March 2, 2025 • 27 mins
Buckle up for a wild ride through memory lane and deep reflection! Bunny and Scott give the MegaWheel a spin and tackle some hilariously random, unexpectedly philosophical topics. From the key to living a meaningful life and memories of home computers to morally ambiguous shoplifting stories and the lost glory of discontinued sodas, this episode is full of laughs, surprises, and heartfelt moments. Plus, they unpack the mysterious magic of lifelong friendships. Grab your Tab, spin the wheel, and join the madness!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Generation X. In general terms, it was born between 1965 and 1980. Lachkinite. Independent.
(00:15):
Existentialism. Modern philosophy focusing on personal experience, human ability and
responsibility in an otherwise meaningless universe. We're the cause. This is the effect.
We're the Gen X existentialists.
(00:39):
Welcome in, my friends, to another edition of the Gen X existentialists. My name is Scott.
And I'm Bunny. And we are here to pontificate for the next 20 minutes or so about all manner of things
from a Gen X perspective. How you feeling today, Bunny?
I'm feeling pretty good. I'm glad to be back in the studio. Glad the crappy audio is having a pause.
(01:00):
I'm going to miss the train sounds, though. I really don't.
I wanted to have a little sound effect going on today.
Beep, beep.
So, should we just get right going?
Let's dive on in.
Give Megawheel a spin. She's spinning very slowly. Very jerkily.
She's heavy.
Well, I think it may be my internet connection, maybe. So, for anyone wondering, obviously,
(01:25):
in case you didn't know, Megawheel is actually a big website.
Yeah. She can't be contained in corporeal form.
No, no. Too much. Okay, we've got our first question.
What do you think is the key to living a fulfilling and meaningful life?
Oh, man. What a day to ask me that.
(01:47):
Yeah, it's perfect. Whenever we get together in the studio, folks, there's always a pre-show discussion.
And today, let's just say that this question just falls perfectly and gracefully,
like an angel falling out of heaven and hitting the ground at 3,000 miles per hour.
Curse splat. Feathers everywhere. The sound of trumpets and horns blaring and bleeding.
(02:11):
So, please, your answer, sir.
I think it's going to come back to time management and love, I think, are what you need to make a fulfilling life.
Now, you may not find that perfect love in your life, so that's why I include time management in there.
(02:33):
The one thing that you can control for yourself is how you use your time.
I think if you are good at time management, you will find that you have a lot more time to spend on yourself.
And that can be working out, reading books, jerking off, playing, going outside, driving around, doing whatever it is that moves you.
(02:55):
And I think that's really the goal of life. You're here to love and enjoy yourself.
You're not here to work for someone else. You're not here to, you know, bang away at the rocks like your caveman ancestors did.
You're here to enjoy yourself. So, enjoy yourself.
Yeah, we're alive now, for the most part. Many of us, at least probably in our target audience, you don't want to live to work.
(03:24):
You work to live so that you can do the things you love.
And it's something we were talking about earlier. I had started a podcast about safety.
And I've kind of let it fall by the wayside because safety is what I do for a job.
It is my career, my current profession. And I don't want to do that on my downtime.
(03:45):
My downtime is for me. It's music, it's writing, it's doing this podcast.
And I think a clear separation of the things you do is probably a key to living a fulfilling and meaningful life.
Make sure that you give the time and the energy to the things you love.
And that doesn't mean I don't love my career. Doesn't mean I don't love my profession.
(04:08):
Here come the qualifiers.
Well, it is a career. It's what I do.
Just giving you a hard time.
It's what I do to make money. It's what I do to put food on the table.
And it's a subtle distinction. I get that.
And I'm trying not to throw qualifiers in there. But there is a difference.
And what I found was after a 10-hour day at work, coming home and doing a podcast,
(04:36):
sitting here and writing it and recording it about the same stuff I just got done doing, it was a lot.
I wanted to do something else. And so I did.
So I think making sure that you're spending your time on things that fulfill you and make your life meaningful.
(04:57):
Does that make sense? Or is that too vague for the question?
Well, hey, I mean, if you're ever in doubt, consult Zorba the Greek.
Zorba the Greek.
There's a guy who had it all figured out.
Who was Zorba the Greek?
Zorba the Greek is a man who said that life without a little madness is not worth living.
That's a fair point. Absolutely.
He lived life to the fullest. He danced. He sang. He drank. He ate.
(05:20):
He lived his sort of a Bacchanalian style life. But he was very kind and enjoyed his family and all that jazz.
So it's a good thing. Like I said, consult Zorba if you're at a loss of what to do with your life
and getting it back on track of just enjoying the things in life.
Zorba sounds like one of those carnival machines that you would just put a quarter in.
(05:44):
Get the shiny lights and a ticket out that says, live life to the fullest.
That's right.
That's not advice. That doesn't help me a bit.
There's lots of vagaries in life.
So we will give Megawheel the Magnificent another spin, I think.
Yeah, I'm going to have to like back out of this and pull it back up.
(06:06):
It's being very jerky today.
Meg's trudging.
OK, next question. Have you ever shoplifted anything?
Shoplifted anything, yes.
Really?
Yes. When I was in Pittsburgh ages and ages ago, nobody in my flat could afford aspirin.
(06:31):
And we were all sick as dogs.
So one of the guys that I roomed with went and distracted the person at the deli counter,
which was covered in flies, by the way.
