(upbeat music) - Hey out there Akronites welcome once again, to "Around Akron with Blue Green".

Now I have four amazing stories.

You're gonna wanna stick around to see.

I'm gonna head down to the valley for meditation and singing bowls with Quiet Mind Designed.

I'm gonna meet up with Dan Wasdahl and learn how to juggle and balance things, amongst other things.

Remember those cards from the eighties, the Garbage Pail Kids, well I'm gonna meet up with the Garbage Pail Queen.

Now to kick this show off today, you guessed it, I'm up at Highland Square at Square Records.

I'm gonna meet up with David back there and learn all about the history of it's 18 years.

Let's go see what Square Records it's all about.

(soft music) - My first memories of vinyl, okay well, that would have been, I guess when I was pretty young four or five, we didn't grow up in like an extremely musical house, but my parents had a few records.

My brother who's five years older than me had some records.

Honestly, the first one I can recall at that age was probably like the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack the Bee Gees and all that disco stuff on it.

I began getting a little interested in my parents' record collection and some of the stuff they had and then hearing things on the radio.

So when we'd go to stores back then, it was just like, you'd find records at like a Gold Circle or Montgomery Wards or whatever.

And I think the first record I actually bought with my own money, I was like eight or so, it was the first "Weird Al" record, "Weird Al" Yankovic and the Michael Jackson Thriller and some Van Halen I guess probably.

I remember buying those pretty early on.

Those were the first like two or three records I had when I was about eight or nine that I bought with my own hard earned money at that point.

(upbeat music) So I moved back to Ohio and started the shop with two other people at the time, Geoff Crowe and Juniper Sage.

We all kinda were bonded by the idea of starting a record shop in Akron, which is where we all grew up, and wanted it to be a little different than what was already here at the time.

We wanted to focus here on vinyl, but also kind of on more underrepresented music, a lot of independent record labels, just things that you weren't seeing around the city of Akron at the time.

But we would see in our travels when we would go to record shops, various places we lived or traveled to over the years.

So we wanted to kind of bring that sort of a vibe here to Akron.

(soft upbeat music) Yeah this is the only location we've ever had in Highland Square here.

So we've been here almost 18 years now.

We opened in August of 2003.

So we set up shop here, at the time this seemed like a pretty massive space for us because we didn't have that much.

We had like a couple bins of records and some CDs.

I think we were selling just whatever use tapes we could find, some artwork.

we also wanted to incorporate like local artists and things into the space.

So we would just like take in whatever we could to fill the shop up at that point.

And over the years, it's eventually gotten to the point where we're pretty full here.

It's pretty maxed out, you know, wall to wall with records, but it took a while to get to that point.

(soft upbeat music) Yeah, Highland Square's changed tremendously in 18 years.

Pretty much every building that's on the opposite side of the street from us is new in the last, I guess, really in the last 10 years, but definitely it has changed from what it was in the last 18 years.

The Mustard Seed moved in, which was pretty significant change to the neighborhood.

The library building changed all the other.

There's a strip across the street from us with six, five or six different spaces that are all new businesses.

So that's one big change, like very obvious cosmetic change.

I feel like the general sense of the square, what people think of Highland Square is more or less the same that it's still like Akron sort of art centric neighborhood.

A lot of artists, a lot of musicians live here.

And those people are out come in all the time.

And they're like really great to talk to.

There's a ton of interesting people in the square.

It's a very diverse area.

I honestly can't think of anywhere else I'd want the store to be, it seems like the right area for what we do for sure.

And then it's changed in little ways, and it's had its ups and downs over 18 years.

It has periods where things are going really great and then periods where things get a little strange, but it's always the square, and I think that's a good thing.

(soft upbeat music) And I think that's one that nobody knows for sure, obviously, but I know for us currently, things are pretty good and vinyl is selling really well.

Vinyl is selling really well again.

And I personally think the future of vinyl is pretty strong.

We've got a lot of younger people that are getting into vinyl, which I think that's a good sign.

A lot of younger people are buying turntables for the first time, finding that their favorite artists are putting things out on vinyl, and picking those up.

You know, I hope they're gonna stick with it.

