From July 4th Celebrations to World Record shows with nearly a million fireworks, Fireworks Designer Phil Grucci is the creative force behind some of the world’s biggest fireworks shows. We talk the intricate details behind fireworks shows, lining up three miles of drones and the world’s best fireworks shows. Then, we countdown the Top 5 American Things
Phil Grucci: 01:18
Pointless:17:20
Candle of the Month: 33:20
Top 5 American Things: 40:37
Interview with Fireworks Designer Phil Grucci
Nick VinZant 0:00
Nick, welcome to profoundly pointless. My name is Nick vinzant Coming up in this episode, fireworks and America
Phil Grucci 0:21
and we matched the fireworks to every beat of music every second of the show. We just had a line of drones that were about three miles long, and they had over 1000 pyrotechnic devices on them.
Nick VinZant 0:34
I want to thank you so much for joining us. If you get a chance subscribe, leave us a rating or a review. We really appreciate it really helps us out. If you're a new listener, welcome to the show. If you're a long time listener, thank you so much for all of your support. So I want to get right to our first guest, because he is the creative force behind some of the world's biggest and most spectacular fireworks shows. This is fireworks show designer Phil Grucci, real quick though, we recorded this while he was setting up one of the fireworks shows. So there's gonna be some background noise. Hope it's not too distracting. So how do you design a fireworks
Phil Grucci 1:20
well, how do you design a fireworks show? So it's quite exciting. So it's a performance that we're designing. It's somewhat of a hybrid of a of a live dance performance and a sculpture or painting, if you will, because the the medium that we use are is the fireworks, right? The color, the movement, the emotion of every single shell is different. This particular program for TD Bank. It's in Nassau County on Long Island. It has a 23 minute, 43 second aerial of audio track. And in this show, we're not we're not only including fireworks, aerial show fireworks in this stage here, low, delicate, type pyrotechnics up by the pond. We also have 300 drones on this program to integrate led drones to integrate into the show. So that's part of the medium. And now we listen to that music. We listen to all 23 minutes, 23 minutes of the performance, and we match the fireworks to every beat of music every second of the show. Every firework has a different characteristic to it the different personalities. Some are big, loud, very Baroque. Some of them are very soft and delicate. You can't hear them, but you could see them, and they're more beautiful and more elegant. So when the music is soft and bold. I mean, when the music is loud and bold and Baroque, like stars and stripes, for example, a lot of horns, a lot of lot of a lot of movement, the fireworks have to be the same way. Then you have small America. The beautiful starts off very soft, and you can hear the clarinets in the beginning, it's very soft in the fire, which will match that. So it takes about an hour for every minute of design time that you see in the sky. So a program like this takes a full 23 to 24 hours working with the software that we have. So we can visualize the movement. We could visualize the overlap, the height, the balance of the colors and things of that nature. And as as precise as every single shell in the show multiple 1000s of shells will be fired here. Every one of them has a circuit. Every one of them has a an angle and a pan direction that they get fired in. So naturally a drawing, and the information that comes from the design has to be created. So the pyrotechnicians that are out in the field, those are the people that are trained to install the equipment, the electronics, the computer systems. They know which fireworks shell to put inside of, which mortar to wire to which circuit. And that's another process that supports the design.
Nick VinZant 4:02
I couldn't, I can't believe it's like that much involvement in doing it. I always just imagined it was like, it's just some guy back there, like, all right, blue one, green one.
Phil Grucci 4:13
Yeah. Well, the days, you know, we had back in the 70s and 80s, and even the early part of the 90s, we did fire the fireworks with the torch. You know, you'd see that traditional pyrotechnician out there with the red dot running around and lighting fireworks and but the programs then weren't as precise as they are. Now, the choreography for music with music and then to integrate in the design of this show, integrate 300 drones to have the American flag in the sky when it needs to be the days that of the manual firing has kind of gone away from a safety perspective, as well as from a precision perspective,
Nick VinZant 4:51
for the show that you're prepping for right now that's in the background, like, how many fire?
Phil Grucci 4:55
Oh, there's over 3500 different devices that. Will be firing in 23 minutes. So you do that math on how many many fireworks per second, but we really don't. We don't look at a show on how many shells that we would fire at a particular program. It's like asking somebody that creates a beautiful painting, how many buckets of paint did you use to create that? Right? You could, you can have a situation where too much of a good thing is a bad thing. You know, you have, you have white out, if it's too much, too many different colors on top of each other, it basically whites out. And then we have, we have pyrotechnics. We have fireworks fire. And Pyro does result in some element of smoke. So if you fire in a very humid environment, like here in New York in the summer, it's very humid Northern, Northern and northeast. So if you fire a whole bunch of fireworks in the sky, you're going to get smoke in the first five minutes, and then the next 1520 minutes you don't see anything. It's because it's obliterated by the smoke.
