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We dive into some science discussions – like how sci-fi has become reality. Everything from camouflage to black holes to apatosaurus and fifth state of matter. Our accomplishments are amazing!
Word of the week: Perturbation
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Transcript
[00:00:37] Alan: I wore the wrong shirt for contracts here
[00:00:42] Stephen: last week you had orange and it was orange fall leaves. So I guess now
[00:00:46] Alan: going to the chameleon mode or somebody, I know
[00:00:49] Stephen: there’s your next costume. Exactly. Really the chameleon.
[00:00:55] Alan: I can’t count on the ninja black, because me moving around was like an eclipse, [00:01:00] so I can get the stills that way.
So I have to, I don’t know. That’s another cool, one of those scientific developments where, what used to just be science fiction, they really are coming up with something that monitors the environment and then displays it so that, even with movement or have you sent stand stock still, it really looks like you’re a part of the wallpaper.
You’re part of the forest. I think that’s the fact that things are able to be done in near real time. People always talk about what, like Moore’s law, about that? The number of processor on a chip, the number of micro on a chip goes up doubles roughly every 18 months. And that was just like an esoteric observation.
But then when you keep finding out how much that kind of speed actually lets you do miraculous things, when they.
[00:01:49] Stephen: I wonder if we really studied that thing with technology and advancement and speed and everything else. I wonder if it would follow some five, a NACI [00:02:00] number or something, it
[00:02:01] Alan: definitely it’s an exponential curve.
You know what I mean? Like I, I know I I read a lot about, and I’ve actually attended a couple of futurist conferences and so much of what they talk about is like half of human knowledge has been discovered in the last hundred years. And, probably it’s even less, the last 20 years in comparison to what little we knew by, having our environment was a hundred miles are, so everybody thought that their desert, their forest, their glacier, whatever it was, the world.
And then you started to look up and you start to say that isn’t the gods that’s stars and how far away are they. As you see, the, whatever they talk about, all kinds of indicators, how many Wikipedia pages have been created every single day now, compared to when it first started and every other bit of scientific experimentation, that just the amount that we keep adding and the depth we keep being able to go to the quality of the instrumentation.
It keeps on revealing, even bigger things. You know what I mean? This is how things [00:03:00] right now, there’s like a fifth state of matter
[00:03:03] Stephen: to just read about
[00:03:04] Alan: this one that as you and it isn’t earth air, fire, water, like we used to think it isn’t flow just on causes fire, the March of science and that incredible curious, relentless need to know.
It’s just revealing things at the big level, the subatomic level, the it’s very thrilling. I dunno, I guess it’s a little smoky when people are like I can just made this comment all over this morning. So I saw a picture of where people are sitting on dinosaur chairs and I thought it was very cute.
You know what, I’m one of those things. I think if you’re going to try to do something for office morale, it really shouldn’t be that everything is gray beige, institutional. Same. How about everybody getting a dinosaur? And I said they were too small for me. It’s funny cause they see me be built for kids though.
Adults were sitting on them, but I’m a big adult. And so I said, I needed a Brontosaurus chair. And I said, I know that it’s now called a pat source. I grew up with [00:04:00] the source and it just sounds bigger and funnier. So that’s what I’m going to use. But then I went and looked at. And actually they’ve revised that revival, that revision that Brontosaurus is now a sub-branch of whatever, the long neck, the classic dinosaur herbivore that a pedestal versus not the only thing in town that they’ve re added Brontosaurus will be added as a planet or whatever.
That’s good
[00:04:24] Stephen: to know. Cause actually me and my cousin were just talking about this. We went trick or treating with the kids. And I mentioned before his grandson who’s seven definitely will be in Mensa. We might bring him to one of the RGS some time he moved it right in because he got some chalk.
So he was out making drawings on the Sidewalk in the patio. So he did the solar system and he put the plant, the moons around each of the planets and he put the asteroid belt in and then he put, I forget what he was saying. Some closest discovered exoplanet and the solar system for that. He [00:05:00] just did that when I can’t, that’s fun.
So we were just talking and I’m like, that’s the thing, man. There’s just so many things we don’t know that we don’t know right now. And there’s so many things we still have to discover, like you said what was that thing a while back where they finally caught a picture of light in the, in a black hole and it proved one of Einstein’s theories that hadn’t been proven yet.
[00:05:23] Alan: Exactly. And it’s kind kinda funny this, I love this about my wife. We watch a certain TV together, but then often we’ll break apart. I’ll come up here and I’ll watch the Sopranos or something like that because I’m catching up on that and she doesn’t really want to see. Too many guns and explosions.
So then, but what she chose to watch was a documentary about exactly that, about how they captured a picture of a black hole. Wait, you mean the black hole where it enlightened and nothing escapes. They did it because this and this, it helped me do the celestial observation nowadays.
It’s not necessarily looking right at it. It’s looking at the perturbations with what we know about all the other natural laws around it and say, [00:06:00] there must be a planet crossing to make that perfect gravity perturbation. That would be why the sons aren’t exactly the way that they should look or that they’re.
And they just discovered one where a planet is orbiting like three sons. If I remember correctly, you know that it’s got this cool, like interesting pattern where the out of all the universe, everything has to happen because of the laws of large numbers. They found a place where however, the gravity works is that it doesn’t just orbit one single star that it actually is enough caught in each of their gravity webs.
[00:06:35] Stephen: I just, how cool is that right there?
[00:06:39] Alan: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Like when a long ago, I remember reading a story called nightfall, by Isaac Asimov. That was that just stepping outside of we have a 24 hour day. If you just start thinking about our other planets that have longer or shorter days or that the planet doesn’t rotate, but there’s always a hot Nicole side.
It takes you to different places in your mind. And [00:07:00] his was about if you live on a planet that actually had multiple moons. And when they all they’re usually are, they’re not they’re in sync. So that there’s hardly ever a time where there isn’t Moonlight. And that when it finally happened, that it really was, the sky went dark, that the world went mad.
They didn’t know how to deal with such a constant in their life. And we already have some traces of that here. If you don’t understand science, you’ll go to. Mythology, you’ll go to craziness. So it’s oh my God, the gods are angry at us. Oh my God. A dragon has eaten the sky, whatever you’re going to think about it.
But the way he described it was even in the face of all the science that, that kind of like when we went to see the solar eclipse, it really is an eerie feeling to have, okay, this is not the way the world is. There’s a horizon everywhere. There’s a sunset everywhere. Instead of in the west, the sun rises in the east and sets in the west and EV every other animal that’s attuned to the natural world. They all got quiet [00:08:00] because temperature dropped like 10 degrees in an instant, because without the constant power of the sun how much the world is affected by that constant thing. And it just was, wow I’m loving this.
And yet there really was a. A little unsettling aspects still that I sure hope
[00:08:23] Stephen: that brings up. One of my all time, favorite stories, Connecticut Yankee in king Arthur’s court, mark Twain used that so well, and that was, 120, 130 years ago or whatever. So it’s just, you could consider that story. Yeah. Saifai has pushed us, Jules Verne had the diving suits and the subs and then star Trek communicators, which we, yeah.
You know
[00:08:45] Alan: exactly. So much it is, this is like what we love talking about in relentless. Geekery that speculative fiction like that has so often been we don’t know, but let’s think about what it might be like. And then the world decides what part of that future do I want it to become [00:09:00] true?
I love the idea of being able to tap this. I’m not being able to run a tri-quarter when you get a medical reading. Yeah this, I got a radio and then I got all that and seeing how will that builds on each other? That once somebody figures out how to do it, then the whole world says wow, look at what we can do.
Now. We, I guess it was science being. Better and better sensors and more and more small, like the minute that you, I remember seeing a movie probably 40 years ago, was a lipstick camera then instead of a camera being a big tripod and a guy under a hood, like you see his old timey photographs. Exactly.
Then instead it was the launch of the stealth movement that they had a lipstick camera that was like just positioned where it was not at all obvious that it was there, but they were spying on a room of some kind. And as they’ve made that smaller and smaller, like now you have in your phone in like camera dust that you can throw on the ground and then put together.