I hope it's not like, for them just sort of like a passing phase, 'cause I think it is, like for me, it's the most fun way to be into music, but we'll see how it goes.

(soft upbeat music) You know, even if you don't find the record, you come in for there's several thousand others here that are worthy of your attention.

And for me, when I go into a record shop, I'm not always necessarily looking, I am looking sometimes for that one record I want, but I'm always gonna look through everything else that's there because you never know what's gonna be in the racks.

It could be something you've been looking for for 10 years or so, just hiding out, out there in the shop somewhere.

So it always pays to kinda give a good look through the shop and see what's there.

(soft upbeat music) - Next up something near and dear to my heart, meditation.

I'm gonna go to the valley and learn all about guided meditation and singing bowls from Quiet Mind Designed.

Let's go see what they're all about.

(ominous music) - I come from a small town in Bulgaria.

And I lived in what was considered back then in the communist times, fashionable complex of blocks.

And it just so happened that complex of blocks that I lived in was right at the end of town.

And literally it was like the last block before a field started, where they would usually grow like barley or wheat.

And we would often just roam around there.

We liked to play hide and seek in the field of like young grass looking tall wheat or barley.

And I just remember this moment, one time when we're playing hide and seek and I just drop in the grass pretty much, that's your hiding spot, (laughs) and somebody has to find where exactly you dropped.

I just remember laying there on my back, and just like looking at the blue sky and seeing the birds flying and just listening to the wind and just listening how it rustles the grass and just noticing the grass blades, just moving.

And it was a very very precious moment that has stuck with me.

And I realize now I was meditating in a way.

And what meditation really means is that you become fully present.

Fully present for what is here, what is right now in your heart, in your mind, around you, in your surrounding.

So that is really the basic of it.

(calming music) Meditation is a beautiful tool.

I know a lot of people may have associated it with Buddhism or may think of religion or some kind of eastern beliefs.

And that is so for the regions of mindfulness of meditation, however, in the recent decade or so, it has really spread widely in the western world, in its like secular form in a way.

And this is what I'm currently actually taught in my two year mindfulness meditation teacher training.

The purpose of that is to become more available to a wider group of people, and to draw the focus on the fact that it is a wonderful tool to help people center themselves, help people calm themselves down, help people improve their performance and focus whether that's at work or at school.

So it serves various purposes.

What the meditation comes down to in a nutshell is your ability to just become present for however long or short you are able to, just to sit with yourself and to recognize that you're here, and to allow yourself to be here into a right time and time again, because thoughts come and thoughts go.

And along with that there are many techniques.

So there's various ways to really center yourself and focus in yourself and just bring yourself back into here and now when you meditate.

One of them is breathing.

The other one is just simply scanning through your body.

And another one is sound and they're called anchors.

And so different people have different preferences for different anchors.

And so it just could be so that sound is your anchor, that just speaks to you.

Sound is my anchor as well.

I love sound, and I've always been connected deeply to sound through singing from my whole life.

And that could be one reason.

But another one also is the fact that you know, how singing bowls are as an instrument.

If you wanna think of them as an instrument.

You know, in the Western world, we think of instruments as tools to produce measured sound in a way, does this make sense?

And the singing bowls are the complete opposite in that regard.

When you tap the sound it's preferable for you just to allow the sound to slowly just take its course and just disappear, right?

And there is something soothing and calming for the mind to not have that restricted like length of a sound and just allowing that sound to carry itself away.

And if you really focus on it, then slowing down and like toning down, winding down, just becomes your carrier to sooth you and calms you down, and becomes in a way, an invitation to just really slow down your breath and become more present.

It's a practice that just needs time and needs commitment, and dedication, and patience.

And then it bears its beautiful fruits.

And then you look back and you're like, oh, now I see now I see this has helped me, yes.

- Next up I'm gonna meet up with Dan Wasdahl and learn all about dancing with gravity.

He's a juggler, he spins things, he balances things.

He gets me to balance something.

Let's go see what Dan Wasdahl is all about.

(upbeat music) - As a kid I was a science nerd.

I grew up in Grand Forks, North Dakota, the frozen hostile wasteland, flat as the surface of the sea on a calm day, and all the kids there play hockey.

