Mall Memories on The Purple Stuff Podcast!

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When I need something, I just go on my Amazon app and order it. Obviously, that wasn’t always an option. The mall was the #1 place to go if you needed something, wanted to hang out with friends, or wanted to grab a quick meal. It was such a part of life that we would basically live at the mall all day on the weekends. The mall wasn’t just a place to buy stuff, but also to keep updated on what’s out, what’s trending, who’s holding hands with who, etc. Sounds a lot like a brick and mortar Twitter doesn’t it? In a way, it really was.

I was lucky, I grew up sandwiched in between 2 of the prominent New Jersey malls and it afforded me the opportunity to walk to either of them on a whim. I even worked at one of them through some of high school and college. To say that these malls are ingrained in my DNA would not be hyperbole. Being that I was spoiled in terms of my proximity to these giant malls, I’m sure a mall was even more of an event in a more rural state where a mall might have been one of the few big attractions for a night out.

All this lead Dinosaur Dracula and I to whip up a show all about our memories of The Mall. We stop into stores that we loved (Sam Goody, Spencer Gifts, and Heroes World to name a few!) and even drop by the food court! It was a fun time and I know you’ll be getting some flashbacks to a time when malls were the place to be. Check it out wherever you listen to your podcasts or you can click the link above to play it right here!

Thanks for reading and listening! If you would like to support The Purple Stuff Podcast, you can go to Patreon.com/PurpleStuff where we post a monthly exclusive bonus show!

Christmas Songs VI on the Purple Stuff Podcast!

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It’s astounding how quickly this year has flew by. That’s both good and bad because who wants this crappy year to drag on any longer than it has to, but at the same time, where the hell does time go? We’re already approaching 2021 and that blows my mind. For now though, it’s time for our annual Yuletide celebration on The Purple Stuff Podcast! Hopefully, a moose mug of egg nog and this episode will help you travel to that marshmallow world where all the BS of life vanishes for an hour.

We have arrived at our 6th installment of our annual Christmas Songs show! These are some of the most fun episodes for us and we hope you enjoy this one as much as you have in the past. Both Matt from DinoDrac and I love having Christmas songs on during the holidays and we compile songs that we think should have the spotlight each year. In our new installment, we’ve got quite an array of tunes including The Power Rangers and Kurt Russell! You read that correctly 🙂 There’s also a couple of tracks I highly doubt you will be hearing anyone else talk about this season so stay tuned for those as well.

Enjoy the episode and let us know what you think. A huge thank you goes out to you if you are reading this and always listening to the podcast, it’s so very much appreciated. On a personal note, I truly appreciate you supporting Sludge Central as well, i.e the occassional videos, the less frequent posts, the Sammi Curr swag and other product releases here and there.  It’s beyond awesome of you! I wish you Happy Holidays and a kickass new year that is exponentially better than the current one!

Purple Stuff Podcast: 2001 Thanksgiving Day Parade!

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It’s so hard to believe that the holidays are here are already. This year has obviously been abysmal for so many reasons, so The Purple Stuff Podcast is here to at least give you some good holiday feels. We’ve covered Thanksgiving Parades of the past on the show before, but this time we opted to go a little more modern. 2001 seemed like a perfect choice. The Tri State area was still in mourning after 9/11, NYC especially. What made this parade significant, was not only that it marked the 75th anniversary of the parade itself, but also the fact that the show went on despite the devastation that occurred in September. The idea was to come together with the American spirit at a difficult time and try to enjoy this annual tradition.

I watch the parade every year. As a person who isn’t the most hardcore Thanksgiving fan, the parade is a must for me, in fact, it’s not Thanksgiving without it. I could easily do without Turkey and Sweet Potatoes, but not without the parade. In the long lineage of the Macy’s Parade, this is one of the standouts, a show filled with a ton of uplifting, positive vibes.

In this episode, Matt from Dino Drac and I feast on a few of our favorite moments from the parade. It’s a given that these choices are probably not what you’d expect, well, aside from WWE, that’s an obvious selection. We’re also discussing Usher, Kenny G, Tim Curry and Pikachu!

Listen on your favorite podcast app, or click the link above. Thanks so much for all of your support throughout the years, it’s very much appreciated. We wouldn’t be able to do the show without you!

If you would like to be a part of our Patreon, please visit us at Patreon.com/PurpleStuff

Purple Stuff Podcast: VAMPIRES!