Concerted image of all the things that it sees. [00:10:00] And that’s how, like now how we have the very large array. We don’t have a single telescope that had to get bigger and bigger a dish that would be able to absorb more and more light or radio waves or whatever else it might be. We said, if we do a hundred of them and we knew exactly how they’re positioned and exactly the angles, the computer can figure out the composite image, that is a hundred times the power of any single
[00:10:20] Stephen: one.
And just me shrink that down the nanobots. And now you’ve got that problem.
[00:10:27] Alan: And that big thing of, okay, I don’t have to have one perfect dish, which has, I think sometimes as they say, necessity is the mother of invention. So why did they do that? We can’t make a big enough lens perfectly anymore, even with perfect grinding and everything like that.
Any flaw means it’s all. If it’s not going to work, it’s all wasted. We can’t account. And we’ve actually figured out how to do that now that it’s actually made out of a single lens, but a series of. Shimmery panels and you can actually do those micro adjustments to make it again, aided by computers. Very fast that [00:11:00] I don’t know, just every time that you see that next thing of now, we have that, those tiny cameras and that they’re not just like fantastic voyage, where they said, let’s take a camera inside a person and we’ll figure out how to cure them.
And that was absolutely science fiction when Asimov came up with it. And now what has that done? When I had my ablation, they sent a little camera in there and a little, heatable element and they zapped so specifically parts of my heart that they fixed. I’m like, wow, thank you, science. I can never thank you enough, but figuring out how to do that without it being clumsy stupid, we’re going to go in there with a steak and pry your heart apart.
We can fumbling,
[00:11:41] Stephen: we fix it. It’s the fact that they could detect it. First of all, because with Halloween here and I was in new Orleans, Diving into a lot of vampire stuff. The lore, the legend, the myth, what people believe and new England, there was a big consumption or tuberculosis epidemic.[00:12:00]
People are there. They get drained. They look like they’re losing blood. They’re spitting up blood. So it must be a vampire. And. And so we’ve watched several vampire shows and one of them was talking about this guy, I forget his name and I haven’t looked up the facts to make sure it’s all correct.
But basically this guy was at these two wards. One was a free ward for people, and one was a ward for women giving birth, whatever but lots of money. There were more people dying at the one where. Cost money and was expensive, but the free one wasn’t. And the only difference was that the doctors at the free one washed their hands, put their hands, everything.
Yeah,
[00:12:39] Alan: exactly.
[00:12:41] Stephen: He got put into a mental Institute because they thought he was crazy. The other
[00:12:45] Alan: doctors that’ll be four. We all agreed that maybe things exist. They’re indeed smaller than the naked eye, like terms and that it wasn’t a curse. It wasn’t you, what? Magic. It was just, I have to expand the scope of what you think is out there.
We know that [00:13:00] there are now, obviously there are germs or viruses that are smaller than droves.
[00:13:04] Stephen: And we saw that, recently with all the COVID we’ve got the people, like you said, saying, oh, you can’t wear a mask. Cause I don’t breathe my own CO2. And it’s wait a second, doctors wear them for 14 hours during surgery.
Come on. And so it’s not this it’s something we can prove right now instead of. Science that we don’t understand yet. And somebody is just guessing, these are people saying I know you can prove it, but I still think you’re crazy.
[00:13:27] Alan: It’s a whole bunch of thoughts, of course, shooting through my head.
We used to play a game called go to the head of the class. It was like desks that you’d move up based on answering questions and so forth. And it’d be first grade, second grade, third grade. And we recently replayed that. And I know I’ve also done this with like even older games. It was a level of science that I think is not being taught a level of science, a level of history, a level of understanding of things there’s no longer being taught in schools.
And before this game, we had also played one [00:14:00] that was like from the 1930s and the things that kids were expected to know the exact dates of historic events, like the all kinds of historic figures that they really were important back then. And maybe now they figured it was time, but it’d be the. You have to, as a decent citizen, no, every Supreme court justice, every member of Congress, every appointed cabinet position, you have to be able to recite every time.
Like you have to, that’s just base knowledge to be a functioning member of society. And we have so much backed away from that. I know that they now teach to the test, but it seems that even the test that we’re requiring it’s gone down. It’s funny. Whenever I get to fuddy, duddy, pronouncements like this I don’t want to be old man yells at cloud, but I think it’s provable that the kinds of base knowledge that people have nowadays, you’ve seen all the things.
Can they identify all the states in the United States when they think we’re Vietnam is they put it where Florida is 40% of the people that were given that quiz. [00:15:00] Don’t have a clue where things are on a globe, don’t have a clue. And it’s funny. It doesn’t have to be exact, you don’t need to know tendencies in the
[00:15:06] Stephen: right hemisphere.
[00:15:08] Alan: You just have to be able to say what century was it in? And given three items, can you put them in order? And you have to know. I guess people would know world war II. Must’ve happened after world war one, but there’s been many other important wars, important scientific breakthroughs, and you need to know what they are.
So you get a
[00:15:27] Stephen: feel for how the world works. There’s a game called timeline. That’s exactly that we quickly love that game.
[00:15:34] Alan: Yes. And honestly, I’m humbled often with wow, I didn’t know. The fax machine was invented that much further back than I thought it was, but then it makes an impression on you and it stays with you forever because you don’t want to be embarrassed again and you want to be, so it was like as soon as they figured out Morse code, as soon as they figured out how to send things over a wire, they started to say how, what can I do with that?
Same with when they first had steam power, they started to say all the ways in which I could make a steam engine useful [00:16:00] and the amazing engineer. Again, I’m jumping all around. I love going to Biltmore house because it wasn’t only the beautiful Vanderbilt mansion. It was the head of working farm and the working farm was as if frozen in time.
So they had all these cool old farm machinery that were how ingenious they were, was being able to develop something to the precision of metal interacting. And it exactly digs the right depth for a seed. And that another thing puts the seed in and another thing covers it with dirt. And then you do that through a whole field.
And instead of an individual having to do that a hundred thousand times, it just did 10 minutes, 10 hours work in and hour. The breakthroughs of that kind of knowing that metal, that you can work with metal to that fight a degree that you understand. I don’t know, man, I just I’ve loved seeing the examples of human ingenuity like that
[00:16:50] Stephen: forever.
It’s how many times have they found a Mayan or in Egypt tomb and opened it up or a pyramid and they’re like deciphering it. And they’re like, wow, [00:17:00] they understood planets and how they moved. And they understood the seasons and the planting and how things grew. We’ve lost all of that. When the explorers like came to American, killed all the Indians and let’s move in, it’s like they had hardly any of that knowledge, it was all
[00:17:17] Alan: well, back when it really mattered, like you had to know what the seasons really were, because you had to know about how to bring your crops in so you can survive the winter so that your whole society didn’t die.
And there might’ve been a mythic component of. Explain why the sun goes across the sky or whatever
like that. But then the, whoever first said I’m going to watch that every day. And I’m going to put together a chart of indeed the days do get longer and shorter. And so then we can use that for, we have more time to work during the summer. And we know when the sun will set so that we can we’ll know how soon we can expect the river to freeze, this river that we have to be able to cross.
It will soon you’re going to afford it, but you’re going to walk across it. But how hard does it for you so that we can actually [00:18:00] not person, but a wagon. And they had to be very aware of their natural environment to survive in it. And so I like that when you see those old, I don’t know, they had to come up with a counting system and this is so much now no ontology, ontological things.
What do you know and how do you know it? It’s the fact that they had to invent language numbers. Records so that it wasn’t. And boy a brutal statement, but I think it’s true. A society that doesn’t have the ability to do written records has to fall behind. No matter how good your oral tradition is, no matter how you have scholars that do the sagas and the, and the troubadours that Preble with news from town to town.
The breakthrough of the civilization is movable type. The Gutenberg Bible is the biggest event that said there was a world before in the world after it. And it changed the world in unbelievably impactful ways. And so just that to be aware of [00:19:00] fire really matters. The wheel really matters when you learn about simple machines in school.
It’s how interesting that now I know about an inclined to play it in a wheel and a lever and that kind of stuff, but then just think of that’s how they were able to build bigger than they ever had before. That’s how they were able to move things differently than they ever had before the triumph.
Time, how long it took to get from one place to another, the amount that they could store. Cause they could build better Adobe bricks than ever. And I know I’m jumping around from simple machines into other technologies, if you will. But like how did we get to where we could go more than 10 stories tall.
