Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and Chuck's here, I'm Jerry's here. So that makes the Stuff you Should Know. And I guess we're just get to call this one of our silly editions.
Well, I don't know if it's silly. I think it's kind of fun. People like caring about curses even though you know it's not a real thing, right.
Yeah, yeah, but I would call silliness fun inherently.
Yeah.
Okay, Well, then we're in agreement.
I just want to clear up whether or not we were a cursed podcast, because we are. We've had pretty good successes at our curse.
Well, no, don't you remember we have a curse on other people's TV shows and our own.
Actually, oh, that's right. When we would mention something, a TV show would get canceled.
Right, No, when we would go on a TV show, it would get canceled. Oh yeah, it happened to I don't remember the name of her program, but one of Solidad O'Brien's shows. Yeah, the whatever show with the Alexis and Jennifer Uh huh. Jeff Probs daytime talk.
Show yeah, propsed in it up. I think it's called.
And I'm sure there's more, but like all three of those we went on and like seriously, within weeks they were canceled off the air or something.
Man, now I'm suddenly glad we never went on Conan O'Brien.
Yeah really, So, yes, we have our own curse, which is hilarious and wonderful because I think that's just one more one more feather to put in our cap, you know.
That's right. And as you pointed out, we when we went on our own TV show that was also canceled.
Yeah, that was bound to happen, actually got canceled.
I always say canceled, it was not renewed. There's a difference.
Oh yeah, there's a big difference. Canceled is like just stop, stop to stop.
It is like, you know, we covered one show last week that had a radar show for mash had a pilot, and that got.
Canceled, yeah, like mid air basically.
Yeah, before it hit the West coast. So that made me feel a lot better.
So let's just say, let's just give a little heads up to everybody, especially the people who are like all I want is science from stuff you should know. This is like I said, it's a little silly. You said, it's going to be fun. A lot of this stuff is just legend. So we kind of tried to fact check as much as we could, but factchecking is a little bit beyond the point because when you start to
look into them, everything just falls apart. So that's why, you know, we're basically doing an anthropological view of some famous curses or interesting curses that aren't necessarily famous.
That's right, And we're going to start with the curse on Brunswick Springs, and that is a place in Brunswick, Vermont, Yeah, that has has a spring, has actually six of them, and each one of these they're pretty great springs. They have some different minerals flowing out of each one, magnesium, sulfur, bromide, calcium, iron, and arsenic and because you know, springs are a great place to heal oneself depending on what's going on with
you and what the spring can offer. And so obviously a lot of people over the years have tried to you know, capitalize and charge money on these springs, but not anymore.
No, they actually kind of stopped trying. And the reason why is because there's a curse on the springs. We'll see what the deal is with that starting now.
Sound like you're gonna say right after this break.
Or something, So let's all go with the Abenaki, chuck.
Yeah, they are an Algonquin speaking tribe and they have lived in that area. And you know, Brunswick, Verman is a lovely area, so I don't blame them, but they've been living there for about twelve thousand years. And they obviously were the first ones to say like, hey, this
spring is pretty great. Because they are a indigenous tribe, they considered it a sacred place and they thought that the springs had mystical healing powers and you know, at the very least they probably have some sort of health benefits.
Yeah. Sure, but this was like sacred ground to the Abenaki. It still is as a matter of fact, and so as part of their oral tradition and as far as legend goes too, during the French and Indian War, the Abanaki brought a wounded French soldier. And remember French and Indian War doesn't mean the French were fighting the Native Americans. They were fighting together against the British right. So the
French soldier was fighting alongside the Abenaki. He got wounded, and depending on who you ask, either he was wounded in his arm and was probably going to lose it. He was mortally wounded. The point of the story is that he was wounded. They took him to Brunswick Springs and he was miraculously cured by the spring water. It was a really bro gesture of the Abenaki to do that for him.
Yeah, for sure. So obviously that soldier is like, hey, this worked wonders for me. I think I can probably make a little money on this thing. So he returned later after he was healed. He took over this ring basically and started bottling and selling the water, and the Abenaki confronted him were like, this is no good. There was a bit of a tiff that broke out and
bloodshed as a result. There was the death of a man and his infant child, which is super sad, and the wife and mother of those two basically said, all right, you know what that means. It's cursed time anyone from here till the end of time that comes along, and I'm summarizing, of course that comes along and tries to exploit these sacred Springs for profit shall be cursed and it will not be a success.
Yeah, which is kind of a mild curse for having just lost your husband and baby.
Yeah, I would say, like, and also you suffer illness and disease and die.
