October 26, 2020 • 56 mins
This week we delve into the OTHER cult Mark Vicente was a member of: Ramtha! Learn how putting a tiny paper pyramid on your head might make you channel an ancient racist spirit. Then it’s even more pyramid pals and a general spooky season and Halloween roundup.
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Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
It's two twenty two am in YELM, Washington and you're
listening to Night Call. Hello, and welcome back to Night Call,
a call in show for our dystopian reality. I am
in Los Angeles. I am Tess Lynch, and with me
(00:23):
are Molly Lambert and Emily Oshida. We were going to
be joined by Marrow Wilson today, but unfortunately she had
some technical difficulties, so she will be on the podcast
next week. We have a night Call we want to
take right off the top in honor of the recent
finale of The Vow on HBO. This is a night email, actually,
and it is anonymous and it is juicy. Okay, So
(00:45):
they write really enjoying all of the conversation around the
Vow and glad to hear I'm not the only one
who seems to have been driven crazy by many aspects
of the series. How did Keith pull this thing off?
Where's Mark to blame in all of this? Why do
you so many of these ladies have bad eyebrows? What
the hell is up with this aerie's narrative structure? Who
shortens Anthony to Nippy? Great question? Anyway, back in I
(01:06):
was working at an unscripted production company that was shopping
around a project about the housekeepers of Beverly Hills homes.
I'm sure you can guess what the very clever title was.
The sizzle was tasteless even for the time. We were
talking the height of Jersey Shore and the eve of
here comes Honey, boo boo, and featured long sequences of
the housekeepers just cleaning fancy houses. One of the featured
(01:28):
housekeepers was employed by none other than the daughter of
Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia, Dynasty's Amanda Carrington and next M's
public enemy number one, herself, Katherine Oxenberg. I don't remember specifics,
but I do remember one woman complaining about how long
it took the housekeeper to walk up and down the
driveway to get the mail, and one obsessed with having
(01:49):
crystal clear windows. I've seen a lot of failed projects,
but the level of cringe from this one was really breathtaking.
I'll never forget it. Thank you so much for this scoop.
So it turns out that that Katherine Oxenburg was like
so close to being a real housewife. The spotlight fell
on her housekeeper instead, and what sounds like a really
awful project that I'm glad ton't go to a series.
(02:11):
You know what's funny is that when they showed the
interior of Katherine Oxenberg's house and the wall of religious
artifacts that's so densely packed with crosses and stuff, I
was like, man, a nightmare to clean right there. Oh
my god, who's gonna dust all those crosses? She has
one of those houses that's like so white and minimalist
looking where you're like, oh, it must take so much cleaning.
(02:34):
It's white and minimalist, but it has a lot of
chat It has chats. It's got spiritual chatch keys. It
also looks like kind of small from the outside, but
like in a Malibu way and where it's like it's small,
but it's like probably costs a zillion dollars. But I mean,
I wonder if Katherine signs off on that, if she
like nominates her housekeeper to be in that show, Like,
(02:58):
how does that work in that instance? I mean she
would have to give permission at least, but I would
imagine that it would be some kind of a weird
casting call where people would recommend I was like, Oh,
my housekeeper happens to also clean houses for so and
so like and then put them in touch. But it's
such an obvious trap to be portrayed as a horrible boss.
(03:23):
Who on earth would sign up to let like a
Bravo s docuseries be made about their housekeepers and their staff.
Probably someone who thinks they're going to come off as
an amazing, gracious, wonderful Yes, and I can totally see
Katherine Oxenbourge being that person, honestly, Like they don't. They
(03:46):
rarely showed domestic laborers on Real Housewives. They did more
in the beginning, and I loved when they would do
that because you would see these people being such assholes
to their housekeep first, uh, and then maybe they realized
that that wasn't good for making anyone sympathized with the
housewives ever, But occasionally it's a plotline. Yeah, it was
(04:09):
this tricky thing they always do, like especially in the
early seasons of those shows, where it's like they're trying
to do this balancing act of portraying outrageous wealth and
you know that kind of lucky lou aspect of it,
with like, oh, but you care about these characters, and
by the time you've actually like gotten to the point
for the further along in the series where you do
(04:29):
care about some of the characters and you have to
like be very then this, then that stuff, and that,
like look at how outrageously wealth they are, like entitled
this person is. SIT's weirder and weirder with the rest
of the show. There was a big plot line on
Real Housewives of New York where Sonia Morgan, who is
like fallen from grace. She used to be married to JP,
(04:50):
someone from JP Morgan, and she's like very attached to
the fact that she had this name and all the status,
and then he left her, and so she just has
the name and this town house. I love it because
it's very like Edith Wharton. She's just like I'm going
to get back up there somehow, you know, even though
I'm in my fifties now, I'm like, it's gonna happen.
I just need a plan. But you know, the townhouse
(05:13):
is basically what what she has at this point because
she lost all this money and all these bad investments
and she had somebody stay with her. She had Tinsley
Mortimer stay with her, and they fought a bunch over um.
She was like, you can't ask my maid to do
things for you, even though you're living here. That's my
maid and you're just my guests. No, I mean all
(05:33):
of this just makes my skin crawls so much. She does.
But it's interesting. It is. It's Tinsley Mortimer, a real
housewife of New York. Yeah, for like two seasons, although
she just left. Oh I didn't. I never watched New York.
I have to say her plot line is great too,
because it's like she comes back to New York after
being disgraced. She had a mug shot in Florida for
(05:54):
trying to break into her boyfriend's house. I remember that, um.
But it's like she comes back to New York and
she trying to recapture the early two thousand's but they're gone,
you know. So she dresses the way she dressed it's
when she first became semi famous, and her mom, her
mom is like this insane Southern mom who's like, you know,
(06:15):
you're still gonna like find the perfect husband and have
a grandchild for me. But there's this incredible episode where
they go to the circus together and they're both wearing
like she's wearing like circus clown like cutie makeup because
she is doing something on stage at the circus and
then she just has a complete mental breakdown at the
circus with her mom. Is she becoming like a or
(06:38):
like our first oughts, Misshavis Sham, Like, oh good, that
sounds incredible. Real house Lives of New York is so
Mishavis Sham. They're all mishavi as Sham and they're all
single now right, they're all single, and they all hate
it and they'd all throw each other under the bus
for a man, which is like a really interesting dynamic
(07:01):
to watch on a show. Yeah. Man, it's like a
Sex in the City went on for five more decades.
Like it's very It stops being glamorous at a certain point.
Because I'm always like, these shows are a critique, which
is what I taught myself so I can keep watching them. Yeah,
if you watched them the right way, there a critique.
I'll say, there's a critique available in the text. It's
(07:21):
not necessarily at the top. Well, they seem miserable despite
the money, and they're so attached to this rich New
York Manhattan lifestyle that they have that it's like they're
all just clinging onto it for dear life. And they
refuse to do anything that might make them happy. That
isn't that? Yeah? Right? Can I wait? This is like
(07:42):
a little segue, and we weren't necessarily going to talk
about this, but I just saw this on Twitter this
morning because I'm like probably an advisable and advisably dipping
my toe back into Twitter, but I was I saw
a thread that was started by uh Sarah Maslin near Um.
She's a journal to New York Times, and she you know,
there have been least threads all summer that are like
(08:03):
New York is dead, New York is over, etcetera. And
she was just saying like, because I guess she lives
in the West Village, and she's like, it's actually totally empty,
nobody's here anymore. And then of course everybody's like, no,
New York is stronger than never, blah blah blah. Even
though we were talking about a city of five boroughs
and there could be wild variation between them, but like,
from from what she was described, it did sound like like,
(08:26):
you know, Manhattan and i e. The place where rich
people live, is like completely empty now, like everybody is
going to their country homes for real. I think that
is a real phenomenon. I think a lot of rich
people have been fleeing cities for their vacation homes because
they can well. I also think that with the travel restrictions, um,
(08:47):
that may have made things even worse, because I think
as soon as it was mentioned that there were they
were going to be restricting travel from New York to
Connecticut New Jersey vacation home places, I think everyone was like, great,
let's go right now we're not allowed to, then we
have to. I mean the New York Times has also
run a lot of insane stuff about stuff like this.
(09:09):
They ran that thing that was like turning your second
home into a first home. God, but I'm interested, like,
and I'd be interested for any of our listeners who
are in New York and specifically who can access like
Lower Manhattan and the most ridiculous parts of Manhattan easily.
Like I would like a scene report from like how
(09:29):
dead meat packing is? Right, it's dead at all? Because
I think it's been. I mean, I think it's like
there's a certain class of person who's like, it's dad,
it's over, and then there's all the like younger broker
people who are like, it's amazing, we can just run
around and do whatever we want. It's like old timey
New York. But this is the thing is like I
(09:51):
think that part of New York has been so taken
over by stuff that is only for the rich people,
and like you know, designers show ups and stuff like
the Mark Jacob's store and shipped like that, and like
hotels that are more or less nonfunctional. Right now, that
I think that when you do take that cohort out
of there, it does become a ghost town of its
(10:12):
own design because you did not design a place that
is for everybody. You don't have affordable places to go
do outdoor dining or whatever. Like. Also, though, just to
be sympathetic to what New York is going through, um
my parents have a lot of friends who are older,
like in their late seventies and eighties and um one
in their nineties. And they're not necessarily wealth either, like
(10:33):
long term New Yorkers who basically have had to leave
grand control. Yeah, but they they are staying with relatives
and staying with friends outside of New York because for
them to be you know, walking around the streets of
New York has just gotten to be scary. You know,
you have high risk, so I think, you know, I
I was having some fun thinking like, hey, new York's over,
(10:55):
but then I was like, oh, but that's you know,
it's not just like all the rich people have been
chased out. It's a lot of them are just old
New Yorkers who are the cohort of New Yorkers. Is
like the ancient New Yorkers who have been there for
and people who can't leave their apartments because there aremunocompromised.
I think that is a lot. Yeah, I mean I
just think all these is New York over. It's like, no,
(11:15):
when the rich people live, that's like when a city
gets cool. You know. Yeah, I think that's the thing.
Like New York is over can means so many different
things to whoever you're talking to you. Uh. And I
think like I wouldn't say New York is over, but
I would say that like it sounds like anecdotally, it
feels like there was some kind of maxine out of
(11:37):
the uber wealthy development that that happened, especially like in
Lower Manhattan. Uh. And that is interesting to me because
it's like, oh if that stuff all, if that if
that really cannot get back up to that level of
you know, outrageous wealth and and you know, nothing but
Lilabo for miles and miles, Like maybe there's a chance
(12:01):
for interesting stuff to come back there, yes, um, which
is you know, not not necessarily looking for silver linings
here at the moment, but that would be interesting if
that happened. So well, I love when people come to
l A and they're like, oh, it's so debt, and
it's like no, it's always like that pretty much. That's
what we love about it. Yeah. I also, though, I
(12:23):
think a lot about how families are doing in New
York right now, and especially with the kind of cluster
fuck that's been going on with schools reopening not reopen.
You know, it just seems like it's going to be
this endless shuffle that's going to go on for way
longer than a lot of families of young kids can handle.
So I also just wonder like how and I talked
about this last week too, of like, well, you've got
(12:44):
to think about like the different architecture that will happen
after this pandemic. It's so exciting because I'm so depressed
that I'm clinging to these things. But I do wonder
how New York is going to kind of reinvent itself
as a place that can withstand these kinds of pandemics,
because I'm sadly as ming that this is not the
last one that we're going to encounter in our lifetimes.