Giant eagle, I'm looking at you, and I swiped a bottle of aspirin.
Was it at least name brand? Was it Bear Aspirin?
No, it was Giant Eagle brand.
(06:53):
Aspirin, just so we could have aspirin because we were all suffering miserably.
So I will take that one. That is my sin.
I'm a dirty thief. I stole a bottle of aspirin when I was 19.
So there we are. When the black vans come to take me away.
Yeah, you admitted to this. My answer is a simple no.
(07:19):
I've never shoplifted anything.
He's such a paladin. See, this guy, he tries to be this hard ass.
Look how anti-hero I am. He's not. He's the biggest paladin class there ever was.
I never did. Now, do I know people who did? Besides you, I never knew that story.
There you go.
Do I know people? Yes. Actually, one of them was a good friend of ours in high school.
(07:41):
Oh yeah, I remember that.
He was not going to name names, but here's the tale.
Now, he's like a VP of some corporation now, so let that sink in for a minute.
I was working at Record Alley. One day he came in and asked me who my favorite baseball player was.
Well, it was Will Clark. He disappears.
Little did I know he was going down to the department store on the other end of the shopping plaza,
(08:03):
and he literally came back in with his jean jacket kind of bulging out.
How he got out of the store, I have no freaking clue.
Opens his jacket up and dumps starting lineup figures out on the counter.
I'm just like, dude, you can't do that.
(08:24):
I'm sifting through them like, there's Will Clark. I'm like, what am I supposed to do with this?
It was just fascinating because obviously, your story, you needed the product.
That was our bad excuse. We didn't go around stealing piles of food just for the laughs or whatever.
(08:48):
It was a bottle of aspirin that we couldn't afford because we were all broke.
So there's that difference. Shoplifting for need.
Well, here's where we're getting into that dilemma, of course, where it's like,
is it okay for a starving man to steal bread for his family?
I don't know. You're still taking stuff from somebody who...
(09:09):
Is it okay? No. Is it understandable? Yes.
Sure.
Stealing for sheer fun and profit.
The same gentleman stole an entire tennis racket for me.
Actually, you did tell me about that.
Yeah. I mean, how do you walk out...
And this was the only thing he had on him. He found out that I like to play tennis.
(09:32):
He brought me a real Ghostbusters action figure and a tennis racket, like a very nice fiberglass tennis racket.
And I'm like, how in the world did you walk out of a place with a tennis racket?
He said, down my pants. It's amazing.
It didn't make sense.
It's truly, it was amazing. He was the quintessential...
And he never got caught.
(09:53):
No, he was never a central cut purse. Turtle cut purse. Amazing.
Yeah. We got to give Megaheel another spin because that whole topic is just...
It's bizarre to me. And it does bring up some interesting ethical questions.
Because either way, whichever side you're on, you are hurting the proprietor, the company, your department store, whoever it is.
(10:20):
And we could spend the entire rest of the show talking about that.
I desperately needed that starting lineup figure. That's my justification.
And to be fair, was it a cool figure? Yes.
Sure.
Did I take it home and put them on my desk? Yes.
Uh-oh. Receiving stolen goods.
Yeah. And see, even now, even now I look back on that and I feel a little bit bad about it.
(10:46):
I really do. That's me and my conscience.
He's a goody. He's a goody, folks.
Yeah. Yeah. So our next question.
If you could bring back one discontinued soda or candy from the 70s or 80s, what would it be?
So it's a different play on the topic we had a while back about candy.
(11:07):
Let's take candy out. A discontinued soda.
Okay. I haven't had soda for almost 20 years now.
So I'm not a huge – it's hard for me to remember back in the day of like, oh, the tasty sodas of the past.
I would have to say Mellow Yellow would be one of them.
(11:28):
Now, I know it still exists in some rare forms.
I can't think of too many sodas that don't exist anymore is what I'm saying.
But I never – you like Tab?
I didn't mind it.
Tab tastes like aspirins to me, speaking of aspirins.
Really? Like aspirin or baby aspirin?
Like baby aspirin.
Yeah. It wasn't bad.
It was gross.
I thought it was the best like canned design, like graphic.
(11:52):
Okay. It's very 70s.
It was. And I typically don't like 70s design features. They make me sick.
Blasphemy.
The color palette and just like –
Blasphemy.
60s, fine with it. 80s, absolutely 70s.
Pink and orange aren't doing it for you.
70s designs are just – I'm not a fan of the 70s.
(12:14):
The only good thing –
You and my wife both hate the 70s.
Yeah, there are a few good things that came out of the 70s like Genesis, Alice Cooper, well, King Crimson started in the late 60s.
Some TV shows, you know, Barney Miller, stuff like that.
And I have a really hard time – Star Wars.
(12:35):
Okay.
I have a really hard time after that.
Okay.
Like especially fashion in the 70s was just abysmal.
All right.
But yeah, I like Tab.
I think the quintessential Gen X answer is supposed to be like Jolt Cola. I wish they'd bring back Jolt Cola. You remember that?
Yeah.
Which didn't really taste very good either.
(12:56):
No.
Yeah. But yeah, the only thing I can think of besides like Tab, as you said, was like squirt and weird stuff like that.
What about – let me throw one at you.
Do you remember Crystal Pepsi?
I do. It was horrible.
You thought so?
Yeah.
I thought it was pretty good.
Yeah. I'm not a Pepsi fan to begin with.