Right exactly. So, very shortly after that, the British one, essentially the French Indian War, and the Abenaki were removed from the area around the Brunswick Springs and they were essentially moved out of the way by British colonists who settled around there, and so they essentially lost control over
their sacred ground. And one hundred years after that, somebody finally was like, we're going to build a resort here, like these are this is a great spa, right, So they built a spa resort and there's a website called the Vermonter and they did a great story on this. But they turned up a hotel brochure from the eighteen sixties and it said that the spa offered medicine waters
from the Great Spirit. So, just to add insult to injury, not only have they been like this is our spring, now, thanks, you go move somewhere else, they were like, by the way, even the Native Americans think this is pretty amazing, so come pay to stay here. So the hotel actually did fairly well for the first few decades, and then the curse finally woke up and was like where am I. Oh, yeah, I better get to business.
That's right. I'm surprised when they included that medicine water from the Great Spirit, like they were really asking for it at that point. But that didn't awaken the curse. But you were right. What would awaken the curse would be when a dentist took it over and expanded the resort. And this was in eighteen ninety four and it burned to the ground. About twenty years after that, a guy named John Hutchins bought the place rebuilt it, and this
was in nineteen twenty nine. That also burned down. So he's like, all right, I guess I'm going to rebuild it again, and I'm going to add a couple of more hotels to make it worth my while. They all burned down in nineteen thirty and nineteen thirty one, so he was like, all right, I guess this place really is cursed. I'm out of here.
Yeah, And since then, no one's tried to rebuild there again, and the ruins of the hotel are still around. It's pretty cool. There's some good photos of it on that Vermont website. There's like a couple foundations the old train platforms there, there's some staircases that go into an old cellar. But there's never going to be anyone who tries their hand at it again who says, forget this curse. I'm going to try and build my own spa and see if that burns down.
Why, chuck, Well, because the Abenaki tribe actually purchased the land around the springs and sold it to Vermont. They said, all right, we're going to sell this to you. This just a few years ago, and now it's held in a trust and it's not ever going to be developed.
Pretty neat. Huh.
Yeah, it's great.
That's a great end of that story. Agreed, And the Chris was able to fall back to sleep.
Go back to sleep now, curse and you're going to wake up in Hollywood, California.
Well hold on, let's have Jerry put some interstitial Christmas music in between these.
All right, So hooray for Hollywood. This is when I had heard of before the Curse of Attuk it's a pretty well regarded curse as far as you know. In Hollyod with Circles, there was a script based on a book. It was a nineteen sixty three satirical Canadian novel called The Incomparable I Took by Mordecai Rickler, and it's about an Inuit hunter and poet from Canada who is discovered by a documentary crew and brought back to the big city of Toronto, and is you know, it's sort of
like a King Kong thing. It's like an exotic curiosity. And of course, as you know, you would expect, once I took us in the city, it's like a fish out of water story. But then he realizes like how awesome Toronto is and how great it is to be a big city guy and to be famous and kind of rich, and so he wants to fit in there and live that life and eventually runs for office.
You're right, it's a great satirical novel. It's essentially the antithesis of Crocodile Dundee because remember, he moved to the big city, but he changed the big city. The big city didn't change.
Him, that's right. And there was actually a line and it took where he had a knife pulled on him and he said, that is a knife that was really worth the effort.
It really was. You got there eventually.
It took me four It takes everybody.
Good lord, I've never heard so many beeps in one spot.
Oh gosh, okay, Jerry.
I can just see Jerry editing this with her face at her hand.
This needs to go in her blueper reel, and that Jerry doesn't do anymore.
I know. So what the book came out in nineteen sixty eight, and it was optioned within three years. Yeah, sixty three, I thought sixty eight. Oh okay, so yeah, I guess it took a little while for the Americans to catch on. Yeah, they the script was purchased, it took a few years to turn it into a script to adapt it. And when they did adapt that, they americanized it so that it took didn't come from the great northern reaches of Canada. That took came from Alaska.
And he wasn't taken to Toronto. He was taken to New York. Right, Yeah, so that did not trigger this movie getting made. I guess. I mean, you would know way better than me, But I mean like, what percentage of scripts actually get made? Like, are there way more scripts out there that have just been passing passed around for years and years or that's actually kind of rare.
Yeah, I wonder what the percentage is. I mean, if you're talking about scripts that actually get like bought by a studio, I bet I bet ten percent of those get made into movies.
Maybe not wow wow, Well this was one of them. It was passed around Hollywood for years, years and years, it just never got made. But over the years there are plenty of people who are like, this is a great script. I want to do this movie. And the first to step up came in nineteen eighty two. The beginning of nineteen eighty two, an actor named John Belu she I think and is Belashie Belashee. Sorry, he got his hands on and he's like, I love this script.