There’s a, the Monadnock building in Chicago is the tallest of the last skyscrapers that were built. Not with. And hanging concrete on the girders construction, but where you had to have in order to get to about 10 feet tall, was it, the base had to be able to support all that way. So the base is I hope I’m not wrong.
Nine feet wide in comparison to a [00:20:00] wide at the top for the walls. You know what I mean? Like we, we knew physics, we knew substances. We knew that concrete. And even that development of concrete, not mine stone, but being able to mix and set concrete and all those things that go into well, we gained capabilities.
And then someone says how could I go, not 10 stories, but a hundred. I got to figure out and I’m going to do it in a place where we might get weather. I got to make it. So my building can not only go up that high, but actually moves with the wind torque so that it doesn’t collapse in a hurricane.
It’s just amazing, the kind of ingenuity that’s caught in it. And we have
[00:20:35] Stephen: these cool things. And we talk about that at times that’s one of those things that kind of sets people, these friends, those friends, whatever you want to say, but if we go to a Mensa gathering and we’re talking about this stuff, you’ll hear people quite often say if we did the, they get those thoughts, they get those ideas as a group.
And it. I guess it surprises me sometimes when I find other people that don’t care. Don’t think about [00:21:00] it. Don’t stretch and wonder about that next big thing. And then they’re just like, who cares? it’s a
[00:21:07] Alan: sad thing. You know what I mean? So over the last, let’s say 30 years, I think there’s been more and more biomimicry.
You know what I mean? We figured everything out. Sometimes we’ve looked at well, how does the natural world do it? And if we was available, materials can do Velcro similar to wow. That bird is really efficient in how it clings to clothing. How does it do that? And, and one of the ones that was fascinating to me was, we’ve divided the belt trains.
Now that the reason they can go 350 miles an hour is not brute force it’s because we learn how to exactly model things that know how to be as if a bird diving into the water and it doesn’t splatter against the water. And it doesn’t. Like when it dives it doesn’t it goes in so cleanly that it’s this perfect shape beak to shoulders to back, and let’s do that through the air.
And in fact, [00:22:00] if I remember correctly, one of the ways they were discovering the way high-speed trains work is usually they’re in a culvert so that they’re not buffeted about by surface weather, but they’re actually in a more controlled environment, a big ditch, if you will, they were discovering that you still had to have places where they went through tunnels and that when they came out of the tunnel, there was a Sonic boom.
They pushed air at such high speed that the act of then that air getting released, if you will, was creating a boom. And of course, then who wants to have that train in their backyard? What I’m going to get six Sonic booms a day? They looked at again, bird heads that were like, how does it get so cleanly in the dye, but chimney swift, or a Kestrel intrinsic, which ones they studied.
And they were able to then model the exact nose of the train. So it’s exactly that bird bill and and then it comes to. Cleanly, no Sonic boom. And how cool is that someone said, just want me to do this because birds fly 80 miles an hour. That’s enough, perhaps to be able to get a boom on a small [00:23:00] scale, and yet they don’t do that.
So what are they doing that isn’t like what we haven’t figured
[00:23:04] Stephen: out yet? If they would hit 88, then you know, you’d really see something happen.
Again, it goes back to you hear all the time that there’s so many things in the jungle that we don’t know. And haven’t discovered that old Sean Connery, movie medicine, man, where he discovered the cure for cancer, and then they wipe it all out.
[00:23:23] Alan: And honestly that’s really coming true in a lot of ways, the bio Pharmacopia that we have in the various different things, that’s a real why should you not burn the jungles down?
And just by being that more absorbent. And I dunno as we understand more and more substances and chemical interactions and so forth, in our lifetime we’ve had of. Go from being wow, that’s death, right? You don’t, if you have that in the, can you die? Then they discover actually what it does is that little bit of nerve deadening.
And if we can put nothing is ever only a poison it’s based on dosage. If we can get the right dosage, we can relax nerves so that it gets rid of people’s forehead, furrows, and whoever [00:24:00] first off that said, okay, bear with me, but I’m going to inject you with a little bit of a deadly poison, but I think it’s going to be okay.
But, they did this study that said here’s how neurotoxic it is and that this thousand times, million times dilution, whatever it is, it’s actually going to have just the effect that we want. And I know that, other solidimide, that when it caused terrible birth defects, back in the fifties, they’re finding out that it might still have a use at the right dosage and the right situation.
Yeah. Tapeworms and various different like parasites in your body. And they’re finding out that they might actually be useful medically that you’d actually want to introduce a tapeworm because it changes your body’s chemistry in such a way that it overcomes, I don’t think it’s, and maybe it’s irritable bowel syndrome.
I think it’s something very specific that like someone kept thinking, it’s not only a villain. There really might be some use if we can control this. And I not a year has gone by where you don’t read about something that we got to a certain point had to abandoned because we were clumsy in its use and now we’ve [00:25:00] become more knowledgeable and refined.
And then you not only have to overcome, of course, will it work or not? It’s will it have none of the terrible side effects? And that’s what the FDA,
[00:25:09] Stephen: how do you get it without the side effects?
[00:25:11] Alan: That’s right.
[00:25:12] Stephen: That’s right. So right there, it’s again, one of those traits that not everybody seems to have is.
Looking at something and how can you use it? How can you change it? How can you modify it? Do you use a big, do you use it little, look at a sticky notes that, that was from a guy that was trying to create and in move adhesive that would hold forever. And he created the exact opposite and became rich
[00:25:41] Alan: people really do want something that’ll hold on just enough and not leave residue behind and all that.
Exactly. I mean that, that’s a brilliant mind that can take that situation and say what could this be good for? I have to, I’m still in the market. I still loving having my investments going on one of my right stars. I have done a [00:26:00] little bit of. Rearranging lately where I think I’ve mentioned before.
It’s part of what I’m trying to do with my investing is not just make money. It’s to make the world a better place. I want to vote with my dollars to say this med tech, this communications tech, this more efficient way of doing things that disrupts an entrenched and kind of evil market. I want all those things to come to be.
So I’ve always my dollars. One of the companies that I have some money in is called Novo cure. And what it is it applies to electrical fields to cure. Cool. And so first of all, oh boy, a field filled with charlatans. People have been for a long time saying if you’re worried about seasickness where a magnet, th there’s all kinds of things where it might have a tiny, anecdotal bit of evidence behind it, but there’s been no science.
And because magnetic fields, electric fields, various different things that are invisible, to people’s eyesight, they can believe or not believe without having to go through the rigor of proving and scientifically what these guys [00:27:00] noticed was as cancer cells, as any cell, but in particular cancer cells, what is the cancer is something that didn’t get the ptosis command to say, when you grown to a certain point, stop, there is out of control growth.
And so they discovered that when in the act like this is at the cellular level, when you go through my ptosis, the cell splits and creates two copies of itself and shares its little cell DNA and that kind of stuff, that there’s an electrical. Part of that is a very specific signature of when the exact cell split occurs.
And these guys have figured out if we can interfere electrically with exactly that thing, we can stop cells from splitting as they should. And if we can make it that it’s not put the whole guy in an electric field and then yeah, all of his cells will stop splitting and that’s terrible if we can make it that it particularly focuses on it.
One of the first things they did was glioblastoma. When you’ve got brain cancer, there’s no easy way to get to it. There’s no good outcomes. There’s no chemical treatment. It’s really been [00:28:00] a death sentence. Pretty much. They found out that’s almost like a perfect environment for, we can get in there with an electric field.
Not at all. Intrusive. You might look a little funny wearing your. Mind reading issue, looking device, but it was able to make the tumors retreat to make them stop, to make them go away enough that amazing cures are happening. And now finding out that you can do that with like pancreatic cancer, that if you can make it so that you can’t obviously wrap your pancreas in this thing, but they’re finding out that you can tune the fields like they’ve been able to do for a long time with, you can have power coming from here and from here, and neither of them is enough to hurt your flesh, but where they intersect the combined power is enough.
So that’s how you can get either by vibration or by heat infrared, that kind of stuff, to be able to do a kind of internal surgery, internal changes. So they’re figuring out similar ways and like the Any number of friends, including me who have been through cancer and it’s terrifying. And there’s only so many ways now [00:29:00] to pursue it, whether it’s chemotherapy, radiation therapy, immunotherapy, and this is a new fourth therapy that’s seemingly working, it’s passing all of its tests.