Oh, see, I'd take Pepsi over Coke anyway.
See, I, you know, I was much more – I drank the stuff that was green.
(13:21):
Yeah.
Like the Mountain Dews, the Mellow Yellows, that kind of stuff.
Have you had – I guess it's Mellow Yellow Zero.
I didn't even know they still made this.
Oh yeah. Yeah. It's really good. It is. It's tasty.
Okay. Interesting. So yeah, that was kind of a non-answer from me, but a good answer from you, Tab.
(13:44):
Yeah. Tab, Crystal Pepsi. I'd do either one of them.
Okay.
I'm going to give Mega Wheel the Magnificent another spin.
That's how out of touch I am. I don't really know what sodas are on the market right now and what aren't, other than the big, you know, Coke, Pepsi.
Yeah.
Mountain Dew, you know, World.
Next time you go grocery shopping, take a walk down the aisle. You'll find some interesting stuff.
(14:06):
Is Mr. Pib gone?
No. Mr. Pib's still out there.
Okay.
And you know what they still make is clearly Canadian. And they do have some sugar-free ones, and they're really good.
Okay.
Yeah, especially the cherry, wild cherry.
The black cherry or whatever, yeah.
I forget what it was. I think I may still have one up in the fridge. Yeah, those are really good.
Interesting.
Now, see, this next question is just way too general. What life-changing events have you experienced?
(14:33):
A lot.
Yeah, exactly. Let's tweak that a little bit.
In my 50s, a lot.
Let's tweak that and say which life-changing event, not personal, but like World life-changing event, had the biggest effect on you?
Affordable home computers.
Wow. Right off the top of your head, and that's a great answer.
(14:56):
Well, I mean, you know, everybody's going to go, oh, the balloon wall, oh, you know, the big giant, oh, the 9-11, oh, blah, blah, blah.
Now, I mean, those are all terrible, wonderful things, you know, respectively. Berlin Wall, wonderful. 9-11, terrible.
But, you know, the rise of affordable home computing is why I work in the business that I work in now.
(15:18):
I mean, I am very thankful to my parents for caving in and buying me a very early home computer and allowing me to learn on that.
That's something that I think GenX has going for it is that we were there really for the rise of home computing.
Yeah. What was your first computer? Was it a VIC-20?
(15:39):
No, actually, my first actual computer that I owned was an IBM PS2.
Okay.
But I used the Commodore 64 of Travis's, of course, and then I played with your VIC-20, so to speak.
Not a euphemism. It was an actual VIC-20.
It was an actual computer and it was wonderful. But, yeah, I never owned one up until that point, until the IBM PS2.
(16:05):
Yeah.
See, my grandfather, when my grandfather retired from the police force, he had about a year or two of just hanging out, and then he got into personal computers.
And for the rest of his life, he was one of those guys that subscribed to the Commodore magazine that would come every month and have just pages and pages of programs.
(16:26):
And he would sit there, type them all in, make the program run, and then go back into the code and shift the colors and do different things to it and just really got into it.
And we had a blast for a few summers.
I would go over there a couple times a week and we would just sit up there and play games and goof around and stuff.
And he got me my first one. It was a Tandy MC-10.
(16:48):
Oh, wow.
The selling point, and this was really cool, was it had a button. It wasn't just a shift button. It was a different button.
And all of the letters on the keyboard had a different basic command above them.
So you didn't have to type go to or go sub. You could hit that button and hit like J and it automatically put go sub and then you just continued coding.
(17:11):
And it had no memory at first. It had a slot for it. So at first I would take hours, type the program in, play the game.
And then when it was time to turn everything off, you just you lost everything.
You know, I think Gen X is one of the last generations to ever understand ephemerality.
Yeah. And that was the epitome of all of our video games were finite.
(17:36):
There was no constantly continuing games. There was no giant long storylines.
There was the computer programming that you could lose in the blink of an eye or a power outage.
There was losing connection to the Internet because somebody picked up the phone.
You know, it was it was all about the ephemeral. You know, you didn't have VCRs and Tivo's and everything else.
(17:58):
You had to catch a show when it was on. And that was it. If you missed it, you missed it.
And it was worth that time to type everything in because it to me, it made it more fun.
Like I finally got it in. OK, take a break. Go get a drink. Come back. Now we're going to play the game.
Don't touch the keyboard. Yeah. And but I think for my next birthday, my grandfather got me the memory cartridge that plugged into the back of the MC.
(18:24):
So I had that for a while so I could save things.
And then I got the Vic 20 and then a 64 and then a 128. And that kind of leads into after a little while modern computing.
So my answer to the question, I'm not going to I'm just kind of kind of piggyback on yours.
Mine would be the Internet. Sure. Because I remember when you had to go to an encyclopedia or the library to look something up
(18:49):
and you had actual trusted, verified, peer reviewed news and stuff like that.
Do you remember the scant time before the Internet really became a popular thing when they used to sell you the Encyclopedia Britannica CD-ROM?
Yes. Oh, yeah. That had video of animals and goofy crap like that. You could look stuff up.
And those were the cool things where one of the entries had a short video. Yeah. Like, oh, everyone you saw, you played it.
(19:14):
Oh, yeah. And the video is abysmal. But it was great by today's standards. Sure.
But, you know, like the ephemerality of those original programs and stuff for anybody that doesn't know, like with a Vic 20 before the days of, you know, floppy disks and stuff.
