In My Footsteps Podcast Episode 222: Remembering Ozzy Osbourne, A Hilarious 90s Subway Employee Training Video, Thanksgiving Day Parade Mishaps(12-3-2025)

 

Remembering Ozzy Osbourne on his birthday. A hilariously dated Subway employee training video. Some of the wildest mishaps during the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Episode 222 kicks off December and the Holiday Season with a package of GenX nostalgia tucked neatly under the tree.

It all begins with a celebration of the Prince of Darkness himself, Ozzy Osbourne, on what would have been his 77th birthday. A creator of heavy metal, a celebrated icon of music, a reality TV star, and more. Ozzy transcended music and became a pop culture legend. We dive deep into his life and the accomplishments of the man himself.

Awkward interactions, questionable hygiene, and seriously weak attempts at humor. You'll find all of this and more in a hilariously dated employee training video from Subway in 1993. All you need to know is there is a pie chart of customer complaints, with one of them being not wearing gloves, and the very next scene is an employee making a sub without gloves. A classic video for sure.

Thanksgiving might be over but there is more turkey day fun to be had. In a new Top 5 we look at some of the biggest Macy's Day Parade mishaps. Hint: They all involve rogue balloons.

There is a brand new This Week In History and Time Capsule, where we look at the crazy but true story of the woman who was struck by a meteorite.

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
• Christopher Setterlund.com
• Cape Cod Living - Zazzle Store
• Subscribe on YouTube!
• Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog
• CJSetterlundPhotos on Etsy
• 1993 Subway Employee Training Video

Listen to Mixtape #2 here

Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog #89: Cart Crunch, I Knew It, Annoying Subway, etc.

1. Who’s at fault? I watched an old man driving a pickup truck that’s way too big for him. He was pulling into a handicapped parking spot. Either he didn’t see or didn’t care that there was a shopping cart sitting up against the curb. I saw it coming and waved my arms, but it was too late. The crunch was super loud as he sandwiched the cart against the curb. His bumper didn’t fall off, but it was definitely damaged. A mother and daughter got out of another car and pulled the cart away when he backed up. Of course, the man blamed whoever left the cart there for being lazy. So again, who is at fault? The lazy person who left their cart in a handicapped spot? Or the man who just plowed into it? I’d say maybe the guy should buy a smaller car so he can see, but what do I know?


2. I don’t know about you, but I find it disgusting when someone blows a snot rocket in a public place. I also find it disgusting when a woman does it. So when I stepped outside of the gym and saw a woman blowing a snot rocket on the sidewalk, you might say it was the worst of both worlds. Don’t worry, there will be no graphic details. I’ll leave that up to your imagination. All I’ll say is that when she turned around, she definitely looked like the type of person who would do such a thing. Just low class, no regard for others. It’s like, at least go behind the building to do that, since I’m sure you’re used to hiding behind buildings to do things anyway.


3. So I did a thing this week. I published my 10th book. In Their Footsteps: The Interesting People, Places, and Events of Cape Cod History. It is obviously a history anthology. It features 40 stories in chronological order. I had been working on this for many months in addition to several other projects. I even crafted a simple landing page for people to get more information and to order the book in either paperback or ebook form. I self-published it mostly because I didn’t want to wait 18 months for it to be published traditionally when all of the materials were done. That’s like making a fancy dinner but not being able to serve it for months. If people enjoy this book, I have enough material to make two more volumes, but I’ll have to wait a few months to see if the interest is there. I am stretched pretty thin as it is so I need to be certain before I spend another big chunk of time on a project. Here is the landing page, by the way: In Their Footsteps Book


4. Typically, when I drive to Walmart, it is low-hanging fruit as far as content for this blog. I tend to see several people or incidents that immediately get made into a note in my phone. You can imagine my disappointment when I drove nearly an hour to Walmart only to have *gasp* a normal experience. I even did 2 full laps around the entire store just in case I’d missed something. Nope. It was all normal. Now granted, there was a lady who had a giant labradoodle in the store for some reason. There was also a guy older than me with a bright purplish/blue haircut, but these are not the types of craziness I was hoping for. I wanted people rolling on the floor fighting over the last box of Velveeta, not people happily shopping and getting along. Weak.

