Some Interesting Curses

9:13Josh Clark:They all burned down in 1930 and 1931. So he was like, all right, I guess this place really is cursed. I'm out of here.

9:21Chuck Bryant: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 Vermonter website. There's like a couple of 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?

9:53Josh Clark: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 is 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?

10:08Chuck Bryant:Yeah, it's great. That's a great end to that story.

10:11Josh Clark:Agreed.

10:12Chuck Bryant:And the curse was able to fall back asleep.

10:15Josh Clark:Go back to sleep, don't curse. And you're going to wake up in Hollywood, California.

10:20Chuck Bryant:Well, hold on. Let's have Jerry put some interstitial Christmas music in between these.

10:29Josh Clark:All right. So hooray for Hollywood. This is one I had heard of before, The Curse of Atuk. It's a pretty well-regarded curse as far as, you know, in Hollywood circles. There was a script based on a book. It was a 1963 satirical Canadian novel called The Incomparable Atuk by Mordecai Rickler. And it's about an Inuit hunter and poet from Canada who was discovered by a documentary crew and brought back to the big city of Toronto. And, 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 Atuk is in the city, it's like a fish out of water story.

11:11Josh Clark: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.

11:17Chuck Bryant:Yeah.

11:18Josh Clark:And so he wants to fit in there and live that life and eventually runs for office. You're right.

11:23Chuck Bryant: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.

11:34Josh Clark:That's right. And there was actually a line in Atuk where he had a knife pulled on him and he said, that is a knife. That was really worth the effort. It really was.

11:43Chuck Bryant:You got there eventually. It took me four 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 in her hands.

11:54Josh Clark:This needs to go in our blooper reel that Jerry doesn't do anymore.

11:58Chuck Bryant:I know. So, what? The book came out in 1968, and it was optioned within three years. 63, but yeah. 63? I thought it was 68. Oh, okay. So, yeah, I guess it took a little while for the Americans to catch on. The script was purchased. It took a few years to turn it into a script to adapt it. And when they did adapt it, they Americanized it so that Atuk didn't come from the great northern reaches of Canada. Atuk came from Alaska, and he wasn't taken to Toronto. He was taken to New York, right?

12:34Josh Clark:Yeah. Yeah.

12:35Chuck Bryant: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 is this actually kind of rare?

12:53Josh Clark: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 10 % of those get made into movies. Maybe not even.

13:05Chuck Bryant:Wow. Well, this was one of them. It was passed around Hollywood for years and years and years. It just never got made. But over the years, there were plenty of people who were like, this is a great script. I want to do this movie. And the first to step up came in 1982, the beginning of 1982. to an actor named John Belushi, I think. I think it's Belushi. Belushi, sorry. He got his hands on it and he's like, I love this script. I'm going to 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 Belushi died.

13:47Josh Clark:Yeah, he died very sadly at age 33 in the Chateau Marmont Hotel from doing drugs from a speedball. Yes. Very famously. I get the picture of Duk as probably a big fella. Yeah. Because everybody that is 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 Kinison, the great comedian, signed on in 1988. And they actually started filming, right?

14:19Chuck Bryant:I think they got eight days into it.

14:22Josh Clark:Okay.

14:23Chuck Bryant:Did you know, real quick, Sam Kinison was a fire and brimstone itinerant preacher?

14:29Josh Clark:Yeah.

14:29Chuck Bryant:I did not know that he started out like that. It 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 Kinison hadn't really read the script because after that point, he was like, hey, I really want some more say in like what the script rewrites are going to do. And the studio was like, we're not really happy about that. And Kinison 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 filed a lawsuit against them.

15:01Josh Clark:Yeah, it got pretty ugly. So production was obviously halted. And it was still sort of being contested when Sam Kinison very sadly died in a car wreck in 1992 at age 38.

15:15Chuck Bryant:Okay. All right. That's a little weird so far. Two actors who tried to play Atuk 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, Atuk, the script, claimed more lives. That's right.

15:37Josh Clark:In 1996, screenwriter Michael O'Donohue, who I believe was an SNL guy.

15:42Chuck Bryant:Yes.

