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Overview
It is almost Halloween, and Stephen is ready all dressed up in his Starfleet uniform. In a week, we will be at the Halloweem RG where there will be plenty of punny costumes.
Stephen saw Amsterdam and thought very highly of it. Reflection of today’s society? Cautionary tale that we are going down paths we’ve already trodden? Hmm.
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Transcript
Alan: Helen, I am nowhere near as cool as you. Let me see if I can get a backdrop besides my incredibly cluttered office here.
Stephen: It’s almost Halloween. I dressed up. I should have done so.
Alan: I let’s see. I think we’ve already had the leaves. What do I want here? How about Dr. Who, old time doctor who
Stephen: maybe so trivia, guess what I was drinking earlier?
Alan: Carilion, Brandy, whatever. Scotty said to get . Sorry, ahead. No,
Stephen: this is Picard. I was drinking tea. Earl Gray Hot
Alan: Earl Gray. Hot. Exactly. Out of the trans, whatever that thing is called. .
Stephen: Wow. We’re up universes there, aren’t we ?
Alan: You do not. I have hardly. Real, like authentic costumes, I have a Dr. Hus scarf, but I don’t have the entire Tom Baker gig, nor for any doctor. And same with, I don’t have a Star Trek uniform. I don’t have a Star Wars Bobba fat outfit. I just have never done the full thing.
Stephen: And even if I, this is really all I have , there we go. But I got a good costume for We, so
Alan: very good.
And Colleen and I have we think we’ve figured out what we’re going to be. Sometimes we’ve been separate this time we’re gonna try to do a team costume and we have of a thing all going on. You know what, how can I spend $3 and 50 cents on this? You know what I mean? We tend to not I’ve never rented, Maybe I have, I think I might have rented like a Bunny’s suit at one time because I went to his Harvey Milk and I had to dress up as a.
Invisible rabbit, if you will, but aka is that .
Stephen: The one idea I had was take a bunch of smarties candies and put ’em all over my pants for smarty pants. Smarty pants. Exactly. That’s lowkey. You could eat it while you’re sitting
Alan: there. It’s funny that’s worth so again, for folks like not as in the know the reason that Halloween and it’s Halloween with an m is really cool is because it’s a big regional gathering for mea and it’s in Chicago, which is a very like, wonderful welcoming tons of activities, tons of quality people, Mensa group.
And they’ve been having this regional gathering on Halloween weekend for like 45 years now. I think it might be 44 or 45. And one of the highlights, because it is Halloween weekend is cuz it’s got a big costume parade. And instead of it just being, Hey, dress up however you want. One of the real themes they do is it should be a ton of some kind.
And so the endless creativity of crazy smart people, like I’ve been going since early nineties so I’m coming up on 30 years out of this thing. And how many it’s not, It, I, it’s just amazing. Not only the every year you’ll have someone with a box of Wheaties and a knife in it, a serial killer and and, but the kinds of attention to detail that goes into, someone shows up as a member of the board and they really have l e d lights running on ’em and an ocular thing that’s really, looks like it’s implanted in their skull and stuff like that.
So just the skill that people put into these things. And also just the big laugh of having a pun that is just obscure enough that you don’t get it without a lot of thought, but then when you get it, the crowd really appreciates. Okay, that’s just so wordplay, witty, obscure as hell. It’s I, that’s a reference to.
The second doctor or something like that, who knows
Stephen: harder to figure it out, but knowing there’s a solution, those are always the ones everyone likes because they remember this wouldn’t even get two glances. It’s yeah, okay. Everybody knows Star Trek. We all have the uniform. We care. I
Alan: see what’s funny is they even take that and run with it.
They had a guy come out with the appropriate clinging on head ridges and stuff like that and carrying a little tackle box. And I am Fisherman’s Wharf. You know what I mean? , that’s voice and stuff. Yeah. And I just, I love that they just don’t leave well enough alone. I, we had one guy that came multiple years in a row with, he would always have the grim reaper type skull and stuff like that, but instead of just being the hood and the site, he’d have like Hawaiian shirt on and that would be, death takes a holiday.
And they had one time he had a whole working, so to speak. Microwave on his head and you open the thing and you can see him in there. That was just warmed over and just, you ran with this theme for years and so incredibly witty. You know what I mean? Really
Stephen: wonderful. Mine, I’m not gonna give it away all yet.
