In My Footsteps Podcast Episode 243: What Was A Yuppie?, 1990s Educational Kids Shows, TV Themes That Were Chart Hits, First Spam Email(5-6-2026)

 

Watch my acting debut film for free, Cape Cod Cthulhu!

What in the world was a Yuppie? What are some of the beloved 1990s educational children's TV shows? What television show themes were also chart hits?

Episode 243 brings the May flowers and the GenX nostalgia.

It begins with an answer to the question of what a Yuppie was. Synonymous with the 1980s, Yuppies were of a certain mold and lifestyle. They dominated the landscape of America for a few years and slowly faded away. We dive deep into their reign in the 1980s.

Barney, Bill Nye, Blue's Clues. These and more made up the must-see list of educational children's shows of the 1990s. It was a decade dotted with familiar favorites, soon to be legends, and oddities that screamed 90s. 

The new Top 5 looks at some of the television show theme songs that made waves on the music charts. Hit shows, forgotten favorites, middling, and downright terrible shows. Somehow, these themes became hits.

This Week In History and Time Capsule looks back to the first-ever spam email, the bane of many people's existence.

You can support my work by becoming a member on Patreon. 

Or you can Buy Me A Coffee!

Helpful Links from this Episode

• Buy My New Book, In Their Footsteps!
• Searching For the Lady of the Dunes True Crime Book
• Hooked By Kiwi - Etsy.com
• DJ Williams Music
• KeeKee's Cape Cod Kitchen
• MSFTS Community
• Christopher Setterlund.com
• Cape Cod Living - Zazzle Store
• Subscribe on YouTube!
• Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog
• CJSetterlundPhotos on Etsy
• Where In the World Is Carmen Sandiego: Classic Reload.com

Listen to Episode 242 here

Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog #109: Brainless, Scratch Tickets, Blizzard Time, etc.

1. I never realized how many people either don’t pay attention or don’t know how to read. I have been posting tons of the Cape Cod ice floes videos for nearly a month on social media. Each one is from a different north-facing beach. Each one is time-stamped, and its location is shared so that viewers get an idea of when and where I shot it. I even make sure to give a good description of each one so that there is literally no possible way someone with an IQ above 10 can be confused. Yet with every post I share, I inevitably get handfuls of people either asking where it was filmed or telling me to stay off the ice since it’s not safe. These low-intelligence people seem to think that if they watch a video of mine at midnight on a Tuesday, that somehow I am magically out there on a sunny beach at that very moment. I gave up trying to explain to these fools that the videos are not happening in real-time and that I actually am not living out on the ice waiting for people to comment. It’s like, use some common sense before trying to fulfill your desperate need to feel important. I guess this is a side effect of gaining tons of new followers. The more people come in, the higher the likelihood that a few idiots wander in like raccoons looking for trash.


2. A goal for 2026 is to get back to my prime running weight. I don’t know if I can ever run like I did at my peak in 2014-15, but I do know that the running I have been doing over the last several years has been at a weight 25-30 pounds above where I was back then. It’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy. I say I can’t run like I used to, but trying to run at a far heavier weight is naturally going to make running harder on my body. So, in trying to drop weight, I have become far more focused on my diet. This has got me down 10-11 pounds since Christmas, which is not bad. It’s still a way to go to my goal, but if I go slow and steady, it should be a success. Also, I have to try to run more as the weight comes off. My stamina hasn’t been the same since Covid, but in the past week, I managed three separate hour-long treadmill sessions of mostly running. After the third day, my body was so wiped out that all of my plans for content work went out the window. All I could do was sit back and watch cartoons while my body melted into my chair. The hope is that maybe in another month I’ll be down another 5-6 pounds, which gets me a little more than halfway to my goal. Just keep moving forward.