We saved stuff on cassettes. Yeah. Magnetic tape. Yeah. Magnetic tape. You would save your program on that.
(19:39):
And you you always had to have the counter lined up because, you know, you might have two or three programs on a tape.
You might roll over and know exactly where it's at on the tape. OK, boomer. I can hear all the listeners out there saying that.
Gen X, baby. Gen X. We're the ones that started it all. OK. You know, we at least benefited from it. Yeah. Yeah.
(20:00):
But, you know, and that led into, like you said, you know, you'd have to give up your games and turn them off.
But then you started getting games like Oregon Trail, Load Runner, stuff like that that did have stories.
And they did continue through levels and to have been there when stuff like that was brand new and see gaming today.
(20:22):
It's just fascinating. I think the perspective that you have, if you're if you're of our age and our generation,
I would hope that younger folks today can maybe look back and look back with appreciation on how far things have come in such a short time,
(20:44):
because really it's it's in the blink of an eye from a historical perspective. Sure.
So I think that's really worth worth a look back if you're of a mind to cast an eye back.
Want to do one more on the wheel for this part? We'll give her one more spin to wrap up this edition of the Gen X existentialists.
Kind of a heartfelt, emotional version of the show. Yeah.
(21:10):
Lots of thievery and shenanigans and sins. OK.
So our final question for the day. Why do you and your best friend get along so well?
I have no idea. This question y'all make no sense. Oh, my God.
(21:31):
No, I think deep down there is a I keep saying this.
I had this conversation with my wife recently. We had a disagreement of political proportions or whatever.
And this comes down to differences with everyone. I think ultimately we're all headed in the same to the same destination.
(21:56):
And I don't mean the grave. I mean, an actual idealistic destination. Yeah.
But there are so many different paths to get there that people don't always travel on the same path, but they're not malicious about it.
You're just taking a path that feels right to you to get to the same destination.
(22:17):
I think friendships are a lot like that where they're there. I think some people are morally and spiritually aligned.
Yeah. And, you know, Scott here is my best friend sitting across from me in the studio.
He is into rush. He is into sports. He is into music. All of these things I have no real vested interest in.
(22:43):
You know, I don't understand them. I don't want to understand some of them.
You know, I mean, that's I'll school you on the on some rush. Oh, I'd rather you didn't.
Let's not say we did. But, you know, it's just that's but that's the thing. It doesn't matter.
We don't always politically aligned. We don't always spiritually aligned. We don't always ethically aligned.
(23:09):
But it doesn't matter because I love him. He's my friend. And we're all headed to the same destination at the end.
You're either ultimately a good person, a neutral person or an evil person. It's very Gygaxian. It's very role playing.
And I think we've already figured out I'm a paladin. Yeah, you're a lawful good. I don't want to be lawful.
(23:34):
You are a lawful good. That's what I mean. This guy hates the idea of being lawful good.
He's one of the most lawful good people I've ever met. OK.
But, you know, I think there and those are the kind of personalities that align.
You know, I mean, if you're of the same alignment, you will find common ground with people.
(23:55):
Yeah. And I have known Scott since fifth grade. Yep. So that's a long time.
So and our interests have changed. We don't have the same taste in clothes, in girls, in cars, in anything.
Very few things we have the same taste in. God, the movies don't get me started on entertainment.
(24:19):
You know, not everybody has my great taste in entertainment.
But you know what the thing is? Either one of us will sit down and watch something with the other one.
Sure. We'll listen to the same stuff. Yeah. We might not get anything out of it.
We might not at the end of the day like it, but we'll do it because of the other person. Yeah.
And I kind of liken it to like Legos. You know, we might not be the same color or same size or shape, but we fit together.
(24:46):
Yeah. And that's all that matters. That's the that's the weird mystery of the universe. Yeah.
Like science is very good about telling you, you know, why something works the way it does.
But they're not it's not very good at telling you why it even exists in the first place. Sure.
And I think friendship is it's a spiritual thing. Yeah. You know, it's it's a mystical thing.
(25:12):
It's something that that happens and it waxes and it wanes, you know, but it's there and it's some sort of invisible thread that connects people.
Yeah. A force. Yeah. Possibly. I don't know about that.
I think it is very much a spiritual thing and an evolutionary thing, too, because we met so young. Yeah.
And we maintain that friendship. And which is rare. Yeah. Absolutely.
(25:37):
Well, I mean, it's one of the things that Tracy has trouble wrapping her head around is that we have been friends for so long because she was a Navy, a daughter of a fell in the Navy.
So they moved around a lot. So forming those friendships was kind of tough for her.
So for us to have known each other that long and pulling in Tim, too, who we met as freshmen, it's just it's a foreign concept to a lot of people.
(26:06):
But I wouldn't trade it for the world. No, neither would I.
And that's the weird thing is that you have to realize that that friendships, they they come and go.
They're like seasons. You know, there are some people that you are not going to be friends with here your entire life.
Yeah. And that's OK. You know, because everyone is there when you need them. Yep.
(26:28):
So it's if you have someone in your life that's been there for more than five years, count yourself lucky.
Yeah, that's an amazing, amazing treasure. Yeah. Right there.
And it only gets richer from there. You know, the older it is, the more rarefied the more stories you've got.
Exactly. The more blackmail you got on each other. Exactly.
(26:50):
So that's everyone's task here as we end this version of the Gen X essentialist is whoever your best friend is or your most longstanding friend,
give them a call, shoot them an email and just tell them thanks. Wish them the best from us.