Nick VinZant 5:58
So like, you know, every artist kind of has their own signature style, right? Like, is there a signature style that you would say that you have, sure
Phil Grucci 6:07
we have a signature scene, which is the use of a shell called the Golden footer, split comet. And it's a shell that my father kind of advanced to use it in a in a sequence that's always just before the grand finale, the shell goes up, and when it bursts, it looks like a gold twinkling spider where the legs are coming out, and it kind of descends. And then just as you think it's going to extinguish, all the tips of those tentacles all split again, hence the golden flitter splitting comet. And he developed that that type of a scene, and we fire them generally right, just as a prelude to the grand finale. And another scene that, something that we're known for is the Gucci grand finale, is making sure that at the end of the grand finale, you know, the show is over. You know, it's so powerful that certainly their eyes are wide open, the mouth is wide open, and they're looking for more. And that's kind of the part of the artisan artesianness that we have, is to let them go away just wanting a little bit more and they'll come back for the next one. What are you gonna What are you gonna do differently? That's our biggest challenge.
Nick VinZant 7:17
How did you feel initially about drones? How do you feel now, was it something that people such as yourself kind of resisted and it was like, Okay, we just gonna have to do this. Or
Phil Grucci 7:26
when they first came out, you know, you have to credit Intel, when they started first coming out with these large fleets of controlled patterns that they were creating with drones, we knew that that was a technology we need to embrace. So we went out and bought, we bought 500 drones that we have in our fleet, and we we have them, and we have access to 1000s of them if we needed to get to a bigger show. And the first year, which was seven years ago, we we set the Guinness we set and established the Guinness World Record for the most UAVs, unmanned aerial vehicles with pyrotechnics on it. So it was a show that we produced in Russia, Kema, in the Middle East, and it had the drones that had Pyro on them. We just got permission here in the United States, through the FAA to be able to attach pyrotechnics, just this month on them. Here in the United States, but over in the UAE, we were able to get permission earlier, and we set the Guinness World Record for the most drones with pyrotechnics on and then this last New Year's Eve, we just had a line of drones that were about three miles long, and they had over 1000 pyrotechnic devices on them. So we embraced, to answer your question, When? When that technology came out, we immediately embraced it. Have been using them for some time now.
Nick VinZant 8:47
When you look at kind of, you know, fireworks design, are there a lot of people, slash companies doing this, or just, there's,
Phil Grucci 8:54
uh, there's about in the United States, there's about 200 firework companies in the United States, what there are is, there's about three or four that are the size of hours and that are busy all year long.
Nick VinZant 9:09
What do you like about it?
Phil Grucci 9:10
What I like about the design part of it is, certainly you can have, you have the control of the emotion of the audience that you have at any moment. You know when you're going to have them calm, you know when you're going to have them on their toes, and you know when you're going to really put them over the top. And it's a, it's a, it's a joy to be able to have a medium that has the energy that it has. Or what's the what's the attraction to fireworks? The attraction is it? It touches on all senses, right, on your sight, on your smell, on your touch. You feel it on your skin, your hearing, and in some cases, if you have your mouth open and the wind is blowing that way, a little bit of smoke, you may taste it also a little bit, as compared to just a drone show, right? The lights in the drone show. But what I love about it is putting all of those mediums together and watch the reaction of the of the crowd. But what. I love about is the emotion and we're, we're always involved in something that's celebratory, even a funeral. You know, we've, we have been contracted to be at funerals where the people that deceased, they want their the they want their guests and their family and their friends to come celebrate their lives. So we have a, you know, we have, we're very fortunate that I love getting up, going to work. I love when we create something, and you turn around and you look at the audience, and you look at the the children, and you look at the older people, and they're all, they all have the same expression on their face. And for that period of time, if the show is 23 minutes long, no one's down here texting, no one's worrying about, you know, things that are going on around the world right now. And we could use that kind of therapy, where you have a 20 minute period or so, where you're with your family, you're with your friends. It's generally a free event. It's outdoors, you know, where do you have that now? Or where, where do you get that freely like that.
Nick VinZant 10:56
Are you ready for some harder, slash, listener submitted questions. Absolutely, hardest firework to make. Easiest firework to make. Well,
Phil Grucci 11:05
the hardest color to make in a fire is blue, and that has all to do with the chemistry and the temperature that you burn the copper, which is the fuel in that composition, if you burn it too hot, turns white. If you burn it too cool with it. It will extinguish and it won't. It won't. It won't sustain the hardest firework to make larger caliber fireworks naturally, as compared to the smaller ones, and now fireworks that don't have any debris, because when you make a firework device or a pyrotechnic device and put it on the roof of a of a building or on a on a trust that's on the foreground of the audience, written upstage. It has to be precise. There can't be any Fallout, Fallout. So those are the harder, low debris, good quality colors, shells that burst. If they're supposed to be spherical, they burst spherical. They're not. They're not oblong, and the patterns have got to
Nick VinZant 12:03
be perfect. Most you've ever set off at one time, just under
Phil Grucci 12:07
a million fireworks in eight minutes. In eight minutes, it was in, it was in, it was in Dubai, and we fired from 133 of the world Islands, which are the man made islands in the shape of the Earth. 250 pontoons, floating platforms to create the outline of the fronds of the palm. On Palm Island, 55 semi trailers that were on the on the circular area the crescent around the palm. And we had 13,000 fireworks, pyrotechnics that we fired on the Burj Khalifa, all at the one time, all at one time that had 250 pyrotechnicians for a little over a month. I
Nick VinZant 12:50
just did the math on that. That's 2083 fireworks a second. Oh,
Phil Grucci 12:55
yeah. Well, the space that we that we covered, it sounds like a large quantity per second, but when you spread it out the way we spread it out on those 133 islands that were 13 miles in circumference, the Palm Island is eight miles in circumference, and you spread that out, you know, think about something that's eight miles away from you, and envision Fireworks continuously connecting one to the next that distance,
Nick VinZant 13:23
I'm assuming that July 4 is the busiest day.