3. In the continuing saga of frozen Cape Cod, we have a new chapter. The ice floes that have clogged up the north side beaches for nearly the last month have begun melting. What’s left? Oh, nothing, just gigantic ice and snow chunks. By gigantic, I mean 7 feet tall and 10-15 feet across. There are legit hundreds of them stretching from Dennis to Orleans. It makes the tidal flats look like another planet yet again. I was able to go one evening after work down to a nearby beach at low tide. There was a layer of ice and snow about 20 feet across at the very edge of the shore. Once you got past that, it was a quick hop down onto the sandy tidal flats. There, you could fully explore the enormous ice blocks scattered as far as the eye could see. In the past month, we’ve had the slush wave phase, the entire north side is a sheet of ice phase, and now the dump truck-sized ice blocks phase. I’m sure it’ll all melt and be over soon, but I do wonder if there’s a 4th even crazier phase to this winter.



4. I’m not against scratch tickets. If people want to spend money they have for a very, very slim chance of winning a lot more money, go ahead, it’s your choice. It is kind of sad when you see people digging through trash to find losing tickets in the, again, very, very slim chance that the person who bought the ticket didn’t realize they had won. This week, I saw perhaps the topper of all wishful thinking. On a pretty rainy afternoon, I was headed into the supermarket. A woman was walking with what had to be her son. She spotted 3 or 4 discarded tickets lying on the soaking wet asphalt. She went over and scooped those dirty, wet tickets up in that 1 in 1,000,000 chance that there might be a winner. There wasn’t, and she seemed surprised. She did carry the trash in and throw it away, which was nice, so I hope her next scratch ticket wins her something.


5. I swear that spam emailers count on people being either stupid or blown away by fake praise that they will fall into their trap. I had a ‘person’ email me raving about my latest book, In Their Footsteps: The Interesting People, Places, and Events of Cape Cod History. If you couldn’t tell by the title, it’s a book about Cape Cod history. It’s an anthology of 40 stories in chronological order. This idiot, who is naturally selling their services in marketing, tells me they sat down to read my book, thinking it was going to be a ‘dystopian thriller.’ What? But then they were pleasantly surprised by the ‘complex narrative to the story.’ Again, what? They said my book wasn’t reaching a large enough audience, fine. I’m sure you read more than just the cover on Amazon. By the 3rd paragraph in this insanely long email, I figured out it was a scam, and I sent it to my spam folder. I do wonder if any other authors received similar emails and didn’t read them, but only saw the heaps of fake praise and quickly entered their debit card numbers. Luckily, being a Gen-Xer, I am always skeptical of even the most sincere praise, and that has served me well most times.

My 'dystopian thriller' according to the scammer.

6. At my work, we have an overwhelmingly positive clientele. I enjoy interacting with 99% of those who come in. That being said, it makes those in the 1% far more noticeable. We have one such lady who, sadly, has become a regular. She routinely comes in for our pulsed electromagnetic field therapy. It is great for healing and recharging your body at the cellular level. This lady was high maintenance from the jump. Having questions about the therapy you're doing is fine, actually encouraged. However, she went from asking questions to treating us like we were her servants and that she ran the place. She brought a negative vibe to a usually pleasant work environment. The biggest issue came with her demands that we turn the music off in the therapy room. We have office music, and I have music at my desk. Since they weren’t the same music, she flipped and asked us to turn one of them off. Incredibly rude. Then, another time she was in, she made the same complaint, but this time about my music in the gym while I was training a client. She made someone close the gym door. We like to leave it open so people can come in and see what we do, or so the boss has easy access to it. The best part of her time at my work is when the door closes behind her as she’s leaving. Just awful.


7. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: New England is in line for yet another huge snowstorm. I feel like we’re at the point in the winter where it’s like Jason popping up one more time just when you think he’s dead. Literally, this weekend, we had nearly all of the snow and ice melted away on Cape Cod. Now, it is predicted that we’re going to get a foot or more of fresh snow to replace it on Monday. The National Weather Service predicts 11”, so we’ll see. Plus, to top it off, we’re not getting the cold blast afterward, so whatever snow we have is going to be the heavy, wet, back-breaking kind. I had a blast shooting the photos and videos of the Cape Cod ice floes, but man, enough is enough. Spring can’t come soon enough.

I enjoyed it for a while but we need spring now please.

