Ep. 21 Hooked On XJs Calls In: Wild Potato Bug Story & Identity Theft Drama | XJ Talk

Good evening, Jeep fam! 🎙️ Welcome to another classic call-in episode of the XJ Talk Show with Tony Muckleroy. Tonight it’s a laid-back, rambling BS session — no official guests, just good conversation, phone calls, and Jeep community vibes. We chat stickers, site updates, forum life, Houston meet & greets (and why they didn’t quite take off 😂), and plenty of life stories. **Highlights:** – Dalton4x4 checking in (hope you’re feeling better!) – Hooked On XJs calls in from north of Baja California — great sticker troubleshooting talk, plumbing stories, wild California growth tales, dirt bike days, Metal Militia, and one heck of a crazy best-friend identity theft story involving potato bugs and homicide warrants 😲 – Shoutouts to Hot Himmie, Order Dean, Mongolia viewer, PEI XJ, Mark from Detours, Fireman Ray, Big Jim 350, and the whole crew – Discussion on podcasting, audio quality, pop filters (DIY pantyhose edition), Biggest Loser commentary ideas with the wife, and the future of the show – XJ Talk site updates, avoiding toxic forum vibes, Google search tips for the board, and more This is pure old-school Jeep Cherokee XJ community radio — real talk, laughs, and connection. **Brought to you by Ironman 4×4** — toughest, most adjustable control arms in the game. 👉 Visit: [Ironman4x4fab.com](https://ironman4x4fab.com) 📧 Want to be a guest or leave a voicemail? Email: tony@xjtalk.com Voicemail (24/7): 530-675-4102 **Website & Forum:** [XJTalk.com](https://xjtalk.com) — the friendliest Jeep Cherokee XJ community on the internet. If you enjoyed this episode, drop a like, comment your favorite part, and subscribe for more XJ Talk! Turn on notifications so you never miss a live show or upload. Timestamps 00:00 Show Introduction and Sponsor Plug 03:11 Site Overview and Podcast Access 05:27 Show Growth and Houston Meet Recap 07:00 Sticker Photo Promise and Closing Note 07:40 Forum Activity and Call‑In Info 09:57 Live Callers Introduction 10:24 Listener Location and Sticker Issue 11:57 Caller Q&A Invitation 12:11 Wrap‑Up and Transition 12:29 Introducing a New Member 14:10 Orange County History and Culture 20:32 Childhood Treehouse Memories 21:46 Personal Anecdotes and Reflections 26:24 Caller Appreciation and Farewell 27:16 Chat Issues and Audio Setup Discussion 30:50 Audio Equipment DIY and Costs 33:21 DIY Pop Filter Construction 37:17 Sticker Requests and Houston Meet Plans 39:03 First Name Feature Implementation 40:20 Site Improvements and Community Input 40:49 Technical Glitch and Moderator Acknowledgment 41:54 Podcasting as Business and Success Perspective 49:08 Success Measures and Personal Reflections 49:47 New Participant and Tie Rod Query 50:19 Search Tips and Early Wrap‑Up 52:22 Closing Difficulty and Phone Number Reminder 53:35 Guest Invitation and Final Signoff #XJTalk #JeepCherokee #XJ #JeepLife #OffRoad #JeepPodcast #CherokeeXJ Visit our website: https://jeeptalkshow.com/ Watch/Listen on Spotify https://jeeptalkshow.com/spotify Join our Discord Server: https://jeeptalkshow.com/discord Subscribe to our newsletter: https://jeeptalkshow.com/newsletter Help Support the show via Patreon: https://jeeptalkshow.com/patreon

Episode Transcript

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It ends in the top show第七截完MeowMeowMeow

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Good evening guys, thanks for joining us on the Jeep Cherokee XJTalk.com show. It’s a show about Jeep Cherokees and other things, things that we like to talk about, some things that we don’t. Maybe it’s just things I want to talk about. My name’s Tony. It’s Mutteroy on XJTalk.com. And tonight’s going to be rambling and talking and taking phone calls. It’s kind of a general BS show. Well, BS-ing on the show. I don’t think it’s a BS show. Anyway, we’ll get started here in just a minute.

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This segment is brought to you by Ironman 4×4, the toughest, most adjustable control arms in the industry. Ironman 4×4 has a wide variety of rugged off-road suspension products that are overbuilt and under priced. Visit Ironman4x4fab.com today. That’s Ironman4x4fab.com. XJTalk.com. XJTalk.com. It’s where you go. When you’re not off-road. Are you interested in being a guest on XJTalk? Well, you can contact me via email, tonyatxjtalk.com. That’s tonyatxjtalk.com.

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Well, guys, as I was saying in the intro, we just have a general call-in chat type of show today. No official guests. If you would like to be on the show, you can call in and we can talk about whatever it is that you’d like to talk about. Something interesting, I hope. Most people have things that are interesting to talk about. My wife tells me that sometimes I don’t, especially if I just got to be watching a show on one of the science channels and I’m coming in to explain to her about the nature of dark matter and dark energy.

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Yeah, she listens, but she’s not real happy about it.