15:43Josh Clark:The original script writer, I looked him up. I can't remember his name now. Maybe it was Todd Carroll or something. He was a National Lampoon guy. Right. And maybe Michael O'Donohue was too. So it was kind of in 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 43 of a heart attack. And O'Donohue also died of a cerebral hemorrhage at 58. 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.

16:22Chuck Bryant:Okay, good. Thank you for that. One other thing about that, John Candy and Michael O'Donohue died the same year in 1996 which was also the same year that they decided to make this movie.

16:37Josh Clark:Was that not clear?

16:38Chuck Bryant: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 Atuk came to an end after John Candy and Michael O'Donoghue. No, no.

17:01Josh Clark:No, I think you know who's coming. Very sadly, if there's one more person kind of waiting in the wings for this kind of role, it's Chris Farley, of course. In 1997, 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.

17:21Chuck Bryant:Yeah, that same year. Same year. Yeah, Chris Farley died. That's right. The next year, Phil Hartman died. We did a whole episode on him.

17:31Josh Clark:Yeah, that was a good one.

17:33Chuck Bryant:Yeah. So, I mean, there's a bunch of deaths of people tagged on to a took. And a 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 at Tales from Development Hell website, they did a pretty good article on this. And they pointed out that if a took is a killer script, there's other killer scripts out there that all those same people were attached to. At least Belushi, Kinnison, Candy, and Farley were.

18:06Josh Clark:Yeah, very famously, the great, great book, A Confederacy of Dunces, has never been made. And there have been just tons and tons of people attached. I think Philip Seymour Hoffman was attached to that as well. And he passed away. I think Will Ferrell was attached. There's been a lot of people attached because it's just such a great, great book. Did you ever read that?

18:24Chuck Bryant:No. Is it just about like Southern foibles or is it like better, bigger? It's better. Okay.

18:33Josh Clark:Yeah, it's good.

18:34Chuck Bryant:What's a foible? Just a unique kind of sometimes negative characteristic or trait 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 going to love that person. How about that?

18:51Josh Clark:Oh, so I have many foibles.

18:53Chuck Bryant:Oh, I have a lot of foibles too. Yeah.

18:57Josh Clark:What's the other one? The Fatty Arbuckle biopic. All those guys were attached to that at one point as well.

19:03Chuck Bryant:That's weird that all of those guys and Philip Seymour Hoffman were attached to 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 in defense of Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly 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, 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 Rotten Tomatoes.

19:36Josh Clark:It's supposed to be just one of the worst movies. So I'm glad you liked it.

19:39Chuck Bryant:That is wrong. I mean, if you're going in looking for any kind of highbrow cinema, yes, you're going to be deeply disappointed. But if you're familiar with the cinema of John C. Reilly and Will Ferrell together, you're going to actually be pleasantly surprised, especially if you think you're going in there like this movie kind of sucks. It's cute. It's a good movie as far as those movies are concerned.

20:00Josh Clark:I want to check it out now. Well, yeah. Was there a Catalina wine mixer in that one?

20:06Chuck Bryant:No, there was not. No, nothing like that. It was a very it was true to the period.

20:12Josh Clark:Well, I kind of want to see it now.

20:14Chuck Bryant:So you should see it. I texted you and told you to see it. This is what it takes for you to finally listen to me? All right.

20:21Josh Clark:I'm going to go ponder my foibles, and we'll be back after this.

20:25Chuck Bryant:You came along, and it was like, bing!

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23:29Chuck Bryant:Okay, Chuck, we're going to head on over to present-day Uzbekistan, and there you'll find that I had already parked the Wayback Machine, so let's get in.

23:44Josh Clark:That's right. And we are talking about the curse of Tamerlame, 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. Right. Very much an antiquated term, but that was what they called Timur. And it was then anglicized to Tamerlame, T-A-M-E-R-L-A-N-E, Tamerlame, not lame. Right. Right. So maybe they were already getting the picture. Like, it's not a nice thing to say.

24:15Chuck Bryant:Right. He was a 14th century Mongol warlord. I don't know if he was a descendant, probably, but he was certainly a successor to Genghis Khan or Chinggis Khan. And very much like Chinggis Khan, he was responsible for the deaths of lots and lots of people. The number that I see bandied about most frequently is 17 million people. Oh, geez. Which even more impressive is that that is about 5 % of the entire global population at the time. That's how many people died as a result of Tamerlane's conquests.