8. I have to laugh when some rando on social media tries to educate me about Cape Cod. I’ve had 2 such experiences in the past week. One was innocent. A guy wanted to drive down to the Cape to experience the ice floes. I said they were melting and might not be worth an hour-plus drive. He told me that Grok (the stupid Twitter AI bot) told him that the ice was still good down on Cape Cod. I was nice and just told me that I live on Cape Cod, Grok doesn’t. The other was some dumbass lady who tried to explain to me where Eastham was. She claimed it was in the middle of the Cape. Nope, it’s the Outer Cape; Yarmouth and Hyannis are in the middle of the Cape. I told her I was 12th generation, and she should probably stick to things she actually knows, like cigarettes and cheap vodka. Normally, I just ignore social media fools, but she caught me at a bad time and had to get put on blast.


9. While watching the Stephen King series 11.22.63, I developed a bit of a celebrity crush on Sarah Gadon, who plays the character Sadie Dunhill. She’s an award-winning Canadian actress who got a lot of notoriety acting in David Cronenberg films in the 2010s. It got to the point in the series that I cared less about the plot of the show, which was trying to prevent the assassination of JFK, and I cared more about Sadie and the main character, Jake, living happily ever after. The next series I began binging after finishing 11.22.63 was another Stephen King series, Castle Rock. It’s a great show, but you could imagine my thrill when, suddenly, in Season 2, Sarah Gadon shows up as a side character. She’s only in it for two episodes, but that was enough to take Castle Rock up a level. I won’t spoil anything for those who haven’t seen either show, but all I’ll say is that her characters have nearly the same fate in each. Pretty wild. She’s also starring in the new Netflix series Wayward, so I might have to just make that next up on my binge list.

Sarah Gadon in 11.22.63

10. We end this blog and this weekend off playing the waiting game for the blizzard. Every time the forecast is updated, it seems to get worse. The snow is one thing, but the wind and flooding are another. I slowly prepped over a few days to make sure that everything is good to go, whatever happens. I fully expect to lose power for a time. How long is another question. I went earlier this week to Crosby Beach in Brewster earlier this week and got some fun footage of hundreds of ice blocks all over the tidal flats. When I went back on Sunday, they were all gone. So the irony is that we’ve gotten rid of most of the snow from the previous storm a month ago, just in time for an even bigger storm to hit us. The only silver lining to this winter is that it’s been the coldest and snowiest on Cape Cod in over 20 years. Hopefully, it’ll be a few years before it’s as bad as it’s been this year.

Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog #86: Unlocked Doors, Phantom Receipts, Soberversary, etc.

1. The off-season has begun on Cape Cod. How do I know? On my typical Monday Runday, I forgot to lock my car in the parking lot where my friend Mike and I run the school track. My car was wide open for over an hour. Only when I got back to it and tried to unlock the doors did I realize they had never been locked. Now, yes as a child of the 1980s, I remember growing up in a time when forgetting to lock your doors when you went somewhere wasn’t the invitation for thieves like it is today, but I do not want to live in the past that badly, where I’d leave my valuables there for anyone to take. There was a team of landscapers there mowing and blowing leaves. I am so glad I was polite to them because maybe cussing them out for blowing debris in my face while running could have been the thing to push them over the edge, and they could have filled my car with grass clippings. It pays to be nice to people.


2. Sadly, this week was the first time since early June that I needed to wear a long-sleeved shirt for my morning drive into work. Now it was still 54 degrees, and I didn’t need to wear it when I left, but it is still symbolic. I do love fall. It is my favorite time of year. That being said, I realize that each amazing step through fall gets us closer to winter, which is my least favorite season. The funny part is that I don’t like the cold, but I also don’t like it too hot. I’d love to find a place that was like early fall on Cape Cod year-round, but that place doesn’t exist. It’s also funny how 54 degrees in September feels much cooler than 54 degrees in February.