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So let’s see. We have Dalton 4×4. Glad you could join us tonight, Dalton. I think you were feeling ill last week and had to beg out and go get some rest. Hope you’re feeling better this week. And there’s Hot Himmie and Order Dean and Mongolia. Special welcome to our Mongolia guest. And P-E-I-X-J, who I received a very nice sticker today that has either a CJ or a Wrangler on it and not a Cherokee. But it’s still a very nice sticker and it was very nice of you to send that over to me. Thank you.

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And that’s it. Not a great plethora of viewers today, but that’s okay. People can catch up on the podcast available on iTunes. Just look for XJ Talk and just that little bit will get you to the podcast recordings. And gosh, I guess there’s about 13 or 14 of them now. So if you’ve missed some shows, you can go and listen to all those past shows and perhaps see how the show has improved, hopefully, over the last few months. We started at the end of December and of course we’re now into April. And they said it wouldn’t work, but it has. I guess if you go by the number of people that are listening, watching to the live show and listening to the podcast, that maybe it isn’t

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a success.

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But I’m going to keep after it. Several people seem to enjoy the show. We have people in here every week. And I guess actually it’s been a little more successful than the Houston meet and greets we were having because we wound up with three people, the same three people, the last three times at the Houston area meet and greets. I guess it was really a problem of being underfunded. No hats, t-shirts, scannily clad bikini women. There was nothing but Jeeps and guys to talk to.

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I guess that’s, you know, there wasn’t even free drinks at Sonic. We were going to the Sonic. You know, it may have even been that. Some people may have wanted some more adult entertainment and beverages, hot wings and you know, so and so forth.

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I think nobody here, nobody in the chat room from Houston, but I think Big Jim was trying to get another get together going and I’ll have to ask him when he gets back online, which by the way, I think his internet service is not available right now for some reason. He had told me that he was going to try to send me some pictures of the new color XJ talk stickers on his Jeep, but he said he would probably have to steal some wireless access to get it to me, get the pictures to me. So I don’t know exactly what’s going on with Big Jim 350, but he’s always here in spirit. I just wanted to say XJ talk is the best

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sight in the

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world and if you think you know a better

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sight,

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you. By the way, this is Big Jim 350.

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Bye. I always have to remember to wait for the bye.

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So anyway, things are going well. I had posted up last week that I was, or maybe the first part of this week, I can’t remember, about a little concerned about the post being not having as many posts on the site and many of the regulars stepped up and posted away and there was quite a bit of post activity. So I really appreciate that and I try to be mindful of changes to the site. I want to do things to upset the general population or especially turn off any new people that think that it might be a little heavy handed. I know that some of the sites that you may go to, some of the other, well I guess really any of the forums out there, no matter whether it’s Jeep or not, you sometimes get the feeling that you’re there for the entertainment purposes of the admin and moderators. And sometimes that entertainment is just to be ridiculed and meant to be made small in some way, shape, or form.

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So I try to be really mindful of that because I don’t want our site to come across that way.

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And by the way, if you notice, you should see the, for those watching on Ustream, you should see the phone number up on your screen scrolling across. And if you want to call in, go right ahead. I really don’t have anything planned. I was just going to do some general chit chat about stuff. So I know there’s not a lot of people in the chat room, but if you would like to call in, feel free, especially those of you that haven’t called in before. The number as you can see is 530-675-4102, 530-675-4102. And if you’re listening to this after the show, you can still call that number and leave a message and a little feedback, a little comment about the show, whatever you like. Well we got a caller. Let’s see who we got. I’ll bet you it’s Dalton.

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Who we got? Oh hey, this is Hooked On XJs.

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Hotdog XJ?

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Hooked On XJs.

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I still didn’t get it. Hooked. Truck. Truck. H-O-O-K-E-D XJ. Hooked On XJs. Hooked On XJs. Hi, my name’s actually, we’re live. Where are you listening from?

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We’re just north of Baja, California. No, I mean I don’t see on the Ustream thing, I don’t see any guests or anything on.

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You’re kidding me? No. No, we got three– Come on, go figure. Yeah, we got three viewers and we’ve got no guests, so I really expected it was one of these three people, one of these four people that are in the chat room. Well, I can’t help if you get lucky once in a while. Yeah, I get lucky all the time. (Laughs) Yeah, I tried to buy one of your bitching stickers online and it wouldn’t let me buy it.

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It must know you very well then. What kind of problem were you having?

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Oh, I want one of the printed stickers.

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Yeah?

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And when I clicked on it, it doesn’t show up on PayPal.

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Only if you click the plotter cut stickers.

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I thought I had tested both of those. I have a look– That’s cool. Because I don’t think anybody has ordered those, come to think of it. I think all they’ve ordered are the die cut. So I’ll have a look a little bit here after the show actually and see. I’m glad you brought that to my attention. I’m surprised nobody else has.

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Yep.

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I thought that I had at least one good question to ask you on the live webcast.

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Please go right ahead. Anyway, I love your show. Thank you. And Big Jim Rocks.

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And Don’t Ever Change is a promo for your show. I love it. That’s great. It’s a classic.

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And how?