Phil Grucci 13:26
Um, New Year's Eve, believe it or not, is a larger holiday than Fourth of July for us. Well, the fourth of Independence Day week, because the world celebrates. Oh, so we're in Belgrade, Serbia, we're in Dubai. We're in Russia came we're in Saudi Arabia, where, you know, we're in Europe, and obviously in the United States. Las Vegas is a massive firework, so the biggest one in the country that we've been producing for 20 years now, called America's party on midnight. We're on $17 billion worth of real estate on the rooftops of the buildings down the strip. Do
Nick VinZant 14:02
you see like, obviously, you know, drones was kind of the most recent big trend that I can think of. Do you do you see another big change coming? The
Phil Grucci 14:11
drones are that they're certainly the most recent trends, the drones and then how they're used in the beginning, they're just led drones, naturally, the introduction prior technics, we are working some with some technology to put lasers on them and lights on them, not LED light that's static, but actually a beam of light coming off them, and other items that you can that you can place onto the drone or drop it from the drone. So the drones are going to continue to increase the effectiveness, but they don't have that power. You know, on their own, they're they're great to put a very accurate logo in the sky. They're great to put some beautiful, three dimensional shape that we fireworks around. But on their own, they become somewhat, somewhat commercial. Social, commercialized, a little bit too commercialized, without having the organic, you know, feel, smell, taste and look of a firework show. This is actually a lot of cities now that are they took that they took that path two years ago and went to drones, and then, you know, the demand from the audience's side was bring back the fireworks. John Adams. And John Adams in 1776 penned to his wife that we shall celebrate with bonfires and illumination from coast to coast, celebrate our independence, and the bonfires and illumination meant fireworks, not drones.
Nick VinZant 15:35
Last question for you, do you have any tips for people watching a firework show? Like, oh, you should be in the center, or you should be on the left side or the right side.
Phil Grucci 15:44
So if you're depending on the size of the show and the size of the fireworks that they have, if you're six, 700 to 1000 feet away from the firework show, you're comfortably looking at it on a on a 30 degree angle, not not on a 6070, 8090, degree angle, because you're so close to it, if it is choreographed to music. Make sure you're either near the sound system or you have the radio, because a lot of the times you'll have a choreographed performance that's that's synchronized to a radio station so you can hear it on the radio from a technical perspective. Look at the show and see how the tempo is, see what the combination, the mixture is, see if it's actually really choreographing music. Look at those blues and purples. Those are the hardest colors to get, and that'll give you an indication of the quality of the show that you're watching. It's our bang, bang, bang, all the time. You know, look at the look at the scenes, and how it transitions from one scene, a nice gold palm tree scene, to a red strobing ring shell scene, and kimoro a big go, Willow, gold Willow scene, things like that. Look how the show transitions, like, like a ballet, like a performance that actually it is a form of art. So enjoy it.
Nick VinZant 16:53
I want to thank Phil so much for joining us. If you want to connect with him, we have linked to him on our social media accounts. We're profoundly pointless on Tiktok, Instagram and YouTube, and we've also included his information in the episode description. If you want to see some of the fireworks that we're talking about, the YouTube version of this episode will go live on July 4 at 12:30pm Pacific. Okay, now let's bring in John Shaw and get to the pointless part of the show. What's the most amount of money that you will spend on fireworks?
John Shull 17:29
The answer is zero.
Nick VinZant 17:32
I'll buy one of those things. I don't know what you call them, like poppers, where you just throw them at the ground and they go off. I will spend as much as two to $3 on those.
John Shull 17:41
I actually don't enjoy fireworks at all, and I don't know if I'm in the minority in that category or not. I don't know if people actually enjoy fireworks.
Nick VinZant 17:49
Well, I think for people who really enjoy it, like they had experiences that made them really enjoy it, like it's not really about that. It's about spending time with family and friends, and they really had a good time, and I just never had that experience. The only
John Shull 18:04
time I remember going to any kind of firework display as a child, my dad used to get pretty drunk. So okay,
Nick VinZant 18:11
but taking this out of fireworks, what is the most amount of money that you will just spend on something that you're just essentially burning money?
John Shull 18:20
I mean, you could say anytime that you go to the bar or out to eat,
Nick VinZant 18:26
but you're getting something out of that. You're getting food or you're with Okay, so my example would be the arcade. Like, I'll take my kids to the arcade. It's a total waste of money. They whatever game they're playing, they're done in 10 seconds because they don't really know how to play it. It's just a complete and total waste of money.
John Shull 18:42
You know, it's probably gambling, like sports gambling,
Nick VinZant 18:45
yeah, that's probably mostly a waste.