3. On a more positive note, for the first time since early June, I went and played basketball after work. I had a pretty bad sprain of my left ankle that kept me off the court. (See blog #72 for more details) I told myself that I’d take it easy, but of course, that’s never the case. I might not be able to jump high, or really much at all, anymore, but my brain still thinks I’m 17. I got to running and shooting, and only about 10 minutes into playing, I very nearly did the exact same thing that caused my sprained ankle in June. I was running after the ball and nearly rolled my ankle in the area under the hoop where the dirt is not level with the asphalt, because so many people land there. I’d like to say that I was more careful after that, but I just avoided the areas directly under the hoops, so it was minimally safer. I didn’t get hurt, yet, so that’s a bonus.


4. There’s nothing like the mini heart attack you have when you think your bank account has been hacked. This ends up being a head-shaker and also a bit of a laugh. When I go to Stop & Shop, I get a receipt via email, which I actually enjoy. They typically are in my mailbox before I even get home. This week, I checked my email one evening and was shocked to see an e-receipt from Stop & Shop when I hadn’t gone there. My heart jumped. I figured someone had stolen my bank account info and bought groceries. Then I saw the date of the receipt, which was 2 weeks ago. Then I realized that in order for me to get a receipt, I have to use my rewards card. So that would mean at worst they stole my rewards card info, which is far less threatening. It turned out it was just a glitch on their end. None of my info got stolen, and my heart returned to normal, and I felt a bit foolish, which isn’t that unusual. Also, only a few hours later, I got another old e-receipt from the same Stop & Shop. This one was nearly 3 months old. Now the question is how many of these old receipts come through, and what will be the oldest one?


5. It’s hard to believe that this week marks 24 years since the horrible events of September 11, 2001. It still seems like yesterday. It is amazing to think there are people who are in college today who weren’t alive when it happened. I guess that is how time works. To me, it felt like I was living in some kind of movie. There was no way what was on TV was real. I have only been to New York City once, and that was in 7th grade. When I was there on a school field trip, I got to go inside one of the Twin Towers. It was only the concourse level since we didn’t have time to go up to the observation deck, but I still remember how enormous the building was on the inside. Even that brief moment gave me a connection to those events on 9/11. I wrote a more in-depth blog about my experiences on 9/11 back in 2021, on the 20th anniversary of the events. You can read that here: 9/11: 20 Years Later


6. Squirrels are definitely one of the most annoying animals there are. Not just with how they run into the road with no regard for the vehicles barreling down on them. It’s also how they are nonstop eating machines who don’t care how they get what they want. Don’t get me wrong, it can make for some funny scenes, which is what happened this week. My sister Ashley has spent years trying to grow sunflowers, which are her favorite. This year, she has finally had a few make it. This includes one flower that is nearly 8 feet tall. Apparently, this was too enticing for a squirrel that climbed up to the top and was sitting on the flower, tearing the seeds out and dropping the petals to the ground. Eventually, we were able to scare it off, but it was too late. It’s still standing, and the bees still like it, but the giant sunflower has seen better days.





7. This week marked 5 years of me being alcohol free. My family got me a 5-year sober chip, which is my first one. It seems like yesterday that I was finally able to push that demon aside. When it was still fresh, I remember thinking, ‘I envy those who can just have a few drinks and stop.’ Now, 5 years out, I have less than zero desire to ever have a drink again. Literally nothing good in my life came from, or was made better by, alcohol. So on my 5-year soberversary, I did a lot of celebrating. The day began with me getting to see my youngest niece get on her bus for school, so I knew it was going to be a great day. It also ended with a sunset at my favorite Cape Cod sunset spot, complete with my new selfie stick. Now it’s on to 6 years.


8. While walking the railroad tracks near my favorite sunset spot, I started hearing a noise in the nearby trees. It was a Great Horned Owl. In my infinite wisdom, I decided it would be a good idea to find owl calls on my phone and try to play them to entice a reaction from the Great Horned Owl. It worked, and I started getting callbacks. It is something I have done before. 5 years ago, at Nickerson State Park, I did the same thing but kept going longer as I walked through the woods to get back to my car. By the time I was next to my car, I had at least half a dozen owls in the surrounding trees yelling at me. As for this time, I have no idea how far the owl would have gone. Would it have flown out of the trees to attack me, thinking I was a rival owl? Unfortunately, or fortunately for me, I had to keep walking to stake out a good spot to shoot the sunset so I’ll never know what the end game would have been for my owl call and response game.