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So anyway, that about does it unless you’ve got any questions for me.

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Oh, I thought you had a question you were going to ask.

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That was it. It’s a sticker question. Ah, okay. I was getting prepared for something. Well, let’s go back a little bit. This is Hooked on XJ. You’ve been on the site here for what, a month? Maybe shorter?

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No, I joined up last year. And anyway, I’m an out of work plumber now. And anything else I’ve done is out of work too right now. And so anyway, I’ve been spending a little extra time on the website. I thought it was kind of fun. I’ve never been a member of any forum before. And I started to have a little bit of fun there. And I thought to myself,

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gee, Tony’s a

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of a guy. And what a better way to support him than to buy a sticker. You can’t even do it.

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For real. I’m really surprised because I think Paul in Punisher in Florida is also a plumber. And I think he’s working at Walmart currently. I think most of his plumbing was new construction. So I can understand where he would have a problem since, you know. That’s all I’ve done is new construction. And it’s really hard for a new construction guy to get into service plumbing.

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See, that’s where I was going. I was really surprised that a plumber would be out of work. But if all you were doing was new construction, I guess I can understand that.

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Yeah, you know, we’re the guys that put it in.

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You need a bumper sticker that says that.

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Yeah, once we put it in, no doubt.

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Yeah, once you put it in, you don’t want to take it out.

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No.

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Yeah, this was the fastest growing area in, I think, in California at one time. And when my parents moved here in 1980, I stayed in Orange County, California. And my parents moved into a city and the population was 1,500.

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My goodness. And this area is famous for avocados and wine and horses.

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And actually four-wheeling and dirt bikes, because the metal militias from this area. Okay. And not enough. You’re probably too old. I wouldn’t even know who they were unless I saw their stickers around. And my ex-girlfriend’s neighbor was a guy named Bo Manley that’s on.

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He was in the metal militia and then he broke himself up, I think, in Guatemala real bad. And he had to retire at like 23.

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So what is that? Is it a band, a biker gang, or what? Oh, it’s the guys that do backflips, off double jumps and stuff. Oh, okay. And then, you know, X-Games stuff. Gotcha.

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Yeah, and they’re all tatted up. And there’s a big controversy here right now about their “S” and their name. It looks like an “S” off the SS Army. Okay. Yeah, and I’m not into that. But, you know, I mean, I’m not a kid anymore.

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Back in our day, we had our own team. It was called Team Swollen.

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Those were dirt bikes. And I guess we were like doing it in reference to the size of your testiculars after you do like a three-hour desert race. Yeah, well, you have to have them that size to do the race. Not really. I mean, you know, I will give, you know, this much acknowledgement is that, you know, as a child, I was very fortunate. To have parents that gave me things that other kids didn’t get. And, you know, I’m sure there was some other people out there that were, that could have been and would have been really great, you know, dirt bike riders. Had they had the same opportunities that I had.

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You know, but for the most part, this town’s exploded. It’s turned into two cities of 100,000 each. My goodness. That is big. Especially from 1500.

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And this area was the largest cattle ranch on Earth at one time.

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And there’s a lake here named Vale Lake. And the veils had a ranch up on top of this place called the Santa Rosa Plateau, which at one time was a great off-roading area. And now it’s a wildlife preserve. Of course.

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Yes. But the veils of Vale, Colorado, pretty much started this whole area here.

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And…

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I was just going to ask real quick. Now, you mentioned Orange County a while ago. Orange County is like, is an actual county, right? That’s not the name of a town, is it?

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No, actually there is an orange city. And what’s ironic is all the county offices and everything are in the city of Santa Ana.

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But Orange County, it goes all the way to the beach and all the way to the foothills right before an area we call the Valley. And I don’t know if you ever saw the movie Valley Girl, but that’s the valley I’m talking about. Gotcha.

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And that actually was, you know, things have really changed here. It’s just not the place, you know, it was when I grew up. Well, I’m sure a lot of people moving into the area has made a change.

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Well, you know, for what a house would cost in Orange County, you’d get the same house out here for almost a quarter of the price.

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Oh, interesting. I didn’t realize that. I thought everything in California was sky high.

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No, actually, I think my parents were buying like 10 acre lots out here for like $15,000 back when they moved here. And then, you know, that same property now would be worth, you know, like a mil. But the property values have just really dropped off here in the last two years. Well, that’s understandable with the way the economy has been going.

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Sure. You know, I mean, I remember, you know, working on the track homes and, you know, it seemed like every month they were like raising the prices on these houses like $10,000.

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Yeah. And we never got any raises. In fact, the wages actually had gone down in probably like the last five years.

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Yeah, I think a lot of people knew what was coming before it got here, and they were probably raising those prices just to try to buffer up. So whenever it got bad, the builders would have some money to live off of.

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Sure, you know, to weather the storm.

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Yeah. You know, I really don’t think they saw coming because, you know, there’s like complete big piece of land. They’re all cleared and graded for track homes with the streets and they’re not building on them. Well, maybe not.

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No. And then I saw on the paper here, it was maybe like a year ago, and there was a track of homes you’re working on just northeast of here. And those are the Aussies.