John Shull 18:47
I could see that I do win, like one out of every 50, but if you think about it, you spend a lot more than you win, and if you do win, you usually end up spending that again. Anyways. So I
Nick VinZant 19:00
think I might be one of the few men who has gambled, but has never gambled on sports. I've never bet on sports.
John Shull 19:10
I probably bet on something sports related every single day. Wow, every day. But they could be $1 bet. They could be $5 bets. I mean, it's not like I'm spending hundreds of dollars at a time.
Nick VinZant 19:23
Do you feel like you have a problem? Like, do you feel like you're addicted to gambling? Because it seems like I'm gonna put $1 on this, like he just want a little thrill. He just want a little excitement in life. Well, this
John Shull 19:33
is another one of those covid things. So I'm gonna blame covid on this. Because, I mean, you know, we had a newborn baby, I would be up at night. There were no there was nothing really to do, but there was, like, international sports. So I would bet on Korean baseball, tennis matches. I've never heard of anybody, cricket, and then that kind of bled over. You know, once American sports got back up and running officially, then I just. Kind of bled into I mean, I'll bet on anything, on any sport, really, there is no limits. I
Nick VinZant 20:05
actually know a surprising amount of people who will bet on a lot of sports stuff. Of the people that I would consider close friends, the of the five to 10 people I can consider close friends, six of them bet on sports constantly.
John Shull 20:20
I think it's just more of a camaraderie thing when you're just playing with petty money. Oh, I
Nick VinZant 20:25
polled the audience about this question. 43% of people said the most they would spend is $25 14% said $100 29% said the most they would spend is 250 and 14% said that they would spend more than 250 so I think that you and I are kind of in the minority here. It sounds like a lot of people will spend what I would consider to be a decent amount of amount of money on fireworks.
John Shull 20:50
Let's get some shout outs here. Luis Gonzalez crazy Pat, don't know what makes them crazy, but whatever. Jason Lind Hey, crazy
Nick VinZant 21:01
do you have to be to put your name is crazy? Pat.
John Shull 21:04
I feel like you have to be pretty crazy to put something like that in your handle. Like you have to be kind of crazy. Or
Nick VinZant 21:13
is it like ironic, like big Tom and big Tom is like five two. So he's either not crazy at all, and like his idea of wild excitement on a Saturday night is cleaning out his dishwasher, Jesus, folding laundries, what I'm gonna do laundry, or he's like a maniac and like, mainlining every drugs you can imagine regularly in jail. You
John Shull 21:36
know, speaking of, you know, what I'm disappointed in, this kind of has nothing to do with what you were just talking about. But when the Edmonton Oilers were in the Stanley Cup Finals, I'm sure you saw everyone saw the viral social media of the woman flashing her boobs in the arena. Did you see that?
Nick VinZant 21:57
I'm aware of it. Well, apparently
John Shull 22:00
it comes out that she just did that it was like a promotional thing to try to build up her only fans. I'm a little let down by that, because I thought it was just a good old, wholesome lady drunk supporting your team. So I'm naive, right? I'm naive, dude,
Nick VinZant 22:18
every pretty much everything in life is fake. The older you get, I think the more you realize that pretty much everything is fake.
John Shull 22:27
Damn it, just damn it. Even those
Nick VinZant 22:29
wonderful bosoms were most likely fake. But you just have to accept things for what it was, right? Like, that's good marketing. I'm not going to be mad at her. Yeah. I mean, who's really that disappointed? Like, oh, I can't believe that the woman who decided to bear her bosoms. I live like saying bosoms, by the way, it's a great word. We should do a top five nicknames for like, the female chest, for bosoms, knockers. Great. I love knockers, fun bags. Ryan,
John Shull 23:05
John, James Anderson, Andrew Cronus, Tony bones. I like that man. Get a like bones as a last name is awesome. Yeah,
Nick VinZant 23:14
it's pretty good. You got to be skinny guy, though you got to be a skinny guy named bones. Carlos
John Shull 23:20
Soto, Michael wall, and we'll end here on uh. Lizzy. J all you get the shout outs for the week. Did
Nick VinZant 23:30
I do fun bags? You
John Shull 23:31
did not do fun bags? Fun
Nick VinZant 23:33
bags isn't on that great one.
John Shull 23:34
All right, are we doing, uh, are we doing the the surprise segment first or Canada? Whatever you're doing, I don't know what you're doing. Well, then we might as well do candle the month. Second. Stick around. We
Nick VinZant 23:44
always do candle the months. But because we always do candle the month right before top five hasn't changed in the 17 years we've been doing this. So
John Shull 23:51
excited. All right, so, uh, for this segment, it's, it's really, it's just, it's fun, it's interesting. Um, I was thinking with with the American Independence Day coming up, July 4. I scoured the internet to try to find a reputable, credible list of the Greatest Americans in history. Oh, okay, so I found a, it's a top 50 list put on research was done by several universities, including the University of Washington in your great state, go dubs baby, oh boy. So I will just do the top 10. And this is, this has been a project that has been updated and researched since 2009 Okay, so these are the greatest Americans, according to this research, the top 10. So we'll start, obviously number 10. Go to number one. Number 10. Harriet Tubman,
Nick VinZant 24:49
okay, I can see it right, right. Underground Railroad did a lot. Gonna be hard to argue with that one.