9. In crafting a blog post about when I briefly lived in Florida in 2005, I found I needed to find a very old email. I found what I needed and then spent a long time going through my old AOL saved emails. These date all the way back to the beginning of 2005 and are a great time capsule of life back then. I found that in 2006, I paid a whopping $20 to have H&R Block do my Federal and State tax returns. Today, I think it costs closer to $200. I found the correspondence between myself and a North Carolina law firm to settle a speeding ticket I got when driving from Florida back to Cape Cod in 2005. There were photos of my nieces and nephews from when they were little. There were emails from my Grampa. It made me so glad that I was basically a hoarder of emails back in the day.


10. When I get done with work, the last thing I want to do is that same job off the clock. I can’t be the only one who feels this way. For years, when I worked as a cook, I hated the idea of cooking for myself at home. I became a master of the microwave. However, working as a personal trainer in my day job makes it kind of essential that I exercise in my off time. That has become a problem as I feel burned out from all things fitness. Maybe it’s because I’ve been in fitness for 10 years now? Don’t get me wrong, I still do some sort of exercise, typically 4-5 times a week. I just prefer walking outside, mostly to avoid gym crowds, and also because my body doesn’t really like running anymore. Combine this with the fact that I am at a low point in life as far as diet goes, and you can see the problem. My food issues really began when I quit alcohol. It was the distraction I needed to keep my mind off booze. Sadly, now 5 years on from giving up alcohol, I find myself somewhere between 20-30 pounds heavier than I’d like to be. I always tell myself that once I get my eating under control, the weight will just fall off, and I do believe that. It’s just a matter of actually finding the discipline I used to have at my peak in fitness, but using that on my diet. My 48th birthday is about 7 weeks away, so we’ll see if I use the time leading up to it as a chance to get back in shape, or if the birthday itself serves as a kick-off for a return to fitness.


11. I live about a mile from the Cape Cod Rail Trail. It’s an easy walk to get there and then to be able to enjoy the scenery. The road I live on is kind of middle of the pack as far as traffic goes. Definitely not a main road, but not a rural road either. During the summer, I can easily see a dozen or so bike riders going by my window if I am sitting at my laptop like I am now. On Sunday this week, I began to notice riders going by more frequently. Within the span of an hour, I had watched what had to be more than 50 people ride by heading away from where the bike path is. The first few I thought were just a group of friends, but by the time several dozen had gone by, I had to investigate. It turns out there was a charity ride going on for Habitat for Humanity. It started at the Coast Guard station at the Cape Cod Canal in Sandwich at 8am, and people could choose routes as long as 50 miles. Case closed, right? Nope. Those routes for the ride were all along the canal and down into Falmouth. So now I have no idea why so many people went riding by my window on Sunday. UPDATE: It was the Yarmouth Second Summer Cycle supporting 20 local nonprofit organizations. 

Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog: #47 - Holiday Photo Trips, Laptop Blue Screens, My Nana's TV, etc

1. One of my recent favorite holiday traditions is snapping photos and videos of a little boat in Allen Harbor in Harwich, MA. I found it maybe 5 years ago by accident. My only issue until this year was that the boat was in an area where if I parked in front of it I had to jump down almost 5 feet to the dock below to be eye-to-eye with it. This year it was moved down where I could easily step my old bones down. Granted I could just walk down the dock to where the elevation was lower, but hey I’m in photo mode. Also, photos of this boat are guaranteed to blow up on social media, and I’m all about the clicks and likes.

2. My final author event of 2024 was one of my best ever. Speaking at the Hyannis Yacht Club was amazing. Very fancy, and very friendly, and all of the people who came out to see my presentation gave it rave reviews. The woman who organized it said the people loved it. I could tell by the number of books I sold. To top it off I got sent home with some choice selections from the lunch buffet. I was busting with happiness when I left, and then busting with food later on.

It was a fun and classy book event.