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But anyway, yeah, the bank took it over and they brought in bulldozers and just plowed down the whole project. It was all sticked up, which means framed up.

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And it knocked over the whole thing. I don’t know what the

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was going on, but it’s not good. Yeah, it was probably a liability. They didn’t want kids going in there and getting hurt. So they weren’t going to finish up. Yeah, I know. We used to go raid them and make a treehouse. Yeah.

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I’m sure you did, man.

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Yeah, had a nice treehouse and had a BB gun fight and they were in the treehouse and I just shot into an opening and they came out of the treehouse. So it worked out well.

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Oh, cool. That reminds me of a story that I’ll share with you.

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Yeah, one of my friends and we had a dirt quad fight and he nailed me in the head and then I tackled him. And in our fort we had potato bugs and a jar and I made him eat one.

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I’ll have to look up a potato bug online to see how nasty that looks.

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You know, imagine a cockroach on steroids.

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Wow.

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They’re big. You know, they probably have a different name other than a potato bug, but that’s all I know them by.

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You know, I’m sure there’s a scientific name besides potato bug, but big old nasty bugs. I mean, I’m all it and then he was allergic to bees, too. And I had a jar of bees. I used to threaten them with all the time. So this was a close friend, right?

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You know what? We were actually like the closest friends and then unfortunately for him, he really thought he would. And then there was Johnny Depp on a blow.

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And we kind of went our own. I was busy racing dirt bikes and he was off to Columbia and Hawaii.

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And yeah, he actually, well, I hope I don’t take up too much time. I could go all night, but actually he ended up using my name in a homicide. And my dad, when I worked for my dad, I was a truck driver and his insurance company called him up one day and said, “Hey, your son’s canceled on the policy.” And then I went to court to find out what it was and I had three warrants. And I remember two of the judges said, you know, I go, look, I go, I don’t live on Moon something court in Newport Beach. I’ve never even drove an Evolvo. And that’s not even my signature and two courts dismissed it. And the third one, the lady goes, I go, you know, maybe there’s another Brian McDonald. And she goes, oh, let me show you my situation here. And I go, yes, ma’am.

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She goes, would all the Juan Rodriguez’s police stand up? And like about 10 guys stood up in the courtroom.

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And she goes, do you see my situation? And I go, well, sorta. And next thing I know I had to get an attorney. And anyway, he told me to change my signature because I used to sign everything, I guess, very legibly. And then I turned it into a scribble.

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And so anyway, so then I got all that behind me after I got the attorney. And then I remember being in the hallway of the courtroom and he went up to the DA and they talked for like five seconds and they shook hands and he came back and he goes, yeah, your case dropped. I go, oh, cool. And so I went back to work. I go, dad, I got my license back. So about a year went by and my ex-wife, one day she called me at work and she goes, you’re never going to believe what happened. What? She goes, I just got a call from the Venice police.

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And I go about what? They’re looking for you. And I go, for what? And she goes, it seems that you were involved in a homicide.

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I’m like, really?

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Yeah. She goes, I go, really? And she goes, she goes, yeah, she goes, but it. But they asked me if you’re if my husband was five foot six, two hundred pounds, dark brown hair and dark brown eyes. And she said no. And then they asked her if the name Robert Smith rang a bell and she goes, oh, yeah, that was my husband’s best friend growing up.

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He goes, oh, well, he’s been using your husband’s name and he’s down here right now. We have him under arrest.

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That’s why I never spoke to him after that. But do you think one of the reasons he do you think one of the reasons he was using your name is because Smith is so common.

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Oh, no, not at all. Actually, we lived two doors away from each other. And I remember his address and even his phone number and our birthdays were 10 days apart. So it’s probably he could remember most of the information. It just seems like it would have been safer for him to steal somebody else’s identity.

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I don’t know. I haven’t killed anybody.

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Well, it probably was paybacks for that that potato bug incident.

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You know, you got a point there. I’ve never really gave that much thought that that could be valid for sure. The bees. You know, the bees. There’s another thing. Somebody’s allergic. Allergies is not a thing. My last name’s McDonald’s and he’s sung every McDonald’s hamburger song and the farm song to me every day until I beat him up and then he became best friend.

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Yeah, that’s that’s pretty much how my wife and I met except she beat me up.

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Those are the kind of chicks you want to hang on to. It’s a keeper. All right. Yeah, I just want to thank you a lot for for calling in. I’m pretty bad about the stay in here on the phone and chatting for a long long period of time and not giving me a look up in the shows over. So but thanks a lot. I’m sorry. I’m all good. I just wanted to call in and make you aware of the sticker situation and also to inquire if they were not available or what the story was. No, no, we have them. Certainly have them. I made that second trip over there to get them. I sure want people to have them if they want to go on there and order one. So I’ll check that out as soon as the show’s over. And thank you very much.

[00:27:05:26 – 00:27:14:23]
You’re welcome, Tony. You guys have a great evening over there and thanks to everybody out there and XJ Talko and talk to you later. All right. Good night.