I'm gonna actually star as a took. And I guess the ball didn't even begin to get rolling. It was sitting there, held in place by inertia still before Bellashie died.
Yeah. He died very sadly at age thirty three in the Chateau Marmont Hotel from doing drugs from a speedball. Yes, very famously. I get the picture. A dook is probably a big fella. Yeah, because everybody that has followed in Belushi's footsteps has been, you know, of larger proportions. So after Belushi passed, it went back into turnaround. It's been
a few more years getting kicked around. And then Sam Kennison, the great comedian, signed on in nineteen eighty eight, and they actually started filming, right.
I think they got eight days into it.
Okay, did you know if.
Real quick Sam Kennison was a fire and Brimstone itinerant preacher. Yeah, I did not know that. He started out like that makes sense, I can totally see it, but wow. So yeah, they filmed this film eight days worth of this movie, and I guess Sam Kennison had really read the script because after that point he was like, Hey, I really want some more say and like what the script rewrights are going to do? And the studio is like, a We're not really happy about that, and Kennison was like, oh, yeah,
well I'm going to deliver a terrible performance. And the studio said, oh yeah, well we're going to sue you. And they did. They follow a lawsuit against him.
Yeah, it got pretty ugly, so production was obviously halted and it was still sort of in being contested when Sam Kennison very sadly died in a car wreck in nineteen ninety two at age thirty eight.
Okay, all right, that's a little weird. So far two actors who tried to play it took have died young. But surely that doesn't mean anything.
Right, No, curses aren't real.
No, although it is real because if you continue on just a few more years, it took the script claimed more lives.
That's right. In nineteen ninety six, screenwriter Michael o'donne hugh, who I believe was an SNL guy. Yes, the original script writer. I looked him up. I can't remember his name now. Maybe it was Todd Carrodge something. He was a National lampoon guy, and maybe Michael o'donahue was too. So it's kind of been that world long way of saying. He took over, did some rewrites and recruited none other than the great, great John Candy, and very sadly, we
all know what happened to John Candy. He passed away at the age of forty three of a heart attack and o'donahue also died of a cerebral hemorrhage at fifty eight, so that was a double curse. And this is the point where I can remind everybody to go out and watch the John Candy documentary because it is wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.
Okay, good, thank you for that. One other thing about that, John Candy and Michael o'donnahugh died the same year, in nineteen ninety six, which was also the same year that they decided to make this movie.
Is that not clear?
No? Okay, so that was I mean to me, that's like, that's very surprising. Okay. I'm also you, guys, I'm not this really this credulous, but it is very interesting to me. Okay, for sure what happened the next year, Chuck, Surely the horrible reign of Terror of a took came to an end after John Candy and Michael o'donnick.
No, No, I think you know who's coming. Very sadly. If if there's one more person kind of waiting in the wings for this kind of role, it's Chris Farley. Of course. In nineteen ninety seven, he decided to take on this role and got his buddy Phil Hartman on board, and we should doubly point this out. They died before they could get that movie made the very same year.
Yeah, that same year, the same year, Yeah, Chris Farley died, that's right. The next year Phil Hartman died. We did a whole episode on him.
Yeah, that was a good one.
Yeah. So, I mean there's a bunch of deaths of people tagged onto a Took, and It Took still hasn't been made. It's a very weird curse as far as Hollywood curses go, and there's plenty of those. It's a strange curse if you ask me. But the people that Tails from Development Hell website, they did a pretty good article on this and they pointed out that if It Took is a killer script, there's other killer scripts out there that all those same people were attached to it.
At least Belushi, Kennison, Candy and Farley were.
Yeah. The very famously the Great Great Book A Confederacy of Dunce's has never been made, and there's been just tons and tons of people attached. I think Philip Seymour Hoffman was attached to that as well, and he passed away and I think Will Ferrell was attached. There's been a lot of people attached because it's just such a great book. Did you ever read that?
No? I is it just about like southern foibles? Or is it like better, bigger?
It's better? Okay, Yeah, it's good.
What's it? Foible? Just a unique kind of sometimes naked of characteristic or trade or habit or something like that. Just something that makes somebody themselves and not like other people that you kind of have to put up with if you're gonna love that person. How about that?
Oh? So I have many foibles?
Oh I have a lot of too.
Yeah, what's the other one? Of the Fatty Arbuckle biopic? All those guys are attached to that at one point as well.
That's weird that all of those guys and Philip Seymour Hoffman were attached to the Confederacy of Dunces too. That's interesting.
Yeah.
I'm glad you mentioned Will Ferrell though, because I want to take a second and give a PSA the defensive Will Ferrell and John c Riley and their movie Holmes and Watson.
Oh yeah, you texted me you liked it, right, Yes.
