they there somewhere. I support research that attempted to
401
00:22:50.240 --> 00:22:52.759
do that. Now there's some people who say, no, thank you, Nope,
402
00:22:52.799 --> 00:22:55.000
it was traumatic, don't want it, don't want it, Nope,
403
00:22:55.000 --> 00:22:56.440
don't want to learn could be traumatic.
404
00:22:57.119 --> 00:22:57.640
But I do.
405
00:22:58.440 --> 00:23:03.319
I do absolutely so. To have unlocked in vivid fashion
406
00:23:04.000 --> 00:23:06.079
memories of your parents when they were young, in the
407
00:23:06.119 --> 00:23:08.640
house where you grew up, things that you thought you knew.
408
00:23:08.680 --> 00:23:10.759
Oh you thought you knew the wallpaper. You had the
409
00:23:10.759 --> 00:23:11.640
wallpaper wrong.
410
00:23:12.680 --> 00:23:15.200
I love that. I would anyway.
411
00:23:15.319 --> 00:23:18.440
As I said, we were good at it, and I'm
412
00:23:18.480 --> 00:23:20.880
happy enough not to only remember it but I've got
413
00:23:20.920 --> 00:23:28.519
footage of it. I do. Then they brought in new
414
00:23:28.720 --> 00:23:33.799
ski ball tables, tables, machines, lanes, and all of a
415
00:23:33.880 --> 00:23:40.279
sudden we couldn't play it anymore. Not that they forbade us,
416
00:23:40.880 --> 00:23:46.319
but we were bad at it. Something had happened, something
417
00:23:46.319 --> 00:23:49.079
had been tightened up. Had the cones been made a
418
00:23:49.119 --> 00:23:51.559
little bit taller, had the balls been made a little
419
00:23:51.559 --> 00:23:55.039
bit thicker. Were there any actual regulations to this sport?
420
00:23:58.319 --> 00:23:59.960
Whatever it was, we couldn't do it anymore.
421
00:24:00.079 --> 00:24:01.680
We just couldn't.
422
00:24:01.960 --> 00:24:04.160
We couldn't play, couldn't get a couldn't get a center
423
00:24:04.240 --> 00:24:06.960
hold of save our lives. Everything went bouncing off on
424
00:24:07.039 --> 00:24:09.839
the top, and so we did the smart thing. Of course,
425
00:24:10.319 --> 00:24:11.599
there are one or two things that you can do
426
00:24:11.680 --> 00:24:13.440
in confront like this. You could look at each other
427
00:24:13.480 --> 00:24:15.480
and say, well, there's the circumstances of the nature of
428
00:24:15.519 --> 00:24:17.799
the game has changed. It's up to us to adapt,
429
00:24:17.839 --> 00:24:18.640
adopt and prove.
430
00:24:19.119 --> 00:24:20.400
So let us let's learn.
431
00:24:20.759 --> 00:24:22.960
Let's let's look at this as a problem and figure
432
00:24:22.960 --> 00:24:25.000
out what we need to do. What is it about
433
00:24:25.000 --> 00:24:28.839
our swing that isn't right? When is it about the velocity?
434
00:24:28.880 --> 00:24:30.839
What is it about the point at which we released
435
00:24:30.839 --> 00:24:35.480
the ball that isn't quite correct. You can do that,
436
00:24:36.319 --> 00:24:37.559
or you can just not play it again and go
437
00:24:37.599 --> 00:24:42.160
stamp in some spiders, which is what we did. I
438
00:24:42.240 --> 00:24:44.960
was reminded of this of actually just now of when
439
00:24:45.000 --> 00:24:47.880
I was playing a candle candlepin bowling with my daughter
440
00:24:47.960 --> 00:24:51.200
in Boston. How actually it was sort of a version
441
00:24:51.240 --> 00:24:52.759
of the ski ball thing, with the size of the
442
00:24:52.759 --> 00:24:54.319
balls and the fact that we didn't know quite how
443
00:24:54.440 --> 00:24:57.359
to throw them after all these years. Real bowling and
444
00:24:57.400 --> 00:25:00.559
candlepin is quite different. Never occurred to us, either of us,
445
00:25:00.599 --> 00:25:03.039
to bring up ski ball, or did we And I
446
00:25:03.079 --> 00:25:09.720
just forgot No, I would have remembered, No, I could. Ah, well,
447
00:25:10.519 --> 00:25:12.799
there's a lot in my mind lately, so it's understandable
448
00:25:12.839 --> 00:25:15.440
if a few things fall through the cracks. So what
449
00:25:15.480 --> 00:25:17.839
have we learned today? We've learned the diner is not
450
00:25:17.920 --> 00:25:20.079
there yet. We've learned that the haunted diner is off
451
00:25:20.119 --> 00:25:22.519
the table until at least October thirty. First, we've learned it's.
452
00:25:22.359 --> 00:25:23.359
Not a metaphor, thank you.
453
00:25:23.880 --> 00:25:26.200
We've learned that the public radio diner has shut down,
454
00:25:26.200 --> 00:25:28.519
and the guy behind the counter, the cook who knew
455
00:25:28.599 --> 00:25:32.319
is Bruckner, is in the wind somewhere we've learned that
456
00:25:32.319 --> 00:25:37.960
I have an un really reasonable and unreasonable but an
457
00:25:38.000 --> 00:25:42.319
overestimation of my fun of chuck e cheeses, and then
458
00:25:42.319 --> 00:25:44.480
I probably chalking a lot of it up to a nice, great,
459
00:25:44.519 --> 00:25:47.920
wonderful formative time of my life, but that there were
460
00:25:47.920 --> 00:25:50.960
things to it, and that we were pretty good. We
461
00:25:51.000 --> 00:25:54.519
were pretty good at something until we weren't. But then
462
00:25:55.039 --> 00:25:56.799
that's just life. So we were saying, you got to
463
00:25:56.799 --> 00:25:58.680
find something else to try and something else to.
464
00:25:58.640 --> 00:26:02.799
Be good at. I wonder what that's going to be.
465
00:26:03.480 --> 00:26:05.839
Well, it's entirely possible that diner will be back next
466
00:26:05.880 --> 00:26:08.200
week unless there's a big sign that says that it's
467
00:26:08.240 --> 00:26:11.680
being redeveloped and new luxury apartments are being built on
468
00:26:11.720 --> 00:26:13.839
the spot, and that maybe I'll.
469
00:26:13.640 --> 00:26:16.079
Move in, maybe I'll have a view of Lake La Lac.
470
00:26:17.240 --> 00:26:17.720
Who knows?
471
00:26:18.119 --> 00:26:18.680
Who knows me?
472
00:26:19.240 --> 00:26:20.400
All I know is that we'll be.
473
00:26:20.440 --> 00:26:22.880
Here next week, wherever here is. And I thank you
474
00:26:22.920 --> 00:26:27.559
folks for joining me. This has been overall conceptually the Diner,
475
00:26:27.799 --> 00:26:43.960
and I'll see you down the road. Ricochet Geez, where
476
00:26:43.960 --> 00:26:46.799
a kid can be a kid Join the conversation,