The FDA is they actually had a thing where the number of patients that they had to do it on. It shows you this many. And then they do all the various different there’s rigor in the testing. And the FDA actually said, these results are proving so promising that you don’t need to only do testing for this small sample.
You need less people to prove it, and you actually need to like, if this can cure things, then proceed. So I just was at mouthful last Friday, had a good backstage all day thing. And it was Interviews with various different Smarties that are running the various different companies, the various different analysts that are knowing a lot about various different fields, about cryptocurrency, about, bio anyway, all of that was it’s so cool to hear this guy talking about it really isn’t about money to him either.
You know what I mean? It’s we’re figuring this out and we’re really [00:30:00] having success and I’m going to be able to save my mother. Do you want, what could be more wonderful? That Sergio and Brin from Google, the reason that they got out of the running of the business of Google in a lot of ways was because they wanted to be able to cure family Alzheimer’s to be able to cure cancer, to be able to, and there’s obviously other things of, Hey, let’s go to the moon, let’s do space travel and go to Mars and stuff like that.
And there’s a lot of mockery being done with that, but the benefits. Doing those kinds of things to figure out how you would do that. There are spin-off benefits of window for the substance knowledge that you have to have for nose cone material, for things that can survive the rigors of airless, near absolute zero space, but to be able to return to the planet and get through atmospheric reentry and the telecommunications that has to be able to occur with that pinpointed ability.
I, a long time ago, I was, I’ve been a believer for a long time in space travel. Not only because yeah, we should go to the moon because it’s cool, but that it really has [00:31:00] the solving of this problem has solved so many other problem. And the rigor of being able to do it. And so I trust that, that I know that space program isn’t Hey, we got Tang and space food sticks. It’s that we got like GPS’s it’s the, we got, the perfect molybdenum type steel
[00:31:21] Stephen: discount, Tang.
[00:31:22] Alan: This Tang.
Kind of idea is sure. They made a nice space suit, but where are you going to be able to use that? Then you find out that the materials for temperature control, fire reflectivity, that a lot of that applies to firefighters. Now, it’s just amazing. How do we know about human beings that say, what would you do to survive the rigors of space?
You have to be able to survive zero gravity. What will that do to like where your organs are? What does it do to your own, your blood flow, going to your brain. If you get up in the spacecraft and you turn into a non-thinking being you. And of course they didn’t test that on him being less than a dog, but in a monkey up.
And [00:32:00] it didn’t seem to drive them mad. You know what I mean? So we got an idea of how we could do. So much science fiction speculation was we’re going to have artificial gravity because we’re going to need to be able to have load bearing, to maintain our muscle mass. And so probably now you’ve seen when they do the international space station or any kind of space flight, they have people that they get on the treadmill and they’ve been able to rig it so that’s enough impact and simulated weight on your muscles that they don’t turn into jellyfish, but they had the two brothers remember they went up and they were able to study exactly.
These are twins. So it’s close. As you can get to same sample. And this guy, his muscle mass went down by 20% in comparison and his heart expanded in ways. Some of these things are not good. They’re damaging effects to human beings for extended space travel. So even if you want to go to Mars, but it’s going to take a year and a half and a year and a half, they might not be able to get out of the capsule and stand on their own because their body has been transformed by being in a different environment.
And how do you compensate for that? Anyway, I know [00:33:00] I’m fine. I’m doing sales talking, these things. So cool together. And like when you see Novo cure, it’s just so it’s like amazing and real intuitive surgical. And the guys that do the DaVinci surgical robots, that a guy remotely can do surgery with the level of precision of a surgeon with all of his training and all of his hand, motor skills and so forth.
Then you can simulate that so that you can have this in. I dunno, smaller towns that don’t have a cracked surgeon to be able to handle a difficult heart operation that has to be done. It’s just amazing to be able to have that robot ties to that level of, it’s not just picking up a box in a warehouse, it’s operating at that amazing skilled level.
And that’s really cool.
[00:33:43] Stephen: That’s why when I hear people say, oh, I hate computers. I wish we didn’t have computers. You know what there’s you don’t even understand what you’re saying
[00:33:52] Alan: exactly. Is there anything that doesn’t have that nowadays? How does your fridge maintain temperature?
It has not only a thermometer. [00:34:00] It has a little chip that’s measuring your temperature 10,000 times. Immediately letting you know, something’s funny,
[00:34:06] Stephen: it’s always, I get cynical about it and I always think, okay when you or your husband or your kids get rushed to the emergency room and they say, oh, you don’t believe in computers.
They’re going to die. There’s nothing we can do. You’d be like, Hey, no, do what you can get. You want all that computer equipment, you would want those 50, 60 years. Yeah. Or we got a witch doctor over there, all right Hey let’s jump on our other topic. Yes. And I had even heard this one, you mentioned to me Jim Carrey has been pegged as MODOK
[00:34:41] Alan: and at first it was only a rumor, but then it sure looks to be being confirmed maybe by Marvel itself.
So MODOK is a huge head that was grown by aim to be a smart being that then overcomes his masters and actually becomes, I think it’s. Let’s see, mental organism designed [00:35:00] only for killing or something stands for, it’s important to know these things the fact that it’s from what I understand, Patton Oswald currently voices him in animation.
They couldn’t, he would’ve made a good MODOK as well, but he was
[00:35:14] Stephen: in agents of shield.
[00:35:16] Alan: Exactly. Maybe the fact that we don’t want only certain actors to get all the rules. Maybe the fact that Jim Carrey really he’s got an aisle he’s got an intensity to him that you don’t know whether he’s crazy or not sometimes.
And that’s what you need. If you’re going to have a brain that’s grown. So where it might be beyond humanity, kind of Ozymandias and the Watchman. Once you get smart enough, you’re not really human. And you worry about artificial intelligence, maybe deciding that us carbon based life forms are not the most efficient way to do things.
Let’s get rid of
[00:35:49] Stephen: them. They’ll fix us. They’ll make us better.
[00:35:53] Alan: Exactly. So I just I’m looking forward because he’s been a great scenery chewer for a long time. [00:36:00] And as he’s moved away from comedy and going into various different things, I’m not sure if you’ve ever seen like the turtle sunshine of the spotless, I’m like that.
I like him. I liked the fact that he is taking risks that had them pay off. Even I saw a man in the moon and I’ll tell you what, I really hate Andy Kaufman, but his ability to inhabit
[00:36:17] Stephen: that was an amazing transformation. So
[00:36:21] Alan: I’m looking forward to seeing what he did when he was the joker in one of the Batman movies, he was just over the top enough, especially compared to Tommy Lee Jones who played to face and was a little bit crazy, but stiff.
You know what I mean? It was there. I’m looking forward to seeing what they do there. And having said that I just bear with me. I just saw another rumor. What, who was it? Somebody that I really thought was going to be ah, as the Batman movies have been good and bad, right and wrong, depending on who has been Batman and who has been the directors and who, and you talked them, it’s been, there’s been enough experimentation.
Some part of what has always informed the current Batman movies [00:37:00] is the dark Knight returns. It was a series of my Frank Miller that really looked at Ben had been retired for 10 years and he asked to come back because the world has really worsened. And what now he’s like a grumpy old man, but he’s still Batman.
So he still has his many of his capabilities. But once in a while, Batman has to take a pill because he’s in so much pain in order to keep going. And so that’s that portrayal of Batman being a little bit mad, a little bit merciless, like he has in the dark Knight returns. That’s a big thing compared to a lot of the other code against killing Batman, more current Batman, if you will.
But what I read was if they’re going to make the dark Knight returns, what they should do is have Michael K. Play Batman. He played him once he has now. So well also similar to Jim Carey. He’s got that crazy in the eyes where you don’t know what he’s going to do. He’s got such acting chops that he’s been in all kinds of different roles.
He played in a movie called Birdman. I hope you [00:38:00] saw it where it’s actually, you’re not sure that he’s a hero or a nut. I had that really the right level of intensity, of heroism, if you will. And so him coming back as the grizzled, grumpy, still very capable Batman. So that would be such a great idea.