(13:04):
And you know, I think about where I grew up
in New York and how often I needed to get
out of the apartment, and like a lot of my
friends were in one bedrooms with their families. You can't
really be in a one bedroom with four people for
seven months, you know, what do you do? Yeah? Well,
that's the thing is It's like a lot of cities
are based on the idea that like maybe you have
(13:25):
a small apartment, but it's because you have the whole
city as your playground, and if you can't leave, your
apartment becomes a different thing. And that's why I you know,
I take a little bit of exception when people are
shaming people who are leaving, especially people who are more
middle class or whatever and have that situation. It's like,
the reason you're in New York is because of your job,
(13:49):
needing to be you know, having proximity to whatever industry
you're in, And if that's off the table, why would
you live in that small of a place for that
much money. Like, I don't. I don't think like there's
this wild, very tribal New York shaming thing that happens.
And I like understand it if you're talking about people
who have multiple homes and are just like ditching the city. Um,
(14:11):
but if that's your one home and you have a
one bedroom apartment in like Crown Heights or whatever, and
you're paying like three thousand dollars for it or whatever,
like I understand wanting to leave. Tons of people are
moving back in with their families because they have no
choice and you can't afford to live in a in
(14:32):
a big city if they're not you know, making making
a salary. Um. But I do think that every time
there's been one of these things where it's like, wow,
what an exciting opportunity to like remake the city is
something good over this year so far, it hasn't turned
out the way I personally would want it to. It's
like such a years long process to right. Like I
(14:53):
feel like, you know, there's gonna be a wave of
stuff closing or you know, corporations taking their their their
franchises out of out of certain neighborhoods. And leaving vacancies behind.
And then there's they're still probably going to only run
out those places too, you know, the kinds of businesses
that can't afford there, and so it'll take to several
waves of failure before it's like okay, like mom and
(15:16):
pops can have this place again. Exactly, we're still at
the point where we're identifying the problems like there were
nowhere near being able to implement solutions until we recognize
how any kind of recovery is possible for small businesses
and how much longer this will go on. I was
talking to a friend um whose doctor said, like, you
you should think of this pandemic as a marathon. Then
(15:38):
you're in miles seven and it's very long. Six it's
that sticker, that something on everybody's car. You can tell
that we all by our six. I heard someone say
(15:59):
two yesterday, twenty five or six to four, we're all
moving to shock Chicago. Maybe that's where Tinsley Mortimer moved
to leave The Real Housewives. She went to Chicago for love,
and they were all like, how dare you leave New
York for Chicago? You'll never be happy in Chicago. She
was like, I've kind of boyfriend. I'll be fine. Well,
(16:24):
we're going to take a break and we'll be right back.
Welcome back tonight. Call. So we have continued to get
a ton of Pyramid Pals slash Crazy Architecture emails and calls.
(16:45):
We appreciate all of them we've got. Maybe we can
like just tweet out a bunch of these or something,
because the thing is that there there are a lot
of them are just visual and like you know, we're
a podcast, so there's only so much that we can
get into with it. But we did want to highlight
something that came up this past week in connection with
(17:07):
the vow. Oh yes can I may I please do?
This is one of those things, so we talked about this. Um.
We recently had a Patreon special episode with Nicki Mayor
Um to talk more about the vow in the finale,
and I Molly first brought this to my attention that
Mark vas Sonny was not a cult newbie when he
(17:28):
joined Nexium. He had, in fact belonged to a cult
called Ramtha. And Molly mentioned this to us, and then
I got so obsessed with Rampa I don't even know
where to begin. I implore everybody who's listening to this
to read up on Ramtha. What if all of the
vow was just like a long con to get people
to join Ramtha because they're like this this cult sucks,
(17:49):
but that well, you campinably come away from the vow
being like, all of these people would join another cult tomorrow,
Oh yeah, definitely, and then they'd be like, it's not
a cult like the last one. It's self improvement, just
like they were saying at the beginning of joining next
um Um Rantha's School of Enlightenment is a cult that's
(18:10):
based in Yelm, Washington. Uh. It's started by a woman
who named herself Judy Zebra Knight. She was born with
a different name. Um. My favorite thing about Rampa is
the origin story of Rampa's that Judy and her first
husband in the seventies were messing around with pyramids that
they thought could turn things into gold and had like
magical properties, and she put one on her head like
(18:31):
a little tiny pyramid, and then she spoke um with
ancient spirits voice and has continued to do so since then. Um.
And when we were talking on the maybe maybe it
was after the Patreon episode had wrapped, we realized Selma
Hyak is a practitioner of Rampa. I think we talked
(18:52):
about this on the pud. I can't remember if it
was on the pot. We kept talking after we wrapped
the pot because we are like Lane has has been
and then Salma Hyak was as well. And then I
found the connection between them and that that's a Sundance
Uh time's up story. But it was it's a very deep,
(19:15):
deep dig. But um. But the crazy thing is I
went back and I read that article again. So this
is I don't know if people remember this. This is
like a very like film twitter thing that happened on
at Sundance a few years back. There was a lunch
a luncheon with like v I P Ladies of Sundance,
and there was just an incident where Salmahayak was like
(19:36):
talking over Jessica Williams Uh and kind of like referring
to like she called her like baby and was just
being being like basically saying that like she couldn't like
her her struggles with like being being a woman of
color or being a black woman in the industry were
like not exceptional, and that we all had to like,
(19:56):
you know, basically have a unified struggle together and not
necessarily recognizing that it could be different for different people. Um,
and the but the language is she's using because Shirley
McClain is also there is so nexium ish that it's crazy,
Like I wonder if I wonder if they also dipped
a toe into nextium at all, because it's very um,
(20:19):
it's very like you can't identify as a victim. That's
the thing a lot. And also I think that they
do they do things like exercises where they get blindfolded
and they have they you know, all of these Rampa
people have to run around and like find objects that
they've put in a field earlier and try and remember
where they put them, and then they bump into each
(20:40):
other and get hurt. I mean, it's just it's And
also it has a very problematic layer where um, Judy
Zebra will talk as Rampa, but she'll say really racist
or anti Semitic things and then just be like, oh,
you know, it's Rampa. It's a really intense is that
because Rampa is an ancient Egyptian pharaoh's like I guess,
(21:03):
so also makes predictions. Rampa likes to predict the future,
and there's a really heavy emphasis on you know, kind
of quantum physics that you put through a sieve and
take what you want, but it's not really quantum physics.
But sorry, what the bleep? Well that's what it is,
is that what the bleep was basically like Rampa, a
Rampa project um. And it's very odd that that none
(21:26):
of this was mentioned in the vow. I feel like
it's very germane to that discussion of him being in
a call. Did we mention with with Rampa that that
Judy Zebra was born in Roswell in n We have
not mentioned that. Seems important, seems we're very important, um.
But it's also a really fascinating, weird kind of encapsulation
(21:49):
of the topics we've been discussing recently, cults and pyramids.
It's all connected. Final destination of cults and pyramids is Rampha.
This is night calling on so it make sense should
we take a night email about our weird buildings? Oh yeah, okay,
(22:10):
this one comes from smaller demon loving the weird building emails.
You could have an entire spinoff podcast based on it.
Side note, maybe we just that's this. It's Alabamian who
has lived in Nashville, Huntsville, Alabama, not Texas, San Francisco,
and now back in Birmingham, Alabama. Alabama may not be
(22:30):
a go to for weird buildings, but there are some
strange things here. Birmingham is home to one of the
largest monolithic domes, the Faith Chapel Christian Center. This thing
is nuts how big it is. Birmingham is also home
to one of the most distinctive buildings I've ever seen,
currently called the A T and T City Center. It
was designed by Conn and Jacobs, a firm that designed
a lot of New York City buildings that would fall
(22:51):
into the dreaded glass and steel category. But this building
in Birmingham is a weird stone and glass building that
I've not seen in many places. It combines black and
white granite and shaded glass and it's just really cool.
But and I'll make this separate from the rest of
the email, the weirdest thing as far as structures, and
I mean loosely speaking in Alabama might be the A
(23:13):
Marie of Marie Grotto with a link. Words are almost
impossible to use to describe it. The grotto was built
over the course of fifty years by a Catholic monk
in the small city of Culman, Alabama. Basically it's Jerusalem
and miniature built out a junk bottle caps, discarded glass, etcetera.
Once you start digging around and find pictures and videos,
(23:33):
you start to realize how utterly bizarre this is and
where it is located. That said, Alabama is the home
of e w t N, the cable television Catholic channel too,
so Alabama has a lot of weird Catholics. E w
t n's headquarters are literally a mile from where I live.
Please take a look at the grotto links though. I'll
send you another bizarre Catholic structure of Alabama in another email,
(23:53):
and some grotto photos. I love a grotto, Molly. You
hang out at a grotto sometimes, I do. I mean,
I just love grottos. I love roadside architecture and and
stuff built out of junk by people. There's one in
Cambria called Knitwit Ridge that is a house a great name.
Oh it's so great. I think it's nit Wit with
(24:14):
like two teas, maybe in both, but it's um It's
like a grotto house, like a coke bottle type house.
And you go there in Cambria. There's a guy who
owns it. Um I think he's trying to sell it,
so obviously we should make it the Night Call headquarters.
Have you guys ever been to the Hollywood Sculpture Garden No, Oh,
(24:37):
my gosh. See it's it's a it's a it's a
bit of a hike from from my current residence, but
it is. It is in somebody's yard. It's just a house.
It's up in the hills, kind of above Beechwood Canyon.
I know what you're talking about. Yeah, it's very tiki techie,
just a bunch of stuff, like you know, the the
the style is all over the map, uh, but a
(25:01):
lot of like mannekins and like vaguely sexy architecture and
stuff like that, and a lot of like you know,
stone collages and stuff like that. I just love when
people decorate their houses weird because it's so it's so
taken for granted that you have to have like a
normal house that fits in with the neighborhood, and obviously
in l A you don't necessarily have to do that. Well,
(25:23):
it's really heartening there because everything else around it just
looks like different iterations on the house from parasite and
then you've gone from total ice or in the middle
of it. But it's like very heartwarming to Okay, it's so.
I was among a bunch of parasite houses the other night.
We were doing an action and it was like up
in the bird streets, which are up behind the Sunset Strip,
(25:46):
and we walked past this house on the way to
the house we are going to that had a million
sculptures all over it of conquistadores and samurai and on
the roof and on the roof were like elephant and
you could just see there were like a weird waterfall
or something in it, just like the cool the coolest,
(26:06):
weirdest house I've ever seen, which cooked up agent lived
on that Larry Flint and he lives there still, I
believe because my friend friend of the pod, Christ Chang, said,
Larry Flint lives around here somewhere. I'm going to go
try and find his house. And then he called me
and was like, it was that weird house that we
(26:27):
walked by. What's up with this crazy house? Um? So
I looked into that house. It before it was owned
by Larry Flint, it was owned by Sonny and Share
and it has apparently a red heart shaped bathtub cool
that Larry Flint left left in um. And then another
(26:50):
friend of mine said that she worked on something where
it was right next to that house, and so she
could see into the Larry Flint house all summer and
she was like, what crazy see stuff am I gonna
see at the Hustler House. And then it was all
like old guys that are friends of Larry Flint hanging
out in the yard and listening to old timey music.