24:49Josh Clark:Yeah. And I think by impressive, you mean depressing.

24:51Chuck Bryant:Sure. Yes, exactly. I mean, if you are impressed by large numbers, regardless what they represent, that's all I mean.

24:59Josh Clark:Yeah. So what are you into? Large numbers.

25:03Chuck Bryant:Yeah. Listen to this one. 17 million. Whoa. So I'm very impressed. What are you talking about? Deaths?

25:11Josh Clark:This date is over. So he was known as the Scourge of God, and he was a member of the Barlas tribe, or the Barlas tribe. And, well, you already spoiled that one in what is now Uzbekistan. And he was, you know, he did what they do. He sacked cities all over the place, Moscow, Persia, Delhi, 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.

25:38Chuck Bryant:Yeah, I mean, as far as conquerors and all the terrible things that's attendant with being a conqueror or being conquered by a conqueror, he is often placed on equal footing with Darius I, Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan again.

25:52Josh Clark:And Darius Rucker.

25:54Chuck Bryant:Yeah, exactly. Wait, as the hooty frontman or as a country star?

26:00Josh Clark:I think he's conquered all.

26:02Chuck Bryant:Okay, well then, yeah, Darius Rucker makes sense. One of the things, though, is about some of these conquerors, including Tamerlane, he was also credited with spreading a lot of culture, too. And there's actually a type of architecture, architectural style called Timurid, and that you can find in the capital city of Samarkand 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.

26:34Josh Clark:You were trying to find something positive.

26:36Chuck Bryant:Sure. If you go look up pictures of that kind of architectural style, you'd be like, wow, that guy was impressive.

26:43Josh Clark:Yeah, it's very nice. I know you guys are all going like, okay, geez, guys, is he cursed or not? Yes. So it turns out there was a curse. He died in 1405. During his last campaign, he fell ill. and he was put in an ebony coffin and entombed in a mausoleum at a mosque in Samarkand. And he was there just, you know, entombed as a dead person for about 500 years until Stalin came along in 1941 and said, you know what? I want to see if this guy truly had apparently the lame, and again, I hate even using that word, But his issue was that he had issues with both his right limbs, his right arm and his right leg.

27:26Josh Clark:And Stalin sounds like he wanted to get down to the nitty gritty and see if that was really true.

27:31Chuck Bryant: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.

27:47Josh Clark:Yeah, yeah.

27:47Chuck Bryant:One of the other points of the expedition was that the leader of the expedition, Mikhail Jerezimov, yeah, he was a renowned forensic reconstructionist. So he was going to take Tamerlane's skull and basically do a lifelike likeness of him from it, right? So here's the problem with all that. There was an inscription, they say, on Timur's tomb that read, Whosoever disturbs my grave shall unleash a conqueror greater than I. So they enter Timur's tomb. They disentomb him, I guess is what you would call that. Exhume him? Yeah, but I think exhume means take out of the ground. This is taking out of the tomb, right?

28:32Chuck Bryant: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.

28:55Josh Clark:And how many days later was this?

28:57Chuck Bryant:Two. Just two? Yeah, two. Two days after they disentombed Timur. The setting of two suns. That's all. I actually saw it put like that.

29:10Josh Clark:So, yeah, it was a massive invasion. Nearly 4 million German and Axis troops flooded there to help out. Like you said, it's the largest invasion in history. And as many as 16 million, not quite 17, 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.

29:40Chuck Bryant: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 1.1 million soldiers in fighting in just this one city, right? The Battle of Stalingrad ended about the same time that Stalin ordered Timur's remains to be re-entombed.

30:12Josh Clark: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. are. But here's the deal. The curse is kind of not only obviously our curse is not real, but this one doesn't even seem to be real at all, right?

30:41Chuck Bryant:Yeah. Like Stalin couldn't have even gotten cagey about the curse because it seems to have been invented not until 2003. Yeah.

30:50Josh Clark:And how did that happen?

30:51Chuck Bryant:Well, our friend Craig Collins on the site Hidden Compass, he's the one who said two two sons set before the Nazis invaded for real. He had a really good article about it. He found a Russian documentary from 2003, and they mention, I get the sense it's a very History Channel-esque documentary from Russia. They mention 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 disentomb 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.