John Shull 24:54
Number nine. Mark McGuire, what just. Kidding. Number nine, for those of you who don't know that, is, he was a baseball player, guy, pop doing steroids. It was a whole thing.
Nick VinZant 25:06
Number nine, see some people actually saying that. So yeah, Frederick
John Shull 25:10
Douglass,
Nick VinZant 25:14
okay, I can't remember what he did.
John Shull 25:18
Let's just move on.
Nick VinZant 25:20
Did something great, though. Oh yeah, I remember, like, I don't remember what he specifically did, that he was a voice for the cause. So just
John Shull 25:28
Yes, he was, if you, if you really want to get deep into what he exactly did, if you give me a second, because I don't want to screw it up any more than what we already have, yeah. So he was, uh, you know, or it's orator. Obviously, he was most famous for speaking out against slavery, number eight, the first president on the list, in the top 10. FDR,
Nick VinZant 25:54
Oh, I thought you were gonna say he's the first president. I was like, he wasn't the first president. Man, I really have no idea who's on this list. Like, I'm sure, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington.
John Shull 26:08
What I don't Why are you going through names like, what are your thoughts on? FDR,
Nick VinZant 26:13
he was great guy, great guy, not in my mind, as good as his relative, Theodore Roosevelt, who I personally thought was like the cooler president, but Franklin Delano Roosevelt, really, I believe that he got us pretty much out of the Great Depression, started the big New Deal, all that kind of stuff. Yeah, he's cool, all right. He's down.
John Shull 26:32
I mean, not to mention he carried us through probably the greatest battle of evil and good in submarine history.
Nick VinZant 26:41
Oh, submarines. That's what it is. That's why you're all up on FDR, Okay, number
John Shull 26:46
seven, uh, Thomas Jefferson.
Nick VinZant 26:50
Oh, I don't care about him. Feel like he's like, what did he do? Bill of Rights. He was the Declaration of Independence. He
John Shull 26:59
was, like, one of the authors of the declaration, defendants.
Nick VinZant 27:02
Oh, a lot of people were I just look, this is my I'm gonna go into this. I'm gonna say this now. It is my as a student of history. I was a history major in college, which that doesn't really mean anything now, because I haven't read a book in probably 20 years, except for MurderBot, which was a great book. I like that a lot. MurderBot diaries, if you want to check it out. It's pretty cool. I completely lost my train of thought. Good. That's what it is. I think that a lot of people are just replaceable. Like, if it wasn't Thomas Jefferson, it would have been Bob Jones, like, Oh, he didn't do it well, somebody else would have. I just think that there's that many people that a lot of people look this is my rant. Now you're gonna get the whole rant. I don't really think that people are special. I think that all of us are pretty much replaceable. And there's few people in history that you would say that person really changed the world. If it wasn't them, it would have been somebody else.
John Shull 27:56
Nick, yep, you're special. I
Nick VinZant 28:00
just don't think that I am necessarily right. Like, if we didn't have Michael Jordan, we'd have Lebron James. We didn't have LeBron James, we would have Steph Curry or Kevin Durant. Like, there's always going to be the best person in the world. You just move down to the next level. Like, what did you really miss?
John Shull 28:16
Well, there's number six, Ben Franklin. All
Nick VinZant 28:19
I can remember is he invented electricity or discovered electricity. Like, okay, cool, sweet man,
John Shull 28:29
I feel like you're not really digging this list so far. I just
Nick VinZant 28:35
don't really know what like you could put anybody on that list and I would be like, Okay,
John Shull 28:42
I mean, what's, I don't disagree what you're saying, but
Nick VinZant 28:46
is Macho Man Randy Savage on there? Because in my mind, he's one of the greatest Americans that I know of. He meant more to me than Ben Franklin did,
John Shull 28:55
right? But, I mean, I want to agree with you. That's the problem, right?
Nick VinZant 29:01
That's the thing. Is, like, what really, who really meant that much to you? Thomas Jefferson. He really was like, yeah, thank God for Thomas, for Thomas Jefferson and
John Shull 29:10
the overall whole of American history. You know, macho man didn't, didn't give the same type of things that the others have. Anyways,
Nick VinZant 29:20
number five show man Randy Savage did more for me than Thomas Jefferson or Ben Franklin. Did?
John Shull 29:25
Ben Franklin gave you electricity?
Nick VinZant 29:27
Somebody else would have, like they wouldn't have, if wasn't for Ben Franklin, nobody else would have invented electricity in the next 200 years.
John Shull 29:35
I actually think he was Tesla, anyways, for right? There
Nick VinZant 29:39
was somebody else that would have done it five minutes later, right? If it wasn't you, it would have been somebody else. So then, far as my mind, macho man. Randy Savage is a better American than Ben Franklin is to me. Macho Man means more to me.
John Shull 29:54
Wow. We got to number six before you just completely shit on everything. Number five, Albert Einstein.
Nick VinZant 29:59
Nine. Oh, I thought he was German. Honestly, I thought he was but, yeah, how is he number five? Like, he should probably be number one, because he basically discovered, like, the fundamentals of science, and we use that for a lot.