You’re at man and then hearing is older and it really. I just
[00:38:21] Stephen: think that’d be a great idea. First a question with Jim Carrey and MODOK I do think they’re going to do practical costume, like the big blow ups we see it Halloween, or they go do CGI with that. I would think it has to be practical to some degree for him to move correctly.
[00:38:37] Alan: I think that, I know I’m, I guess I’m curious as to how they’re going to pull that off. Part of what Kirby often created were like, you can’t have Artemis Mazola with his face in his stomach without doing that via CGI and stuff like that. And Modocs same thing. It’s a huge I don’t know, 50 times as big ahead in a little chair with his limbs dangling, the vestibule, Oregon type living like that. So [00:39:00] how are they going to do it? If they have big zoom ins on his face and all of its mobility, he’s got a very good rubbery face and that’s actually a big on the screen. It would be very interesting because not prophetic. I guess it would still have to be in order to get the wedge shaped head, some combination of the miracle of CGI and express ability.
I’m curious as to how
[00:39:23] Stephen: they’re gonna do I hope they don’t go all CGI. Cause I think that would look too phony. They need some practical something. I, it’s fine having a framework shape, but I think Jim Carrey, as the actor would need that dimension, the weight, the size of it,
[00:39:38] Alan: the proof like Andy circus doing, Golem and doing king Kong and stuff like that, that a human actor that can mimic those movements, a Simian movement or creepy movement.
And they just, so it’s not CGI. It’s that. Little dots all over your computer, track that, and then can map that into a different form with all the right different bone structure and stuff. [00:40:00] Hey, after come over here, we’re going to chip away at you to make you more believable in this role. We did it, something like that, that they computer map him and have it be that it’s still very believable.
The uncanny valley kicks in if you’re going to have a big old head, but it doesn’t look right. People will, oh, that’s fake. And so you overcome the uncanny valley to make it that it really looks like.
[00:40:22] Stephen: Real. It’ll be interesting. So the next thing is talking about Batman, the new Patterson trailer Colin and I had a long discussion on this guy said, okay, this looks like a seriously psycho Batman.
And he said, oh, I’m tired of the cycle, Batman. I’m like, ah, I don’t. The Christian bale or the Michael Keaton and all the other guys, they weren’t real psycho. This would look psycho. He looks as psycho as joker.
[00:40:51] Alan: Honestly, I think I agree. And I, haven’t always enjoyed seeing the hardening of characters like that.
You know what I mean? Wolverine has [00:41:00] gone through various different bases of really being a killing machine or really having a horse. And so as Batman, and so we can start naming the characters that have the Punisher was created to be a very much an hero mass murderer. But then if you direct him at the human traffic or people, yeah.
Go kill them all, go get them. So do you know what I’m trying to say? It’s funny. I, in the same way that I thought nobody. Out joker Jack Nicholson and then he fledger did it. I’m always looking forward to see what they do. I don’t usually go in with, oh, we can’t do it. That’s not good. I was very curious, even from that very first Michael Keaton announcement of just because I really had that, the Batman is not a well man, he’s learned to play Bruce Wayne.
He’s really Batman, if you will. And Bruce Wayne is the genteel persona. That’s the mask. So I’m curious. I don’t know that I know patents in enough from other work to say, I know that. Teen idol, vampire type
[00:41:55] Stephen: stuff.
[00:41:57] Alan: You know what I mean? I didn’t think that he was embarrassing in that. I [00:42:00] thought that it was still okay.
I get by that. You know what I mean? It, I, there are some actors that I think are so light that it would really be hard for me to put them into that
[00:42:08] Stephen: role. Tom Holland would not make a good Batman.
[00:42:12] Alan: Maybe that’s it. He’s too boyish. If it’s too like innocent and cheerful and you need to have a certain grit and in the guy, and it’s not like Spiderman, hasn’t been through tragedy.
And yet his way of coping was the wisecracking angle, not the the brutalist angle. You know what I mean?
[00:42:30] Stephen: So speaking of Spiderman two we know the movie’s coming out in a little over a month for my birthday. That’s what we’re doing. And we know it has to do with multiple universe, the quantum universe, Dr.
Strange, and they’re bringing in some of the older, Dylan’s and actors. So here’s my thing. Here’s what they need to do. And I would buy the 4k version of this movie. They did this and I don’t even have a 4k TV, so we know we’re pretty sure Michael, Keaton’s going to be in that [00:43:00] as the vulture.
So we’re going through all these universes. Wouldn’t it be sweet if he transformed in the Batman, even just for a moment on screen in a Spider-Man movie. Wouldn’t that be cool.
[00:43:12] Alan: I hope that so studios and especially the people that are running them now. There’s a possibility that it’s not only about money and protecting the character that they’re such fans, that they want to see that ready player.
One moment where every single video game character ever is on the screen who framed Roger rabbit, same as cabin in the woods. There’s just that wonderful little, they know how much people would love it. And they’re going put that little
[00:43:39] Stephen: Easter egg, I think their egos and their greed for money. And there, everything else gets in the way.
Cause seriously, there was so much problems with Spiderman and venom and all this stuff. They went back and forth and Sony one in the control it and
[00:43:54] Alan: versus marble instead of, but I don’t know if Kevin is has any, he has lots of pull in the [00:44:00] industry now because he’s got eight of the top 10 of all time.
Money-wise maybe he’s the one like Steven Spielberg has that ability to go and say, I really need to borrow both bugs and Daffy and I need all the rap. I need all the ducks. I think that he might be able to pull it off as he’s, I will take good care of your character. I’m not going doing this so I can sucker punch him.
I’m doing it so that everybody can get, I always thought, whenever they have, how many movies have had this big scene, let’s go into the justice league trophy room. And there was all the weapons and all the costumes and all the heads of villains and whatever else it might be, but they really should.
Easter egg wise put something that isn’t from the Marvel, even from the DC universe in there. So someone would go, wait a minute. Aquaman’s phone that’s summer Mariner’s phone, his helmet or whatever else it might be. And I have never been the guy that like crabs that stop motions my way through it, to identify every single thing.
And I’ve not read this, but I would hope that someone would [00:45:00] one day rule. Wait a minute. That’s a doctor who
[00:45:04] Stephen: I love though.
[00:45:06] Alan: I hope that they’ve been sneaky enough to
[00:45:08] Stephen: do that. And I know Lucas gets discussed a lot for his wreck Connie and changing things in the movies. And I go back and forth. There’s a few things I like and some things I’m like, why didn’t you change that?
But I think because we know we’re pretty sure that there’s a fantastic movie for movie. In the next couple of years. Yeah. You know what I would love that I don’t think would destroy anything, go back to the original Avengers movie when they’re in New York. And just when they’re flying by, you see the fantastic four on a building fighting some scrawls, that’s it
[00:45:44] Alan: just that little bit,
[00:45:47] Stephen: I’d be all for that because it doesn’t change the movie at all, but it enhances the fantastic four in the universe.
That’s a change I could get behind, but some of the ones Lucas did, that’s a whole nother topic. [00:46:00] So did you see, oh, sorry. What, no,
[00:46:03] Alan: I just, honestly, one of the things that you’ve said that I’ve seen a lot of fanboy anger about is that it’s like the curious case of the dog in the nighttime sometimes.
What is there isn’t as also important was what’s not there. And if you’re going to have a tack on the earth, And every single hero on earth didn’t defend the planet. Where were they?
[00:46:22] Stephen: You’re sitting out,
[00:46:23] Alan: having tea. No, they must’ve been lured into a different crisis that they couldn’t be there.
Or at least that’s always, when I think is people talk about, so while they’re all fighting Santos, wouldn’t other villains have said I don’t want him to own the universe. That’s what other bringing Kang is the next big bang. There’s all kinds of other cosmic beings, very evil, et cetera, et cetera.
There’s no way that Dracula would sit back while another vampire took over the planet. You can’t have that without, if you will. Real comic book continuity of not having the people that would appear in that situation. Where were they?
[00:46:58] Stephen: Yeah, they should have had [00:47:00] an outline of the watcher just briefly in the background.
Some watching all that and
[00:47:04] Alan: saying, okay, I guess I didn’t have to step in. You know what I mean?
[00:47:08] Stephen: So I heard. That the Eternals is the lowest rated Marvel movie yet.