31:39Chuck Bryant:We know for a fact it was not inscribed on his tomb because that same Soviet team that entombed Timur, 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. 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.

32:15Josh Clark:Yeah, America's pastime. We're not going to talk about the curse of the Bambino and 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.

32:34Chuck Bryant:Yeah. I tell everybody Wrigley Field's the easiest ballpark to just walk right into. It's wonderful.

32:40Josh Clark:Yeah, it's the best. You don't even need a ticket.

32:42Chuck Bryant: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 6, 1945, 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.

33:14Josh Clark: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$7.20 a piece, 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.

33:54Josh Clark:That's my best Simpsons guy.

33:56Chuck Bryant:That was pretty close, too.

33:58Josh Clark:Pretty good. Yeah. And so they rejected him and he was not allowed to come in.

34:04Chuck Bryant:No. And so Sienis, I mean, he was fairly well known. I don't know if connected is 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 1934 and wandered into the Lincoln Tavern. And Sianus was like, you're now the mascot. Apparently, he even formally adopted Murphy through court. And Murphy had a great home. So these guys have been friends for over 10 years by the time this incident happened. So Sianus is like, you know what? I got just enough clout to get in touch with Philip K.

34:46Chuck Bryant:Wrigley. I want him to say I can't come in before I'll accept it.

34:51Josh Clark: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 at the tavern. And Wrigley 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, Wrigley 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.

35:24Chuck Bryant:So Siennis was like, I'm not going to take this sitting down. He stood up. He said, my pride has been wounded. You have 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 going to 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.

36:01Chuck Bryant:Either way, they got cursed because Murphy was not allowed to sit and watch the game.

36:05Josh Clark: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.

36:14Chuck Bryant:You came along and it was like, yeah,

36:23Josh Clark:well, we were work pals.

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39:56Josh Clark:Cubs lose! That was great. That's exactly what happened. They lost that game. They lost the World Series to the Tigers. And Sianus apparently sent a telegram that said, who stinks now?

40:12Chuck Bryant:Yeah.

40:13Josh Clark:And the curse of the billy goat was born. And for the rest of the 20th century and well into the 21st century, The Cubs were, you know, a 500-ish team. They didn't do so great. They had about 15 winning seasons over that span from 46 to 2003, finished first place three times, no pennants, no World Series appearances, and just four postseason appearances.

40:38Chuck Bryant: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 15 winning seasons over 57 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.

41:25Josh Clark: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 1973, the new owner of the Billy Goat Tavern, Sam Sianus, 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 is 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.

42:07Josh Clark:What I don't get is they really, like, set this all up with a red carpet and still didn't let him in? Like, so the Cubs were not involved?

42:13Chuck Bryant:No, they weren't involved. There was, I think, a Chicago Tribune columnist who was kind of helping with the whole thing. Okay. And the Cubs were not, I guess, informed ahead of time or—

42:25Josh Clark:Like, surely they knew this was coming. There was a red carpet out there.

42:27Chuck Bryant: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 1973. 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.

43:01Josh Clark:They're like, if you can have a bunch of guys racing around the field in a foot race dressed as hardware and tools.

43:08Chuck Bryant:Yeah.

43:10Josh Clark:Or at least that's what they have at the Braves Stadium.

43:12Chuck Bryant:Is it just the Braves? I've wondered.

43:14Josh Clark: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 in some cities it's like a sausage races a bratwurst, races a hot dog.

43:25Chuck Bryant:I'll bet I can guess those cities.

43:27Josh Clark:Yeah, it's a drill that races a hammer and like a wrench 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.

43:41Chuck Bryant:Right. So they did. There were actually a number of times Sam Sienis, who led in Socrates in 1973 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.

43:59Josh Clark:Yeah.

44:00Chuck Bryant:Remember, they only had four postseason appearances, 1984, 89, 98 and 2003.

44:07Josh Clark:That's right.

44:07Chuck Bryant:All four of those postseason appearances came on years when they brought in Murphy's descendants to try to lift the curse.

44:15Josh Clark:OK, this is what I want to know. Were those the only four times they brought the descendant in?