When we did our episode on I guess, Sherlock Holmes. Yeah, we got a lot of hate from people who were like, that movie sucked, it's terrible, and it's got like a really bad rating generally on it's just to.
Be just one of the worst movies. So I'm glad you liked it.
That is wrong. I mean, if you're going in looking for any kind of high browse cinema, yes you're going to be deeply disappointed. But if you're familiar with the cinema of John c Riley and Will Ferrell together, yeah, you're gonna actually be pleasantly surprised, especially if you think you're going in there like this movie kind of sucks. It's it's cute. It's a good movie as far as those movies are concerned.
I want to check it out now, I will. Yeah, was there a Catalina wine mixer in that one?
No, there was not, no, nothing like that. It was a very it was true to the period.
Well, I kind of want to see it now, so you should see it.
I texted to you and told you to see it. And this is what it takes for you to finally listen to me.
All Right, I'm gonna go funder my foibles and we'll be back after this.
You came along and it was like, yeah, well we were work pals.
Okay, Chuck, We're gonna head on over to present day Uzbekistan and there you'll find that I had already parked the way back machine. So let's get in.
That's right, and we are talking about the Curse of tamer Lame. Originally Timur the Lame, And we very much need to point out here that calling someone lame is not a word that we use anymore, very much an antiquated term, but that was what they called Timor, and it was then anglicized to tamer Lame t a m E r l a n E tamer Lane, not lame, right, So maybe they were already getting the picture, like it's not a nice thing to say, right.
He was a fourteenth century Mongol war lord. I don't don't know if he's a descendant, probably, but he's certainly a successor to Genghis Khan or Chingas Khan, and very much like Chingis Khan, he was responsible for the deaths of lots and lots of people. Yeah, the number that I see bandied about most frequently is seventeen million people, jeez, which even more impressive is that that is about five
percent of the entire global population at the time. That's how many people died as a result of Tamerlane's conquests.
Yeah, and I think by impressive you mean depressing.
Sure, yes, exactly. I mean if you are impressed by large numbers regardless, what theres en that's all I mean.
Yeah, So what are you into large numbers?
Yeah, listen to this one seventeen million?
Whoa very impressed?
What are you talking about? Deaths?
This date is over. So he was known as the scourge of God, and he was a member of the bar Last tribe or the Barlest tribe, and well you already spoiled that one and what is now Ubekistan. And they he was, you know, he did what they do. He the sacked cities all over the place, Moscow, Persia, Deli, Damascus, you name it. And he's you know, known as one of the you know, I hate saying great, but one of the great conquerors.
Yeah, I mean as far as conquerors and all the terrible things that it's attendant with being a conqueror or being conquered by a conqueror, he is often placed on equal footing with Darius the First Alexander the Great chingis Khan again.
Darius Rutger exactly.
Well, wait as the hoodie frontman or as a country star.
I think he's conquered.
All Okay, well then, yeah, Darius Rutger makes sense. One of the things, though, is about some of these conquerors, including tamer Lane. He was also credited with spreading a lot of culture too. And there's actually a type of architecture, architectural style called timrod And that you can find in the capital city of Samarkan in Uzbekistan. It's incredibly ornate and colorful and beautiful, and it's credited to his reign.
That's great.
Yeah, that's about the best thing you could say.
You were trying to find something positive.
Sure, if you got up pictures of that kind of architectural style, you'd be like, wow, that guy is impressive.
Yeah, it's very nice. I know you guys are all going like, okay, jeez, guys, is he cursed or not? So it turns out there was a curse. He died in fourteen oh five during his last campaign. He fell ill, and he was put in an ebony coffin and entombed in a mausoleum at a mosque in Samarkan, and he was there just you know, entombed is a dead person for about five hundred years until Stalin came along in nineteen forty one and said, do you know what I
want to see? If this guy truly had apparently the lame and again I hate even using that words, but his issue was that he had issues with both his right limbs, his right arm and his right leg, and Stalin sounds like he wanted to get down to the nitty gritty and see if that was really true.
Yeah. I also get the impression that Stalin was also flexing his power, like over his vassal states, you know, saying like, you're this conquering hero that's like the most revered person in your culture. I can dig him up basically if I want to.
Yeah.
Yeah.
One of the other points of the expedition was that the leader of the expedition, Mikhail jerezim Off. Yeah, he was a renowned forensic reconstructionist, so he was going to take Tamberlaine's skull and basically do a lifelike likeness of him from it. Right. So here's the problem with all that there's a There was an inscription they say on Timor's tomb that read, whosoever disturbs my grave shall unleasha conquer greater than I. So they enter Timor's tomb, they
disentomb him. I guess is what you would call that.