John Shull 30:16
He was a German born, obviously physicist, but ended up getting American citizenship. So hmm, because I believe the Germans were hot to get him back to Germany during World War Two. And, yeah. Anyway, something going on there. Number four, Martin Luther King, Jr,
Nick VinZant 30:36
okay, he's four. I could put him higher on the list. I would have thought that he would have been higher, like, who's above him, really, when you think about it, yeah,
John Shull 30:46
number three, George Washington, which, to me, is probably the most replaceable list or person on This list.
Nick VinZant 30:57
Oh, he was the first. I mean, yeah, who's number two and number one, Abraham Lincoln is number is Abraham Lincoln number one or number two? Number one, then who's number two? Rosa
John Shull 31:12
Parks.
Nick VinZant 31:16
But the thing is, is, like, I remember, if I remember correctly, that somebody else had actually done it before she did it, and didn't really get any like there are people that kind of, I think that you can see this in social media, in the sense that, for some reason, everybody coalesces around this one thing, and even if you're not the first to do it, for some reason that catches people's attention. And there is something to be said from that.
John Shull 31:42
I mean, you need someone to step up, just because she may not have been the first for you know, she's the one that history remembers for whatever reason. Yeah, it's interesting
Nick VinZant 31:51
to see who History remembers and who history forgets.
John Shull 31:56
You think will be forgotten or remembered, forgotten, forgotten. Anyways, I feel like I need to go 20 through 11 real fast, because some of these people I've never even heard of, so I'm just gonna go real quick. Don't interrupt me until I'm done 20 to 11. So we'll start at 20 of the most famous Americans, Josiah Gibbs,
Nick VinZant 32:20
who's that? The lead singer for Saturday Night Fever, staying alive,
John Shull 32:25
huh? No, that's Andy Gibbs, I think. Oh,
Nick VinZant 32:29
the hell's Josiah Gibbs, Teddy
John Shull 32:31
Roosevelt, Noam Chomsky, Henry David Thoreau, Booker T, Washington, not. Booker T, baby. Oh, God, the wrestler, Cesar Chavez, Eleanor, Roosevelt, a first lady on the list that high. John Muir, Susan B Anthony and Thomas Edison,
Nick VinZant 32:56
okay, so basically, people who are linked to social causes are the top. I mean, you're linked closely with a social cause, then you put the up that's, that's kind of how they did that
John Shull 33:08
some, some would say that, you know, those are the folks that you know make the biggest difference.
Nick VinZant 33:13
Yeah, I just think that sometimes I have not.
John Shull 33:20
All right, are you ready for candle the month?
Nick VinZant 33:23
Oh, okay, okay. This is big. I feel like, what month Do you feel like is the biggest month for candle of the month? Uh, October. Oh, sets the scene for fall and winter. Really.
John Shull 33:40
I mean, I'm not gonna lie, those are my favorite fragrances. Are the fall, Autumn favorite fragrances, wow. Say that five times fast, fragrances, fragrances, fragrances, fall fragrances,
Nick VinZant 33:53
fall fragrances.
John Shull 33:55
Anyways, all right. Are you ready?
Nick VinZant 33:59
Yes, it's Oh, yeah, wait, wait, wait, wait, it's time the outlaw candle connoisseur Rides Again. Candle of the month. What is that supposed to be?
John Shull 34:17
I'm calling. I'm calling all the
Nick VinZant 34:21
what Yes, I'll hide that with a Nerf gun. Oh, my son just stared you down. What's it like to get punked by a seven year old just punking you out, Logan, close the door
John Shull 34:42
so the can of the month for July is a red, white and blue candle. Oh,
Nick VinZant 34:51
you wuss. No,
John Shull 34:52
I so I thought about not doing this because July 4 is going to a past, okay, but I. This is, this is a unique red, white and blue candle. Okay, head over to Goose Creek candle.com.
Nick VinZant 35:09
Did you say goofs?
John Shull 35:11
Goose? Goose Creek Candle? I was given this by a co worker because I had, I was talking to somebody else, they had overheard the conversation about our favorite like, popsicles. Okay, I had said one of my favorite popsicles is the bomb pop, which is red, white
Nick VinZant 35:33
and blue. Bomb. Okay, all right, so head over
John Shull 35:37
to once again, Goose Creek, candle.com the red, white and blue candle. Get it. You can get a three wick large for 10 bucks. Right now,
Nick VinZant 35:47
I don't know if tell you to tell me, three wick for $10
John Shull 35:51
get it. Hot cakes and hot cakes, titty, biggies. So once again, this candle, it's, it's like eating a bomb pop. It's gonna, it's gonna hit you with Blueberry, raspberry, strawberry. It's just gonna remind you of a hot summer day and getting sticky stuff in your mouth.
Nick VinZant 36:18
Sorry, I started playing something on the internet. I pulled up my phone, I could
John Shull 36:22
tell you are the worst person to record with. Like you are not. You're just not. You're just not good.
Nick VinZant 36:32
I just did something else. I was checking the social media feed.
John Shull 36:36
See what I'm See what I'm saying. Multitasking. This is why we can't do live feeds, because you'll never be a part of the show.
Nick VinZant 36:42
Oh, we're, by the way, we're gonna start trying to do live stuff starting maybe next week.