So disappointed....

5. While driving back in sadness from my Walmart trip, I stopped at a place I hadn’t visited in over 10 years. The Waquoit Bay Reserve is in East Falmouth. It overlooks the bay, naturally, and has loads of scenic trails, a cool cemetery, and the visitors center is filled with educational material. I did a walk on my own and decided to take a few minutes to sit at a picnic table and enjoy the moment. While I was there, a group of people came out of the visitors center with an employee giving them some historical information. Once they went walking on the trails, the employee stopped and we chatted for a while. He used to work at Plimoth Plantation, so he had loads of info about the Pilgrims, etc, which I enjoyed. I also particularly enjoyed when he’d slip into Olde English to talk about certain topics from the 1600s. What I thought would be a quick hello ended up being closer to a half hour, and I loved every second. It was fitting and funny that when he was going back inside to close up, he said, ‘Sorry, as you can tell I hate talking about history.’ I smiled and said back, ‘And you can tell I obviously hate hearing about it.’ He gave me some stories that might make good future blog posts, but I need to research them first.

The boat house at Waquoit Bay

6. There’s nothing quite like the mini heart attack you get when you’re sound asleep and you hear a crashing sound in your room. I woke up and looked around in the dark and saw nothing. I figured it must have been a dream that was too real. Then it happened 2 more times. Finally, at 4am I got out of bed and stood in the dark in the middle of my room waiting for the sound again so I could figure out what it was. It turned out that the wind had picked up so much during the night that it was blowing my blinds, which then would crash into the window frame. At that point, I just closed my window and went back to bed. Of course, I was so wired from the noise that it took me forever to go back to sleep. I’d have almost been better off just staying up. Oh well, at least it wasn’t a killer waiting to jump me in my closet.


7. There was a bit of an ‘I knew it,’ moment when I went to get my haircut this week. I always go to the same place. The person who I prefer to cut my hair is someone I’ve known for years and who always does an excellent job. However, because he is so good at his job, you need to book an appointment, and he is often booked out for weeks. The last time I had no choice but to do a walk-in and have one of the others on staff do the cutting. This guy talks way too much, bragging about how good he is going to make you look. It’s off-putting. During the haircut, he left to go into the backroom a few times and seemed to not be paying as much attention as he should to a paying customer whose hair he was cutting. I left there feeling like I got ripped off. It wasn’t short enough, and it looked uneven in a few places. Flash forward to this week, and I was right. The barber told me he needed to even things out because it was a bit of a mess. It’s all fixed now and looks great, but that other guy is a big mouth hack, which is why I’m not giving names here.


8. In the weekly cuteness alert, I mentioned last week that my youngest niece, Sylvie, gave me a blade of grass to keep when I was waiting for her school bus. This week I got another gift. It was a random stick that she wanted me to keep. Knowing that she’s smart and will call me out on it if I say I kept it but threw it away, I brought it with me on my walk. I was 2 miles into my walk when I shot a quick video for social media showing me with the stick by the water. So I had proof I kept it...for a while. Once the video was over, I left the stick on a bench. Luckily, she won’t know about that until she reads this blog in the future. But who knows, I might be long dead by then, so I won’t have to feel bad.


9. This weekend, I took a drive out to an area of beach that we plan on using to shoot the short film called When Henry Met Henry, my directorial debut. It was location scouting so that the rest of the crew could get a feel for where we’d be without having to actually drive there. I lauded this beach for being very secluded during the off-season. I walked about 1/3 mile to the specific spot where we will film, which is a beautiful trail over the dunes that leads into the woods. There was nobody around, well, except for one couple. Do you want to guess where they ended up going? Yup, right up the same path where I was going. Out of the miles of open beach, the only other people I saw went to the exact same place as me. I ended up having to wait by the water until I figured they were deep into the woods. I still got the video I wanted, but I had to shake my head. We’ll be filming early in the morning, so hopefully there won’t be any onlookers. With my luck, there will end up being a crowd just in that one spot.