They exom him.
Yeah, but I think I zoom means take out of the ground. This is taking out of the right good point. Yeah, So they take him out of his tomb. Let's just stop being hoity toity. And two days later, two days later, Hitler rolls across the Russian border, the western Russian border, in the biggest land invasion ever before or since. It's called Operation Barbarossa.
And how many days later was this too?
Just too? Yeah? Two two days after they disentombed Timor.
The setting of two suns.
That's all I actually saw it put like that.
So, yeah, it was a massive invasion. Nearly four million German and Axis troops flooded there to help out. Like you said, it's the largest invasion in his and as many as sixteen million, not quite seventeen, but still a big number. And so I hope we're all impressed. Sure, Russian civilians, just civilians, alone were killed and millions more, obviously soldiers were killed, and it just the bloodshed kept going on while Germany was there in Russia, and it was a bad scene.
It was a terrible scene. Right. So, like the tide eventually did turn, and one of the battles that the whole thing turned on was the Battle of Stalingrad, which is considered still to this day the bloodiest urban battle in history. The USSR lost one point one million soldiers in fighting in just this one city. Right, Yeah, the Battle of Stalingrad ended about the same time that Stalin ordered timors remains to be re entombed.
Yeah, I mean, as the legend goes, Stalin got a little spooked and was like, all right, well maybe this thing, you know, this curse happened because of what I did. And so they put him back in there and that was it. They were repelled. The Germans were repelled from the USSR. But here's the deal. The curses kind of not only obviously our curses not real, but this one doesn't even seem to be real at all.
Right, Yeah, like Stalin couldn't have even gotten kg about the curse because it seems to have been invented not until two thousand and three.
Yeah, and how did that happen.
Well, our friend Craig Collins on the site Hidden Compass, he's the one who said two suns set before the Nazis invaded for real. He had a really good article about it. He found a Russian documentary from two thousand and three and they mention, I get the sense it's a very History Channel esque documentary from Russia. They mentioned a book that they don't name, they don't show, but they say in the book there was inscribed this curse saying like if you dig me up or disintune me,
I'm going to unleash a conquer on you. That seems to have kind of translated into this idea that that curse was inscribed on his tomb.
Ah.
We know for a fact it was not inscribed on his tomb because that same Soviet team that disentombed Timor. Yeah, they copied down all of the inscriptions. One of them went back and translated them all and published it as a book. There wasn't a single curse in there. No curse, but the rest of the stuff is fairly accurate. The timing actually is still pretty accurate. It's just the fact that there wasn't an actual stated curse is the thing. Wow, Wow, indeed,
I think. But so let's stop talking about tens of millions of people dying, Chuck, and let's start talking more about baseball.
Yeah, America's past time. We're not going to talk about the curse of the Bambino in the Red Sox. We're going to talk about the other great curse, the Curse of the Goat, which involves the beloved Chicago Cubs, a team that I have grown to love, Yeah, merely by growing up watching them on WGN after school and by going to wrigley Field now a few times.
Yeah. I tell everybody, Wrigley Field's the easiest ballpark to just walk right into. It's wonderful.
Yeah, it's the best. You don't even need a ticket.
So let's get back in the way back. Let's get back in the way back machine, Chuck, and talk about somebody who actually did have a ticket and still had a problem getting in. We're going to go back to October sixth, nineteen forty five, a particularly chilly day, and when we show up at wrigley Field, we're going to find that the Cubs are scheduled to play the Tigers in Game four of what's known as the World Series of Baseball.
That's right, and the guy trying to get in was a bar owner. He owned a tavern called the Lincoln Tavern on Madison. His name was William Sianis. He's a Greek immigrant, and got a couple of box seats for seven dollars and twenty cents. Apiece walked up to Wrigley Field with his pet goat, Murphy. Murphy had a little blanket on because it was unseasonably chilly for early October. And there was a sign on Murphy that said we got Detroit's goat. And he's like, this will be great.
I'm going to go in here with my goat. I love this goat and we're going to watch the ball game. And the kid at the gate said, sir, I don't think you can have a goat in here. That's my best Simpsons guy.
That was pretty close to pretty good.
Yeah, And so they rejected him and he was not allowed to come in.
No, And so Sianis, I mean, he was fairly well known. I don't know if connected's the right word, but he owned what was known as the Lincoln Tavern. I think you said. He had since renamed it before this the Billy Goat Tavern, because Murphy as a kid had fallen off some truck back in nineteen thirty four and wandered into the Lincoln tavern and Sanis was like, you're now the mascot. Apparently he even formally adopted Murphy through court,
and Murphy had great homes. So these guys have been friends for over ten years by the time this incident happened. So Sianis is like, you know what, I got just enough clout to get in touch with Philip K. Wriggly. I want him to say I can't come in before I'll accept it.