John Shull 36:48
I can't that sounds terrific.
Nick VinZant 36:52
Logan, get out of here with your squishmallows.
John Shull 36:58
Anyways, let me wrap this up. So get out of here. Check it out. Goose, Creek. Candle, calm. What
Nick VinZant 37:03
is happening? Close the door. Get out. Close the door. My son doesn't listen to me. No. Logan, go, God, I had to put the base in the voice. Man,
John Shull 37:19
blueberry, strawberry, cherry, orange, raspberry. It's going to take you back to when you were 10 years old in the hot summer day. Check it out. Goose Creek Candle, calm the red, white and blue candle. They also have some other awesome candles too. I haven't had I haven't tried them yet, but they have like bubble gum and peach pie, just some good candles. How
Nick VinZant 37:39
upset Are you on a scale of one to 10 that I ruined your candle of the month? Thing? Month
John Shull 37:44
thing? I mean, not, not really. I enjoy doing it, so I got enjoyment out of it.
Nick VinZant 37:48
I actually feel a little bit bad, because I was legitimately interested when you said it smelled like a bomb pop. It's like, Oh, I thought, since you were bringing it. What brings me down, though, when you do candle of the month is when you say somebody just gave it to you, like somebody just gave it to you, you should be out there researching, scouring the depths of the internet, looking through the clearance bin at different stores that sell candles. You should be investigating for the people I don't feel like you're investigating for the people you're just like, okay, oh, I got these three. I'll pick this one.
John Shull 38:20
I mean, the last six, seven candles I've done, people have given to me because I'm the candle connoisseur. I don't go hunting or riding into the sunset for these candles.
Nick VinZant 38:33
People bring them to you, yeah, when, Oh, I see right. When you're a big enough movie star, you don't have to audition.
John Shull 38:40
And if it's not up to code, I whip the shit out of them, and then I spur them with my boots.
Nick VinZant 38:50
Okay, good. I like it. I like that level. You need to let the people, other people who have candles, know that you're better than them, by far, better than them. You're better than other candle connoisseurs. You don't have to waste your time. Why would I ever buy this? It should be sent to me for free.
John Shull 39:06
Here's the thing, all right, I'm gonna say I'm the best candle connoisseur in podcasting today.
Nick VinZant 39:17
I couldn't disagree with you. Is there anyone else? Do you win by default?
John Shull 39:24
I don't know. Probably win by default, but that's fine. I'm okay. There's
Nick VinZant 39:27
famous movie critics, literary critics, TV show critics, that you gotta turn this into something. You know,
John Shull 39:35
the candles no one can all the flame to my candle.
Nick VinZant 39:39
There you go. There you, there you we should make that into a t shirt, copyrighted, yeah, okay, um, so what's the name of the candle? Again, the red hot and blue Boomer.
John Shull 39:51
It's just red, white and blue. And you know what? I think next month I will start bringing the actual candle. With me to record?
Nick VinZant 40:01
Oh, yeah, you should have done that a long time ago. Yeah, been doing a video for a while now. Just a little while, like, two years, three years, yeah, why is the first time you ever thought of that? But I've recorded, we have recorded 104 episodes, because we do one a week. We've recorded 104 episodes. It's 24 months. That's candle of the 24 times you had an opportunity to do this and you just now thought of it.
John Shull 40:26
Hey, man, great thoughts come to me when I'm being disrespected by my co host.
Nick VinZant 40:31
That's how you do it, right? That's what I'm trying to do, is motivate you, not agitate. Motivate. Okay, so our top five is top five American things, things that just say, America, what's your number five?
John Shull 40:48
Man this. This is a harder list than I thought it was gonna be. Can I speak like this for the top five, or is this gonna be annoying if
Nick VinZant 40:56
I talk like this? Well, yeah, it's gonna be annoying, fine. Well, my number five is,
John Shull 41:01
I'm gonna put pickup trucks.
Nick VinZant 41:05
That's what I have. Is my number five. My number five is big trucks, because we love a big truck. It doesn't matter what you're doing, get you a big truck, even if you're driving it to your accountant job that's five minutes away from your house in a downtown city. Get you a big truck. You gotta have a big truck.
John Shull 41:27
The best, best part about people that have big trucks is they bitch the most man gas is $8 a gallon. But I'm gonna drive from, you know, my house to the grocery store for 40 minutes, and then I'm gonna complain about gas, even though I could have taken a economically smart vehicle, like,
Nick VinZant 41:46
that's exactly what we do, baby.
John Shull 41:48
We don't care about the planet. Fuck it, right?
Nick VinZant 41:53
I need this big truck. What are you gonna use it for, driving to work at the grocery store? Because I need it. Oh, is it like a like a rough road? Nope,
John Shull 42:07
I'm gonna tailgate the shit out of this guy in this sedan. But number four is American football.
Nick VinZant 42:17
Oh, that's number four. Oh, yeah,
John Shull 42:20
I got my list is stacked, man,
Nick VinZant 42:24
oh, I think you could have put football a lot higher. Yeah, I wouldn't argue with somebody too much if they put in football at number one. Wouldn't argue with you too much.