[00:27:17:06 – 00:27:47:17]
Well, that was a bit of a bit of a surprise because, you know, like I said, I don’t see him in chat. We have a guest there now. So maybe it was just the this wasn’t updating very fast. So anyway, the phone lines open and no offense, Dalton. You’re just somebody I can count on to call in. So I just figured that was you because you’ve you have no aversion to calling in and being on the show. But that was a that was a nice welcome call.

[00:27:49:08 – 00:27:50:08]
So anyway,

[00:27:51:08 – 00:27:56:11]
let’s see, just looking to see who is who is here in chat.

[00:27:57:14 – 00:28:14:13]
Looks like Mark from Detours has has joined us. I like this boom mic, but it’s it’s kind of hard to find a place to to put it and still be able to see both screens. Oh, yeah, Mark was commenting on the on the mic that was hanging down here. Let me move it over a little bit. That’s the wrong way.

[00:28:18:10 – 00:28:23:21]
There we go. You can kind of see the kind of see the boom, the boom mic that way.

[00:28:26:27 – 00:29:02:21]
Yeah, it’s pretty cool. I was talking to a guy about a salesman at full compass today about getting a microphone. What’s it called? Pop shield pop filter. There we go. Pop filter. That way, if you’re drinking soda, you don’t get it on your microphone. No, actually, it’s a little little disk. You see probably whenever like music videos when people are recording songs vocals into a mic. It keeps the popping noise, the pop, pop, pop, pop, like you can probably hear when I say pop. So and also to when I breathe into the microphone.

[00:29:04:02 – 00:29:08:14]
So that pop filters was to eliminate that or at least knock it down quite a bit. So

[00:29:10:00 – 00:29:17:18]
we’re arbitrating back and forth on price and they’re not really expensive, but I’m cheap. So I want to try to get it for as little as I can.

[00:29:18:19 – 00:29:43:07]
And then I’ll have a little pop filter on here and maybe the show will sound a little better. And that’s kind of an interesting thing. Since I’ve started doing podcasts, I’ve been listening to other podcasts and mainly just for entertainment. But also too, it gives me an idea of a level of content and quality that’s being put out on on the other shows. And there is a show.

[00:29:46:04 – 00:29:50:04]
The survivalist podcast, I think it’s what it’s called. And

[00:29:51:25 – 00:30:03:00]
the guy is good. He has a lot of interesting information. It’s it’s it’s one of those deals about you know, you don’t want to have a lot of debt, you want to have gold and silver. So whenever the country goes to

[00:30:03:00 – 00:30:05:14]
when the monetary system goes to

[00:30:05:14 – 00:31:04:21]
can still buy things with your gold and silver. And also to the government doesn’t necessarily have to know about your gold and silver because it’s, you know, in your basement someplace or I don’t know, buried in the dark recesses of your Jeep. Anyway, so it’s an interesting podcast to listen to. But the the audio quality of that show is horrible. It is really, really bad. It sounds like somebody talking into a cheap headset microphone on a PC or a laptop. Yet he is in that that group of that type of podcasts, he’s the number one. So it’s totally on content. And that this kind of reminds me of what I’m doing here. I’m spending a lot of time on the electronic side of things. And I enjoy that part of it. I enjoy all those little wires that you guys were making fun of me today on. And I just looking at the chat room.

[00:31:05:25 – 00:31:26:04]
And I’ve been spending a lot of time getting things set up and sounding good and not so much time on the content. So hopefully some of the guests that we’ve had have been helping out with the show quality content wise. And also too, I hope that you can hear and understand them well.

[00:31:27:06 – 00:32:21:13]
So I don’t know we don’t like I said, we don’t have a lot of people on the in the chat room tonight. But if you would like to call in the phone is open. And also to Skype is available. I just don’t doesn’t seem like very many people use Skype. But as you can see the the phone number is 530-675-4102. 530-675-4102. You should see it scrolling across the top of your screen if you’re watching the show. And like I said earlier, if you are listening to the show after, you know, when it’s not live, listening to the recording the podcast, you can still call that number and a recording, you know, voicemail will answer the phone. And you can leave a message if you would just leave your name and where you’re calling from and your question, comment or rude or lascivious remark that you know, I don’t care.

[00:32:23:01 – 00:32:36:28]
And then we’ll probably play on the show because it’s kind of fun to have things to play. And like the the promo we had from big Jim, that’s one of those one of the things that we got via the voicemail line.

[00:32:39:16 – 00:32:45:05]
So most people seem to like to call in on the the landline, which you can certainly do.

[00:32:46:28 – 00:32:56:23]
So if you guys anybody in the chat room have any any questions or comments, happy to entertain them.

[00:33:01:03 – 00:33:08:08]
It seems that Mark wants somebody to call spank me. Is that your 900 service Mark?

[00:33:11:09 – 00:33:19:04]
50 cents a minute. Now, do you think you could last a minute? I had one 900 spank me. I bet not.

[00:33:22:07 – 00:34:00:15]
Let’s see, get a plan. A PEI says get a plastic ring and a piece of pantyhose. Well, you know, I was looking at he’s talking about the the pop filter. I was looking at a video on YouTube today. I think it was. And the guy took a not knitting. What do you call those things that it holds cloth and then cross stitch the little circular cross stitch thing that holds the material. He got a four inch because he likes the four inch and not the six inch. I’m sure that’s, you know, each individual’s choice.