That's right. So he pleaded his case. He said, I went to goat court for this guy, and it's all legal, and everyone loves Murphy. You should see people at the tavern and Wriggly apparently supposedly said no, and then he said let Billy in, but not the goat. Yuck, yuck, yuck. And when he was like, well, why not the goat, I went to goat court and everything, Wriggly said because the goat stinks, which he didn't need to say that,
like goats have an odor and everybody knows that. You don't have to point it out.
So Ciennis was like, I'm not going to take this sitting down. He stood up. He said, my pride has been wounded. You have incited and insulted my goat friend of more than a decade. So he cursed the Cubs right then and there. He apparently exclaimed, the Cubs ain't gonna win no more. The Cubs will never win a World Series so long as the goat is not allowed in Wrigley Field, and he stormed off with Murphy in tow.
There's another version that says that they were allowed in, but they ended up getting kicked out because other fans complained that Murphy was trying to eat their food, and then the curse happened. Either way, they got cursed because Murphy was not allowed to sit and watch the game.
All right, I think that's a great cliffhanger because we got to see what happened to the Cubs and we'll find that out right after this.
And when you came along and it was like, yeah, well.
We were work pals club flues. Great, that's exactly what happened. They lost that game. They lost the World Series to the Tigers and Sianas apparently sent a telegram that said, who stinks now, Yeah, and the Curse of the Billy Goat was born. And for the rest of the twentieth century and well into the twenty first century, the Cubs were, you know, a five hundred ish team. They didn't do
so great. They had about fifteen winning seasons over that span from forty six to two thousand and three, finished first place three times, no pennants, no World Series appearances, and just for postseason appearance.
Yeah, and so just for people like me who don't follow baseball, or at least don't follow baseball stats that have a decimal involved, they had fifteen winning seasons over fifty seven years, and that just means that in those seasons they won more games than they lost, right, that's right. That is terrible, especially Chuck, when you consider up to that curse, the Cubs were one of the best teams
in baseball and had been their entire existence. They'd won the World Series the year before the curse too, So this was like a real reversal of fortune for the Cubs, and it seems to have hinged on the Curse of the Billy Goat.
Murphy that's right. So, you know, because baseball is fun and people like doing kind of goofing around with kind of lore like this, they tried over the years to lift this curse. They're like, we'll do some fun stuff. So in nineteen seventy three, the new owner of the Billy Goat tavern, Samsianis, who was the nephew to William brought the goat to Wrigley. He says, he's got to
lift this curse. The goat showed up, I think this was a descendant of Murphy Socrates showed up in a white limousine with a red carpet entrance, with a sign that said all was forgiven. Let me lead the Cubs to the pennant. But the grandson of the initial denier said, I don't think you can bring that goat in here. Still, what I don't get is they really like set this all up with the red carpet and still didn't let him in. Like so the Cubs were not involved.
No, they weren't involved. There was I think a Chicago Tribune columnist who is kind of helping with the whole thing. Okay, the Cubs were not I guess informed ahead of time, or like.
Surely they knws it was coming. There was a red carpet out there.
Yeah, they saw the red carpet and they were like, no, this isn't happening. So they actually turned a second goat away, a descendant of Murphy's. Like you said in nineteen seventy three, that's not what you do when you're trying to lift a curse. And so this curse continued on for many, many more years. But over those same years, Chuck the
Cubs changed hands several times. I think the Tribune owned them for a while, and some of these later owners they had a different feeling about letting a goat in the park. They were a little more goat friendly.
Yeah, they're like, if you can have a bunch of guys racing around the field and a foot race dressed is hardware and tools, Yeah, or at least that's what they have at the Brave Stadium.
Is it just the Braves, I've wondered, Well.
I mean it's a home depot thing, which is Atlanta, So I mean they do all kinds of funny races. I think sometimes like in some cities it's like a sausage races, a broad worse races a hot dog. Yeah, it's it's a drill that races a hammer and then like a wrinch or something. I don't know, but at any rate, they're like, if we can do that kind of silliness, we can let a goat in here to lift this curse and at the very least it'll be some fun press.
Right, So they did. There were actually a number of times sam Sianis, who led in Socrates in nineteen seventy three, or tried to, they brought him back and with other descendants of Murphy over the course of a few decades. He would walk the goat around the field and say like, we're lifting the curse. We're lifting the curse, right.
Yeah.
Remember they only had four postseason appearances nineteen eighty four, eighty ninety eight, and two thousand and three. That's right, All four of those postseason appearances came on years when they brought in Murphy's descendants to try to lift the curse.