(27:11):
I like when it's like, what crazy things am I
going to see it, It's like they're just just some
old old friends kicking at kitchy style. I love old
guys in the porn industry because they're so like overseeing
naked women at this point, you know, they're just like
family men. Usually by the time they're like of a
certain age, they're like, oh yeah, I did all that
and now I'm going to listen to Ragtime with my friend. Um,
(27:33):
we don't have time to read all of these emails,
so we're just going to mention this one here. We
also got a night email from Zach about the Flintstones House, which, um,
if you can just look them up on Wikipedia you'll
have a fun time. It kind of looks like they're
out of the Simpsons UM and they're located in Hillsboro, California. Uh,
(27:54):
but those are they're fun to mention, but you just
need to see them. We can't podcast. There is a
Simpson's house called We did a whole dome homes run
a while back, and now we're getting drawn back into
dome homes. So just when we thought we were out,
That's how I felt about the second Nextium documentary. Just
(28:16):
when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in.
We also, uh, you know, we talked. We started to
transition a little bit into mounds last week and we
got an email from Catherine about the mounds of Wisconsin,
which I had no idea about UM, but she said
(28:37):
true mountain heads such as yourselves will probably be interested
to learn about Wisconsin's effigy mounds. UM. And these date
back to seven d b C. And a lot of
them are kind of formed as animals UM, like birds
and turtles and buffalo and stuff like that, and some
align with the moon and sun sunrise set on the
(28:59):
solstices or e winoxes. And they are about four thousand
of them. That survived to this day, which is I
had I'd never heard of these effigy mounds, these Wisconsin
effigy mounds. But she she also says that Madison still
has a ton of them. Uh and one of them,
the largest effigy mound in the world, which is an
(29:19):
eagle with a six and twenty four ft wingspan um
along with a dozen other eagles, I guess, is on
the grounds of the Mendota Mental Health Institute formerly known
as the Wisconsin Hospital for the Insane, where ed guy
in the Serial Killer who inspired the Silence of the
Lambs and other famous horror stories, spent the left last
(29:40):
twenty years of his life. Wow, pretty wild stuff it is.
Did you guys see that cat Nascal lines thing that
just got discovered? What this like a giant drawing of
a cat on a hillside in Peru, Like an ancient
drawing of a cat and so cool. I love stuff
(30:00):
like that that's so old and you can still tell
what it's supposed to be representative of. It's interesting in
this email about Madison having so many of these mounds
because it says that they're in city parks, backyards, cemeteries,
and it's I'm just like, imagine if you had a
house with an ancient mound in the backyard. That's my dream. Yeah, no,
(30:22):
they were uh she She says that like the soil
from the mounds is uh is sometimes collected because it's
like lucky mound dirt and people in their gardens. You
can make moon water and mound dirt, and then you
could just totally transform. That's how we're going to sell
in our store. You will ascend um. It's also crazy
(30:45):
that ed Gain connection is crazy. First of all, a
Gain not guying. It's either it's either guying or Geen.
I believe I have. I don't know how to pronounce middle.
I don't know how to pronounce anything. I looked this
up right before we started, but apparently it's so contentious.
You can say whatever you want me to say. Ed
Geen ed Geen just because he was famous for digging
(31:07):
burial things up, you know, so interesting you surrounded by
burial mounts. I have learned a lot about ed Geen
recently because I watched the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which is
one of three all time classic horror movies based on
ed Geen. The other two are Psycho and Silence of
(31:31):
the Lamps. I find it an unpleasant horror movie. Well,
it's super unpleasant, no, but I mean I like unpleasant,
like horror movies are intentionally unpleasant, clearly, but I find
that it leaves me with that scuzzy feeling that I
can't shake that I don't. I'm a little allergic to
the because it was horrible to make, and you can
tell everybody's super unhappy. Yes, but it's it's so good
(31:55):
and everybody dresses amazing. It's I find it cluster Well,
obviously it's claustrophobic. I just watched The fun House last
night too, which is the other Toby Hooper movie about
like a scuzzy carnival. I mean his movies are scuzzy,
that's what's cool about them. But like the ed Geen
story is super scuzzy, and part of what's so creepy
(32:16):
about it was that he was just like some guy
in a farmhouse and nobody knew he was like digging
up all these bodies to make lampshades out of people. Yeah. Um,
but I also heard because I watched that Errol Morris documentary.
I didn't know this, but Errol Morris was going to
dig up ed Geen's mother to see if he had,
(32:38):
you know, dug up the body and done something with it,
just based on the idea that he probably did psycho
stuff and he was gonna do it, and he invited
Werner Hertzog and they were gonna do it together on
a trip, just buddy. So he was like a fan
of Verner Hrtzog, you've never met him before. This is
when he was like, this is my husband plays Errol
(33:00):
Morris in a short film currently at festivals about all
of this specifically. So yeah, then Errol Morris totally whisked out.
He freaked out. He was like, I can't dig up
a body. And that is when Vernon Hurd talk said like,
if this guy makes a movie, I'll eat my shoe.
And then he did. He did, and he did. He
also like threw a ton of like wads of bills
(33:22):
at Errol Morris, who then threw it out the window.
It's it's a very interesting and strange friendship. I like it.
I would love to get Errol Morris and Vernon Hertzog
on Nightcall, Oh man, I would like Ernie on on
Nightcall Ernie. We could just we could just ask him
(33:42):
about some mounds, mounds and ribs they could be They
could cause play the mound in the rid and have
a building personified conversation. Do you guys ever think about
how weird it is that we like very dead people?
Oh yeah, what else are we supposed to do with them? Though?
Just leave him be? Well? A lot of people burn them,
(34:02):
a lot of culture has just burned them space as
a result. We all still like the mushroom suits, right,
we love the mushroom Sits still down for the mushroom suits.
It's crazy to think about how much space dead people
take up in this country and around the world, you know,
just like crazy. Yeah, And how many like toxic chemicals
(34:25):
are leached into the earth because of the sheer volume
of dead people that are in the ground. It's crazy.
What are the chemicals do? I don't know. They can't
be good formaldehyde and shipped all the embalming fluids. I'm
a big fan of cremation. I think, I think very
neat and tidy, but that probably also is a pollutant
(34:48):
when you think about, you know, the fumes. That's how
we got to do the mushroom suit. But I like,
I like the idea of the mounds because it's like,
wouldn't you just decompose and help play let's grow? I
mean you should, but I think I don't know. Maybe
if you're in a less um densely populated area, like
(35:10):
if you are a native person living before you know,
colonization and everything, and you've got the whole wide open
country to yourself, you can just stick somebody in the
ground and you don't need to worry about like making
sure that I don't know, they don't well, you need
to worry about the other people that are already in
the ground. I guess, I guess. I mean, I think
(35:30):
it's too crowded. Well, we got into this on our
on our episode about ghost Land, but just the idea
that like all of America is a burial ground and
so like it's all haunted because it's all built on
top of a civilization that was you know, wiped out
in a genocide by the people that built on top
of it. The shining Yeah, I was actually I just
(35:52):
watched um the second episode of the second season of
Unsolved Mysteries. Oh, which, Oh, it's it's good. Uh. It
features a woman who is an unidentified woman. They think
she was maybe an assassin or a spy. Um she
signed into a hotel under a false name and a
false birth date, and she it seemed to be a suicide,
(36:13):
but then it seemed maybe not to be a suicide.
She was shot in the head, but she had the gun,
was in her hand with her thumb on the trigger,
and the forensics people were like, there's just no way that,
you know, the crime scene just does not seem like
she took her own life. It has to be a homicide,
and maybe she was like a high profile assassin or something. Anyway,
(36:33):
they had to bury her after a year, and they
had no leads on who she was, her identity, and
so they buried her. And then they decided to dig
her back up, get DNA samples and examine her teeth.
And one of the really interesting things was like, they
can find your age by your teeth. And it's not
just like with a horse's teeth where you can see, oh,
it must be this age because of the growth of
(36:54):
the teeth. It's like the chemicals that your teeth have absorbed.
It's weird because I guess your teeth absorb ambient radiation
or something, and so they can test your teeth and
see which nuclear events you've been affected by and therefore
discover your age. That was a great scary episode, uh,
because it was just so weird that nobody could identify
(37:16):
this woman and they were running her photo everywhere and
just nobody had any connection to her whatsoever. But she
was very specific looking and she looked just like gi Lane.
She did. She looked exactly like Elane, which was interesting
because she was probably CIA or some kind of you know,
not CIA, but some kind of secret agent for probably
(37:37):
like Belgium or something. They ultimately decided, well, she had
listed this weird small town ver Lane, I think Belgium.
She listed a fake name and a fake hometown, and
then they went to the hometown to try and find
her and they were like, no, she's not from here.
And then they used her teeth to figure out where
she was actually from because of like nuclear testing, they
could tell whoa. It was a really good episode. It
(37:59):
was good. And that's where I learned which I had
not known, that when somebody is murdered and they are
secret agent, they cut the tags out of their clothes. Yes,
so this apparently this is this happens like not frequently,
but it's not the first time it's happened that they
remove all labels from clothing and that they kind of
like sand off any identifying information from jewelry and weapons
(38:20):
and stuff like that, so there's absolutely no way to
trace where the person is from. Should take a break
and come back with a little bit of spooky Halloween
chap Let's do it. Welcome back. It is the reason
(38:42):
for the season. The Big Skeleton Man and the Ladies
of Night Call. We just wanted to talk a little
bit about Halloween, spooky fun time on our our last
episode pre Halloween. Yeah, obviously this is going to be
this Halloween is not like the others, but we have
plenty of I feel like we have plenty of like
(39:03):
Halloween material and stuff to do and activities and stuff,
mostly movies, but also driving around and looking at people's
in saying Halloween houses. Yeah, which has definitely I would
say it's dipped a little bit this year. I also
just personally feel like it reached a peak a few
years ago and then both people had less money and
(39:23):
spend on Halloween stuff. Yeah. We talked about this when
we were talking about The Big Boy, the Skeleton Boy,
which I still have not seen any. And I was
driving around Burbank the other day and I know where
a few are. Okay, you'll have to share off pod
will make a map and make a map of the
big boys. That's perfect. They have medium boys in stock
(39:44):
at Rite Aid. If anyone is interested in a medium boy,
they're probably they look to be like maybe four feet
tall and they're posable. It's not big enough, No, that's
that's not a big enough boy. I've gone on several
spooky cruises so far, just by myself because I'm a weirdo.
I went to Toluca Lake, which I recommend if you're
looking for extremely decorated houses. To Luca Lake is like
(40:07):
the place where they have really great lawn decorations of
all kinds. But I also went to South Pasadena yesterday,
which is where all the filming locations from John Carpenter's
Halloween are located, and they always kind of go crazy
for Halloween there, I think because of that um But
there were all these signs on the lawn that were
(40:27):
like no trick or treating this year. Enjoy the decor,
but like do not knock on the door. I mean,
it makes sense, but that bums me. Out anyway, it
makes sense, but it was funny. It's like they made
their own sign for the neighborhood because it's like a
famous Halloween neighborhood that were like, please enjoy these decorations,
but like it's different this year. A lot of people
are taking driving tours of which houses I saw on
(40:50):
like Hidden l A or something, um like witchy little Hoppit,
witchy little habit homes. I just saw there was an
Ecto one in my neighborhood that was cool inable Ecto one. Wait,
what's Ecto one? It's the Ghostbusters. Yeah, it's the car
from ghost Pecto one. It's the license plate the Ghostbusters
(41:14):
car busted mobile true Ghostbusters heads. No, that it's It's
license plate is Ecto one one. Um. But I appreciate
when people kind of make the effort to like do
it up because it is it's kind of I guess
it's not the first holiday we had. I mean we've
had a number of holidays. We had the fourth of
July under quarantine. We'll probably have a lot more holidays
(41:38):
under quarantine. But for some reason, Halloween, this one stings. Well,
it's weird. It's like the one time that people go
talk to their neighbors that they don't know exactly. It's
like this, it's very surprising that we even do it
because like there's such a weird social contract about it.