And I never even learned to skate when I was there.

I read chemistry books and I had a little chemistry laboratory in my basement and I made explosives and poisonous gases.

So I guess I entertained myself.

(upbeat music) We had a pool table in my basement when I was in junior high school, a buddy of mine picked up two pool balls and juggled them.

And I thought that was really cool.

I didn't do anything about it though for about five years.

And then when I was a senior, I took three oranges and went in my room and closed the door and figured out how to juggle them.

Took me about an hour and a half to unpack it.

A year or two after that, one of my high school buddies, I found out that he knew how to do it.

And another of my high school buddies, we found out that he knew how to do it.

So we started practicing together and throwing stuff back and forth and eventually started to get work.

We did, not halftime shows, what did they call them?

Oleo apps for the like tenth show, melodrama that a community theater put on.

And people started calling us and booking us.

And calling us on the phone and booking us because 40, (laughs) 40 plus years ago, that's how they did things.

(upbeat music) I did it until I was about a little over 30 and then I quit, at the same time as I quit that I picked up a new hobby of driving race cars.

And so I did that for a few decades.

And then about six, seven years ago, I picked this up again.

So I practiced pretty steady when I was a kid for about 15 years.

And then I've got about seven years, in my golden years now.

So it's not been lifelong.

(upbeat music) I don't know, original is the wrong word, 'cause it's all derivative and I've got heroes that I derived my stuff, but I wanted to do stuff that I put my mark on and it's at least semi original.

And so rather than just juggle the common clubs, balls, rings, food, dangerous objects, I've taken up spinning balls and spinning plates and spinning kiddie pools and hula hooping and balancing on a variety of akuilabristic apparatus.

And then combining all of these things doing, as many of them as I can and simultaneously.

And that's what I've been having fun with.

Particularly since the pandemic that afforded me a lot of practice time.

And so I did quite a bit of development during the isolation months of COVID.

(upbeat music) I'm working on a new fire trick and actually I'm trying to get the old fire trick solid enough for performance because I'm batting less than 500 (laughs) on executing.

I mean I can execute it for a video when we can do multiple takes, but I think I was like about 30% of the time in a session we had the other weekend.

There's another fire trick that I'm still editing the science if you will, getting the props to the point where I'm not at risk of burning myself.

Back when I was a kid, I used to do torches and there were no laws about that back then, we could use pump gas and light up whenever we want.

Now there's fire marshals regulation.

Perhaps, maybe that's a good thing.

(upbeat music) Flow state is achieved, if that's the right word, by musicians, athletes, being in the zone in the common parlance.

What's happening is your ability to process information is saturated.

And so the thoughts are crowded out and you are entirely immersed in the moment.

Now this is dovetails with meditation, right?

Am I starting to sound like what people (laughs) talk about there.

Because in meditation, the idea is to contemplate your processes, and see yourself thinking, and to seek a state beyond thought.

Well I haven't got there through meditation, but when I have been performing optimally in a race car, I have been in that flow state.

I haven't raised for as long as I've picked up juggling again but I won the national championship in this amateur racing called autocross racing six times.

And there were times when I would get out of the car and say that it felt like someone else was driving.

It felt like it was totally automatic.

This is getting kind of long haired because unless you've been there, it's hard to find words to describe it, but the flow state I've achieved in juggling, I've achieved it in racing.

And I don't know if I'd say it's so, see when you say it's about manipulating time then I mean, certainly it is another way to think of it as dancing with gravity though, because you wouldn't be able to juggle unless you were in this field, that cause the thrown object to return back to your hands.

(upbeat music) - Now to wrap this show up today, I'm gonna meet with the Garbage Pail Queen.

That's right, she is the queen of Garbage Pail Kids.

Do you remember those from the eighties?

Not only that, she also was one of the hosts on "The Daughter of Ghoul Show".

Let's go see what Garbage Pail Queen is all about.

- Well, greetings and salutations.

It's the Garbage Pail Queen here.

Wait, what am I saying, oh my gosh, oh.

Well it started off with Garbage Pail Kids.

So I think that would be my intro to everything horror.

I used to watch "Elvira" and the "Son of Ghoul" and you know, all those old horror movies.