Okay, this is what I want to know. Were those the only four times they brought the descendant in.
Those Yes, as far as I understand, yes, those were the only four times over that span of those years when they brought him in as I'm.
Pretty sure I think that seals the deal. Then this one is actually real.
Yes, and Chuck, they finally removed the curses twenty sixteen, Samseyanis did with help from the ghost of Murphy.
Yeah. So in this case, Sam Siannis rang the Trocanie bell that was worn by the original goat in the nineteen forty five World Series and that year, as everyone knows, in twenty sixteen, the Cubs won at all. They beat the Cleveland Indians and it was kind of one of the great World Series. It ended in very dramatic fashion.
Yeah, it went into extra innings in Game seven.
And I think that was the game that he rang the bell, right.
Yeah, I apparently he rang it while they were going into extra innings in the club one.
That's incredible.
Yeah, as they say, Cubs win, Cubs win, Cubs win.
Man, that is a great Harry Carey.
Let's move on, Chuck, Let's head on over to Hong Kong.
That's right. Jackie Chan one of my favorites. Although I haven't seen a movie APIs in a while, we did watch the and I had never seen them. I might have talked about it on the show, but the one with Owen Wilson, The Westerns. What were those? I knew Changhai Noon, Shanghai Noon and It's sequel, and I don't know why I never saw those, and they were both quite delightful, especially to watch with, you know, like a nine or ten year old.
How do you know they were delightful if you've not seen him?
No, I did see them.
Oh I see, okay.
I had not seen them up until like last year when I finally saw them.
Gotcha. Yeah, he does make some pretty delightful movies. Rumbling the Bronx was pretty good.
I love that one.
Yeah, the Rush Hours were fairly fine.
I did not see those.
They were watchable. Chris Tucker is pretty great. I like Chris Tucker at any rate. Jackie Chan is pretty big in the West, but he is He can eclipse the sun in China. He's been an enormous star since the eighties when he started starring in movies. He started out as a stuntman and he kind of came well, I don't want to stay on the other side of the camera.
But he actually started acting in front of a camera that was rolling in filming essentially, but as himself, not as some other actor, I guess is what I'm trying to say. When he and then he became a star very quickly. And this is a time well in the entire world where the Internet wasn't around, but I think China had access to it even later than other people, so the choice of stars to choose from was much more limited, which let Jackie Chan just get bigger and
bigger and bigger over the year. So he's huge in China, he is.
And my friend, I think you missed your calling. You could have been a director with your neck for the vernacular.
Yes, maybe the snort chuck.
All right, so Jackie Chan gets famous in the United States. Finally, that Rumble in the Bronx that you mentioned was his I think his first big American film in nineteen ninety five. I'm not going to count the Canniball Run movies.
Was he in that?
Yeah?
In the original ones?
I mean truly, they haven't been remade, right.
I think they have? Have they? Really? I think I'd just say stuff though sometimes he.
Was in he was in Cannonball Run. Okay, like waite a minute, now, I'm doubting myself. I'm pretty sure. Remember there were the two you know, the two. I think they were supposed to be Japanese in the movie that didn't speak English, that were racing, and I think Jackie Chan was one of them. But now I'm doubting myself. I don't know, we'll look it up.
Maybe I thought they only used Italian actors to play Japanese people.
Beat Well, yeah, that's true old Hollywood. But here's where Jackie Chan's curse comes in, because he has endorsed a lot of brands over the years as a pitch person, and a lot of those brands have gone out of business after he pitched them.
Yeah, so much so that there's a what they call a Jackie Chan curse where if you are going to take advantage of his fame, basking in the glow of his glory, and say, hold this product while I take a photo of you, and then turn that photo into billboards and maybe we'll have you move around with my product and turn those into actual commercials too that will
put on television. You do so at your own risk, because there's a lot of companies that have taken a nose dive after they hired him as their pitch man.
That's right, by the way, confirmed that was Jackie Chan and Cannonball Run Wowie. But I have a feeling he didn't speak English at the time, and I don't think the character spoke English, so it didn't matter.
Yeah, he learned everything he knows about acting from Dom Delauise.
Maybe. So who I met when I was six years old?
Oh?
Yeah, yeah, I met Don Delouise walking around Stowe Mountain Park one time, and I was delighted because I was a big, big Cannonball Run fan. And he signed a envelope. My mom had a you know when you get autographs in those days before the selfie, and my mom had a bill like with the little cellophane window, and he signed that envelope. So somewhere in my past had Tom Delawi's name scribbled on a bill to Georgia Bout.
That's wonderful.
Yeah. So should we read through some of these that went out of business?
Yeah, because some of them went out of business in fairly dramatic fashion too.