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The Purple Stuff Podcast recently turned 5 years old. What’s even more preposterous is that we’ve never done a show on VAMPIRES! Well, here it is folks. More than likely it won’t include the obvious selections that you’d think might get brought up. In this episode Dinosaur Dracula and I have gathered up quite a fiendish list for you. With the Halloween season kicking off, we’re here to help create that spooky atmosphere. You can hear us delve into Draculas and various vampires from all over pop culture, no limits here. This time around we’ve got animation, animatronics, and advertising. It’s all here for you to sink your teeth into! You can listen here or your favorite podcast app. As always, thank you so much for listening and reading. If you’d like to support the show, we are on Patreon where we present a monthly bonus show!

Purple Stuff Podcast: Friday the 13th: The Series

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The Purple Stuff Podcast returns with a new episode! In this one, we dissect a VHS recording of an episode of Friday the 13th: The Series from 1988. Dinosaur Dracula and I get into detail about the episode as well as many of the commercials that aired during the broadcast that night. There was some crazy stuff that went on in this ep and the commercials sandwiched in between will either bring you fondly back in time or make you seriously wonder about the ad wizards who made them. So let me run this down, we talk about Friday the 13th the Series, 7Up Gold, Roger Rabbit, a sports instructional video for a sport that I don’t even play, and a couple of defunct overpriced 1-900 HOTLINES! It’s a total smorgasbord. You might recall, we did a show like this previously focused on a VHS tape of Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter so check that one out if you haven’t yet. Thank you for listening and reading. As always, your support is very much appreciated and if you would like to support the podcast please visit us on Patreon.com/PurpleStuff

Recreating Harley Quinn’s PINK’ PUDDIN’ from Magnolia Bakery!

People pursue different things. Off the top of my head, I can think of the pursuit of happiness, the American dream, a higher salary, you know all those things. I pursue promotional tie-ins. Yesterday on a drive down the Garden State Parkway, I was reflecting on this and thinking how basically my entire existence has been defined by this chase. It’s something that’s always been in me. Baseball ignites passion in a lot of guys, while others love hunting and fishing, not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it’s just not in me. Driving to Manhattan like a maniac at 10:00pm on a weeknight in a torrential rainstorm merely to nab a couple of cardboard Birds of Prey crowns at a select Burger King location that’s jazzed up to promote the film – now THAT is my shit. The level of motivation you have to have for that kind of thing is pretty intense. That fire lead me to do something I wouldn’t ordinarily do: BAKE! And that baking lead me to document it on my website, something that I rarely get motivated to do. So here it is, please marvel at my madness for minutia.

Looking back, Birds of Prey had a proper theatrical run before this current quarantine climate. While it wasn’t as lucrative as it should have been, it received a ton of positivity from fans and critics. I saw it twice in theaters and it was easily in my top 3 DC movies thus far. I’ve obviously got a huge soft spot for Harley Quinn, so there’s that, but it’s still a bombastic, colorful, and frenetically fun film and that can’t be denied. No complaints from me in that area, especially since it was released early to digital an VOD. I was ecstatic to be watching it at home way sooner that I thought I’d be. Although, there was one missing piece for me in the promotional machine for the movie.

A quite legendary bakery in New York City, Magnolia, renowned for their cupcakes, was quietly offering an officially endorsed Harley Quinn themed dessert. I found out about this news late as I watched Margot Robbie get presented with it on a late night talk show that I DVR’d and watched a few days too late. SON OF A B! By the time I called Magnolia to see if any of their locations were still offering this delight, I was outright denied. The promotion seemed to have lasted maybe 2 weeks or possibly even less than that.

Their specialty banana pudding recipe was altered ever so slightly and branded with the Birds of Prey logo. In honor of Joker’s ex-squeeze, they even renamed it PINK PUDDIN’! Once I heard the lady on the phone from Magnolia tell me “NO, we stopped serving that,” it was naturally my mission in life to right the wrong that has clearly occurred. How could I have missed out on this? ME…the guy with Harley Quinn on his website header! My mission in life since early February became even clearer and not even the world shutting down could stop me from accomplishing it.