44:22Chuck Bryant: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. I'm pretty sure.

44:31Josh Clark:I think that seals the deal then. It does. This one is actually real.

44:35Chuck Bryant:Yes. And, Chuck, they finally removed the curse in 2016. Sam Siennis did with help from the ghost of Murphy. Yeah.

44:44Josh Clark:So in this case, Sam Siennes rang the Trocani bell that was worn by the original GOAT in the 1945 World Series. And that year, as everyone knows, in 2016, the Cubs won it all. They beat the Cleveland Indians, and it was kind of one of the great World Series. It ended in very dramatic fashion.

45:04Chuck Bryant:Yeah. It went into extra innings in Game 7.

45:07Josh Clark:And I think that was the game that he rang the bell, right?

45:10Chuck Bryant:Yeah, apparently he rang it while they were going into extra innings in the Cubs one.

45:16Josh Clark:That's incredible.

45:17Chuck Bryant:Yeah. As they say, Cubs win. Cubs win. Cubs win.

45:23Josh Clark:Man, that is a great Harry Carey.

45:25Chuck Bryant:Let's move on, Chuck. Let's head on over to Hong Kong. That's right.

45:31Josh Clark:Jackie Chan, one of my favorites. Although I haven't seen a movie of his in a while. We did watch the, and I had never seen them. I might have talked about this on the show, but the one with Owen Wilson, the Westerns, what were those? Shanghai Noon. Shanghai Noon. And its 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 9 or 10-year-old.

45:53Chuck Bryant:How do you know they were delightful if you've not seen them?

45:56Josh Clark:No, I did see them.

45:58Chuck Bryant:Oh, I see. Okay.

45:59Josh Clark:I had not seen them up until, like, last year when we finally saw them.

46:02Chuck Bryant:Gotcha. Yeah, he does make some pretty delightful movies. Rumble in the Bronx was pretty good.

46:06Josh Clark:I love that one, yeah.

46:09Chuck Bryant:The Rush Hours were fairly fine. I did not see those. They were watchable. Chris Tucker is pretty great.

46:17Josh Clark:I like Chris Tucker.

46:18Chuck Bryant: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 80s when he started starring in movies. He started out as a stuntman, and he kind of came, well, I don't want to say on the other side of the camera, but he actually started acting in front of a camera that was rolling and filming, essentially. But as himself, not as some other actor, I guess is what I'm trying to say. 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.

46:57Chuck Bryant: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 years. So he's huge in China.

47:07Josh Clark:He is. And my friend, I think you missed your calling. You could have been a director with your knack for the vernacular. You just made me 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 1995. I'm not going to count the Cannonball Run movies.

47:34Chuck Bryant:Oh, was he in that? Yeah. In the original ones?

47:38Josh Clark:I mean, surely they haven't been remade, right?

47:40Chuck Bryant:I think they have. Have they really? I think. I just say stuff, though, sometimes.

47:45Josh Clark:He was in Cannonball Run.

47:47Chuck Bryant:Okay.

47:48Josh Clark:Like, wait 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.

48:03Chuck Bryant:I thought they only used Italian actors to play Japanese people back then.

48:07Josh Clark:Oh, 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.

48:22Chuck Bryant:Yeah, so much so that there's 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 we'll put on television. You do so at your own risk because there's a lot of companies that have taken a nosedive after they hired him as their pitch man.

48:52Josh Clark:That's right. By the way, confirmed. That was Jackie Chan in Cannonball Run. Wowee. 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.

49:02Chuck Bryant:Yeah. He learned everything he knows about acting from Dom DeLuise.

49:07Josh Clark:Maybe so. Who I met when I was six years old.

49:10Chuck Bryant:Oh, yeah? Yeah.

49:11Josh Clark:I met Dom DeLuise walking around Stow 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 Deluise name scribbled on a bill to Georgia Power.

49:38Chuck Bryant:That's wonderful.

49:40Josh Clark:Yeah. So should we read through some of these that went out of business?

49:44Chuck Bryant:Yeah, because some of them went out of business in fairly dramatic fashion, too.

49:47Josh Clark:Yeah, I'm going to pick this one then. The Sineer Frozen Dumpling Company went out of business after staff was found in their dumplings.

49:57Chuck Bryant: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.