I collect comic books.

I mean, it's all just, I've always been surrounded with monsters.

And I even worked at Mr. Funs, making costumes, selling costumes, props, all that stuff.

I mean, it's just, that's my life.

It's all horror.

(laughs) (ominous music) weird Wendy, that's my girl.

It's Weird Wendy she's probably up here somewhere.

But she's a little witch and she's standing over a cauldron and she's got snakes and frogs coming out.

And I just remember that is, wow, this is the coolest, it's witches, it's so cool.

And after that everything grows.

There's Dead Ted, Junky Johnny.

Like just all of the atom bomb.

Everything is like the more you went through them, the grosser they got and the better it just felt.

(upbeat music) They have an animated series coming out and I'm excited.

I'm gonna do a review on that as soon as it comes out.

They already have a video game.

It's not that great.

It's a mobile game.

But I did play it and I enjoyed that.

So they constantly are coming out with stuff.

They have skateboard decks, which I painted my own decks with Garbage Pail Kids, and then somebody was like, "oh hey, they have Garbage Pail Kids decks."

And it's crazy the stuff that they come out with, skateboard wheels, everything, it's nuts.

I mean they have cereal pop, like everything.

(laughs) (upbeat music) Mostly I like to get the older stuff 'cause I'm very nostalgic for all the old original stuff.

But now I have people who watch my channel.

They send me stuff now and I barely even have to like go out and buy anything anymore.

But I mean, they still have card series that come out and I order those.

I've been seeing them at Walmart and Target and at the Exchange, you can go there.

And there's the little cars that they came out with.

And there's wrestling figures and it's ridiculous.

There's funcos now.

It's ridiculous how much stuff they have.

- [Narrator] Its time for "The Daughter of the Ghoul Show" - They found me and they found me through Facebook and YouTube.

They found me on Facebook.

And my profile picture is Mistress of the Dorks, which I did my own renditions of Garbage Pail Kids.

Which I actually have a whole line of different characters that I redid.

And they found me through there.

And then they saw that I had a YouTube channel, and they watched that and they said, "we need her to host."

And they called me up and I was like, "Daughter of the Ghoul?"

I didn't even know that they had "Daughter of the Ghoul" I knew about "Son of Ghoul", "The Ghoul", "Ghoulardi".

And I was so excited, I couldn't believe it.

But yeah, I've been working with them for a few months now.

It's actually really new.

They just restarted, rebooted the show.

Hi I'm Chucky and I am your friends at the earth, hello.

(laughs) My advice is always if you love it, do it.

I mean, just don't let it get away.

It's whatever you love and do it for you.

And I know a lot of people who start off doing stuff online, TikTok, YouTube, Twitch, and all that.

They worry about the numbers.

They worry about their audience and getting big.

And I try not to worry about that kind of stuff.

I just do what I love and whatever I want to do, I just, I film it and I get it done and it's just, have fun doing it is really all it's about.

And then the people will come to you.

They'll see that you love it.

They'll see that you're enjoying it and they'll enjoy it too.

(upbeat music) Well, I would say so with horror and metal and all this Garbage Pail Kids stuff, I found that the people that I've met through all of it are the nicest people.

And I really feel like it's because it's you're surrounding yourself with, it's kinda angry and violent and disgusting, but it's all kind of the feelings that you're feeling inside being expressed around you.

And it gives you a, I don't know, it's like a coping mechanism almost.

But I feel like it helps me stay positive in the real world.

So all my fantasies are being put out there and you're just like, yes.

And then you can just go out there and just be yourself in the real world, you know?

And I don't know how to explain it, but I feel like it helps me stay positive.

(laughs) (upbeat music) - Thank you once again for watching this episode of "Around Akron with Blue Green".

Now if you have any questions, comments, you just wanna drop me an email.

You can reach me at www.aroundakronwithbluegreen or you can catch me on social media.

Thank you and have an amazing day.

I got four amazing stories, you're gonna wanna stick around to hear and see, that should be better.

Guess in a lot of the podcast, huh.

Now we scared everybody away.

(laughs) We get the place to ourselves.

Okay, here we go, next up, so.