10. For me, having lived on Cape Cod for so long, it’s incredibly rare to find an area that I am not familiar with. As luck would have it, the Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary was one such place. Now, I have been there before, once, over 10 years ago. However, when I was there, I didn’t do much walking. I just found the first clearing I could and got a photo of the sunset. This time, I hiked nearly a mile out to the ocean. It was incredibly isolated. Loads of chipmunks and squirrels couldn’t have cared less about me walking by. I made it out to a boardwalk for sunset photography. It was well worth the walk. The part that made perfect sense for my life was that as I was approaching the ocean, I spotted a couple coming my way, headed back to the parking lot. The woman was a patient at my job. So I only saw two people my entire time at this spot, and one of them knew me. For anyone else, it would seem like a wild coincidence. For me, it was like ‘of course.’

The sunset at Wellfleet Bay.

11. I don’t know why this irks me so much, but it does. I created an account for Subway a long, long time ago. I do enjoy me some Subway. The info I entered as a profile is all the same as today, except for the fact that I had an AOL email address because it was like 15 years ago. For the last however many years, I haven’t used that AOL email; I use a Gmail account. I changed my account info on every single site I had a profile with to reflect the change of email. Subway will not allow you to change your email. These people will let me change my actual name and my phone number, but not my email. Their stupid app says your email is ‘how we know it’s you.’ How do you know it’s me? How about my friggin’ name and phone number? When I try to sign in, they send a confirmation code to my AOL email. The issue is I never use that email, so when I go there AOL then sends me a confirmation code to my Gmail. It’s so stupid. I have never heard of a company not allowing you to change your email. Well, I did what I had to do and deleted my account and then created a new one using the Gmail address, so the joke's on them. Or it’s on me since I went through all of this trouble for a sub shop.

Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog #85: Labor Day, Angry Eyebrows, Wings of Love, etc.

1. Growing up on Cape Cod in the 1980s, I can remember a tradition we had on Labor Day. People would walk from their homes to a nearby overpass, if they lived close enough, and they would wave to the throng of vehicles exiting the Cape. It was a fun tradition, I know I partook in a few times. It was a celebration of the end of tourist season, but more gratefully and thankfully. We appreciated the crowds that chose to come and spend their time and money on our little peninsula. I don’t know if anyone still does that on the Cape in the 2020s. I haven’t heard of it in any great way since the 90s. I feel as though some people who visit now are rude and entitled. They treat locals like we’re their servants and we should kiss their feet because they grace us with their presence. Like I said, this is ‘some,’ and probably a small percentage, but those people make Labor Day feel more like a celebration of getting rid of tourists rather than a celebration of a wonderful summer.


2. I would like to think that I have a pretty strong stomach. I mean, after all, I grew up in the 1980s, where we could rent disgusting horror movies as kids. That strong stomach got put to the test at work this week. There was a woman who came in to use our PEMF (Pulsed Electromagnetic Field) machine to help speed the healing of an injury. She needed to lie down on a padded table with her leg elevated on a thick green bolster to feel more comfortable. I was training a client in the gym next door, but once I was done and had a free moment, I went back into the therapy room to get the PEMF machine set up for the next patient. That is when I noticed that the bolster had a pretty sizable wet patch on it. Now I know what you’re thinking. No, it was not pee. Oh no, it was actually more gross than that. What I haven’t mentioned is that the woman had a bandaged wound on her leg, which is what she was trying to heal. Yup, you’ve got it right, the giant wet patch on the bolster was weeping fluid from her wound. It looked as though someone had poured a full bottle of water on the bolster and table. It was just disgusting and a bit disrespectful and careless of this person to use our facilities with a severely leaking wound, and wearing shorts to boot. Unreal. Needless to say, that bolster was quickly carried out to the dumpster.


3. Not far from where I live, they are in the beginning stages of building a new bike path extension. It is located on a walking route through a golf course that I like to go on a few times a month. It is fun to see the progress. This week I really got a show. I was walking when I noticed three large trucks coming down the bike path toward me. Needless to say, that’s something you don’t see very often on a bike/walking path. After seeing the trucks driving to get to where the extension is set to begin, I thought I was done with vehicles on the trail. Nope, right after I also had to dodge what had to be a golf course maintenance vehicle. I saw more motorized vehicles on the bike trail in one walk than I have in every other bike trail walk I’ve ever done combined. I also saw this wild traffic cone stalking those trucks. Nature at its best.