[00:34:01:21 – 00:35:08:15]
Anyway, he likes the four inch, the four inch circle. And he took some some pantyhose, a nylon pantyhose and doubled it and stuck it, stretched it across that that cross stitching frame and put the the frame on top of it to hold it in place and screwed it down. And he used some number. He wanted some number two. Reading and talking. He used some number two cable. So it was very thick and able to he could bend it and put it where he wanted. So he basically used that as the the goose neck for this thing. He attached to that. And then I think he used a hose clamp or something to attach the other end of the cable to the to the mic stand. He made this little thing and I figure he spent he said ten dollars, but I think that that piece of copper cable number two gauge, two feet, number two gauge cable, maybe not two feet. Maybe it was only a foot or so. That probably would have been five or six bucks by itself.

[00:35:10:14 – 00:35:19:21]
So I don’t know. I can get it from full compass for about fifteen dollars and I don’t have to have hose clamps or anything else. Yeah, hose clamp.

[00:35:22:13 – 00:36:00:27]
Mark says hose clamp. Ah, there’s Fireman Ray. Glad to have you. I’m kind of moving my head over to the side so I can read the screen. I guess I could just move the mic and look at it. Yeah, the other thing on this deal, I wish they would set it so that you wouldn’t have to update the viewers to get a new viewer. See who the new viewers are. The viewer count updates. And you guys can see this too. If you click on the little icon of a man right above the send button, it’ll show you who all’s in the chat room by name and how many guests.

[00:36:03:23 – 00:36:10:07]
So anyway, I’m not getting any more calls. Mark, you ought to call. You like talking on the phone.

[00:36:11:24 – 00:36:15:02]
You can make all these colorful comments on the phone.

[00:36:21:23 – 00:37:03:00]
I was talking to, by the way, Mark, I was talking to Matt M.S. Mornberg from XJ Talk. I was talking to him the other day or chatting with him on Facebook chat. And I was asking him, he had told me that he had ordered the backbone system from you. And I said, “How long is it going to be before you get that?” And I think he said three to four weeks. And I was just really surprised because I think that that rear bumper that I got from you took as long. Maybe a little longer. It’s been a while since I ordered it. But I was real surprised that you were having that long lead time on a smaller item.

[00:37:07:24 – 00:37:14:05]
Ten years. I think Mark’s having his own conversation in chat. He’s not listening to me.

[00:37:18:29 – 00:37:42:27]
Oh yeah, a few of you had posted today about, I know Dalton, you did. Maybe somebody else did as well, about wanting a detour sticker. Dalton, I can’t remember if you ordered any XJ Talk stickers or not. I think you did. If you did, and I remember, I’ll stick a detour sticker in there when I send you your stickers.

[00:37:50:00 – 00:38:01:19]
Well, I guess that’s good. Yeah, I guess you did tell me about that last time we spoke. Mark says in the chat, this is a screen named “Detours,” backed up like a $5

[00:38:01:19 – 00:38:03:05]
Actually it says “Dala.” “Dala

[00:38:08:12 – 00:39:13:13]
Well, you know, times are hard. So $5 goes a lot further than it used to. Okay, good, Dalton. I’ll just need to remember to stick one in there. Yeah, Mark sent me several stickers and I was going to take them out to the next Houston area meet and greet and just kind of hand them out to anybody that wanted them. But like I said earlier in the show, Big Jim had started a thread about getting another one going and then there was some discussion about if it should be closer to the Katy area or closer to the Conroe area. And most everybody that’s a member of XJ Talk in the Houston area is really to the north of Houston, Conroe and so on and so forth. Reenie, Big Jim, Matt. Actually, I think Patrick, who still hasn’t posted a picture of his

[00:39:15:04 – 00:39:27:26]
fabulous A-pillar, Detours USA A-pillar light mounts, he posted it on Facebook. But he hasn’t posted it on XJ Talk. I’ll tell you that’s being grateful right there.

[00:39:29:02 – 00:40:12:11]
But anyway, I think he actually lives out close to the Astrodome. So that would be the one exception. And Scott, XJ4IV, he lives over here about three miles from me. So I do have quite a few people in the Houston area. Kind of happy about that. I think all that happened with Reenie. Reenie is unlike me, who I, you know, I’ll talk to people on the internet and I’ll do this show. Reenie really is an outgoing person. He’ll talk to you all day long and find out all kinds of things about you. He’s a very friendly person. And of course, I blame him for getting the first name thing going on the site.

[00:40:13:20 – 00:40:44:21]
I wasn’t all that comfortable with doing the first name thing. And I was afraid that some of you guys might not like it either. But Reenie was just saying, “Hey, what’s your first name? I don’t want to go by this. What’s your first name?” And everybody jumped in and made a mod so that we could see everybody’s first name in their post. So seems like that was a real good way to go. And that’s the nice thing about the site. It’s not, it was only my vision to get it going. And what we have now is the vision of what all you guys want.