To qualify me as a “baker” would be an absolute farce. Truthfully, I do know my way around a kitchen, although I rarely put those skills into practice. In this case, I called myself on the Batphone and I sprang into action. If you saw me during this blitz of baking, the control and chutzpah on display was pretty remarkable considering I used my stove maybe 5 times in 15 years. My plan was to recreate Magnolia’s specialty banana “Pink Pudding’.” Banana pudding + pink cake crumbles + other nonsense = heaven? I didn’t even bother researching a copycat recipe which is what I’ve done for certain meals in the past. I felt compelled to just guess and wing it and whip this up myself using only THE FORCE a.k.a my intuition. How hard could it be to make banana pudding?

WARNING: I try my best to eat as healthy as I can in any situation, but in this case I went with all the standard ingredients. Ordinarily, I would opt for the healthier options. It’s probably super easy to make a vegan version or just a version that health conscious people don’t mind eating. This right here is a sugar coma waiting to happen, so be warned!

WHAT YOU NEED: Milk, Eggs, Butter (or oil), bananas, cake mix, sprinkles, a couple of colors of icing, instant pudding, measuring cup, large mixing bowls, electric mixer, cake pan, paper dessert cups with lid.

STEP 1:

I picked up banana cream instant pudding. It’s absurdly easy to make. To be honest, I haven’t made pudding since I was a kid with my mom in the kitchen. You throw the mix into a bowl with milk and whisk it for a few minutes and your pudding magically appears in the bowl. If all things in life were as easy as making pudding, we’d live in constant euphoria.

STEP 2:

I’m 99% sure there’s actual bananas in this dessert and it was important to me that I had at least some semblance of fruit in this otherwise it would be literally 100% garbage for you. I bought some of those monster bananas you see in the produce section that were clearly injected with BANE venom. I sliced these babies up real nice and threw them directly into the pudding. Mixed it up, covered the bowl in plastic wrap and threw it in the fridge while I worked on the other stuff.

STEP 3:

Bake a cake! First, pre-heat your oven to the temp. that the box tells you to and then move onto the cake mix. I bought the pink cake because PINK is in the title and the colors are important. The Harley “caution tape” costume in Birds of Prey is the inspiration here in my view, so the more vibrant the better. In this case, I started to add my own spin. If the cake mix you buy calls for oil, that’s fine, but if it calls for butter, make sure the butter is softened and not hard as a rock. That is a key so your cake isn’t lumpy. Nobody wants lumpy cake. In a mixing bowl, throw in some water, your cake mix, eggs, and butter (or oil). This is where you blend it all together until it’s smooth with an electric mixer. Some of you have fancy Kitchen-Aid contraptions, but an electric hand mixer is all you need.

STEP 4:

Once your cake mix is all nice and blended, ensure your pan is greased and floured and then pour the pink goo evenly into the pan (I used a 13×9 pan.) I tried to make sure that the pink sludge (SLIME – it’s a river of slime!) covered all the real estate on the bottom of the pan. Get this baby into the oven. Follow the suggested time range on the back of the box. My cake cooked a little over 30 minutes which was slightly longer than directed. When you remove the cake, stick a knife or toothpick into the cake and when you take it out, if there’s batter lingering on it, it needs more time. If it comes out clean, remove the cake and place it somewhere to completely cool off (away from the hot oven.)

STEP 5:

When the cake is fully cooled off (I left it overnight) you can begin the icing process. To replicate the vibrant, multicolored Harley costume with pinks and blues and yellows etc, I suggest picking up at least 3 colors of icing and fun sprinkles. Pink and yellow were my main colors, but I also used cream cheese icing since I read somewhere that Magnolia uses that in their banana pudding. Next, I separated the cake into 3 sections and iced them accordingly. If the cake crumbles at any point, it’s fine, you’re going to need it to do that anyway. When you are all good and iced, pretend you’re Tinkerbell and sprinkle the Pixie Dust all over the cake.

STEP 6:

Take one of your paper dessert cups and begin to form your PINK PUDDIN’. This is not a science by any means, especially since I have absolutely no clue how this is actually made. To me, that’s what makes this great, each dessert cup is a work of art, it’s like Joker fixing the paintings in the Flugelheim Art Museum. Throw a little puddin’ in to start at the bottom, and then throw in a small piece of cake over in this corner, and on that corner make sure there’s some more pudding but ensure there’s an actual banana included, then take a small chunk from another section of the cake to get that multicolored appearance. While you are forming this, use a spoon to mash it together a little bit, all while attempting to keep the colors separated. Once you are reaching the top of the cup, use a spatula or any similar utensil to flatten off the excess and then close it up with the lid and into the fridge it goes until you are ready to enjoy it.