I like, this is the night where it's okay to's
(41:58):
just like randomly stopping at somebody house that you don't know. Yeah.
I haven't lived in a neighborhood that has tricker treating
since I can't remember when. Like I I any time
I moved to a new place, I always like get
a bag of candy just in case. I mean, obviously
I'm not going to do this year, but uh, and
then no kids come and always even in New York. Yeah,
(42:18):
no I'm not in New York. I mean, like they're
a lot of times people will like be out on
the stoops, but I don't even I didn't even see
that in my last apartment. Like kids would go to
the businesses, Like they'd go to the business street and
like you know, the delis and stuff, and they'd be
handing out candy there. But they wouldn't be going to
people's houses. I've seen some kind of workarounds. There is
(42:39):
a drive through haunt that someone set up. I think
it's the people who do the Haunted hay Ride normally
in Griffith Park, which is definitely not happening this year.
The drive through Haunt has gotten mixed reviews. People are like,
it's not that good. It's kind of short and basically
just a bunch of people come up and like, bang
on your car. I think that sounds awful. Um. I
(43:00):
just discovered trunk or Treat, which is you decorate the
trunk of your car, you meet in a parking lot, uh,
and then whoever has the best trunk wins. But Halloween's
not supposed to be competitive with in a car sense.
I mean, I feel like that sounds like a drug
deal drunker treat. We all meet in a parking lot
and open our trunk and give each other money. Well,
(43:22):
do you guys have any good h Halloween viewing lined
up or anything you've been watching recently that you've been
really into, um, that you would like to recommend. I've
been watching everything on Movie Past, which is my friend
Michelle's Twitch channel where she's been programming movies all summer. Uh,
and they're doing a Spooky Past series that's all spooky movies.
(43:44):
So they did like a really good Hong Kong Horror
Day a couple of days ago. Yesterday, they did one
that was all Dark Ride themes extremely Nightcall, and they
showed Dark Ride and walk through videos between the movies.
They owed Waxwork, which was really scary, which is like
a Horrors of the Wax Museum movie. Wax Museum adjacent
(44:09):
horror movies are like extremely scary, engrossed me. So scary.
And then The Fun House, which I've seen before, which
is the Toby Hooper but I love it. It's um
people did these like two teen couples on a double
date go to a super sketchy carnival and decide to
stay overnight in the Dark Ride for fun. Spoiler it's
(44:30):
not fun. Also, it's another Toby Hooper like incestuous Family
of Deformed People thing. So he's really into that. I
thought that though, because his parents ran a movie theater
in Texas where they showed a lot of like exploitation movies,
(44:51):
and so that's why he makes exploitation movies. And then
they showed Final Destination three, Oh Great, which I couldn't
handle because it's too scary. I really Destinations that's the
one where they it's uh I think it's Mary. Elizabeth
Winstead is the lead, and she they're at a theme
park and she had a theme. She sees that the
(45:13):
roller coaster is going to derail and kill everybody and
convinces people to get off, but then of course they
are killed anyway. Those movies, those are the movies that
I find like too bleak, really the Final Destinations, Yeah,
because you can't escape death in them. It's like, well,
you can't escape death in real life, and exactly I
(45:36):
know that's why they're so fucking scary. I don't know.
There's something like so outrageous though about the desks in them,
where it's like this is like fate like arranging the
most grizzly death for you. That is so it's so
nasty that I just like it makes me laugh, Like right, no,
when it gets into that nightmare on Elm Street territory
(45:58):
where it's like you're gonna have the dad that like
makes the most sense for you, and that person the
tailor made death is really alarming, so scary. I might
watch some Freddie movies I've been I've seen all of
the Freddie movies a couple of times. Now, those are
the ones that really freaked me out as a kid
too much to even engage with. And then I finally
(46:18):
watched them and they're really good and funny. Emily, what
are you thinking of watching? Well? I wanted to just
recommend a couple of things. One, I think we talked
before about the seventies horror series on Criterion right now,
which is really great. Um. I did watch Dracula uh
nine a d uh the other day, which is truly ridiculous,
(46:41):
but just like, yeah, it's like a fun thing to watch.
Uh and then uh oh. And then there's also I've
found myself like browsing HBO Max, which I rarely do
because like lately I've just had specific things that I'm
watching on HBO Max. I haven't been like going through
and looking at what they have. But they also have
(47:03):
a pretty good, um like classic horror or seventies horror
situation that has like I think they have like The
Brood and like, uh, Carnival of Souls is on there,
and a bunch of other stuff. I would recommend that, Oh,
they've got Final Destination five. There's a really good movie
(47:28):
in that seventies horror collection on Criterion that's so Nightcall
called The Velvet Vampire. Oh, I haven't seen that. You
haven't either. You recommended it, and it sounds great. It's great,
and it's directed by Stephanie Rothman, who's like one of
the few women who made a bunch of Roger Corman movies,
who's really rad. But it's like the most nightcall movie.
It's basically The Love Which but about a vampire, and
(47:50):
it's about a sexy female vampire bisexual who invites hipsters
to come to her desert house in Joshua Tree and
then seduces and destroys everybody. That's I mean, that sounds great.
When was it made? It's so great. It's seventies and
it's like the most seventies movie. It's the most California
(48:14):
maybe because it's like she's a vampire but she has
son and she drives a dune buggy. Oh hell yeah,
it's so nightcall Um and the guy and it is
one of it's like the Himbo from Beyond the Valley
of the Dolls. It is a delight. I had never
heard about it. That sounds perfect for it's great. Well,
(48:36):
I had also been saying, like I I said, like
a minute before my boyfriend like why aren't there more
horror movies where all the victims are met? And then
this was a little more like that. Oh yeah, that's
like good there should be because it's all like dudes
making these movies for the most part. Um, That's why
I was actually a little like stoked about in Texas
Chainsaw Massacre. You know they don't discriminate. Oh they don't.
(49:00):
Everyone's gotta go, uh what about you test? I'm taking
it classic style. We're going to rewatch the Shining Um
because we're living in the shining And then I'm also
going to force us to watch Pet Cemetery, which I
think is just such a terrifying movie. My parents, um
are not easily freaked out. But in New York they
(49:24):
went to go see Pet Cemetery in the theaters and
they had adopted a dog. I think they'd had dogs before,
but they this dog had like some behavior issues. It
was just one of those dogs where you like, what's
going on in your mind? I'm not sure. And they
got home and they also had a very mean cat.
They got home really late from the movie and like
opened the door and saw the pets and like couldn't
(49:44):
couldn't deal. They were like so rattled by the movie
that they were like our our pets, like evil pets,
and they had to just be like, good night, guys,
I'll see you in the morning. I'm also gonna recommend
that you guys have to watch Doctors Sleep because it
is so bad. I can't bear to watch something that's
so bad. Right, but it makes you appreciate The Shining
(50:07):
so much, But what about what? But watching the Shining
also makes you appreciate But it's funny because it's like,
you know, Stephen King hates Stanley Kubrick Shining because it's
like not faithful enough to the book. This is like
his opportunity to litigate that, and so he just like
makes it all completely literal. It's like, just like here's
(50:28):
all the rules and logic of the Shining Verse and
like the things that make the things in the Shining happen,
which is totally demystifying and not something anyone wants. Yeah, well,
it's like a scolding movie where he's like, I'll do
it right here. It is so unscary. And the villain
is a woman whose name is Rose the Hat because
she wears a hat. Well, I'm Emily the headphones right now.
(50:57):
I just want you to have to see it so
that we talk about it, because it's so silly and dumb.
I never read the book, so I have no you know,
so good point for the faithfulness. I just love the movie.
I think all the stuff that that Stephen King was
mad didn't end up in the movie. It's like, that's
what makes the movie good is your brain is like
(51:18):
trying to make connections and it can't fully make them right,
and Stephen King is like it's because he's an alcoholic. Yeah,
but I mean that the book is great, like they're
two things can exist in the world without I've never
read the book. Maybe we should do it for a
book club. Sometimes. I'm always down for some vintage Stephen King. Guys. Know,
(51:38):
I've never read a single Stephen King book in my life.
I guess I've read. I've read the anthology, like the
short stories, but mostly I just would make tests, tell
me what happens and that, and I'm here for that. Molly.
You read The Lango Years though, right, No. I just
saw the TV mini series. Oh my god, you guys. Look,
(51:59):
I'm sitting I'm sitting on the floor and it's like
you're like by a pile of your Stephen King pyle. Look,
it's like I even have like current Stephen King, this
one of the like second last, it's all by my bed,
and I'm embarrassed because like latter day Stephen King, like
I could read something more nourishing for my brain, but
(52:19):
it's nourishing the one that I always I'm like the
girl who loved Tom Hardy. That's not what it's called,
but the But everybody I know who's into Stephen King
is like a completist in that way, and I like,
I don't look down on it at all. I think
it seems really fun. I just never caught the train.
I never got it on at the right time, and
so now it feels really daunting. I did ask another
friend of mine, who is like a major Stephen King fan,
(52:40):
to like give me kind of a primer, give me, like, like,
here's the first five you should read, and I remember
that she recommended, like I think she recommend. I know
that Christina and Kujo were both in those that top five,
and I was like, yeah, I want to read both
of those books. Uh, I just haven't yet. They also
go well together because it's the Possessed Car and the
(53:01):
Possessed Kujo is actually holds up really while I re
read Kujo, but that was the book where at my
copy of Kujo, it was like a really cheap whatever,
shitty copy of Coujo. And I got maybe halfway through
and then the pages started repeating, like there there was
like a section that had were found out of sequence,
(53:22):
and I was like, this is a really amazing book
because it's just it's like making me feel like I'm
insane and wow, like this is really incredible work by
Stephen King. And then was like, oh, okay, there's just
like a chapter missing and it's it's just a printing era.
That's amazing. It was just exactly, um, well, maybe we
(53:46):
should take some night calls about the Stephen King of
Verse to go and take us into November. We're also
going to be doing some episodes about dreams. Uh, and
so if you have any thoughts or don't, maybe maybe
don't tell us your dream because I think I don't
know about you guys. Maybe we can talk about this later.
But like, listening to somebody tell me their dreams is
(54:08):
like never the most interesting thing, but like recurring dreams
are interesting. Recurring dreams and prophetic dreams. Yeah, and also
I would like to hear about some COVID dreams because
I know it is a documented phenomenon that people are
having lots of dreams about, like getting caught out with
no masks. I I had a really intense COVID dream
last night that I won't tell you about because of
(54:29):
Emily's Emily's take on this is true, but I did
realize like people are talking a lot more about their dreams.
I think people are having more vivid dreams in general. Um. Also,
if you have movies or books that you love about dreams,
please recommend them to us. So, yeah, I was gonna
say it's one of like three stimuli we get now
it's like food, sleep. Yeah, if you're I don't know,
(54:53):
I was gonna say drugs. Yeah, you can say drugs.
It's drugs. U keep it spooky and we will see
you all next week. Thank you for listening Tonight Call.
You can subscribe to us on iTunes and make us
a rating and review there please. We've gotten some recently
(55:14):
and they're they're so fun to read, so thank you.