[00:47:16] Alan: I’m still going to go see it because I just, I love comic book movies, and I think there’s some part of it’s so funny that very much dovetails from what we’ve been talking about, from what I understand late, the way they present the internals, that they’ve been this in the background for some of the world for a long time, where were they?
That’s the
[00:47:35] Stephen: problem. And like Colin said, he’s come on, you can’t bring these all important. Big guys out that can do anything and then say, Hey, come and watch Shane cheek. Cause he’s interesting. I’ve said this for awhile. I think the turtles is a mistake for Marvel, but at least if they were going to do it, they really should have ramped it up better.
Cause they’re dropping this whole new team that nobody [00:48:00] knows. So of course nobody cares. We saw that with every DC movie.
[00:48:05] Alan: I’m hoping. It really is possible that what the part of the mythos of the turtles is that they operated in secret. They didn’t want to battle against the deviance to be apparent to the, if you will, the regular earth people, they really felt obligated to let birth development continue on its own pace and not have it be that they were worshiped as gods or et cetera, et cetera.
So the fact that they’re there, they maintained their stealth is going to be a big part of that movie. And then maybe, part of the unfortunate thing that happens there is if the turtles were because of the Celestials that came to the planet to create them another one of those things like really the Celestials wouldn’t have interceded when Galactus came around, when Santos came around, when the molecule man first appeared that controls matter, you would think that There’s a certain amount of what were they not watching?
Are they handling so many different things that we are the smallest little pinky finger of the universe, and they wouldn’t care [00:49:00] about our planet being destroyed
[00:49:04] Stephen: every Superman comic or whatever. You see him hearing everything, seeing everything and taking care of everything, but then you always have Batman fighting alone except for finest, so it’s okay.
[00:49:20] Alan: I’m always curious as to, because even in comic books, not even in the movies, they’ve had different writers have a different take on that. You know what I mean? If you’re really trying to monitor the world, but then you get it you, for sure it gets it, it gets proven that you can’t handle everything.
So then you have to say am I going to save people from this flood or from this tornado or from this virus or whatever, and you have to play God, you have to decide who lives and who dies. And there’s any number of people that really couldn’t handle that pressure. I just want to beat up bad guys in the streets of Gotham.
I don’t, I can’t take the big view of, I monitor everything and I choose that on that big of a scale. You know what I [00:50:00] mean? I that’s always been a very interesting existential question. You really, you can do anything, but can you do everything? No. Then you will get the flash. He gets promoted who really can operate at super speed.
And could they just forever be that interceding force that really could get to everything if they want to do, but they just have to decide. I can’t rest. I have to continually refuel. I could have no relationships. I really have 24 hours a day. And eventually I think if you’re a human being, you’ll go mad from.
So then you have to say I’m going to do everything I can with 16 hours out of the day. And for eight hours, I’m going to go into my sanctuary and sleep in a coma, trying to charge myself. And there’s very practical aspects to being amazing. You would still have to deal with if you’re using IQ has the basis
[00:50:48] Stephen: of, that’s probably why I liked Spider-Man so much because out of all of them, he seemed to always get his butt kicked, always get damaged and hurt, but sometimes they went overboard.
It’s oh, look, it’s the third time this year he [00:51:00] revealed himself because he had the flu or,
[00:51:02] Alan: in fact they did a really, the scale that they’ve been able to maintain. He really does have obsessive villains, but they’re not like with a snap of their fingers, they can make him cease to exist.
At least his villains. You know what I mean? A lot of what they’ve done well in comic books sometimes is there’s a certain, you’ve seen the power charts as to you can’t have the rhino confined Spider-Man because he really is strong, but clumsy and that kind of stuff. But when you have someone like the jumper, could Spiderman even move him.
You know what I mean? What effect could he have? But having said that when they had Daredevil fight the Hulk or something like that, and that it was wow. A very agile, fearless, dedicated kind of crazy man really could put up a pretty good fun until he got his hands on him. And yet, so the nobility of that was what they were trying to portray.
Not that it was practical Bethel, if you will. And if I remember right, the whole. Has such respect for him that he doesn’t [00:52:00] just crush him and kill him. He’s I can’t believe you kept coming at me. You know what I mean? You’re so much a human flee in comparison to me, but you wouldn’t give up hats off to,
[00:52:08] Stephen: I remember, I don’t know. I’m sure you have the issues. The after nine 11 methods of towers fell and they came out of the whole bunch of marble with superheroes at the towers and Spider-Man was the last one. That’s. Powerful, two panels I remember is the towers are coming down and Spider-Man’s still zipping in the windows and pulling people out.
Yeah. And he was the last fighter against the Martian invasion in the original guardians too. They had his suit on Mars. So I, that’s what I love about Peter. And he was a nerd. He didn’t feel like he was all together. He thought all the superheroes, he looked up to all of them, and yet he never gave up.
He always kept going, that’s. Peter Parker and Spider-Man definitely,
[00:52:53] Alan: I totally agree. I’ve spoken a number of times on Chi folks. And one of the things that I often try to get a [00:53:00] chance to mention to how moving comic books can be. There’s a, I think it’s called the final chapter.
Maybe Spider-Man number 33, very early in his run where he’s buried under a ton of wreckage. And it probably is beyond him, but he won’t give up and he’s I got to do it for may. I got.
[00:53:21] Stephen: Yeah, that’s the first time she’s dying,
but isn’t that what, I know the new movie is semi based on this, but isn’t that what gets Spider-Man Peter to try and make the deal with Mephisto to one more day, because aunt may get shot and she really is dead. Yeah. Mary Jane in order to differ. Yeah. Yeah. So that, Spider-Man definitely I’ll give him kudos for all of that.
That when he’s good, he’s really good.
[00:53:55] Alan: Absolutely. It’s funny. Various authors have really captured that. That’s like [00:54:00] we talked about James Bond last week, couple of weeks called maybe that the ability to maintain a character and what makes him that character over the course of time, it’s not easy.
You know what I mean? They’ve let Dr. Who be quite different over the course of time, in my opinion, there’s a core of him, but What makes Spiderman heroic? What makes Superman heroic? It’s not easy.
[00:54:24] Stephen: That’s fine, man. These, this stuff has been part of both of our lives, literally forever, and when there’s the, that’s, what people don’t get is how good some of the comics are. Yeah. There’s some crap. And you go through stages for any of the heroes, any of the books, but when they are good, I told you about the battle worlds, whatever I was Spider-Man and he was fighting the venom to save his wife and daughter on timeline.
And it was just with. He was holding back. And then when Mary Jane showed up and told them that the building was empty and [00:55:00] the way they Drew’s look and Spider-Man has a mask on, but he conveys such emotion even with the mask. And it was, it’s just one of my favorite Spider-Man stories ever.
Dozens of times, it’s just that one, exactly.
[00:55:16] Alan: Boy, this just comes to mind and it’s a variation on that, that I’m not sure. So Dr. Doom a big villain in the fantastic foreign for a long time, all through the Marvel universe. And he really is a megalomaniac and you know what I mean? But he’s got that interesting core of the reason that he stopped doing all the science was starting to dabble in the arcane things is because his mom got taken to hell.
If I remember correctly even and so forth. So every year he fights to try to win her back and doesn’t do it, but he won’t give up. There’s a series where the over mind comes to earth and Reed Richards gets incapacitated, I think even taken over by the Overmeyer and Dr. Doom [00:56:00] steps into lead the fantastic Fort, because he’s like the world’s last best hope.
The over mind, if I remember so real quick, the stranger came and. I gonna say this the over mind is the sum total of a world. That’s everyone’s minds melded together. And that’s why he’s so powerful. Leave the stranger out of this for a moment. Cause it’s worth reading. There’s a scene where the fantastic words getting their asses kicked.
You know what I mean? They’re only so powerful, but Dr. Doom will go down, he’s getting his armor beat off of him. He’s getting his Cape torn. And I don’t know why I’m so emotional this morning, but he goes down, as long as I can, I fight. I fight. And that’s even in a crazy a villain that I’m not going down anymore, whatever it is, that is really important.
You know what I
[00:56:51] Stephen: mean? And that’s the thing with Dr. Joe, he’s been up. So often, sometimes he’s the biggest, bad guy [00:57:00] that causes the worst problems and they got to get rid of them. And other times he really is almost that antihero and, almost respectable at the, it depends on the era. It depends on the story, but he really is up and down.
