In My Footsteps Podcast Episode 233: Defunct Bookstore Chains, 60's & 70s Lunchbox Culture, Dating/Love Game Shows(2-25-2026)

 

Order a copy of my acting debut film, Cape Cod Cthulhu!

Some popular bookstore chains that have since gone out of business. Kids lunchboxes in the 1960s and 1970s. The fun and ridiculousness of dating and love game shows.

Episode 233 puts a wrap on the month of love.

The show begins with a look back at defunct bookstore chains. These were some of the heavy hitters in literature retail but have since gone by the wayside. Many an hour were spent by 80s and 90s kids reading as much as they could and then not buying anything. Did you frequent any of these stores?

We take a trip down memory lane with a look back at all things lunchboxes in the 1960s and 1970s. What they were made of. Who was on them? What was inside of them? How the wrong choice could spell doom for your school popularity. Don't forget to pack your Thermos.

To end the month of love we have a new Top 5 going through some of the most fondly remembered, and some downright bad, love and dating game shows.

There is a brand new This Week In History and Time Capsule looking back at the cloning of Dolly the Sheep.

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
• Hidden Track Podcast #1

Listen to Episode 232 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.

In My Footsteps Podcast Episode 232: The Final Original NES Games, Dating Game Killer, 1970s Teen Idols & Queens, Chris Farley(2-18-2026)

 

Order a copy of my acting debut film, Cape Cod Cthulhu!

The last games released for the original Nintendo. The story of the infamous Dating Game Killer. Some of the popular teen idols and teen queens of the 1970s.

Episode 232 keeps the month of love rolling on.

It starts with the ending of a beloved gaming console. For several years, and with more than a thousand titles to its ranks, the original Nintendo Entertainment System changed the gaming when it came to gaming. All good things must end though, and we will look back at the final 10 games ever released for the NES.

The month of love meets true crime. One of the most infamous true crime stories of the 1970s is that of 'Dating Game Killer' Rodney Alcala. How did a man in the midst of a killing spree end up as a bachelor on the popular game show? What is the story behind the notorious 1978 Dating Game appearance? Have any other killers appeared on game shows?

The 1970s weren't all serial killers on game shows. This week's Top 5 goes in a more wholesome direction as we look at some of the most popular teen idols and teen queens that dominated the disco decade. 

There is a brand new This Week In History and Time Capsule looking back at the life and career of beloved comedian Chris Farley.

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
• Hidden Track Podcast #1
• Retro Games.cz

Listen to Episode 231 here

Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog #108: Super Bowl, Still Frozen Cape Cod, Valentine’s Day, etc.

1. Super Bowl LX has passed. My New England Patriots didn’t finish their story and go from the outhouse to the penthouse in one season. The Seattle Seahawks defeated the Patriots 29-13 and deserved to win. Their defense lived up to the hype. Patriots quarterback Drake Maye looked rattled at many points during the game. His right shoulder was still somewhat injured, but he didn’t make excuses. He’s only 23, the 2nd youngest quarterback to ever start a Super Bowl. Despite the team losing, I have no doubt that they will be back in the Super Bowl within the next 3-4 years. The Patriots are a young team, with most players signed, and tons of money to spend. There might be a step back next year with a harder schedule and other teams getting a bit of a playbook on the Patriots, but rest assured, this is only the beginning of this chapter. So Patriots fans like me have no fear, and Patriots haters, sorry, but get used to them being contenders for the foreseeable future. Until then, though, hats off to the Seahawks; they are the champions and deserve all of the accolades.


2. The ice floes have been clogging the north side of Cape Cod for three weeks now. It has almost become just another part of life. I have been at some beach nearly every day getting photos and videos, as you who have been reading the blog know. When something feels common, it can also feel less dangerous. I have been climbing out on the ice chunks to get better vantage points. Of course, I’ve been doing it safely, but when you’re maneuvering on pieces of ice, how safe are you really? I have had a few slips and gone down during the last few weeks, but that didn’t stop me from taking it one step further this week. I went for a sunset shoot at Sea Street Beach in East Dennis. I carefully made my way out onto some of the ice and shot a video. Then I wanted to get some more footage since you never know when the temperatures will rise, and the ice will become only a memory. So I started walking further out until I was probably 75 feet offshore on the ice. Then I heard what I thought at first was a wounded bird. It was a high-pitched squeak. Then I heard it again, but it was no bird. It turned out to be the sound of ice splitting. Think about what an ice cube does when you drop it into room-temperature liquid. It kind of squeaks and cracks. Once I realized what it was and where I was, I got back to the beach as quickly as I safely could. That squeaking noise definitely was a reminder that I needed to respect those ice floes, no matter how cool the photos and videos could be.



3. As we are in mid-February, thankfully, we’re closer to the end of winter than the beginning. I am craving warmer temperatures and things blooming. It feels as though this has been a classic New England winter when we haven’t had one in several years. For as much as I want spring to get here, I am torn. The ice floe videos have been a boon for my social media, so I am not too keen on giving them up. That being said, I believe that Cape Cod in general is a great place, and videos of it will keep bringing in new viewers. Also, no matter how much I want the ice floes to stay, I can’t do anything about it. Or can I? No, I can’t. But I can shoot so much content that I can repost and repurpose it until I get sick of it. Of course, the biggest issue with spring on Cape Cod is that we don’t get one until May. Before then, we get a mass of mid-40s and fog, which makes us all feel like we’re in some horror movie waiting for the killer to pop out from the fog to end us. Yay.