If you have left one. You can also follow us
on social media. We're on Twitter at Night Call Pod
and Instagram at Facebook at Night Called Podcast, and you
can join our Patreon at patreon dot com slash Nightcall
where you can get our bonus episodes, our newsletter, our mixtapes,
and also it's fun stuff. Check it out and we
(55:34):
will see you all next week
It's two twenty two am in YELM, Washington and you're
listening to Night Call. Hello, and welcome back to Night Call,
a call in show for our dystopian reality. I am
in Los Angeles. I am Tess Lynch, and with me
(00:23):
are Molly Lambert and Emily Oshida. We were going to
be joined by Marrow Wilson today, but unfortunately she had
some technical difficulties, so she will be on the podcast
next week. We have a night Call we want to
take right off the top in honor of the recent
finale of The Vow on HBO. This is a night email, actually,
and it is anonymous and it is juicy. Okay, So
(00:45):
they write really enjoying all of the conversation around the
Vow and glad to hear I'm not the only one
who seems to have been driven crazy by many aspects
of the series. How did Keith pull this thing off?
Where's Mark to blame in all of this? Why do
you so many of these ladies have bad eyebrows? What
the hell is up with this aerie's narrative structure? Who
shortens Anthony to Nippy? Great question? Anyway, back in I
(01:06):
was working at an unscripted production company that was shopping
around a project about the housekeepers of Beverly Hills homes.
I'm sure you can guess what the very clever title was.
The sizzle was tasteless even for the time. We were
talking the height of Jersey Shore and the eve of
here comes Honey, boo boo, and featured long sequences of
the housekeepers just cleaning fancy houses. One of the featured
(01:28):
housekeepers was employed by none other than the daughter of
Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia, Dynasty's Amanda Carrington and next M's
public enemy number one, herself, Katherine Oxenberg. I don't remember specifics,
but I do remember one woman complaining about how long
it took the housekeeper to walk up and down the
driveway to get the mail, and one obsessed with having
(01:49):
crystal clear windows. I've seen a lot of failed projects,
but the level of cringe from this one was really breathtaking.
I'll never forget it. Thank you so much for this scoop.
So it turns out that that Katherine Oxenburg was like
so close to being a real housewife. The spotlight fell
on her housekeeper instead, and what sounds like a really
awful project that I'm glad ton't go to a series.
(02:11):
You know what's funny is that when they showed the
interior of Katherine Oxenberg's house and the wall of religious
artifacts that's so densely packed with crosses and stuff, I
was like, man, a nightmare to clean right there. Oh
my god, who's gonna dust all those crosses? She has
one of those houses that's like so white and minimalist
looking where you're like, oh, it must take so much cleaning.
(02:34):
It's white and minimalist, but it has a lot of
chat It has chats. It's got spiritual chatch keys. It
also looks like kind of small from the outside, but
like in a Malibu way and where it's like it's small,
but it's like probably costs a zillion dollars. But I mean,
I wonder if Katherine signs off on that, if she
like nominates her housekeeper to be in that show, Like,
(02:58):
how does that work in that instance? I mean she
would have to give permission at least, but I would
imagine that it would be some kind of a weird
casting call where people would recommend I was like, Oh,
my housekeeper happens to also clean houses for so and
so like and then put them in touch. But it's
such an obvious trap to be portrayed as a horrible boss.
(03:23):
Who on earth would sign up to let like a
Bravo s docuseries be made about their housekeepers and their staff.
Probably someone who thinks they're going to come off as
an amazing, gracious, wonderful Yes, and I can totally see
Katherine Oxenbourge being that person, honestly, Like they don't. They
(03:46):
rarely showed domestic laborers on Real Housewives. They did more
in the beginning, and I loved when they would do
that because you would see these people being such assholes
to their housekeep first, uh, and then maybe they realized
that that wasn't good for making anyone sympathized with the
housewives ever, But occasionally it's a plotline. Yeah, it was
(04:09):
this tricky thing they always do, like especially in the
early seasons of those shows, where it's like they're trying
to do this balancing act of portraying outrageous wealth and
you know that kind of lucky lou aspect of it,
with like, oh, but you care about these characters, and
by the time you've actually like gotten to the point
for the further along in the series where you do
(04:29):
care about some of the characters and you have to
like be very then this, then that stuff, and that,
like look at how outrageously wealth they are, like entitled
this person is. SIT's weirder and weirder with the rest
of the show. There was a big plot line on
Real Housewives of New York where Sonia Morgan, who is
like fallen from grace. She used to be married to JP,
(04:50):
someone from JP Morgan, and she's like very attached to
the fact that she had this name and all the status,
and then he left her, and so she just has
the name and this town house. I love it because
it's very like Edith Wharton. She's just like I'm going
to get back up there somehow, you know, even though
I'm in my fifties now, I'm like, it's gonna happen.
I just need a plan. But you know, the townhouse
(05:13):
is basically what what she has at this point because
she lost all this money and all these bad investments
and she had somebody stay with her. She had Tinsley
Mortimer stay with her, and they fought a bunch over um.
She was like, you can't ask my maid to do
things for you, even though you're living here. That's my
maid and you're just my guests. No, I mean all
(05:33):
of this just makes my skin crawls so much. She does.
But it's interesting. It is. It's Tinsley Mortimer, a real
housewife of New York. Yeah, for like two seasons, although
she just left. Oh I didn't. I never watched New York.
I have to say her plot line is great too,
because it's like she comes back to New York after
being disgraced. She had a mug shot in Florida for
(05:54):
trying to break into her boyfriend's house. I remember that, um.
But it's like she comes back to New York and
she trying to recapture the early two thousand's but they're gone,
you know. So she dresses the way she dressed it's
when she first became semi famous, and her mom, her
mom is like this insane Southern mom who's like, you know,
(06:15):
you're still gonna like find the perfect husband and have
a grandchild for me. But there's this incredible episode where
they go to the circus together and they're both wearing
like she's wearing like circus clown like cutie makeup because
she is doing something on stage at the circus and
then she just has a complete mental breakdown at the
circus with her mom. Is she becoming like a or
(06:38):
like our first oughts, Misshavis Sham, Like, oh good, that
sounds incredible. Real house Lives of New York is so
Mishavis Sham. They're all mishavi as Sham and they're all
single now right, they're all single, and they all hate
it and they'd all throw each other under the bus
for a man, which is like a really interesting dynamic
(07:01):
to watch on a show. Yeah. Man, it's like a
Sex in the City went on for five more decades.
Like it's very It stops being glamorous at a certain point.
Because I'm always like, these shows are a critique, which
is what I taught myself so I can keep watching them. Yeah,
if you watched them the right way, there a critique.
I'll say, there's a critique available in the text. It's
(07:21):
not necessarily at the top. Well, they seem miserable despite
the money, and they're so attached to this rich New
York Manhattan lifestyle that they have that it's like they're
all just clinging onto it for dear life. And they
refuse to do anything that might make them happy. That
isn't that? Yeah? Right? Can I wait? This is like
(07:42):
a little segue, and we weren't necessarily going to talk
about this, but I just saw this on Twitter this
morning because I'm like probably an advisable and advisably dipping
my toe back into Twitter, but I was I saw
a thread that was started by uh Sarah Maslin near Um.
She's a journal to New York Times, and she you know,
there have been least threads all summer that are like
(08:03):
New York is dead, New York is over, etcetera. And
she was just saying like, because I guess she lives
in the West Village, and she's like, it's actually totally empty,
nobody's here anymore. And then of course everybody's like, no,
New York is stronger than never, blah blah blah. Even
though we were talking about a city of five boroughs
and there could be wild variation between them, but like,
from from what she was described, it did sound like like,
(08:26):
you know, Manhattan and i e. The place where rich
people live, is like completely empty now, like everybody is
going to their country homes for real. I think that
is a real phenomenon. I think a lot of rich
people have been fleeing cities for their vacation homes because
they can well. I also think that with the travel restrictions, um,
(08:47):
that may have made things even worse, because I think
as soon as it was mentioned that there were they
were going to be restricting travel from New York to
Connecticut New Jersey vacation home places, I think everyone was like, great,
let's go right now we're not allowed to, then we
have to. I mean the New York Times has also
run a lot of insane stuff about stuff like this.
(09:09):
They ran that thing that was like turning your second
home into a first home. God, but I'm interested, like,
and I'd be interested for any of our listeners who
are in New York and specifically who can access like
Lower Manhattan and the most ridiculous parts of Manhattan easily.
Like I would like a scene report from like how
(09:29):
dead meat packing is? Right, it's dead at all? Because
I think it's been. I mean, I think it's like
there's a certain class of person who's like, it's dad,
it's over, and then there's all the like younger broker
people who are like, it's amazing, we can just run
around and do whatever we want. It's like old timey
New York. But this is the thing is like I
(09:51):
think that part of New York has been so taken
over by stuff that is only for the rich people,
and like you know, designers show ups and stuff like
the Mark Jacob's store and shipped like that, and like
hotels that are more or less nonfunctional. Right now, that
I think that when you do take that cohort out
of there, it does become a ghost town of its
(10:12):
own design because you did not design a place that
is for everybody. You don't have affordable places to go
do outdoor dining or whatever. Like. Also, though, just to
be sympathetic to what New York is going through, um
my parents have a lot of friends who are older,
like in their late seventies and eighties and um one
in their nineties. And they're not necessarily wealth either, like
(10:33):
long term New Yorkers who basically have had to leave
grand control. Yeah, but they they are staying with relatives
and staying with friends outside of New York because for
them to be you know, walking around the streets of
New York has just gotten to be scary. You know,
you have high risk, so I think, you know, I
I was having some fun thinking like, hey, new York's over,
(10:55):
but then I was like, oh, but that's you know,
it's not just like all the rich people have been
chased out. It's a lot of them are just old
New Yorkers who are the cohort of New Yorkers. Is
like the ancient New Yorkers who have been there for
and people who can't leave their apartments because there aremunocompromised.
I think that is a lot. Yeah, I mean I
just think all these is New York over. It's like, no,
(11:15):
when the rich people live, that's like when a city
gets cool. You know. Yeah, I think that's the thing.
Like New York is over can means so many different
things to whoever you're talking to you. Uh. And I
think like I wouldn't say New York is over, but
I would say that like it sounds like anecdotally, it
feels like there was some kind of maxine out of
(11:37):
the uber wealthy development that that happened, especially like in
Lower Manhattan. Uh. And that is interesting to me because
it's like, oh if that stuff all, if that if
that really cannot get back up to that level of
you know, outrageous wealth and and you know, nothing but
Lilabo for miles and miles, Like maybe there's a chance
(12:01):
for interesting stuff to come back there, yes, um, which
is you know, not not necessarily looking for silver linings
here at the moment, but that would be interesting if
that happened. So well, I love when people come to
l A and they're like, oh, it's so debt, and
it's like no, it's always like that pretty much. That's
what we love about it. Yeah. I also, though, I
(12:23):
think a lot about how families are doing in New
York right now, and especially with the kind of cluster
fuck that's been going on with schools reopening not reopen.
You know, it just seems like it's going to be
this endless shuffle that's going to go on for way
longer than a lot of families of young kids can handle.
So I also just wonder like how and I talked
about this last week too, of like, well, you've got
(12:44):
to think about like the different architecture that will happen
after this pandemic. It's so exciting because I'm so depressed
that I'm clinging to these things. But I do wonder
how New York is going to kind of reinvent itself
as a place that can withstand these kinds of pandemics,
because I'm sadly as ming that this is not the
last one that we're going to encounter in our lifetimes.