4. You have to respect people who try to pull a fast one despite fully knowing they’re going to fail. This example comes from visiting a Subway to get lunch one day. I order ahead through the app so I am in and out in a flash. However, I was in there long enough to watch a guy try to use a paper coupon on his meal at the register. Not only had this coupon expired, but the woman working the register remarked that it had expired by more than a year. You could see the expiration date on the coupon. Either this guy was ultra stupid and didn’t know how to use a calendar (shout out to people who think the last day of summer is Labor Day). Or this guy thought he was way smarter than he actually was. Honestly, I think both can be true, as most stupid people have disproportionately high levels of confidence.


5. To try to get some more donations for the When Henry Met Henry short film I am directing in October, I decided to take a location field trip. I went to Coast Guard Beach in Eastham to get some video and photos from the southern end near where Henry Beston’s Outermost House used to be. I figured a little narrated video from that spot might entice a few more people to donate to the fundraiser. Of course, I couldn’t just do the easy route and drive to the beach. I decided to park at the Cape Cod National Seashore visitor’s center and walk the bike trail to the beach and back. It was a perfect afternoon. I ended up doing about 6 miles, with more than 2 of those being a beach walk. I loved every second of the walk, but was wiped out afterward. I was so tired that I was sitting on the ground at the amphitheater behind the visitor’s center. I would have stayed there longer, but about a dozen ants started circling me, and I didn’t want any trouble, so I left.


6. On a curvy road not far from me, there is a speed detector. You know, one of those contraptions that shows the speed limit on that road and then your speed, typically in a large digital font. Usually, these detectors flash your speed, and then if you go over the limit, your speed either flashes or changes color, or something like that. This particular detector does neither. Once you go above the speed limit, your speed disappears and is replaced with a ‘slow down.’ If you keep going, it is then replaced by a pair of eyes with angry eyebrows. Seriously? If you got caught speeding on this road, what are they going to tell you as far as how fast you were going? ‘Sorry sir you were going ‘angry eyebrows’ in a 25 zone.’ So stupid.


7. Back in 1982, a singer named Jeffrey Osborne released a song called ‘On the Wings of Love.’ It peaked at #29 on the Billboard Hot 100. I definitely remember it as a kid. What does this have to do with this past week? My sister Ashley was insisting that she recalled a comedy sketch where Osborne had opened a restaurant appropriately named ‘Wings of Love.’ It was a chicken wing joint. Despite searching the internet, she couldn’t find any such sketch. Well, I took the bet and decided to create my own advertisement for Jeffrey Osborne’s chicken wing establishment, ‘Wings of Love.’ So here you go. Yes, my insanity and humor blend seamlessly.


8. It’s pretty sad that you can have a pair of flashing lights at a bike trail crossing and drivers will still just blow through and not stop if you’re standing there. It happens more than it should. Luckily, I stop and wait, rather than just walking across and assuming that people know that the crazy flashing lights mean to stop. During one walk this week, there was one car that stopped for me and another that just flew through. It’s like you’re either not paying attention when you drive, or you’re just a piece of garbage who doesn’t care about anyone but yourself. It’s just simple common courtesy and respect. I need to start carrying a rock in my pocket to throw at someone if they don’t stop.


9. As some of you know, back in March, I filmed a small role in a campy indie horror film, Cape Cod Cthulhu. It was my first acting gig, and I was told it was pretty good, which is always nice to hear. I have lots of footage I’ve been waiting to share to coincide with the film being released. There is an interview with one of the stars, and then a bigger interview with several of the cast and crew. It was such a fun experience, and I have been waiting for some news on the film’s release. Well, I can share the trailer for the film here. I don’t know the firm release date for streaming and DVD’s but it seems to be late October. I’ll keep you posted but until then, enjoy the first trailer for Cape Cod Cthulhu.



10. I am typically very easy to please. I would like to do amazing things and achieve huge amounts of success, but in reality, I am about as low-maintenance as they come. For example, this week I went out driving in the rain. I was listening to a podcast and I had an idea of where I wanted to go. I went to a beach that was deserted. There I parked in a far corner of the lot, turned off the car, and listened to the podcast while the rain poured all around me. It was so bland and mundane and perfectly soothing. I would love to travel the world and see everything there is to see, but honestly, I feel like I get the same amount of satisfaction from sitting in an empty beach parking lot in the rain listening to a podcast.

Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog: #28 - Mystery Pain, Bratty Raccoons, Watch Out For the Door, etc.

1. I am now of the age where I get an ache or pain and can’t always remember how it happened. I’ve had soreness on the inside of my left calf up into my knee for a few days. When I stop and think I honestly have no clue where or how it happened. It could be an insect bite, I could have torn my calf sleepwalking, or aliens came in and kicked me there and left. All of these make sense at this point.

2. This week I signed up the oldest client I have ever trained. He is 97 years old. This man was literally graduating high school when World War II ended. All he wants is to get the most out of his body as it is today. Sadly some trainers would see a person in their 90s and say ‘sorry you’re too old I can’t help you.’ I know this because I had a 91-year-old client who told me that happened to her. For me, I want to try to help anyone who comes to me seeking it. I was unable to help my grandparents as they declined in their 90’s. I look at this as symbolically helping my grandparents since this new client is how old they would be if they were still here.

3. I pulled into the parking lot at work like any other day. When I shut my car door I noticed something at the dumpster. 2 heads popped up from inside between the large plastic flaps covering the dumpster. It was a pair of young raccoons. This has happened before. I walked over to kind of shoo them away. That’s when I noticed a 3^rd one inside the dumpster too scared to come out. I opened the right flap of the dumpster and began walking away. The 3^rd raccoon climbed out and began to leave with its siblings until it saw me leaving. Then all 3 scurried back into the dumpster. I had to go to work but came back out a few hours later. Yes, they were all still inside. The same 2 ran away leaving the 3^rd behind. This time I opened both sides of the dumpster and watched the 3^rd raccoon climb with its siblings into a nearby tree. They were not happy when I closed the dumpster and locked it. Sorry kids, the buffet is closed.

It wasn't quite like this but since the site won't let me upload the actual video this will have to do.

4. I’ve been doing more running than I have in a few years. That, plus it being overwhelmingly humid on Cape Cod this summer, means lots of soaked-in-sweat days. Sadly this means I’ve had acne issues for the first time in several years. The only very small bright side is that at my age when I bought Stridex pads I could pass them off as being for my teenage child if I had been asked. Very small bright side.

5. In a ‘life flashing before your eyes’ moment I was driving down a curvy road when some jerk in an SUV was coming the other direction. Not only was he going way too fast but he was also halfway in my lane. I had to swerve out of the way and ended up in someone’s driveway while also laying on my horn. Needless to say, I had to give a quick wave and apology to the woman who was gardening in her yard that I scared half to death.

6. I have reached the point in my life where even on my days off the time I wake up is getting earlier and earlier. If you had told young me that someday I’d wake up at 6:30am because I wanted to I’m sure young me would have either laughed or wondered what the hell happened to me. Now? I take it as extra time to get content work done, like this blog.

Me and early morning are friends.

7. Shout out to the people who work at my local Subway. It’s in South Yarmouth, MA if you want to visit. I don’t go as often as I used to (I am trying to get back into race shape) but every time I go they are always friendly despite the restaurant industry being so cruel. I worked it for years so I know. The food is always good too. So there, go get something from that Subway and be good to hospitality workers because, well because it’s what decent humans do.

8. Everytime I think it has been the soupiest humid day possible the world says ‘hold my beer.’ A run this week had me soaked so much that I think I’d have been less wet if I’d have just dove into the ocean. Fall can’t come soon enough.

9. I’ll never say ‘now I have seen it all.’ Once I say that then I see something like a teenage boy running face first into a closing automatic door at a supermarket. He was too busy looking at the toy vending machines to see the door closing. He whacked his face so hard that he probably thinks he’s a gumball now.

10. Does anyone else feel like there are way more ads on YouTube now than even a few years ago? I’m seeing videos I watch with ad breaks every 3-4 minutes. That’s more than regular television has. But hey the jokes on them. I don’t even watch the ads, I mute the sound and stare at the lower right corner until the ‘skip’ option comes up. Or I just find the latest ad blocker, shhhh.