WRAP-UP

I went to the next level to try to make this as accurate as possible, even going to the extent of printing out the actual labels Magnolia used. I used a graphics program to isolate the sticker from a picture I found on Instagram. Then I had to order printer ink because I never use my printer. It was covered in dust! Printed those babies out and taped them right onto the top of the container.  I have to say, this dessert was ridiculously delicious. I know a lot of people hate bananas and anything remotely banana-flavored, but this is a must try. The standout for me was the cake, once the cake sits in the container in the fridge it starts to absorb the flavors of the icing and the pudding and it’s just all so wonderful. It’s a very sweet and rich dessert and I have a feeling it was a pretty close stand-in for the real thing, even though I have no backing to say that. Even if it wasn’t close, getting shut out of a Birds of Prey promotional food tie-in motivated me enough to “do a thing.” I will always have this experience to carry with me now and I was able to share it with you. It’s amazing how getting told NO can make you do some absolutely WILD shit…like turning on your oven!

The Halloween Special 2019 Is HERE!

I usually don’t think it’s necessary to go into a whole explanation of what The Halloween Special is all about, so I will let it speak for itself. What I can tell you is that, as always, we had fun making this and I think it really shows. The work that I put into it on a personal front usually brings me to the brink of death, but in the end it’s all worth it. I get 3 or 4 hours of sleep for about a month straight due to late night editing and filming pick up shots and b-roll. Do I take this too seriously? Maybe, but it’s what I love. It’s not like I’m making the Shining, but it’s nice to have dreams.

I pushed really hard to make this one move quicker and have a run time that was roughly in line with a TV sitcom episode. I would love to talk about my inspirations but a few of them would be spoilery. One of them isn’t though and that’s the Rocky Horror Picture Show. It’s NOTHING like that and nowhere near that epic level, but I always aspire to those heights. This was more of a nostalgic type of fun party romp and I hope you have fun watching it. Happy Halloween and there is a quite a bit more to come this season between more videos from me AND also coming to you is more Purple Stuff Podcast with me and Dino Drac! Thanks to everyone who helped me make this Special happen. From the title intro to the music to the cast, it’s always a labor of love. If you haven’t yet seen what brought us to the party, go back and watch the previous 7 installments! They’re all there in a neat little playlist.

THE PURPLE STUFF PODCAST’S SUMMER SATURDAYS KICKS OFF!!!

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The hot, blazing summer has come for all of us. Just think, if we make it out alive we are one step closer to the Halloween season! At least that’s my incentive to persevere through these hellish, humid days. Even though it’s my least favorite season, I admit that theres so much to enjoy about it. If you can deal with swamp ass and drenching back sweat then you’ll have no problem appreciating the finer things that the summer has to offer. To encapsulate it all into one tiny nostalgic trip, The Purple Stuff Podcast is very excited to bring to you SUMMER SATURDAYS! We look at this as a way for you to savor the summer while sipping Shasta cans in the yard.

What is Summer Saturdays you ask? Essentially, me and Matt will be bringing you a new podcast every Saturday throughout July focusing on some of the highlights of summer for us. We’ll be presenting a variety of different themes during this extravaganza, but first, to kick things off, we have a music show for you compiling our summer playlists. You know us by now, we intentionally try to avoid the typical fare in favor of spotlighting the slightly more obscure stuff.

Whacked out is the best way to describe the variety on this episode. From songs heard in horror films to more songs heard in horror films to a member of the Mickey Mouse Club, to The Lost Boys on the beach, to fun with Phoebe Cates it’s just bananas. Check this one out if you’re chilling by your pool, doing yard work, *PAINTING THE FENCE, or just living that sloth life on your couch in the air conditioning. It’s a fun way to kick off your summer and we’ve got a lot more in store for you this month so stay tuned!

Thank you for listening to the show! If you would like to support The Purple Stuff Podcast we greatly appreciate your help! You can spread the word to friends IRL, leave us a positive review on iTunes, share us on social media, or join in the fun on our Patreon where we present a monthly bonus show exclusively for our “Patronies.” Thanks again and we hope your summer kicks ass.

*Can you name what movie this references? That’s another hint to a movie that gets brought up in this episode thanks to the awesome summer song!