(13:04):
And you know, I think about where I grew up
in New York and how often I needed to get
out of the apartment, and like a lot of my
friends were in one bedrooms with their families. You can't
really be in a one bedroom with four people for
seven months, you know, what do you do? Yeah? Well,
that's the thing is It's like a lot of cities
are based on the idea that like maybe you have
(13:25):
a small apartment, but it's because you have the whole
city as your playground, and if you can't leave, your
apartment becomes a different thing. And that's why I you know,
I take a little bit of exception when people are
shaming people who are leaving, especially people who are more
middle class or whatever and have that situation. It's like,
the reason you're in New York is because of your job,
(13:49):
needing to be you know, having proximity to whatever industry
you're in, And if that's off the table, why would
you live in that small of a place for that
much money. Like, I don't. I don't think like there's
this wild, very tribal New York shaming thing that happens.
And I like understand it if you're talking about people
who have multiple homes and are just like ditching the city. Um,
(14:11):
but if that's your one home and you have a
one bedroom apartment in like Crown Heights or whatever, and
you're paying like three thousand dollars for it or whatever,
like I understand wanting to leave. Tons of people are
moving back in with their families because they have no
choice and you can't afford to live in a in
(14:32):
a big city if they're not you know, making making
a salary. Um. But I do think that every time
there's been one of these things where it's like, wow,
what an exciting opportunity to like remake the city is
something good over this year so far, it hasn't turned
out the way I personally would want it to. It's
like such a years long process to right. Like I
(14:53):
feel like, you know, there's gonna be a wave of
stuff closing or you know, corporations taking their their their
franchises out of out of certain neighborhoods. And leaving vacancies behind.
And then there's they're still probably going to only run
out those places too, you know, the kinds of businesses
that can't afford there, and so it'll take to several
waves of failure before it's like okay, like mom and
(15:16):
pops can have this place again. Exactly, we're still at
the point where we're identifying the problems like there were
nowhere near being able to implement solutions until we recognize
how any kind of recovery is possible for small businesses
and how much longer this will go on. I was
talking to a friend um whose doctor said, like, you
you should think of this pandemic as a marathon. Then
(15:38):
you're in miles seven and it's very long. Six it's
that sticker, that something on everybody's car. You can tell
that we all by our six. I heard someone say
(15:59):
two yesterday, twenty five or six to four, we're all
moving to shock Chicago. Maybe that's where Tinsley Mortimer moved
to leave The Real Housewives. She went to Chicago for love,
and they were all like, how dare you leave New
York for Chicago? You'll never be happy in Chicago. She
was like, I've kind of boyfriend. I'll be fine. Well,
(16:24):
we're going to take a break and we'll be right back.
Welcome back tonight. Call. So we have continued to get
a ton of Pyramid Pals slash Crazy Architecture emails and calls.
(16:45):
We appreciate all of them we've got. Maybe we can
like just tweet out a bunch of these or something,
because the thing is that there there are a lot
of them are just visual and like you know, we're
a podcast, so there's only so much that we can
get into with it. But we did want to highlight
something that came up this past week in connection with
(17:07):
the vow. Oh yes can I may I please do?
This is one of those things, so we talked about this. Um.
We recently had a Patreon special episode with Nicki Mayor
Um to talk more about the vow in the finale,
and I Molly first brought this to my attention that
Mark vas Sonny was not a cult newbie when he
(17:28):
joined Nexium. He had, in fact belonged to a cult
called Ramtha. And Molly mentioned this to us, and then
I got so obsessed with Rampa I don't even know
where to begin. I implore everybody who's listening to this
to read up on Ramtha. What if all of the
vow was just like a long con to get people
to join Ramtha because they're like this this cult sucks,
(17:49):
but that well, you campinably come away from the vow
being like, all of these people would join another cult tomorrow,
Oh yeah, definitely, and then they'd be like, it's not
a cult like the last one. It's self improvement, just
like they were saying at the beginning of joining next
um Um Rantha's School of Enlightenment is a cult that's
(18:10):
based in Yelm, Washington. Uh. It's started by a woman
who named herself Judy Zebra Knight. She was born with
a different name. Um. My favorite thing about Rampa is
the origin story of Rampa's that Judy and her first
husband in the seventies were messing around with pyramids that
they thought could turn things into gold and had like
magical properties, and she put one on her head like
(18:31):
a little tiny pyramid, and then she spoke um with
ancient spirits voice and has continued to do so since then. Um.
And when we were talking on the maybe maybe it
was after the Patreon episode had wrapped, we realized Selma
Hyak is a practitioner of Rampa. I think we talked
(18:52):
about this on the pud. I can't remember if it
was on the pot. We kept talking after we wrapped
the pot because we are like Lane has has been
and then Salma Hyak was as well. And then I
found the connection between them and that that's a Sundance
Uh time's up story. But it was it's a very deep,
(19:15):
deep dig. But um. But the crazy thing is I
went back and I read that article again. So this
is I don't know if people remember this. This is
like a very like film twitter thing that happened on
at Sundance a few years back. There was a lunch
a luncheon with like v I P Ladies of Sundance,
and there was just an incident where Salmahayak was like
(19:36):
talking over Jessica Williams Uh and kind of like referring
to like she called her like baby and was just
being being like basically saying that like she couldn't like
her her struggles with like being being a woman of
color or being a black woman in the industry were
like not exceptional, and that we all had to like,
(19:56):
you know, basically have a unified struggle together and not
necessarily recognizing that it could be different for different people. Um,
and the but the language is she's using because Shirley
McClain is also there is so nexium ish that it's crazy,
Like I wonder if I wonder if they also dipped
a toe into nextium at all, because it's very um,
(20:19):
it's very like you can't identify as a victim. That's
the thing a lot. And also I think that they
do they do things like exercises where they get blindfolded
and they have they you know, all of these Rampa
people have to run around and like find objects that
they've put in a field earlier and try and remember
where they put them, and then they bump into each
(20:40):
other and get hurt. I mean, it's just it's And
also it has a very problematic layer where um, Judy
Zebra will talk as Rampa, but she'll say really racist
or anti Semitic things and then just be like, oh,
you know, it's Rampa. It's a really intense is that
because Rampa is an ancient Egyptian pharaoh's like I guess,
(21:03):
so also makes predictions. Rampa likes to predict the future,
and there's a really heavy emphasis on you know, kind
of quantum physics that you put through a sieve and
take what you want, but it's not really quantum physics.
But sorry, what the bleep? Well that's what it is,
is that what the bleep was basically like Rampa, a
Rampa project um. And it's very odd that that none
(21:26):
of this was mentioned in the vow. I feel like
it's very germane to that discussion of him being in
a call. Did we mention with with Rampa that that
Judy Zebra was born in Roswell in n We have
not mentioned that. Seems important, seems we're very important, um.
But it's also a really fascinating, weird kind of encapsulation
(21:49):
of the topics we've been discussing recently, cults and pyramids.
It's all connected. Final destination of cults and pyramids is Rampha.
This is night calling on so it make sense should
we take a night email about our weird buildings? Oh yeah, okay,
(22:10):
this one comes from smaller demon loving the weird building emails.
You could have an entire spinoff podcast based on it.
Side note, maybe we just that's this. It's Alabamian who
has lived in Nashville, Huntsville, Alabama, not Texas, San Francisco,
and now back in Birmingham, Alabama. Alabama may not be
(22:30):
a go to for weird buildings, but there are some
strange things here. Birmingham is home to one of the
largest monolithic domes, the Faith Chapel Christian Center. This thing
is nuts how big it is. Birmingham is also home
to one of the most distinctive buildings I've ever seen,
currently called the A T and T City Center. It
was designed by Conn and Jacobs, a firm that designed
a lot of New York City buildings that would fall
(22:51):
into the dreaded glass and steel category. But this building
in Birmingham is a weird stone and glass building that
I've not seen in many places. It combines black and
white granite and shaded glass and it's just really cool.
But and I'll make this separate from the rest of
the email, the weirdest thing as far as structures, and
I mean loosely speaking in Alabama might be the A
(23:13):
Marie of Marie Grotto with a link. Words are almost
impossible to use to describe it. The grotto was built
over the course of fifty years by a Catholic monk
in the small city of Culman, Alabama. Basically it's Jerusalem
and miniature built out a junk bottle caps, discarded glass, etcetera.
Once you start digging around and find pictures and videos,
(23:33):
you start to realize how utterly bizarre this is and
where it is located. That said, Alabama is the home
of e w t N, the cable television Catholic channel too,
so Alabama has a lot of weird Catholics. E w
t n's headquarters are literally a mile from where I live.
Please take a look at the grotto links though. I'll
send you another bizarre Catholic structure of Alabama in another email,
(23:53):
and some grotto photos. I love a grotto, Molly. You
hang out at a grotto sometimes, I do. I mean,
I just love grottos. I love roadside architecture and and
stuff built out of junk by people. There's one in
Cambria called Knitwit Ridge that is a house a great name.
Oh it's so great. I think it's nit Wit with
(24:14):
like two teas, maybe in both, but it's um It's
like a grotto house, like a coke bottle type house.
And you go there in Cambria. There's a guy who
owns it. Um I think he's trying to sell it,
so obviously we should make it the Night Call headquarters.
Have you guys ever been to the Hollywood Sculpture Garden No, Oh,
(24:37):
my gosh. See it's it's a it's a it's a
bit of a hike from from my current residence, but
it is. It is in somebody's yard. It's just a house.
It's up in the hills, kind of above Beechwood Canyon.
I know what you're talking about. Yeah, it's very tiki techie,
just a bunch of stuff, like you know, the the
the style is all over the map, uh, but a
(25:01):
lot of like mannekins and like vaguely sexy architecture and
stuff like that, and a lot of like you know,
stone collages and stuff like that. I just love when
people decorate their houses weird because it's so it's so
taken for granted that you have to have like a
normal house that fits in with the neighborhood, and obviously
in l A you don't necessarily have to do that. Well,
(25:23):
it's really heartening there because everything else around it just
looks like different iterations on the house from parasite and
then you've gone from total ice or in the middle
of it. But it's like very heartwarming to Okay, it's so.
I was among a bunch of parasite houses the other night.
We were doing an action and it was like up
in the bird streets, which are up behind the Sunset Strip,
(25:46):
and we walked past this house on the way to
the house we are going to that had a million
sculptures all over it of conquistadores and samurai and on
the roof and on the roof were like elephant and
you could just see there were like a weird waterfall
or something in it, just like the cool the coolest,
(26:06):
weirdest house I've ever seen, which cooked up agent lived
on that Larry Flint and he lives there still, I
believe because my friend friend of the pod, Christ Chang, said,
Larry Flint lives around here somewhere. I'm going to go
try and find his house. And then he called me
and was like, it was that weird house that we
(26:27):
walked by. What's up with this crazy house? Um? So
I looked into that house. It before it was owned
by Larry Flint, it was owned by Sonny and Share
and it has apparently a red heart shaped bathtub cool
that Larry Flint left left in um. And then another
(26:50):
friend of mine said that she worked on something where
it was right next to that house, and so she
could see into the Larry Flint house all summer and
she was like, what crazy see stuff am I gonna
see at the Hustler House. And then it was all
like old guys that are friends of Larry Flint hanging
out in the yard and listening to old timey music.