[00:57:14] Alan: It’s mentioning this ties together a little bit, what we were talking about so much, a lot of what they do with Dr. Dummy. When he goes away for awhile, you’re like wouldn’t you just be out of his megalomania, always trying to take over the world. No, they’ve actually shown where he’s had a plan that he’s been working on for 2, 3, 5 years.
He had to manipulate all these events, make these scientific breakthroughs, Invega his way into various different things, like high or whatever. And so to show that as much as he’s obsessed, he’s also got. Discipline. He’s got like his obsession leads into, I really will step out of the world for a couple of years in order to improve my armor.
My science enough to know I could take on iron man or whatever else you want. It’s like some, it’s cool that they’ve been able to show that there [00:58:00] are some good ones that are nothing, but they come at you again and again, because they can’t help themselves. That Dr. Doom actually has that kind of dispassionate, really evil clinical approach of what matters is the end will justify all these means I will do whatever’s necessary, even great sacrifice in order to get the goal, which is, I want to run the world.
I want to run battle world. You know
[00:58:19] Stephen: what I mean? When they, because I am so good, I can do it better than anyone
[00:58:23] Alan: else. This will be the proof. And it’s funny, there’s the shadow side. If you will, of Dr. Doom, Hank. As yellow jacket and the various different personalities and costumes that he’s taken on, he’s always had that inferiority complex of, I’m really brilliant, but it sucks to be in the world the same time as Tony stark.
You know what I mean? I even had pit particles. I bet, but he’s the one that gets all the tech accolades, if you will. And what’s really funny is they really did that in the Marvel movies. You know what I mean? Who had mentioned Ultron, not Hank, Pam it’s Tony stark and Bruce banner. They even made him feel [00:59:00] even more inferior in the real movie world.
If you will, by not giving him a big, bad, one of the worst villains, the Avengers they’ve ever had to contend with this artificial intelligence ultra, they took it away from him. Oh, I just, they had some really good stories. Seeing his personality get it. Couldn’t take the battering on the pressure and the competition and the inferiority and
[00:59:22] Stephen: which they kept in the what if where the original ant man is taking out all the Avengers.
So exactly. That was a pretty good one. Yeah. Spoiler alert, belated.
[00:59:34] Alan: Exactly. The Ultimate’s came out, probably also 25 years ago and they started to do all the retellings of the various different marbles with slight variations, because it was a different universe. There was a different ultimate universe, if you will.
And one of the things that Spider-Man in the ultimate universe written by Brian, Michael Bendis for I dunno, a hundred issues, a whole long time also in the Avengers Hank Pym becomes, so [01:00:00] if I’m going to not have a good time at work, I’m going to go home and kick the dog kind of a thing. And in fact, he kicks the dog, being his wife, terrible, but.
It led to the vendors saying, you can’t be a good enough hero to make up for the fact that you’re being this kind of a piece of shit. And captain America beats him within an inch of his life. Pretty much you can’t have enough science, costumes, weapons that I’m not going to keep coming at you because I’m not going to have a wife as in my sight.
You know what I mean? It’s in my anyway, very what makes those real world, that it’s not only. Happy and Hey work kids in a club that there really was internal dissension, as well as funny against the villains and stuff had a lot of that was captured
[01:00:49] Stephen: the ultimate Spider-Man and loved that has some really good art, especially the early issues.
And that led that there’s another example you had that [01:01:00] mega ultra goblin that was about to destroy when in the ultimate world and aunt may and the whole house and all the kids were. And a little old is 16. They really made him look like a puny little thing. He kept going and it killed him and that when he died, but that’s what inspired miles when he got that.
So we got miles out
[01:01:21] Alan: of that. Yeah. So bear with me because Ben wasn’t like mark Bagley, I think is the name of the artist because I shouldn’t have only mentioned Benson this. I think that they were the same team for a long, good run. And it Begley really had that. There’s a little bit of a disc Ditko ask.
He’s very slight, he’s distorted his body takes on body. Doesn’t bend that way type things, but for dramatic effect. And then, so you’re exactly right. It isn’t just, Bendis’s writing, beg these artwork was fantastic,
[01:01:50] Stephen: such
[01:01:50] Alan: an extended run. You know what I mean? We really did great work and in fact, they didn’t let themselves get distracted by you could go make more money over here or you could no we’re going to make.
[01:02:00] Magnum Opus out of ultimate Spiderman that it will stand forever because I like reading the old man and those Marvel masterworks additions, those ultimate additions really read well.
[01:02:12] Stephen: And I love those. And Ben, this was from Cleveland, right? Yes,
[01:02:18] Alan: exactly. A whole bunch of them were here. And then they made a mass Exodus to Portland.
If I remember, and he was like, come back. It was, I think they left before I got to town and it was, but it really was like in the same way that I had a chance to get to know some Chicago comic book creators, I was looking forward to it all. I’m sure we’ll run across. And as long as I know, like totally over fanboy, maybe they’ll let me be amongst them
[01:02:44] Stephen: by the beer.
[01:02:46] Alan: Exactly. I’ll be. Appreciate without fawning, hopefully enough, but they don’t like this guy. You know what I mean?
[01:02:56] Stephen: We’re done with work. We want to forget about it. Leave [01:03:00] you 60 year old kid. We got a couple things, but what’s this about the comedy festival? What’s going on with that? I haven’t heard about it.
And I got something coming up to tell you about
[01:03:11] Alan: exactly what Cleveland comedy festival has been running. I think this is its 15th year it’s. It’s never been like a big one, like Toronto or Montreal, New York, Miami, but it ha it, they I actually was funny. I did get to know the people that are behind it and have become friends with them.
And so it’s been really cool. The way I w when they first announced it, we come in a Colleen and I love going to comedy. It’s our favorite night out. They announced it. And they had six shows, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. And we bought tickets for every single one of them. And the first time that we showed up on that Thursday night, they said we were looking forward to meeting the guy that bought every ticket.
And so we they’d had, they’d been in multiple venues at Playhouse square at polarities comic club this year, they’re doing at the Odeon, which is a big rock [01:04:00] club that had a lot of accident, but apparently it’s a good space for comedy. And and in the past, they’ve had some big names coming in, like Todd Barry, various different headliners this year.
It seems to be, we’ve got enough, good local Cleveland town that they’re doing that. They’ve got a couple people coming in from like maybe New York, New Jersey they’ve got, they’ve always had a talent showcase where they, Hey, we’re going to have 10 young unheralded comedians on, and then the audience will vote and they’ll get a prize of some kind.
They have it, it’ll be a nice running. And if I remember right, it’s from Wednesday to Saturday night, no Sunday, but Wednesday to Saturday. And we just got tickets for the Cleveland showcase for Wednesday and for Friday nights headliner and very reasonable prices, like 15 or 25, if I remember right.
It’s, compared to other festival prices be much higher. I don’t know. We’ve been, we’ve seen them for 15 years and when they come to town, it’s usually like now, early in November ish and. There’s no better night out than live comedy. You know what I mean? [01:05:00] So hats off to so that’s it.
I’m trying to think of that’s enough if you’re interested in good, likely even comedy, especially the Wednesday comedy showcase, which we’ll have bill Squires, Mary Santura, John Wellington, John I’m an idiot. I really like and respect these guys, but there’s six people on the bill and they’re all the names are not coming to mind.
They should be able to bring it up.
[01:05:23] Stephen: I’ll put it in the show notes.
[01:05:25] Alan: It’ll be really. And then I think that maybe I didn’t mention this when we were talking about what to talk about. So what’s yours please.
[01:05:34] Stephen: We went two years ago and they didn’t do it last year to this group called first snow up at the Lorraine palace theater.
What they are is a Trans-Siberian orchestra covering. This is what they are. So it’s like seeing a trans Siberian orchestra show, but that you can actually get tickets to. And not
[01:05:54] Alan: for $78. Exactly.
[01:05:57] Stephen: 20, 30, and $40 tickets. I [01:06:00] think we went two years ago and
[01:06:02] Alan: palace theater is a great place to go to.