John Shull 42:32
All right, what's your number four
Nick VinZant 42:34
flags. We love flags. Flag for anything you got, we got a flag for every holiday, every season, every month. We love flags. Really do love flags. Absolutely, we do love flags. We have a day dedicated to flags. Is there any other country that has Flag Day? It's just for flags. I know it's not, but like it's more complicated than that. But still, we have a holiday dedicated to flags.
John Shull 43:03
I mean, yeah, huh, that's actually we love. Flags are my number three. And I just, I don't, I don't think this is specific to just America, but I'm putting it on there anyways ways, and that's just shitty beer.
Nick VinZant 43:24
I thought about that. I didn't think that was that, that that was high enough. I didn't think to put that on my top five. But I thought about, like, shitty beer. We do love some crappy beer.
John Shull 43:35
I forget. So I mean, somebody's went and toured the Miller factory up in Wisconsin, and the amount of volume of shitty beer that they distribute to America was mind blowing, like, per month. It was, you know, it was, it was like, millions of cases of beer per month. And I'm like, Who the fuck drinks as much Miller Lite, like, it's not even very good.
Nick VinZant 44:03
We'd like an excuse to just get wasted. Yeah, we do. America likes to party, right? We will look for any reason. I don't know if we do that more than other countries, but we do like cheap beer. I could see that definitely. My number three is misinformation. We love being wrong and not caring, because America makes us right. It doesn't matter if we love talking about stuff. We have no idea if it's right or wrong. America makes it right. Oh yeah, that's not how that works. Well, America says that's how it works.
John Shull 44:39
We just love to puff out our chest and yeah, America, put our foot down and we'll kick the shit out of you. It doesn't matter you can't do anything to us.
Nick VinZant 44:49
We have no problem being wrong. We have absolutely no problem being wrong and convincing ourselves that we are right. That is an American tradition.
John Shull 44:59
You. Goddamn America. Speaking of my number two country music,
Nick VinZant 45:07
oh, I don't know. Oh, I don't know. Not as popular as it once was. I don't think that that's a two man. What's your justification for that?
John Shull 45:16
When you think of America, you think of shitty music, and you think of country music, the shittiest kind of music there is. And listen, I like some country music, don't get me wrong, but I just, I just, I've always envisioned myself, and I have pretty shitty music taste. But like, if you're in Bolivia or somewhere, I don't know, pick a random country and you just hear a bunch of sad music about your wife leaving you and your dog dying and your pickup truck breaking down, and it's like, down, down, down, down. Like, come on, man, that's That's America, right. There
Nick VinZant 45:52
is America. Country music is America. It used to, I was a fan of, like, older country music, country music that I grew up with, like Hank Williams Jr and George Strait and yeah. But things not tell you nothing. Tell you what, uh, my number two is fast food. Oh, I love me some fast food. Love it. So my minor. Are there any chains that have originated outside of the United States that we have, like, for example, you can get a McDonald's in other countries, right? But is there any fast food chains in other countries that have come to America? Oh, I'm going to look that up,
John Shull 46:34
probably because, well, if there were, they'd be here already, because they would have made, yeah, that's true and insane. I'm sure there's some Canadian ones. I feel like there has to be some. Oh, Tim Hortons. Tim Hortons, yep.
Nick VinZant 46:46
Oh, there's a couple, not very many, that we've heard about. Okay, okay, okay, okay, I've got here they are. I'm gonna go really quickly, most of them. The only one that I have heard about was Tim Hortons, polo campero, Cody zone, chicken lickin. That's the name. Moss burger, taramuk, yoshinora Paris, baguette, monchu Walk pret a manager, Jolly b I've seen one of those before, but never had it. So basically, none. Only two that I've ever even heard of came from other countries.
John Shull 47:25
I mean, I don't know what the hell you just said for Manchu walk,
Nick VinZant 47:30
yeah, there's not a lot of them. Toast, llama bean, Jolly bee, which is it? I've seen those in Seattle, where I live. There's one of them that I've seen. It's like a Popeyes, basically, Tim Hortons is essentially, kind of like a cross between Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts. Yeah, that's
John Shull 47:50
a good that's a good thing. Yeah, that's
Nick VinZant 47:53
the only that's, it's, it's pretty solid, okay, yeah, fast food definitely. Um, it's your number one. You
John Shull 48:01
kind of already talked about it. My number one, I put processed foods.
Nick VinZant 48:07
Oh, firearms, dude. We love we love guns, man, we love them.
John Shull 48:13
Yeah, I mean, I put that on my auto mention. Didn't want to get into the whole firearms
Nick VinZant 48:20
talk like we're not going and for any of these things, we're not going to the left or the right. We're not getting into politics. These are just things that, like America does love, that. Do you have anything in your honorable mention? I personally do not.
John Shull 48:34
I mean, nothing crazy. I mean you pretty much, you know, hit the nail on the head there.
Nick VinZant 48:41
Oh, okay, that's gonna go ahead and do it for this episode of profoundly pointless I want to thank you so much for joining us. If you get a chance, leave us a quick review. We really appreciate it. It really helps us out and let us know what you think are some of the most American things. I'd be interested to hear from other people who live in the United States, but also people who live internationally. Like what do you think are some of the most American things?