4. The older I get I try not to look past today to get to tomorrow. What I mean is I see so many people on social media ‘dreaming of summer’ currently. Summer is 4 months away. These people are wishing away so much time that you don’t get back. Sure, I might be taking it too literally, but I am trying to make the best of each day rather than sitting back wishing it was spring, or summer, or sunny, or warmer, or that I was doing something more exciting. I think that’s a big reason why I have enjoyed Cape Cod’s icy winter. It’s like it gives each cold winter day purpose rather than these days being looked at with scorn and wishing it were summer already. Don’t forget, the sooner it’s summer, the sooner it’s winter again. Just make the best of each day you have; summer will come right on time as it does every year.


5. Dedication to the Craft is something I’ve mentioned a lot in this blog. It is something my buddy Steve and I coined about getting a photograph, no matter what might be in our way. This typically means putting ourselves into some sort of less-than-ideal situation for the good of the shot. One such way I can do this is by running on a treadmill and then deciding to go chase a sunset at an icy beach. My adventure to Chapin Beach in Dennis included me in shorts, trudging through a foot of crackling snow to get amazing photos. A pair of women, all bundled up, saw me out there and fled. There was also a nice older man shooting photos who didn’t seem too surprised when he saw me up on a hill, standing on a picnic table looking for the best vantage point. All in all, it was a fun trip, and the photos were worth it.

6. Dedication to the Craft can also take the shape of standing underneath a tree full of fighting turkeys, trying to capture some sort of National Geographic video. It was a ‘jerk the wheel and pull over’ type of moment as I spotted what was probably close to 20 turkeys in a tree. A few were fighting over the best branch and gobbling at each other. When trying to leave, I was boxed in by the rest of the turkey family, probably another dozen or so. These ones casually swaggered across the street and hopped onto a snow bank, all while I tried to reason with them. Luckily, I knew the password *gobble*, and they let me by without hassle. That was a close one.


7. I had a cute interaction with a little girl at the supermarket this week. As I was walking, she was facing me in a shopping cart. She looked like she had just finished a frosted donut, as it was all over her face. She smiled, waved, and even said hi. I made sure to say hi back, and she seemed happy with that. She also said hi to everyone else who passed by, but I didn’t hear anyone else actually say it back. I’m sure they all waved or something because who could resist engaging with a cute little kid? Psychos maybe. I would interact with every kid I saw if I could, but I think it would start to look like I was a creep, and we can’t have that.


8. Valentine’s Day is interesting in that I’d love to have someone to celebrate it with, but I also love the fact that I can just do for myself and not have to stress about whether I did a good job. It’s not really a holiday. It’s more of a spend more money on a relationship day. You can put in almost no effort, like getting flowers at a gas station on your way home from work, and be rewarded like a king. Or you could go all out, spending handfuls of money you don’t have on a celebration, and still be looked at as less-than. You sometimes never know what you’re going to get. I have always thought that if you’re a big Valentine’s Day person, that’s great, but not overly impressive. Everyone who cares about their partner does something on that day. More impressive is being the hero of the day on a random Tuesday in August when nobody else is watching. That’s when you know you’ve found the right one. Would I do something like that? I’d like to think so, but there’s only one way to find out.


9. Speaking of Valentine’s Day, mine was spent on a treadmill in the morning. While I was there, trying to run like it was 2019 again, I spotted this cute girl I had seen several times there. She’s a combination of mousy and serious, if that makes sense. Like, she’s not there to hang out and chat. She’s there to get her work done and go. I have been racking my brain trying to figure out how to get her attention. We wear the same brand of shoes, Brooks, but I don’t know if that’s much of an in. On this day, we each finished our respective cardio at the same time and ended up next to each other in the stretching room. Sadly, for as much as I’d like to think I would be coming off as genuine, I stayed silent and stretched rather than try to talk to her. I know most women don’t want to be approached by a stranger at the gym, and I had to respect that. There’s not much else I can do but try to be in her line of sight next time we’re both at the gym and smile like an idiot. Yeah, I’m sure that will suddenly break the ice.


10. Sadly, the wonder of the Cape Cod ice was shattered this week when a husband and wife fell through the ice. It happened at First Encounter Beach in Eastham. Unfortunately, the ice can look thick and stable and actually be ounces of pressure away from cracking. The couple had been out with their dog and walked out on the ice. This week saw temperatures getting into the high 30s on most days, which seriously compromised the ice. It was apparently also high tide at the time that they were walking, which was a perfect storm for a tragedy. Incredibly, the day before the event, I had been not far away at Skaket Beach in Orleans. There it was, low tide, and I hiked nearly ¼ mile out onto the ice for one final adventure. There were several other people out wandering on the ice at Skaket. The big difference between my walk and the tragedy in Eastham comes down to knowing your surroundings. Skaket Beach is the epicenter of the tidal flats on Cape Cod. Essentially, any erosion of the beach itself just gets dumped right offshore onto the flats. This makes it possible to hike great distances offshore, especially at low tide. To the untrained eye on social media, it might appear as though I throw caution to the wind with some of my photo adventures, but in reality, it is a lot of low-risk or highly calculated risks. My condolences to the family and friends of the people lost in Eastham this week.