And I didn’t make it all. I’m just not, I like to do things, but I’m just not going to spend 50 hours on a costume. But I got a good one and it’s a good idea, but it also could use a really good voice changer, which went down the rabbit hole of, Huh. I wonder if there’s a voice changer program I could run on the raspberry pie and I wonder if I could program it to make it custom for my suit, my, my outfit.
Huh. That’s where I’ll spend the time. I’ll spend the 50 hours on a voice changer that fits my costume.
Alan: Exactly. I, This is. At least twice, no lie it’s happened where you’ve had this wonderful barrage of creativity. So in the car on the way home, we always do our little let’s talk about, oh we met our good friends and we had this nice conversation and we did good in quiz bowl and whatever else it might be.
And then you start talking about we had to look at all these great costumes, what’s next year’s theme? And we’ll be like roofing in the car and we’ll come up with a really good idea. When do we execute that good idea about two days to go outta the intervening three and 65 days? That can just be so funny about, we really, it’s gonna be a good idea.
We both wanna do it. Sometimes we put a lot of work into, and it really shows and other times it was just like, what do we have around the house? Staple that together. Make sure the staples don’t go into you. That’s
Stephen: the work. I did that for years with my kids. It there was many a time where its like, Oh man, we have a week to Christmas quick.
Let’s run out and get the . But there, as they got a little older, I started doing more of getting things throughout the year. We were somewhere and I saw something where they really liked something or whatever. But then I ran into the opposite problem where I’d take it and I’d hide it up in the closet.
And then the 23rd, 24th, when I’m wrapping presents, I’d wrap it all under the. And then March, I’d say, Oh crap, I got that stuff in the closet. I forget. I
Alan: forgot the stuff I pre bought. Exactly. Yeah. You know how many times we’ve celebrated Christmas in March?
I really love again it, it’s the geekery of all this is so much what I enjoy. There’s so much I love the fact that people will go I don’t know, I’m around 63 years. It’s fair game to go back 20 and 40 and 60 years. Something that I was watching as a Saturday morning cartoon when I was growing up.
There are still people that will remember the Hercules or Tom and Jerry or, and if you make a reference sometimes it’s not only that it was a good thing, it was like, Oh man, I haven’t thought about that in
Stephen: forever.
Alan: And it’s really nice to just summon that too, that so many mens.
Really amazing memories. They’re all Jeopardy champions, and it’s just very nice to be able to say at this, a song I haven’t heard in 30 years, and yet, here’s the lyrics, here’s a costume from what was Tom Sellon before Magnum pi? Oh, you, oh my God, you got that kind of stuff.
I just love it. I just love that incredible level of as you, as people go up on stage you have that exposure can I get the pod while they’re walking to the mic and yell it out. But it’s I sometimes also I take pictures of everything and then I used to, when I was consulting into MiTek for a long time, the Monday after Halloween was almost.
10 people having lunch together because they wanted to hear all their jokes from the joke off, which before the internet, when now everybody hears every joke in like immediately. It used to be that you could hear good jokes during the course of the year and accumulate them and spring ’em on an audience.
And if you were a good joke teller, it wasn’t only a matter of do you hear the joke, Did you tell a joke? It’s also how can you do the voices? Can you make it so that there’s that little suspense before you give the punchline and I don’t know. And then of course, the litany of all the costumes and people were like, Surry with a fringe on, with a fringe on top.
That’s Fanta. Oh, it’s furry with a syringe on top and things like that. Yeah. Go one year and one year as like a. The lunch bag of Notre Dame. You know what I mean? I just, to just to start, I want you one hear as Hootie and the Blowfish and people still compliment me on a costume from 20, 25 years ago because it was well executed at a big explosion of laughter.
You know what I mean? It was, we’ve had so much fun doing this. So
Stephen: that’s program, that blue program. I love the programs which usually have very inventive, creative titles and very it’s such an eclectic mix of everything. You go and you can learn about the history of tea and then you can learn how to knit, and then you learn about Shackleton’s expedition to the Arctic and then you, you talk about socio politics in the 16 hundreds it’s pick what you like. I love that you’re just, Hey, let’s see what this is. I, the way I often refer to it is I just love hearing smart, passionate people talk about what they’re passionate about. You know what I mean? They’re probably experts, but it isn’t even, It isn’t that only they know about it.