3. People who know me and have come to my speaking events are shocked I am the same person they know. This comes down to me being far more introverted in my daily life. With my dreams of being a writer came the issue of having to learn to speak in public for events. It was not easy. My first few events back in 2014 consisted of me speaking into an open copy of the book I was presenting. I needed to craft a visual presentation to take eyes off of me. Plus a friend of mine at an event said I looked ‘bush league’ acting like a scared rabbit talking into my book. That influenced me too.

4. My event at the Hyannis Yacht Club was made even better by my cousin Dale being there. She and her husband, my cousin Richard, have always been special to me. As everyone grows older, and some start passing away, we see each other less and less. Last year I saw them both at a family event and she asked me to stay in touch. I did briefly via email but that didn’t last. So seeing her at this event was a thrill. It also helped to have family in the audience to put me at ease. As I just mentioned I am way more introverted than I appear at these events, so any sort of home-field advantage I’ll take.

5. One morning this week I woke up and turned my laptop on as I do every day. I was horrified to get the dreaded blue screen. It mentioned something not being installed or some other issue with an update. My heart was in my throat. I’ve had this happen several times before on old laptops. The worst incident was in the spring of 2020 when my hard drive basically cooked itself. I ended up losing well over 1,000 photos and videos from my amazing 6-day 2,100-mile road trip in November 2019. I turned the laptop off and back on and wouldn’t you know it everything was fine. Granted I’m now expecting another issue anytime now, but it’s almost like the computer gods wanted to remind me not to get too comfortable with my technology running smoothly.

6. As the holidays go along I start to realize just how many places on Cape Cod are a part of my annual photo trips. I start to get memories popping up on social media which remind me to visit these places. By my count, I have close to 10 places that likely will span several trips. It’s almost like an obligation now to get my fair share of holiday cheer. I don’t mind though. Any excuse to take night drives and get some really nice photos is alright with me.

7. When it comes to this year’s first shoot my luck was both good and bad. It was cold, hovering around freezing. It wasn’t very windy, even by the ocean, so that was good. However, a few of the spots I visited are typically lit up either with a spotlight or actual Christmas lights. This year two places were not lit up, at least not when I was there. I guess it could be worse, it gives me an excuse to go back again before the season ends to try to get more photos.

A festive scene on the Eastham town green.

8. Wandering through Stop & Shop one evening this week I passed by Marty the robot that glides along looking for messes for the staff to clean. If you walk near it the robot stops because it has a sensor so it doesn’t just plow into people. But it can be kind of slow and get in the way at times. Me? I just step around it because it’s not a big deal. This angry old man though felt the need to plow into it a couple of times with his shopping cart while badgering his wife. A. He’s a jerk and I feel bad for his wife. B. He looks exactly how you think he looks. 60-something, mustache, some garbage phrase on his shirt that needs a wash, and jeans that look like they’re going to blow away like dandelion spores.

9. I made a typical foolish card for some friends and family for Christmas. What I end up doing is creating a card and getting it printed through Walgreens. I do have an account with them but use it probably once a year. When I got ready to have this card printed I needed to sign in. Fine. Since I don’t use my Walgreens account much I needed to check my email to confirm. Sadly my Walgreens account uses my old AOL email. So I had to go sign in there for the first time in forever. When I went to sign in there because I never use my AOL account I then had to verify myself for that through my Gmail account. I did that and was actually expecting to have to verify my Gmail account next through my Subway account or something. Cards are ordered though and all is good.

10. Finally after having my Nana’s old giant CRT TV for 15 years since she died I decided it needed to go. I haven’t turned it on in many years. Basically, it’s been a huge paperweight on an antique stand that I remember her having since I was a kid. As far as I know, it still works. It even has the remote. When it came to carrying the TV down the stairs and out to the street I noticed that it felt far heavier than I remembered. I thought maybe I’m just older and weaker which was pretty depressing. Then I noticed I had the TV still hooked up to the cable wire which made it feel like a thousand pounds. The fact that I forgot to check that was more depressing. I left it out by the street with a ‘free’ sign on it. 

How I thought my move of my Nana's TV might end up.