Ha ha. And with that, we will call it a day here on the Gen X existentialist. My name is Scott and I'm Bunny.
(27:12):
We'll catch you next time. Have a good one.
Generation X. In general terms, it was born between 1965 and 1980. Lachkinite. Independent.
(00:15):
Existentialism. Modern philosophy focusing on personal experience, human ability and
responsibility in an otherwise meaningless universe. We're the cause. This is the effect.
We're the Gen X existentialists.
(00:39):
Welcome in, my friends, to another edition of the Gen X existentialists. My name is Scott.
And I'm Bunny. And we are here to pontificate for the next 20 minutes or so about all manner of things
from a Gen X perspective. How you feeling today, Bunny?
I'm feeling pretty good. I'm glad to be back in the studio. Glad the crappy audio is having a pause.
(01:00):
I'm going to miss the train sounds, though. I really don't.
I wanted to have a little sound effect going on today.
Beep, beep.
So, should we just get right going?
Let's dive on in.
Give Megawheel a spin. She's spinning very slowly. Very jerkily.
She's heavy.
Well, I think it may be my internet connection, maybe. So, for anyone wondering, obviously,
(01:25):
in case you didn't know, Megawheel is actually a big website.
Yeah. She can't be contained in corporeal form.
No, no. Too much. Okay, we've got our first question.
What do you think is the key to living a fulfilling and meaningful life?
Oh, man. What a day to ask me that.
(01:47):
Yeah, it's perfect. Whenever we get together in the studio, folks, there's always a pre-show discussion.
And today, let's just say that this question just falls perfectly and gracefully,
like an angel falling out of heaven and hitting the ground at 3,000 miles per hour.
Curse splat. Feathers everywhere. The sound of trumpets and horns blaring and bleeding.
(02:11):
So, please, your answer, sir.
I think it's going to come back to time management and love, I think, are what you need to make a fulfilling life.
Now, you may not find that perfect love in your life, so that's why I include time management in there.
(02:33):
The one thing that you can control for yourself is how you use your time.
I think if you are good at time management, you will find that you have a lot more time to spend on yourself.
And that can be working out, reading books, jerking off, playing, going outside, driving around, doing whatever it is that moves you.
(02:55):
And I think that's really the goal of life. You're here to love and enjoy yourself.
You're not here to work for someone else. You're not here to, you know, bang away at the rocks like your caveman ancestors did.
You're here to enjoy yourself. So, enjoy yourself.
Yeah, we're alive now, for the most part. Many of us, at least probably in our target audience, you don't want to live to work.
(03:24):
You work to live so that you can do the things you love.
And it's something we were talking about earlier. I had started a podcast about safety.
And I've kind of let it fall by the wayside because safety is what I do for a job.
It is my career, my current profession. And I don't want to do that on my downtime.
(03:45):
My downtime is for me. It's music, it's writing, it's doing this podcast.
And I think a clear separation of the things you do is probably a key to living a fulfilling and meaningful life.
Make sure that you give the time and the energy to the things you love.
And that doesn't mean I don't love my career. Doesn't mean I don't love my profession.
(04:08):
Here come the qualifiers.
Well, it is a career. It's what I do.
Just giving you a hard time.
It's what I do to make money. It's what I do to put food on the table.
And it's a subtle distinction. I get that.
And I'm trying not to throw qualifiers in there. But there is a difference.
And what I found was after a 10-hour day at work, coming home and doing a podcast,
(04:36):
sitting here and writing it and recording it about the same stuff I just got done doing, it was a lot.
I wanted to do something else. And so I did.
So I think making sure that you're spending your time on things that fulfill you and make your life meaningful.
(04:57):
Does that make sense? Or is that too vague for the question?
Well, hey, I mean, if you're ever in doubt, consult Zorba the Greek.
Zorba the Greek.
There's a guy who had it all figured out.
Who was Zorba the Greek?
Zorba the Greek is a man who said that life without a little madness is not worth living.
That's a fair point. Absolutely.
He lived life to the fullest. He danced. He sang. He drank. He ate.
(05:20):
He lived his sort of a Bacchanalian style life. But he was very kind and enjoyed his family and all that jazz.
So it's a good thing. Like I said, consult Zorba if you're at a loss of what to do with your life
and getting it back on track of just enjoying the things in life.
Zorba sounds like one of those carnival machines that you would just put a quarter in.
(05:44):
Get the shiny lights and a ticket out that says, live life to the fullest.
That's right.
That's not advice. That doesn't help me a bit.
There's lots of vagaries in life.
So we will give Megawheel the Magnificent another spin, I think.
Yeah, I'm going to have to like back out of this and pull it back up.
(06:06):
It's being very jerky today.
Meg's trudging.
OK, next question. Have you ever shoplifted anything?
Shoplifted anything, yes.
Really?
Yes. When I was in Pittsburgh ages and ages ago, nobody in my flat could afford aspirin.
(06:31):
And we were all sick as dogs.
So one of the guys that I roomed with went and distracted the person at the deli counter,
which was covered in flies, by the way.
Giant eagle, I'm looking at you, and I swiped a bottle of aspirin.
Was it at least name brand? Was it Bear Aspirin?
No, it was Giant Eagle brand.
(06:53):
Aspirin, just so we could have aspirin because we were all suffering miserably.
So I will take that one. That is my sin.