[00:40:46:27 – 00:41:14:05]
We keep adding to it and making it better, I think. You may see the light changing on my face here. That’s because the screensaver is kicking in. And I noticed that when I was watching a playback of the show, last week’s show. And I thought, “What’s changing? Why is the lighting changing?” And then I realized the screens are on blank. So part of the lighting that you see is the light coming from the screen.

[00:41:17:26 – 00:41:47:12]
Okay. Dalton4x4 says, “Okay, y’all. I got to sign off. Cold meds are kicking in.” So I guess that’s what’s wrong with you. You had a pretty bad cold. Well, go get some rest, man. And hopefully you’re not missing work. If you are, you really do need to get some rest so you can at least function well enough at work. Keep that job going. Thanks for moderating for me tonight. I’m sure there wasn’t anything to do, but just being there and being blue kept everybody in line, I’m sure.

[00:41:55:09 – 00:44:30:26]
I spoke with my wife. One of the people that I’ve listened to about podcasting is he and his wife both do podcasts. Every Thursday, they do a series of about five or six one-hour shows. And then they put them up. I mean, he does this for a living. He’s got like these five or six shows that he does weekly. And he makes a living off of that. I guess about half of his income is from doing those podcasts. The other half is doing consulting work for people that are trying to learn about podcasting. So anyway, it’s kind of funny because they’ll do a couple of shows. Well, they do one show together. And then I think she has a show. And then the rest of them, he does. Well, they actually got started in podcasting by watching and commenting on the television series Lost. And I think within the first week, yeah, I think this is right. I think this is what he said. The first week that they started doing this, and they were just watching, they would watch the show, watch Lost, and then they would do a podcast and comment on it, just them talking about it really, of that episode. And I think they got 14,000 downloads or subscribers or whatever. So it kind of got him hooked that anybody would be that that many people would be interested in hearing what he had to say. So here a while back, I was my wife really likes watching Biggest Loser. And she really likes it when I sit there and watch it with her. I don’t particularly care for the show. But and I guess that’s part of the reason why I make comments while the show is going on. And it’s apparently fairly entertaining because she laughs and she likes me to watch the show so I can provide commentary while she’s watching so she can laugh about left behind. And she can laugh about the show. So it dawned on me that it might be pretty cool if I could get two microphones set up in here and two cameras. But instead of watching The Biggest Loser and then doing the podcast and commenting on it would be to watch the show and comment on it while it’s going on. And this is the same type of thing that if you ever watched Mystery Science, what was it? Mystery Science Theater 3000.

[00:44:32:14 – 00:45:08:06]
It was these robots sitting in the front, the pseudo front of the theater making comments. So that’s kind of what I do. And she makes comments back, of course, but I’m the one that usually makes the off-color remarks and she laughs. So I thought that would kind of be a neat thing that we could try where she watches, she reacts, she makes comments. I make comments and we do it while watching the show. So perhaps what we would wind up doing is for a few people, I don’t know, 5, 10, 15, 15,000, that they would turn the volume down on Biggest Loser and listen to us.

[00:45:09:12 – 00:45:25:09]
So anyway, that comment about getting my wife in here and let’s talk into her, it could happen. It just won’t happen on this show because she doesn’t want to hear anything about Jeeps. She likes the Jeep, but she didn’t like it enough to listen to all the stuff that I talk about.

[00:45:26:29 – 00:45:53:19]
I remember when I first figured out how the 4-wheel drive mechanism worked on the Jeep. That I was really excited understanding when you put it in 4-wheel drive full-time and part-time what that meant and how it locked the front and the rear together and so on and so forth. And I was explaining that to her because I was excited that I understood it.

[00:45:54:20 – 00:46:02:11]
And she’s just like trying to be a good wife and listen, but that just wasn’t something that she was interested in at all.

[00:46:05:08 – 00:46:11:14]
We could have a cooking show. Now see, now you’re talking about getting into a whole big cost of

[00:46:12:26 – 00:46:34:19]
overhead camera and cooking two meals and etc. etc. So now it wouldn’t be that big of a problem setting up two microphones and two cameras. And then I don’t know what we would do as far as fixing it so that we could watch the show.

[00:46:35:20 – 00:46:37:23]
But I’m sure I could figure something out.

[00:46:39:07 – 00:46:51:11]
Anyway, it could happen. I think it would be kind of fun. If nothing else, it would be fun for us to give it a try and maybe listen to it years later and laugh at it.

[00:46:52:29 – 00:47:27:07]
I think it would be a blast to be able to do what the gentleman that I listen to, the podcast Answer Man, PodcastAnswerMan.com, if you want to know more about podcasting. He’s very detailed, very good. I think it would be really cool to have your job be podcasting. I mean, it’s like having a radio show, but you don’t have to deal with anybody. I mean, there’s no programmer directors, there’s no owners, there’s no this, that, the other. There’s no FCC, at least not so far.

[00:47:28:09 – 00:47:32:18]
You just do what you think is best and the people vote with

[00:47:34:10 – 00:47:45:08]
their attendance. They’re down-lowed. They’re listening to your show. So it’s a really, really neat idea of a business model.