50:08Josh Clark:Wait, is a VCD something? VCDs. So did that predate the DVD?

50:14Chuck Bryant:Yes, I believe it did. Wow.

50:17Josh Clark:I've never heard of this. And it wasn't like, obviously, the big platter, like, LaserDisc or whatever.

50:22Chuck Bryant:No. They were compact discs, actually, and they were video compact discs. I don't know what year this was. Huh. But it does. That's crazy. Yeah, I think it does predate the DVDs or else they would have just called them DVDs.

50:34Josh Clark:Yeah, I guess you're right. Here's one for you. Do you know what DVD stands for?

50:39Chuck Bryant:Direct to Video Direct.

50:43Josh Clark:I think a lot of people, in fact, I heard our pal Scott Aukerman 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 actually digital versatile disc.

50:56Chuck Bryant:Oh, that's the, yeah, because. Strange little tidbit. You can call it a DVD or a VCD. So it is quite versatile. All right.

51:04Josh Clark:An air conditioning company that Jackie Chan endorsed 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.

51:14Chuck Bryant:Also, there is an herbal hair loss shampoo called Ba 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 there are also other brands where like their product just didn't get off the ground, even though they had Jackie Chan as their pitchman. Volkswagen had a panel van called the Caddy that they just stopped making because no one was buying them. Fen Wang Cola fizzled out. I see in every single article on the Jackie Chan curse. There was a children's computer called the Subor Learning Machine. All of these just failed, failed, failed.

51:52Chuck Bryant:So Jackie Chan is clearly cursed, right?

51:54Josh Clark: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 10 grand if you'll stand here for 25 seconds and hold this thing. He was down with endorsing a lot of products. So you probably got about a 50-50 shot of a Jackie Chan product being endorsed and not doing so well.

52:19Chuck Bryant: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?

52:27Josh Clark:Yeah, unless you count tennis.

52:29Chuck Bryant:Yeah, this Jackie Chan curse extended or just showed up or kind of spread its girth across the 2025 Australian Open. Not one, not two, but three different tennis players who made it to the final rounds. Arena Sabalenka, Alexander Zevrov, 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?

53:09Josh Clark:Do you want to do this last one or should we call it a day?

53:13Chuck Bryant:Sure. We can call it a day.

53:16Josh Clark:Yeah. I think true to our curse, we can never get through a full list. And everyone's just going to 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.

53:31Chuck Bryant:Okay, we'll call it that. You got anything else about curses, Chuck?

53:36Josh Clark:I got nothing else.

53:37Chuck Bryant:Well, we got to put the Wayback Machine in the shop because we don't normally use it this often. So it needs a good tune up, I think. Yeah, it's making a weird noise, too. That clunky thing. And the smoke, too. Yeah. Well, since we just talked about the Wayback Machine, that means it's time for a listener mail.

53:56Josh Clark:This is from Brett about our episode about Tippi Hedren getting the Vietnamese nail salon started in the United States. Hey, guys, I just listened 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 going to say, you know what? I'm not going to try.

54:18Chuck Bryant:Okay. But I know that N-G-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 Yoy? Yoy? Maybe.

54:35Josh Clark: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 Pol Pot's reign and trained them to have their own donut shops, which he helped fund. Neat. 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.

55:10Josh Clark:But totally worth a watch. Maybe a candidate for short stuff. Thanks for entertaining me at work all day and keep up the nerdy work. That is from Brett with one T.

55:19Chuck Bryant: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 a short stuff or a regular episode or say go watch this documentary, we always welcome that. You can send it off to StuffPodcast at iHeartRadio.com.

55:41Josh Clark:Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

55:57Chuck Bryant:Stuff at Sea is a five-night, adults-only sailing trip that brings the Stuff Podcast universe to life on board. This voyage is a culture-soaked escape where pink sand paradise meets curious minds. Sailing round trip from New York City to Bermuda on October 2nd to 7th, 2026, this voyage drops you straight into the iHeart Podcast Stuff universe. On top of the adults-only experience you already love, you'll get live podcast episode recordings, behind-the-scenes sessions, themed activations, and more unmissable onboard moments. Learn more at virginvoyages.com slash stuff. Geico presents a 30-second podcast between your podcast.

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