I'm a dirty thief. I stole a bottle of aspirin when I was 19.
So there we are. When the black vans come to take me away.
Yeah, you admitted to this. My answer is a simple no.
(07:19):
I've never shoplifted anything.
He's such a paladin. See, this guy, he tries to be this hard ass.
Look how anti-hero I am. He's not. He's the biggest paladin class there ever was.
I never did. Now, do I know people who did? Besides you, I never knew that story.
There you go.
Do I know people? Yes. Actually, one of them was a good friend of ours in high school.
(07:41):
Oh yeah, I remember that.
He was not going to name names, but here's the tale.
Now, he's like a VP of some corporation now, so let that sink in for a minute.
I was working at Record Alley. One day he came in and asked me who my favorite baseball player was.
Well, it was Will Clark. He disappears.
Little did I know he was going down to the department store on the other end of the shopping plaza,
(08:03):
and he literally came back in with his jean jacket kind of bulging out.
How he got out of the store, I have no freaking clue.
Opens his jacket up and dumps starting lineup figures out on the counter.
I'm just like, dude, you can't do that.
(08:24):
I'm sifting through them like, there's Will Clark. I'm like, what am I supposed to do with this?
It was just fascinating because obviously, your story, you needed the product.
That was our bad excuse. We didn't go around stealing piles of food just for the laughs or whatever.
(08:48):
It was a bottle of aspirin that we couldn't afford because we were all broke.
So there's that difference. Shoplifting for need.
Well, here's where we're getting into that dilemma, of course, where it's like,
is it okay for a starving man to steal bread for his family?
I don't know. You're still taking stuff from somebody who...
(09:09):
Is it okay? No. Is it understandable? Yes.
Sure.
Stealing for sheer fun and profit.
The same gentleman stole an entire tennis racket for me.
Actually, you did tell me about that.
Yeah. I mean, how do you walk out...
And this was the only thing he had on him. He found out that I like to play tennis.
(09:32):
He brought me a real Ghostbusters action figure and a tennis racket, like a very nice fiberglass tennis racket.
And I'm like, how in the world did you walk out of a place with a tennis racket?
He said, down my pants. It's amazing.
It didn't make sense.
It's truly, it was amazing. He was the quintessential...
And he never got caught.
(09:53):
No, he was never a central cut purse. Turtle cut purse. Amazing.
Yeah. We got to give Megaheel another spin because that whole topic is just...
It's bizarre to me. And it does bring up some interesting ethical questions.
Because either way, whichever side you're on, you are hurting the proprietor, the company, your department store, whoever it is.
(10:20):
And we could spend the entire rest of the show talking about that.
I desperately needed that starting lineup figure. That's my justification.
And to be fair, was it a cool figure? Yes.
Sure.
Did I take it home and put them on my desk? Yes.
Uh-oh. Receiving stolen goods.
Yeah. And see, even now, even now I look back on that and I feel a little bit bad about it.
(10:46):
I really do. That's me and my conscience.
He's a goody. He's a goody, folks.
Yeah. Yeah. So our next question.
If you could bring back one discontinued soda or candy from the 70s or 80s, what would it be?
So it's a different play on the topic we had a while back about candy.
(11:07):
Let's take candy out. A discontinued soda.
Okay. I haven't had soda for almost 20 years now.
So I'm not a huge – it's hard for me to remember back in the day of like, oh, the tasty sodas of the past.
I would have to say Mellow Yellow would be one of them.
(11:28):
Now, I know it still exists in some rare forms.
I can't think of too many sodas that don't exist anymore is what I'm saying.
But I never – you like Tab?
I didn't mind it.
Tab tastes like aspirins to me, speaking of aspirins.
Really? Like aspirin or baby aspirin?
Like baby aspirin.
Yeah. It wasn't bad.
It was gross.
I thought it was the best like canned design, like graphic.
(11:52):
Okay. It's very 70s.
It was. And I typically don't like 70s design features. They make me sick.
Blasphemy.
The color palette and just like –
Blasphemy.
60s, fine with it. 80s, absolutely 70s.
Pink and orange aren't doing it for you.
70s designs are just – I'm not a fan of the 70s.
(12:14):
The only good thing –
You and my wife both hate the 70s.
Yeah, there are a few good things that came out of the 70s like Genesis, Alice Cooper, well, King Crimson started in the late 60s.
Some TV shows, you know, Barney Miller, stuff like that.
And I have a really hard time – Star Wars.
(12:35):
Okay.
I have a really hard time after that.
Okay.
Like especially fashion in the 70s was just abysmal.
All right.
But yeah, I like Tab.
I think the quintessential Gen X answer is supposed to be like Jolt Cola. I wish they'd bring back Jolt Cola. You remember that?
Yeah.
Which didn't really taste very good either.
(12:56):
No.
Yeah. But yeah, the only thing I can think of besides like Tab, as you said, was like squirt and weird stuff like that.
What about – let me throw one at you.
Do you remember Crystal Pepsi?
I do. It was horrible.
You thought so?
Yeah.
I thought it was pretty good.
Yeah. I'm not a Pepsi fan to begin with.
Oh, see, I'd take Pepsi over Coke anyway.
See, I, you know, I was much more – I drank the stuff that was green.
(13:21):
Yeah.
Like the Mountain Dews, the Mellow Yellows, that kind of stuff.
Have you had – I guess it's Mellow Yellow Zero.