Yeah, I'm going to pick this one. Then the Seinear Frozen Dumpling Company went out of business after staff was found in their dumplings.
Yeah. There's a company that made video compact discs, also known as VCDs, they went bankrupt and the head of the company went to jail for fraud after they hired him.
Wait, is a VCD something VCDs? So did that predate the DBD?
Yes? I believe it did.
Wow, I've never heard of this. That's and it wasn't like obviously the big platter like laser disc or whatever.
No, they were compact discs actually, and they were video compact discs. I don't know what year this was, huh, but it does. Crazy. Yeah, I think it does predate the DVDs, or else they would just call them DVDs.
Yeah, I guess you're right. Here's what forya. Do you know what DVD stands for?
Direct to video direct?
I think a lot of people. In fact, I heard our pal Scott Ackerman on his movie show Scott Hasn't Seen the other day said digital video disc and I was going to text him and shame him, but I didn't. But it's actual, actually digital versatile disc.
Oh that's yeah. You can call it a DVD or a VCD, so it is quite versatile, all right.
An air conditioning company that Jackie chan Endors had a unit explode and sales dropped, and I don't know if they went out of business, but that's not a good look.
Also, there is a herbal hair lost shampoo called bah Wang, and I don't think they went out of business, but their sales obviously plummeted after it was misreported that it contained a carcinogen.
So oh.
There are also other brands where like their product just didn't get off the ground even though they had Jackie Chan as their pitchment. Volkswagen had a panel van called the Caddy that they just stopped making because no one was buying them. Fenn Wang Coola fizzled out. I see in every single article on the Jackie Chan curse. There was a children's computer called the sub or supe Boar learning machine. All of these just failed failed, failed. So Jackie Chan is clearly cursed, right.
That's right, clearly cursed. To be fair, Jackie Chan is one of those guys in his home country where they would just walk up to him and say, hey, we'll give you ten grand if you'll stand here for twenty five seconds and hold this thing. He was down with endorsing a lot of products, so you probably got about a fifty to fifty shot of a Jackie Chan product being endorsed and not doing so well.
So it's basically just the law of statistics that he's willing to pitch so many things that, of course some of them are going to be clunkers.
Right, Yeah, unless you count tennis.
Yeah, this Jackie Chan curse extended or just showed up or kind of spread its girth across the twenty twenty five Australian Open. Not one, not two, but three different tennis players who made it to the final rounds Arena Sabalanca, Alexander Zevrev and Jelena Ostapenko. They made it to the final rounds and all three of them lost their matches. After they met Jackie Chan and shook his hand. Wow,
that's really something. I wouldn't get too close to Jackie Chan if I had a business or was a professional athlete.
Owen Wilson did all right, did he?
Though?
I think, do you want to do this last one? Or should we call it a day?
Sure we can, we can call it a day.
Yeah, I think in true to our curse, we can never get to a full list, and everyone's just gonna have to wonder what this last curse was. I think I had heard it called the zero factor at one point, So let's just tease that.
Okay, we'll call it that. Uh, you got anything else about curses, Chuck?
I got nothing else.
Well, we got a the Wayback Machine in the shop because we don't normally use it this often, so it needs a good tune up by think, Yeah.
What's making a weird noise too, that plunky thing.
In the smoke too. Yeah. Well, since we just talked about the way Back Machine, that means it's time for a listener mail.
This is from Brett about our episode about Tippy Hedron getting the Vietnamese nail salon started in the United States. Hey, guys, to just listen to that episode, and it reminded me of a documentary called The Donut King about Ted And I don't know how to pronounce this n g o y He's Cambodian. I'm gonna say, you know what, I'm not going to try, Okay, but I know that ng e n is pronounced when.
Yeah, I think it's like n g y e n or something like that. But yeah, so this would be uy.
Maybe we're butchering this. I'm sorry, everybody, We're trying anyway, guys. I often wondered about why so many donut shops, especially here in southern California, are operated by Asian families. The documentary is about a Cambodian immigrant who opened a donut shop, then used it as a loophole to bring other Cambodian citizens over during Polepot's reign and train them to have their own donut shops, which he helped fund nat He ended up helping dozens, maybe even hundreds of families immigrate,
and he basically had a West Coast donut empire. He wasn't without his flaws, though, you should Know, and the documentary touches on that stuff, but totally worth watch. Maybe a candidate for a short stuff Thanks for entertaining me at work all day and keep up the nerdy work That is from Brett with one.
T nice Brett, thank you for that. Definitely hadn't heard that story and it sounds quite worth looking into. Yeah, if you want to be like Brett and recommend a great idea for short stuff or a regular episode, or say you go watch this documentary, we always welcome that. You can send it off to Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
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