(27:11):
I like when it's like, what crazy things am I
going to see it, It's like they're just just some
old old friends kicking at kitchy style. I love old
guys in the porn industry because they're so like overseeing
naked women at this point, you know, they're just like
family men. Usually by the time they're like of a
certain age, they're like, oh yeah, I did all that
and now I'm going to listen to Ragtime with my friend. Um,
(27:33):
we don't have time to read all of these emails,
so we're just going to mention this one here. We
also got a night email from Zach about the Flintstones House, which, um,
if you can just look them up on Wikipedia you'll
have a fun time. It kind of looks like they're
out of the Simpsons UM and they're located in Hillsboro, California. Uh,
(27:54):
but those are they're fun to mention, but you just
need to see them. We can't podcast. There is a
Simpson's house called We did a whole dome homes run
a while back, and now we're getting drawn back into
dome homes. So just when we thought we were out,
That's how I felt about the second Nextium documentary. Just
(28:16):
when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in.
We also, uh, you know, we talked. We started to
transition a little bit into mounds last week and we
got an email from Catherine about the mounds of Wisconsin,
which I had no idea about UM, but she said
(28:37):
true mountain heads such as yourselves will probably be interested
to learn about Wisconsin's effigy mounds. UM. And these date
back to seven d b C. And a lot of
them are kind of formed as animals UM, like birds
and turtles and buffalo and stuff like that, and some
align with the moon and sun sunrise set on the
(28:59):
solstices or e winoxes. And they are about four thousand
of them. That survived to this day, which is I
had I'd never heard of these effigy mounds, these Wisconsin
effigy mounds. But she she also says that Madison still
has a ton of them. Uh and one of them,
the largest effigy mound in the world, which is an
(29:19):
eagle with a six and twenty four ft wingspan um
along with a dozen other eagles, I guess, is on
the grounds of the Mendota Mental Health Institute formerly known
as the Wisconsin Hospital for the Insane, where ed guy
in the Serial Killer who inspired the Silence of the
Lambs and other famous horror stories, spent the left last
(29:40):
twenty years of his life. Wow, pretty wild stuff it is.
Did you guys see that cat Nascal lines thing that
just got discovered? What this like a giant drawing of
a cat on a hillside in Peru, Like an ancient
drawing of a cat and so cool. I love stuff
(30:00):
like that that's so old and you can still tell
what it's supposed to be representative of. It's interesting in
this email about Madison having so many of these mounds
because it says that they're in city parks, backyards, cemeteries,
and it's I'm just like, imagine if you had a
house with an ancient mound in the backyard. That's my dream. Yeah, no,
(30:22):
they were uh she She says that like the soil
from the mounds is uh is sometimes collected because it's
like lucky mound dirt and people in their gardens. You
can make moon water and mound dirt, and then you
could just totally transform. That's how we're going to sell
in our store. You will ascend um. It's also crazy
(30:45):
that ed Gain connection is crazy. First of all, a
Gain not guying. It's either it's either guying or Geen.
I believe I have. I don't know how to pronounce middle.
I don't know how to pronounce anything. I looked this
up right before we started, but apparently it's so contentious.
You can say whatever you want me to say. Ed
Geen ed Geen just because he was famous for digging
(31:07):
burial things up, you know, so interesting you surrounded by
burial mounts. I have learned a lot about ed Geen
recently because I watched the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which is
one of three all time classic horror movies based on
ed Geen. The other two are Psycho and Silence of
(31:31):
the Lamps. I find it an unpleasant horror movie. Well,
it's super unpleasant, no, but I mean I like unpleasant,
like horror movies are intentionally unpleasant, clearly, but I find
that it leaves me with that scuzzy feeling that I
can't shake that I don't. I'm a little allergic to
the because it was horrible to make, and you can
tell everybody's super unhappy. Yes, but it's it's so good
(31:55):
and everybody dresses amazing. It's I find it cluster Well,
obviously it's claustrophobic. I just watched The fun House last
night too, which is the other Toby Hooper movie about
like a scuzzy carnival. I mean his movies are scuzzy,
that's what's cool about them. But like the ed Geen
story is super scuzzy, and part of what's so creepy
(32:16):
about it was that he was just like some guy
in a farmhouse and nobody knew he was like digging
up all these bodies to make lampshades out of people. Yeah. Um,
but I also heard because I watched that Errol Morris documentary.
I didn't know this, but Errol Morris was going to
dig up ed Geen's mother to see if he had,
(32:38):
you know, dug up the body and done something with it,
just based on the idea that he probably did psycho
stuff and he was gonna do it, and he invited
Werner Hertzog and they were gonna do it together on
a trip, just buddy. So he was like a fan
of Verner Hrtzog, you've never met him before. This is
when he was like, this is my husband plays Errol
(33:00):
Morris in a short film currently at festivals about all
of this specifically. So yeah, then Errol Morris totally whisked out.
He freaked out. He was like, I can't dig up
a body. And that is when Vernon Hurd talk said like,
if this guy makes a movie, I'll eat my shoe.
And then he did. He did, and he did. He
also like threw a ton of like wads of bills
(33:22):
at Errol Morris, who then threw it out the window.
It's it's a very interesting and strange friendship. I like it.
I would love to get Errol Morris and Vernon Hertzog
on Nightcall, Oh man, I would like Ernie on on
Nightcall Ernie. We could just we could just ask him
(33:42):
about some mounds, mounds and ribs they could be They
could cause play the mound in the rid and have
a building personified conversation. Do you guys ever think about
how weird it is that we like very dead people?
Oh yeah, what else are we supposed to do with them? Though?
Just leave him be? Well? A lot of people burn them,
(34:02):
a lot of culture has just burned them space as
a result. We all still like the mushroom suits, right,
we love the mushroom Sits still down for the mushroom suits.
It's crazy to think about how much space dead people
take up in this country and around the world, you know,
just like crazy. Yeah, And how many like toxic chemicals
(34:25):
are leached into the earth because of the sheer volume
of dead people that are in the ground. It's crazy.
What are the chemicals do? I don't know. They can't
be good formaldehyde and shipped all the embalming fluids. I'm
a big fan of cremation. I think, I think very
neat and tidy, but that probably also is a pollutant
(34:48):
when you think about, you know, the fumes. That's how
we got to do the mushroom suit. But I like,
I like the idea of the mounds because it's like,
wouldn't you just decompose and help play let's grow? I
mean you should, but I think I don't know. Maybe
if you're in a less um densely populated area, like
(35:10):
if you are a native person living before you know,
colonization and everything, and you've got the whole wide open
country to yourself, you can just stick somebody in the
ground and you don't need to worry about like making
sure that I don't know, they don't well, you need
to worry about the other people that are already in
the ground. I guess, I guess. I mean, I think
(35:30):
it's too crowded. Well, we got into this on our
on our episode about ghost Land, but just the idea
that like all of America is a burial ground and
so like it's all haunted because it's all built on
top of a civilization that was you know, wiped out
in a genocide by the people that built on top
of it. The shining Yeah, I was actually I just
(35:52):
watched um the second episode of the second season of
Unsolved Mysteries. Oh, which, Oh, it's it's good. Uh. It
features a woman who is an unidentified woman. They think
she was maybe an assassin or a spy. Um she
signed into a hotel under a false name and a
false birth date, and she it seemed to be a suicide,
(36:13):
but then it seemed maybe not to be a suicide.
She was shot in the head, but she had the gun,
was in her hand with her thumb on the trigger,
and the forensics people were like, there's just no way that,
you know, the crime scene just does not seem like
she took her own life. It has to be a homicide,
and maybe she was like a high profile assassin or something. Anyway,
(36:33):
they had to bury her after a year, and they
had no leads on who she was, her identity, and
so they buried her. And then they decided to dig
her back up, get DNA samples and examine her teeth.
And one of the really interesting things was like, they
can find your age by your teeth. And it's not
just like with a horse's teeth where you can see, oh,
it must be this age because of the growth of
(36:54):
the teeth. It's like the chemicals that your teeth have absorbed.
It's weird because I guess your teeth absorb ambient radiation
or something, and so they can test your teeth and
see which nuclear events you've been affected by and therefore
discover your age. That was a great scary episode, uh,
because it was just so weird that nobody could identify
(37:16):
this woman and they were running her photo everywhere and
just nobody had any connection to her whatsoever. But she
was very specific looking and she looked just like gi Lane.
She did. She looked exactly like Elane, which was interesting
because she was probably CIA or some kind of you know,
not CIA, but some kind of secret agent for probably
(37:37):
like Belgium or something. They ultimately decided, well, she had
listed this weird small town ver Lane, I think Belgium.
She listed a fake name and a fake hometown, and
then they went to the hometown to try and find
her and they were like, no, she's not from here.
And then they used her teeth to figure out where
she was actually from because of like nuclear testing, they
could tell whoa. It was a really good episode. It
(37:59):
was good. And that's where I learned which I had
not known, that when somebody is murdered and they are
secret agent, they cut the tags out of their clothes. Yes,
so this apparently this is this happens like not frequently,
but it's not the first time it's happened that they
remove all labels from clothing and that they kind of
like sand off any identifying information from jewelry and weapons
(38:20):
and stuff like that, so there's absolutely no way to
trace where the person is from. Should take a break
and come back with a little bit of spooky Halloween
chap Let's do it. Welcome back. It is the reason
(38:42):
for the season. The Big Skeleton Man and the Ladies
of Night Call. We just wanted to talk a little
bit about Halloween, spooky fun time on our our last
episode pre Halloween. Yeah, obviously this is going to be
this Halloween is not like the others, but we have
plenty of I feel like we have plenty of like
(39:03):
Halloween material and stuff to do and activities and stuff,
mostly movies, but also driving around and looking at people's
in saying Halloween houses. Yeah, which has definitely I would
say it's dipped a little bit this year. I also
just personally feel like it reached a peak a few
years ago and then both people had less money and
(39:23):
spend on Halloween stuff. Yeah. We talked about this when
we were talking about The Big Boy, the Skeleton Boy,
which I still have not seen any. And I was
driving around Burbank the other day and I know where
a few are. Okay, you'll have to share off pod
will make a map and make a map of the
big boys. That's perfect. They have medium boys in stock
(39:44):
at Rite Aid. If anyone is interested in a medium boy,
they're probably they look to be like maybe four feet
tall and they're posable. It's not big enough, No, that's
that's not a big enough boy. I've gone on several
spooky cruises so far, just by myself because I'm a weirdo.
I went to Toluca Lake, which I recommend if you're
looking for extremely decorated houses. To Luca Lake is like
(40:07):
the place where they have really great lawn decorations of
all kinds. But I also went to South Pasadena yesterday,
which is where all the filming locations from John Carpenter's
Halloween are located, and they always kind of go crazy
for Halloween there, I think because of that um But
there were all these signs on the lawn that were
(40:27):
like no trick or treating this year. Enjoy the decor,
but like do not knock on the door. I mean,
it makes sense, but that bums me. Out anyway, it
makes sense, but it was funny. It's like they made
their own sign for the neighborhood because it's like a
famous Halloween neighborhood that were like, please enjoy these decorations,
but like it's different this year. A lot of people
are taking driving tours of which houses I saw on
(40:50):
like Hidden l A or something, um like witchy little Hoppit,
witchy little habit homes. I just saw there was an
Ecto one in my neighborhood that was cool inable Ecto one. Wait,
what's Ecto one? It's the Ghostbusters. Yeah, it's the car
from ghost Pecto one. It's the license plate the Ghostbusters
(41:14):
car busted mobile true Ghostbusters heads. No, that it's It's
license plate is Ecto one one. Um. But I appreciate
when people kind of make the effort to like do
it up because it is it's kind of I guess
it's not the first holiday we had. I mean we've
had a number of holidays. We had the fourth of
July under quarantine. We'll probably have a lot more holidays
(41:38):
under quarantine. But for some reason, Halloween, this one stings. Well,
it's weird. It's like the one time that people go
talk to their neighbors that they don't know exactly. It's
like this, it's very surprising that we even do it
because like there's such a weird social contract about it.