I didn't even know they still made this.
Oh yeah. Yeah. It's really good. It is. It's tasty.
Okay. Interesting. So yeah, that was kind of a non-answer from me, but a good answer from you, Tab.
(13:44):
Yeah. Tab, Crystal Pepsi. I'd do either one of them.
Okay.
I'm going to give Mega Wheel the Magnificent another spin.
That's how out of touch I am. I don't really know what sodas are on the market right now and what aren't, other than the big, you know, Coke, Pepsi.
Yeah.
Mountain Dew, you know, World.
Next time you go grocery shopping, take a walk down the aisle. You'll find some interesting stuff.
(14:06):
Is Mr. Pib gone?
No. Mr. Pib's still out there.
Okay.
And you know what they still make is clearly Canadian. And they do have some sugar-free ones, and they're really good.
Okay.
Yeah, especially the cherry, wild cherry.
The black cherry or whatever, yeah.
I forget what it was. I think I may still have one up in the fridge. Yeah, those are really good.
Interesting.
Now, see, this next question is just way too general. What life-changing events have you experienced?
(14:33):
A lot.
Yeah, exactly. Let's tweak that a little bit.
In my 50s, a lot.
Let's tweak that and say which life-changing event, not personal, but like World life-changing event, had the biggest effect on you?
Affordable home computers.
Wow. Right off the top of your head, and that's a great answer.
(14:56):
Well, I mean, you know, everybody's going to go, oh, the balloon wall, oh, you know, the big giant, oh, the 9-11, oh, blah, blah, blah.
Now, I mean, those are all terrible, wonderful things, you know, respectively. Berlin Wall, wonderful. 9-11, terrible.
But, you know, the rise of affordable home computing is why I work in the business that I work in now.
(15:18):
I mean, I am very thankful to my parents for caving in and buying me a very early home computer and allowing me to learn on that.
That's something that I think GenX has going for it is that we were there really for the rise of home computing.
Yeah. What was your first computer? Was it a VIC-20?
(15:39):
No, actually, my first actual computer that I owned was an IBM PS2.
Okay.
But I used the Commodore 64 of Travis's, of course, and then I played with your VIC-20, so to speak.
Not a euphemism. It was an actual VIC-20.
It was an actual computer and it was wonderful. But, yeah, I never owned one up until that point, until the IBM PS2.
(16:05):
Yeah.
See, my grandfather, when my grandfather retired from the police force, he had about a year or two of just hanging out, and then he got into personal computers.
And for the rest of his life, he was one of those guys that subscribed to the Commodore magazine that would come every month and have just pages and pages of programs.
(16:26):
And he would sit there, type them all in, make the program run, and then go back into the code and shift the colors and do different things to it and just really got into it.
And we had a blast for a few summers.
I would go over there a couple times a week and we would just sit up there and play games and goof around and stuff.
And he got me my first one. It was a Tandy MC-10.
(16:48):
Oh, wow.
The selling point, and this was really cool, was it had a button. It wasn't just a shift button. It was a different button.
And all of the letters on the keyboard had a different basic command above them.
So you didn't have to type go to or go sub. You could hit that button and hit like J and it automatically put go sub and then you just continued coding.
(17:11):
And it had no memory at first. It had a slot for it. So at first I would take hours, type the program in, play the game.
And then when it was time to turn everything off, you just you lost everything.
You know, I think Gen X is one of the last generations to ever understand ephemerality.
Yeah. And that was the epitome of all of our video games were finite.
(17:36):
There was no constantly continuing games. There was no giant long storylines.
There was the computer programming that you could lose in the blink of an eye or a power outage.
There was losing connection to the Internet because somebody picked up the phone.
You know, it was it was all about the ephemeral. You know, you didn't have VCRs and Tivo's and everything else.
(17:58):
You had to catch a show when it was on. And that was it. If you missed it, you missed it.
And it was worth that time to type everything in because it to me, it made it more fun.
Like I finally got it in. OK, take a break. Go get a drink. Come back. Now we're going to play the game.
Don't touch the keyboard. Yeah. And but I think for my next birthday, my grandfather got me the memory cartridge that plugged into the back of the MC.
(18:24):
So I had that for a while so I could save things.
And then I got the Vic 20 and then a 64 and then a 128. And that kind of leads into after a little while modern computing.
So my answer to the question, I'm not going to I'm just kind of kind of piggyback on yours.
Mine would be the Internet. Sure. Because I remember when you had to go to an encyclopedia or the library to look something up
(18:49):
and you had actual trusted, verified, peer reviewed news and stuff like that.
Do you remember the scant time before the Internet really became a popular thing when they used to sell you the Encyclopedia Britannica CD-ROM?
Yes. Oh, yeah. That had video of animals and goofy crap like that. You could look stuff up.
And those were the cool things where one of the entries had a short video. Yeah. Like, oh, everyone you saw, you played it.
(19:14):
Oh, yeah. And the video is abysmal. But it was great by today's standards. Sure.
But, you know, like the ephemerality of those original programs and stuff for anybody that doesn't know, like with a Vic 20 before the days of, you know, floppy disks and stuff.
We saved stuff on cassettes. Yeah. Magnetic tape. Yeah. Magnetic tape. You would save your program on that.
(19:39):
And you you always had to have the counter lined up because, you know, you might have two or three programs on a tape.
You might roll over and know exactly where it's at on the tape. OK, boomer. I can hear all the listeners out there saying that.