Alan: Almost always. There’s some people in the audience that have quite a bit of knowledge. Yeah. And they don’t just how some people ask a question so they can show how much they know. Instead, people are like from what I read, it was this. And not as a challenge, but as a way of opening up another part of discussion.
And 80% of the time the q and a is a really fascinating thing to hang out for. Instead of being, Oh God, this guy’s gonna drone on. Or, this guy’s gonna try to take over the, It just, I really, I don’t spend enough time in hospitality like interacting with my friends. Cause I keep looking at my program going, Oh, I gotta see the scope thing.
Yeah. I gotta see The teeth thing. Yeah. Or what else it might be. I love it. .
Stephen: Yeah. So we’re doing a live podcast. I was thinking about that. I’ve got two things to do for that. So I’ve got, Are you ready for this? My. What old high eight camera that my parents got for me when the kids were born. I’ve got cartridges.
So I’m gonna set that up to record us. And then Vicky’s go have my camera and I’m gonna do a live Facebook stream of our thing right then. So it’ll be on Facebook, but I’m gonna take the high eight and turn that into the episode. That fantastic. So yeah. I, hopefully that’ll cover it now. , the high eight, it’s gotta be plugged in cause the battery’s the only thing bad on it, but it does transfer pretty good, so it gets pretty good results.
Wonderful.
Alan: It just that that’ll be in near real time. We’ll post that soon thereafter. And I hopefully like one of the joys of doing these kinds of things, it won’t just be you and I, it’ll be, there’ll be that wonderful hum of the audience. You know what I mean? There’ll be people yelling things out.
We’ll ask for that kind of stuff. Yeah. What do you think? It’ll be fun to do that with. And at one of the joys, we, I, as I mentioned, we, Colleen and I we went to a wedding this weekend all the way in Tonica, Illinois, which is like halfway up the state and in the middle. And so it was a big drive probably 7, 7, 8 hours.
What do you do on a long drive? You brainstorm things like, Hey, what kind of stuff is reunited? But it feels so good. So we rampage all over movies and music and all the kinda stuff. And I, I will I already give my attribution here. Just will the thing, This isn’t only just me, Colleen thought of a lot of good ones, but I’m gonna throw ’em out there and hopefully it’ll just be all that riffing that’s gonna get the audience going, Oh yeah, that happened too.
And. I don’t know. We will have no problems at all filming an hour
Stephen: No, not at all. I, and I’ve got a couple I wrote down that I like that struck me, Oh yeah, this is a good exactly good time thing something to remember and all that. They have stuff on my
Alan: laptop or my phone to be like prompting me so that we don’t miss some of what I think are some of the really good ones.
You know what I mean? Yeah. I just it, I dunno, It’s a great topic, some that thing of I, there’s even a whole like a genre of how are they gonna regather. The Brady Bunch for one last Christmas special. How are they gonna and the ones that have happened, or the ones that like, Oh, everybody wants Firefly.
Why are they bringing, You know what I mean? And everybody wants the Beatles reunion, Oh, we’re too down. That’s never gonna and I don’t mean to be stealing our thunder. It’s gonna be like that though of things have really happened and the why not, and it’ll just be fun to go through that.
The, it’s, some part of it is nostalgia. Some part of it is a triumphant return. They still got stories to tell, like we just made a reference to the Picard earlier, Man, that shows pretty good for. Star Trek, which have been superseded by 3, 4, 5 other star treks since then. But those characters really are indelibly stamped on the geek crowd.
And it’s very nice to see how they’ve been able to bring people in. The what happened after the voyage of the Starship enterprise, that was their five year mission and that kind of thing. So I’m sure we’ll have
Stephen: fun with it. . Yeah. Yeah. It’s gonna be great. And then we got pretentious drinking and so many the, and so many other activities.
I don’t know, Are they doing the dance and karaoke and stuff again? I didn’t, I,
Alan: I think so. I. If I remember right it’s after Pretentious Drinking and I think we go from eight to nine 30, if I remember right. Yeah. So I think it immediately after people have had a chance to get there. And by the way, it’s five shots this year, not four.