I like, this is the night where it's okay to's
(41:58):
just like randomly stopping at somebody house that you don't know. Yeah.
I haven't lived in a neighborhood that has tricker treating
since I can't remember when. Like I I any time
I moved to a new place, I always like get
a bag of candy just in case. I mean, obviously
I'm not going to do this year, but uh, and
then no kids come and always even in New York. Yeah,
(42:18):
no I'm not in New York. I mean, like they're
a lot of times people will like be out on
the stoops, but I don't even I didn't even see
that in my last apartment. Like kids would go to
the businesses, Like they'd go to the business street and
like you know, the delis and stuff, and they'd be
handing out candy there. But they wouldn't be going to
people's houses. I've seen some kind of workarounds. There is
(42:39):
a drive through haunt that someone set up. I think
it's the people who do the Haunted hay Ride normally
in Griffith Park, which is definitely not happening this year.
The drive through Haunt has gotten mixed reviews. People are like,
it's not that good. It's kind of short and basically
just a bunch of people come up and like, bang
on your car. I think that sounds awful. Um. I
(43:00):
just discovered trunk or Treat, which is you decorate the
trunk of your car, you meet in a parking lot, uh,
and then whoever has the best trunk wins. But Halloween's
not supposed to be competitive with in a car sense.
I mean, I feel like that sounds like a drug
deal drunker treat. We all meet in a parking lot
and open our trunk and give each other money. Well,
(43:22):
do you guys have any good h Halloween viewing lined
up or anything you've been watching recently that you've been
really into, um, that you would like to recommend. I've
been watching everything on Movie Past, which is my friend
Michelle's Twitch channel where she's been programming movies all summer. Uh,
and they're doing a Spooky Past series that's all spooky movies.
(43:44):
So they did like a really good Hong Kong Horror
Day a couple of days ago. Yesterday, they did one
that was all Dark Ride themes extremely Nightcall, and they
showed Dark Ride and walk through videos between the movies.
They owed Waxwork, which was really scary, which is like
a Horrors of the Wax Museum movie. Wax Museum adjacent
(44:09):
horror movies are like extremely scary, engrossed me. So scary.
And then The Fun House, which I've seen before, which
is the Toby Hooper but I love it. It's um
people did these like two teen couples on a double
date go to a super sketchy carnival and decide to
stay overnight in the Dark Ride for fun. Spoiler it's
(44:30):
not fun. Also, it's another Toby Hooper like incestuous Family
of Deformed People thing. So he's really into that. I
thought that though, because his parents ran a movie theater
in Texas where they showed a lot of like exploitation movies,
(44:51):
and so that's why he makes exploitation movies. And then
they showed Final Destination three, Oh Great, which I couldn't
handle because it's too scary. I really Destinations that's the
one where they it's uh I think it's Mary. Elizabeth
Winstead is the lead, and she they're at a theme
park and she had a theme. She sees that the
(45:13):
roller coaster is going to derail and kill everybody and
convinces people to get off, but then of course they
are killed anyway. Those movies, those are the movies that
I find like too bleak, really the Final Destinations, Yeah,
because you can't escape death in them. It's like, well,
you can't escape death in real life, and exactly I
(45:36):
know that's why they're so fucking scary. I don't know.
There's something like so outrageous though about the desks in them,
where it's like this is like fate like arranging the
most grizzly death for you. That is so it's so
nasty that I just like it makes me laugh, Like right, no,
when it gets into that nightmare on Elm Street territory
(45:58):
where it's like you're gonna have the dad that like
makes the most sense for you, and that person the
tailor made death is really alarming, so scary. I might
watch some Freddie movies I've been I've seen all of
the Freddie movies a couple of times. Now, those are
the ones that really freaked me out as a kid
too much to even engage with. And then I finally
(46:18):
watched them and they're really good and funny. Emily, what
are you thinking of watching? Well? I wanted to just
recommend a couple of things. One, I think we talked
before about the seventies horror series on Criterion right now,
which is really great. Um. I did watch Dracula uh
nine a d uh the other day, which is truly ridiculous,
(46:41):
but just like, yeah, it's like a fun thing to watch.
Uh and then uh oh. And then there's also I've
found myself like browsing HBO Max, which I rarely do
because like lately I've just had specific things that I'm
watching on HBO Max. I haven't been like going through
and looking at what they have. But they also have
(47:03):
a pretty good, um like classic horror or seventies horror
situation that has like I think they have like The
Brood and like, uh, Carnival of Souls is on there,
and a bunch of other stuff. I would recommend that, Oh,
they've got Final Destination five. There's a really good movie
(47:28):
in that seventies horror collection on Criterion that's so Nightcall
called The Velvet Vampire. Oh, I haven't seen that. You
haven't either. You recommended it, and it sounds great. It's great,
and it's directed by Stephanie Rothman, who's like one of
the few women who made a bunch of Roger Corman movies,
who's really rad. But it's like the most nightcall movie.
It's basically The Love Which but about a vampire, and
(47:50):
it's about a sexy female vampire bisexual who invites hipsters
to come to her desert house in Joshua Tree and
then seduces and destroys everybody. That's I mean, that sounds great.
When was it made? It's so great. It's seventies and
it's like the most seventies movie. It's the most California
(48:14):
maybe because it's like she's a vampire but she has
son and she drives a dune buggy. Oh hell yeah,
it's so nightcall Um and the guy and it is
one of it's like the Himbo from Beyond the Valley
of the Dolls. It is a delight. I had never
heard about it. That sounds perfect for it's great. Well,
(48:36):
I had also been saying, like I I said, like
a minute before my boyfriend like why aren't there more
horror movies where all the victims are met? And then
this was a little more like that. Oh yeah, that's
like good there should be because it's all like dudes
making these movies for the most part. Um, That's why
I was actually a little like stoked about in Texas
Chainsaw Massacre. You know they don't discriminate. Oh they don't.
(49:00):
Everyone's gotta go, uh what about you test? I'm taking
it classic style. We're going to rewatch the Shining Um
because we're living in the shining And then I'm also
going to force us to watch Pet Cemetery, which I
think is just such a terrifying movie. My parents, um
are not easily freaked out. But in New York they
(49:24):
went to go see Pet Cemetery in the theaters and
they had adopted a dog. I think they'd had dogs before,
but they this dog had like some behavior issues. It
was just one of those dogs where you like, what's
going on in your mind? I'm not sure. And they
got home and they also had a very mean cat.
They got home really late from the movie and like
opened the door and saw the pets and like couldn't
(49:44):
couldn't deal. They were like so rattled by the movie
that they were like our our pets, like evil pets,
and they had to just be like, good night, guys,
I'll see you in the morning. I'm also gonna recommend
that you guys have to watch Doctors Sleep because it
is so bad. I can't bear to watch something that's
so bad. Right, but it makes you appreciate The Shining
(50:07):
so much, But what about what? But watching the Shining
also makes you appreciate But it's funny because it's like,
you know, Stephen King hates Stanley Kubrick Shining because it's
like not faithful enough to the book. This is like
his opportunity to litigate that, and so he just like
makes it all completely literal. It's like, just like here's
(50:28):
all the rules and logic of the Shining Verse and
like the things that make the things in the Shining happen,
which is totally demystifying and not something anyone wants. Yeah, well,
it's like a scolding movie where he's like, I'll do
it right here. It is so unscary. And the villain
is a woman whose name is Rose the Hat because
she wears a hat. Well, I'm Emily the headphones right now.
(50:57):
I just want you to have to see it so
that we talk about it, because it's so silly and dumb.
I never read the book, so I have no you know,
so good point for the faithfulness. I just love the movie.
I think all the stuff that that Stephen King was
mad didn't end up in the movie. It's like, that's
what makes the movie good is your brain is like
(51:18):
trying to make connections and it can't fully make them right,
and Stephen King is like it's because he's an alcoholic. Yeah,
but I mean that the book is great, like they're
two things can exist in the world without I've never
read the book. Maybe we should do it for a
book club. Sometimes. I'm always down for some vintage Stephen King. Guys. Know,
(51:38):
I've never read a single Stephen King book in my life.
I guess I've read. I've read the anthology, like the
short stories, but mostly I just would make tests, tell
me what happens and that, and I'm here for that. Molly.
You read The Lango Years though, right, No. I just
saw the TV mini series. Oh my god, you guys. Look,
(51:59):
I'm sitting I'm sitting on the floor and it's like
you're like by a pile of your Stephen King pyle. Look,
it's like I even have like current Stephen King, this
one of the like second last, it's all by my bed,
and I'm embarrassed because like latter day Stephen King, like
I could read something more nourishing for my brain, but
(52:19):
it's nourishing the one that I always I'm like the
girl who loved Tom Hardy. That's not what it's called,
but the But everybody I know who's into Stephen King
is like a completist in that way, and I like,
I don't look down on it at all. I think
it seems really fun. I just never caught the train.
I never got it on at the right time, and
so now it feels really daunting. I did ask another
friend of mine, who is like a major Stephen King fan,
(52:40):
to like give me kind of a primer, give me, like, like,
here's the first five you should read, and I remember
that she recommended, like I think she recommend. I know
that Christina and Kujo were both in those that top five,
and I was like, yeah, I want to read both
of those books. Uh, I just haven't yet. They also
go well together because it's the Possessed Car and the
(53:01):
Possessed Kujo is actually holds up really while I re
read Kujo, but that was the book where at my
copy of Kujo, it was like a really cheap whatever,
shitty copy of Coujo. And I got maybe halfway through
and then the pages started repeating, like there there was
like a section that had were found out of sequence,
(53:22):
and I was like, this is a really amazing book
because it's just it's like making me feel like I'm
insane and wow, like this is really incredible work by
Stephen King. And then was like, oh, okay, there's just
like a chapter missing and it's it's just a printing era.
That's amazing. It was just exactly, um, well, maybe we
(53:46):
should take some night calls about the Stephen King of
Verse to go and take us into November. We're also
going to be doing some episodes about dreams. Uh, and
so if you have any thoughts or don't, maybe maybe
don't tell us your dream because I think I don't
know about you guys. Maybe we can talk about this later.
But like, listening to somebody tell me their dreams is
(54:08):
like never the most interesting thing, but like recurring dreams
are interesting. Recurring dreams and prophetic dreams. Yeah, and also
I would like to hear about some COVID dreams because
I know it is a documented phenomenon that people are
having lots of dreams about, like getting caught out with
no masks. I I had a really intense COVID dream
last night that I won't tell you about because of
(54:29):
Emily's Emily's take on this is true, but I did
realize like people are talking a lot more about their dreams.
I think people are having more vivid dreams in general. Um. Also,
if you have movies or books that you love about dreams,
please recommend them to us. So, yeah, I was gonna
say it's one of like three stimuli we get now
it's like food, sleep. Yeah, if you're I don't know,
(54:53):
I was gonna say drugs. Yeah, you can say drugs.
It's drugs. U keep it spooky and we will see
you all next week. Thank you for listening Tonight Call.
You can subscribe to us on iTunes and make us
a rating and review there please. We've gotten some recently
(55:14):
and they're they're so fun to read, so thank you.
If you have left one. You can also follow us
on social media. We're on Twitter at Night Call Pod
and Instagram at Facebook at Night Called Podcast, and you
can join our Patreon at patreon dot com slash Nightcall
where you can get our bonus episodes, our newsletter, our mixtapes,
and also it's fun stuff. Check it out and we
(55:34):
will see you all next week
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