Gen X, baby. Gen X. We're the ones that started it all. OK. You know, we at least benefited from it. Yeah. Yeah.
(20:00):
But, you know, and that led into, like you said, you know, you'd have to give up your games and turn them off.
But then you started getting games like Oregon Trail, Load Runner, stuff like that that did have stories.
And they did continue through levels and to have been there when stuff like that was brand new and see gaming today.
(20:22):
It's just fascinating. I think the perspective that you have, if you're if you're of our age and our generation,
I would hope that younger folks today can maybe look back and look back with appreciation on how far things have come in such a short time,
(20:44):
because really it's it's in the blink of an eye from a historical perspective. Sure.
So I think that's really worth worth a look back if you're of a mind to cast an eye back.
Want to do one more on the wheel for this part? We'll give her one more spin to wrap up this edition of the Gen X existentialists.
Kind of a heartfelt, emotional version of the show. Yeah.
(21:10):
Lots of thievery and shenanigans and sins. OK.
So our final question for the day. Why do you and your best friend get along so well?
I have no idea. This question y'all make no sense. Oh, my God.
(21:31):
No, I think deep down there is a I keep saying this.
I had this conversation with my wife recently. We had a disagreement of political proportions or whatever.
And this comes down to differences with everyone. I think ultimately we're all headed in the same to the same destination.
(21:56):
And I don't mean the grave. I mean, an actual idealistic destination. Yeah.
But there are so many different paths to get there that people don't always travel on the same path, but they're not malicious about it.
You're just taking a path that feels right to you to get to the same destination.
(22:17):
I think friendships are a lot like that where they're there. I think some people are morally and spiritually aligned.
Yeah. And, you know, Scott here is my best friend sitting across from me in the studio.
He is into rush. He is into sports. He is into music. All of these things I have no real vested interest in.
(22:43):
You know, I don't understand them. I don't want to understand some of them.
You know, I mean, that's I'll school you on the on some rush. Oh, I'd rather you didn't.
Let's not say we did. But, you know, it's just that's but that's the thing. It doesn't matter.
We don't always politically aligned. We don't always spiritually aligned. We don't always ethically aligned.
(23:09):
But it doesn't matter because I love him. He's my friend. And we're all headed to the same destination at the end.
You're either ultimately a good person, a neutral person or an evil person. It's very Gygaxian. It's very role playing.
And I think we've already figured out I'm a paladin. Yeah, you're a lawful good. I don't want to be lawful.
(23:34):
You are a lawful good. That's what I mean. This guy hates the idea of being lawful good.
He's one of the most lawful good people I've ever met. OK.
But, you know, I think there and those are the kind of personalities that align.
You know, I mean, if you're of the same alignment, you will find common ground with people.
(23:55):
Yeah. And I have known Scott since fifth grade. Yep. So that's a long time.
So and our interests have changed. We don't have the same taste in clothes, in girls, in cars, in anything.
Very few things we have the same taste in. God, the movies don't get me started on entertainment.
(24:19):
You know, not everybody has my great taste in entertainment.
But you know what the thing is? Either one of us will sit down and watch something with the other one.
Sure. We'll listen to the same stuff. Yeah. We might not get anything out of it.
We might not at the end of the day like it, but we'll do it because of the other person. Yeah.
And I kind of liken it to like Legos. You know, we might not be the same color or same size or shape, but we fit together.
(24:46):
Yeah. And that's all that matters. That's the that's the weird mystery of the universe. Yeah.
Like science is very good about telling you, you know, why something works the way it does.
But they're not it's not very good at telling you why it even exists in the first place. Sure.
And I think friendship is it's a spiritual thing. Yeah. You know, it's it's a mystical thing.
(25:12):
It's something that that happens and it waxes and it wanes, you know, but it's there and it's some sort of invisible thread that connects people.
Yeah. A force. Yeah. Possibly. I don't know about that.
I think it is very much a spiritual thing and an evolutionary thing, too, because we met so young. Yeah.
And we maintain that friendship. And which is rare. Yeah. Absolutely.
(25:37):
Well, I mean, it's one of the things that Tracy has trouble wrapping her head around is that we have been friends for so long because she was a Navy, a daughter of a fell in the Navy.
So they moved around a lot. So forming those friendships was kind of tough for her.
So for us to have known each other that long and pulling in Tim, too, who we met as freshmen, it's just it's a foreign concept to a lot of people.
(26:06):
But I wouldn't trade it for the world. No, neither would I.
And that's the weird thing is that you have to realize that that friendships, they they come and go.
They're like seasons. You know, there are some people that you are not going to be friends with here your entire life.
Yeah. And that's OK. You know, because everyone is there when you need them. Yep.
(26:28):
So it's if you have someone in your life that's been there for more than five years, count yourself lucky.
Yeah, that's an amazing, amazing treasure. Yeah. Right there.
And it only gets richer from there. You know, the older it is, the more rarefied the more stories you've got.
Exactly. The more blackmail you got on each other. Exactly.
(26:50):
So that's everyone's task here as we end this version of the Gen X essentialist is whoever your best friend is or your most longstanding friend,
give them a call, shoot them an email and just tell them thanks. Wish them the best from us.
Ha ha. And with that, we will call it a day here on the Gen X existentialist. My name is Scott and I'm Bunny.
(27:12):
We'll catch you next time. Have a good one.
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