We’ve seen Arlo, Guthrie, seen a whole bunch of stuff
[01:06:05] Stephen: there in classic. It’s got, that old field,
[01:06:09] Alan: exactly. The Baroque style guilt
[01:06:11] Stephen: on all the walls. It’s beautiful. And so we couldn’t go last year, we were disappointed and Gina sent me a message and I had just been thinking, huh. And I went to look it up.
So we we were both on the same wavelength and we’re going to go this year again. Cause then Lindsay, isn’t like 1st of December, November 27th this year, I believe the weekend
[01:06:31] Alan: of Thanksgiving.
[01:06:31] Stephen: Yes. Yeah. And I think that’s when it was last.
[01:06:35] Alan: All right, honestly, can’t thank you enough. Or we’ve seen a couple Christmas shows.
We sealed deals as w one silent night, we see Trans-Siberian orchestra. We see Mannheim steamroller. We really love those kinds of shows. I heard a first snow, so
[01:06:48] Stephen: very cool. Yeah. I’ll put it in the show notes linked to that because we’re going to go and yeah, they’re fun. Like I said, they play Trans-Siberian orchestra music, except they’re not actually, [01:07:00]
[01:07:00] Alan: it’s a good time.
He writes to a tool and everybody else, but. We’re going to, we have as long as I’m pretty sure it’s not that same weekend. We’re going to go see Kansas. We’re going to see at the the people’s bank theater in Marietta. So it’s a bit of a drive like two, three hours. But we, this is a great theater.
We’ve seen a couple of things there. It’s we’re looking forward to it being like while we’re down there, let’s go Christmas shopping down at Tamarack. Let’s go to the stained glass museum or whatever else. They have cool things down there, confluence of the rivers, Ohio Kentucky and Pennsylvania, et cetera, et cetera.
And then we also just found out about this Neil Stevenson is going to be doing a reading at the Cuyahoga public library branch down in Parma and Neal Stephenson is like another great cyber punk author. He’s done snow crash. He’s on the diamond age. He’s done. Let’s see ream D read me with the letters wrong.
He’s just really high quality stuff. The Baroque cycle is like three, 900 page books. If I remember right. You know what I [01:08:00] mean? There’s all kinds of good stuff. And I think he’ll be doing like question and answer reading a little bit about, what does, how does he do, what does he do? And I’m still very much, I only want to go to places where I’m not going to be eating there so I can keep my mask on that.
Hopefully. That would know about Neal Stephenson would mostly be science people. So they have a map. And a little bit of my worry about some shows is that even if we’re all masked and stuff like that, we just have to be careful about what we’re going to go down. We just, we just missed Halloween for the first time in 30 years in Chicago, because I was a little bit still not sure that people are going to be rigorous enough and there was no vaccine mandate.
And I just didn’t what w what do I do? I play games and I chat at tables, go to pretentious drinking. Every one of those would have been east by how do you have, no transfer of germs, if everybody’s touching the same meatballs, so I was a little bit spooked
[01:08:56] Stephen: by that.
Absolutely agree way gears are overwhelming [01:09:00] Neal Stephenson. I’m gonna have to look that up because obviously you can say I met that author too. Exactly,
[01:09:06] Alan: honestly, and I’ve really discovered him early. And then each book he’s written. Monument, it’s just, it keeps turning out little things.
There’ve been fantastic ideas about like stateless nation states floating in the ocean as an information repository. It’s been about what if computer power had been originated back in the steam era and what, how things would have changed in the world. He has had big ideas and they, and he plays them up very
[01:09:32] Stephen: well.
You know what I mean? You gotta be ready to read.
[01:09:38] Alan: He’s not an easy read, but he’s absolutely a worthwhile read.
[01:09:42] Stephen: And that’s one of those weird things. When you read an ebook, you can look and see you’re at location block of so many, but that just see numbers doesn’t mean anything. And I’ve read a couple of.
Your God, when does this book and I’ve been reading it forever, but you don’t have a clue. I can’t
[01:09:57] Alan: look at hold the book up my [01:10:00] bookmark, but two thirds.
[01:10:01] Stephen: Okay. But the thing is, if I’m reading with the iPad and the case on it, it’s heavy enough. It’s like those big books. Reading at night thought, oh yeah.
I guess it’s
[01:10:09] Alan: time for me to check out. I will make sure this, I reading the casual vacancy by J K Rowling who everybody has heard of because they have a pot of books. She’s done some stuff besides the Potter verse. And I got to say I admired the craft of it. She really spins a good story, but the story itself is terrible.
The reason that I don’t read Dramatic soap opera books is because there’s no likable characters. Everybody has twitches and quirks and failures. Everybody is they’re all struggling to get by. I prefer heroic fiction where you’re doing things for a reasonable cause other than I want to seat on this city council in a tiny town, nothing matters more.
And all the villainy that I’m willing to commit, shafting friends and lying and hiding [01:11:00] things. I just, it’s really weird to read a book filled with dysfunctional characters and say, I wouldn’t talk to a single one. I would be like, wow. You’re, and it’s not because they’re odd. I love odd and quirky it’s because they’re nasty.
It’s cause they’re like, you know what I mean? An even, oh So that’s my review of casual vacancy is not my kind of book I get into it. It’s I want to find out what happens to various different characters,
[01:11:24] Stephen: but I guess
[01:11:25] Alan: you feel audio you’re and as I read this, I’m like, is there anybody in here?
[01:11:31] Stephen: God damn it. If you don’t like it, but it down, there’s plenty of books, and she just came out with a new book the Christmas pig some Christmas stories. So we might pick that up and give it a try. I like quirky little Christmas stuff.
[01:11:45] Alan: I really didn’t get this out of loyalty to her. You know what I mean?
The Harry Potter books are really good and et cetera, et cetera, just, and it is, it’s funny, she’s more adult in this book and so whatever. They got a little bit more adult as the kids got older and there was like, not just, kissy, but maybe [01:12:00] real love and maybe real villainy.
But this book is just loaded with adult themes. And so it’s not okay, I’m okay with it. I’ve read many books with adult themes, but I just was okay. I didn’t mind you doing the Harry Potter books. Someone’s going to do that and do it well,
[01:12:16] Stephen: she doesn’t have to worry
[01:12:16] Alan: about it also on my part. No, go do the one thing I like you doing don’t you don’t get to stray.
I’m not like that at all. Usually
[01:12:23] Stephen: I really don’t think that’s the general consensus though. That’s what I fight against this, but like every time I’m with a group of authors or there’s someone on stage talking, it’s always, Fantasy keep writing fantasy because people want to keep reading the same thing.
I’m like, man, I have a problem with that myself,
[01:12:40] Alan: but it on me. So
[01:12:42] Stephen: yeah, that’s not always true anymore. People are because of digital, it’s easier to get various and people are reading wider. It seems. And it’s not as much of a detriment. Plus they say, if you start right off with maybe a sci-fi short [01:13:00] story and a fantasy short story, and then a middle grade kids horror book and yes.
Which is what Pearl jam did on that first album. They had such a variety of music. They could do anything they wanted after that. That’s a great way to put it. All right. Cool, man.
[01:13:14] Alan: All right. As usual, wonderful talking to you. And let’s see, where is in November, man? I got to start wearing long sleeve shirts and stuff like that.
Darn it.
[01:13:21] Stephen: Yeah. Our heater went out. We can’t get the repair guy out here until Friday oh boy. Now it’s not been horrible yet.
[01:13:29] Alan: Fifties outside, not thirties at night. Unfortunately I think as the weekend was playing, it’s supposed to get it. You’re really going to appreciate that.
[01:13:37] Stephen: Oh yeah. But mail, we ha we found the best warm comforter at a Goodwill or a thrift store.
And we threw that on the bed last night and I was all cuddled in and found a cat lane next to me. And I’m like, I put my head out and I’m like, oh my gosh, it’s cold out there. I feel like I’m camping.
[01:13:56] Alan: We really are getting to that. Especially this weekend is daylight [01:14:00] savings time. So we’ve got the latest mornings if you will, for this last week.
And I’m Colleen and I both, we woke up this morning. It was like, it’s cozy in here. It’s still dark outside. I’m just not, I don’t care what my alarm just told me. I’m not
[01:14:14] Stephen: getting up yet. I understand. Take care of later. Okay.