[00:47:46:15 – 00:49:00:13]
I don’t know that. I suspect it’s like you see some people that go and audition for something and next thing you know, they’re in a movie or selling songs and they’re making millions of dollars and they’re very popular. And then there’s those ones that you see that get up there and try and they fail. They’re not necessarily bad. They just didn’t have that spark that made them interesting, more interesting than the other person. So you never know. But of course, if you don’t try, you don’t know. And I’ve been fairly successful at things that I’ve done. I don’t know that I’ll be successful, any more successful than I have been on podcasting than what I am now. But just like the podcast Answer a Man says, if you’ve got five people that listen to you, that’s a lot. Because that means they’re setting aside time to come and listen to you, whether it be a live show or listening to the podcast. So don’t worry if it’s 100,000 or five people. If you just got one person, that should be enough.

[00:49:02:00 – 00:49:07:26]
But that should be something that you shouldn’t measure your success by the number of people that listen.

[00:49:09:29 – 00:49:18:28]
Although I’m sure Jay Leno probably measures his success by the number of cars that he has in his multiple garages.

[00:49:21:01 – 00:49:39:09]
The thing that surprised me is I don’t think he’s, I believe he’s married, but I don’t think he has any kids. And I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s the lifestyle or just a personal choice, maybe a little both. But I’d hate not to. I’d hate to live my life and not have at least one child.

[00:49:41:20 – 00:49:42:16]
So anyway.

[00:49:48:18 – 00:49:55:02]
Oh, there’s a VW fool. Why has joined us? Let’s see. I think we got a few more people in here.

[00:49:56:23 – 00:49:59:18]
Maybe just one. Lost one, gained one.

[00:50:03:19 – 00:50:08:11]
No tech in chat. You guys can talk about tech in the chat room. That’s fine.

[00:50:10:12 – 00:50:51:16]
PEI XJ was asking Detours if he knew what tie rods would work from a Grand Cherokee on a 99 XJ. You know, that’s a great question to ask on the site because I know, actually, I think that’s already on the site. I think that that information is already there. And that reminds me, I’ve kind of been thinking about coming up with a page, perhaps a new front page to the site that isn’t the forums, that would be kind of like a map or a guide into the forums and have different groupings of things like front end parts,

[00:50:53:01 – 00:52:17:24]
things that you could do by getting other parts like Grand Cherokee, tie rod, the Grand Cherokee, Dana 35 disc brakes, things that you could get and put on your XJ to improve the performance or improve your chances of not bending a tie rod. And it kind of, because the search thing in the V-Bullet and software leaves a little bit to be desired. In fact, I’ll give you a tip. When I’m trying to find something on the bulletin board and I can’t find it, I’ll actually just go to Google and type in XJ talk space and then whatever I’m looking for, whatever makes the most sense to me. And it is amazing to me how quickly I’ll find the information I’m looking for. And I may have tried for five, maybe even ten minutes on using the built in XJ talk search. And boom, Google does it, you know, usually first try and it’s usually at the top of the page. So, you know, give that a try. That might save you some searching time. But anyway, I’m hoping to make some more changes to the site and come up with some things to make it a little more interesting for you guys. Hopefully it’s been pretty interesting so far.

[00:52:21:14 – 00:52:43:15]
Well guys, we’re going to wrap it up a little early tonight. I’ve been having some horrible difficulty in forming words. And I don’t want to be like one of those reporters that you see that starts spitting out gibberish. Actually, I’m a little tired. I got up early this morning and couldn’t go back to sleep. So I think that’s probably what it is.

[00:52:45:05 – 00:53:18:04]
Actually, the Grand Cherokee Heavy Duty Fan Clutch is a very nice mod and I’ve done that to mine. It’s trying to solve some of the heat greet problem I have. And it does make a difference. It squeals like a stuck pig whenever you get it to a certain RPM. But it does make a big difference on cooling off the water or the cooling, I should say, running through the radiator. And I think that write-up is on XJTalk.

[00:53:19:28 – 00:53:53:11]
Well guys, thank you very much for joining us tonight. Don’t forget to call in to our voicemail. Open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Leave your questions, comments, feedback. 530-675-4102. If you’d like to be a guest on the show, you know, contact me on the site, motoroy. You can send me an email, tony at xjtalk.com. So until next week, 8pm Central Time, Wednesday, we’ll see you on the forums, xjtalk.com.

[00:54:37:18 – 00:54:50:25]
Hey, I just wanted to tell you about xjtalk.com. It’s a great site. There’s no bashing. Everybody’s nice and friendly. Great place to be.

[00:54:52:27 – 00:54:56:03]
I just wanted to say, xjtalk is the best

[00:54:56:03 – 00:54:57:11]
site in the

[00:54:57:11 – 00:55:00:01]
world. And if you think you know a better

[00:55:00:01 – 00:55:00:23]
site,

[00:55:00:23 – 00:55:06:02]
you. By the way, this is BigM350. Bye.

[00:55:07:28 – 00:55:08:26]
Awwww.

[00:55:08:26 – 00:55:13:07]