So it’s actually one more little bit of liquid courage to get you out there on the dance floor. Yeah. And I got a nice, a good budget. We have leftovers from previous years. I always go and get all kinds of new stuff. Hats off to Benny’s Beverage Depot because they’re such a great source for I don’t know.
The best concentration of Leurs and cordials in Chicago so far is I’ve been able. By scoping it out multiple years and keep is place gonna unseat bennie’s close enough to our venue that it’s worth doing hours of drive? No, Benny’s is nice and close and it’s great. So that’s I’m really looking forward to that.
That’s such a fun
Stephen: event. I, this isn’t as eclectic as some of the LaCores and stuff, but. I got a couple octoberfest beers just to for the season. But I saw one the other night and I’m like, Okay I just have to get it. It was pumpkin villa Latte craft beer. It was pumpkin beer with signature coffee and special locally grown ingredients,
Alan: So I like in a grow house type thing group
Stephen: I knew like what we got personally in there, so I actually, I was like, this is a lot better than I thought it was going to be. I thought it was ghost stock and it’s got the pawn off most of them, but it was a almost chocolatey flavor because of the coffee.
But it was like, interesting. It was like a chocolatey pumpkin flavor. So I was like, Wow, that’s actually a lot better than I thought. .
Alan: And so that’s funny to have both coffee and alcohol involved. Let’s let the stimulant and the depressant fight it out inside you, and let the bipolar out, bipolar personalities just love all that.
Exactly. Let’s see. I’m gonna lower your inhibitions and I’m gonna keep you two on your feet for longer so you can to yourself even more fully . Yeah.
Stephen: Yeah. I went and saw Amsterdam. That is out. Okay. I don’t know if you’ve seen the trailers for this or anything.
So
Alan: is it a sequel to in, do you know what I mean? Long ago? Colin Ferrell and Cole, Meaning are those the guys that are in it? They made a very interesting, Okay. Please tell me about it then. I think I’ve seen a trailer and I was like, it, I thought it was those same guys. Dbi The story
Stephen: is it’s Christian, Ba Bravo Rao, Margie r.
Margot Robbie . And the cast is just huge. And the collected, Taylor Swift is in it for a bit. Interesting. De Niro it just at Begley Junior. Okay. But it starts off and watching the trailer, it comes across as like a vaudevillian comedy just it looked high. JX and antics is what the trailer looked like.
It did, it wasn’t quite that. The humor was a very subtle humor throughout the whole thing, and most of it was Christian Bell. His, he was just phenomenal in it. But it’s, it starts off, the very first thing on screen, it says a lot of this was true and that, so it’s really that, that hung cheek almost, but, , I loved it.
I don’t know if the actual base story is true based on true events type thing. Okay. But if it is, then it’s almost a cautionary tale of things that happened a hundred years ago that are repeating. It’s like history’s repeating. It’s a reflection, take a look. But if they are not true and it’s just made up, then it’s flat out doing it as a World War I setting for the story.
But, hey, you know what? This is really our society today. We’re just saying here’s what gets past the sensors type thing. So I’m not sure that it’s, But there’s a lot in there that you’re like, Oh my God, that’s current. That’s things that are happening today. But so it was just a weird, interesting movie.
I I thought, eh, okay, we’ll go see it. There’s not much else out. But I loved it way more than I thought I would. It was just different and kept my interest and funny, and the story was wonderful. Great. The acting was phenomenal. All across the board. And it almost felt like an independent film it was even with the Stellar
Alan: cast. Exactly. Okay.
Stephen: Yeah. Yeah. All around it was just different sides to it, so I highly recommend it. I will always go see the superheroes and the Star Wars and all those will always, But this is one of those that’s off my usual path that I’m gonna go by the Blueray as soon as it.
Wonderful.
Alan: It’s funny, Colleen and I will not have a chance to go see movies like for the next two weeks because I’m in and out of town and then we’re going to Halloween and stuff. But while I’m out of town in California visiting mom is a two, three hour thing a day. And then I have all the rest of that time.
In the past it’s been really working on the house getting it cleaned up, ready for resale and so forth. And now that’s like in the offing. We actually have the house being worked on currently to get it ready to go on sale. Nice. And so I’m like what am I gonna do without having the run of the house a kitchen to cook my food in and stuff.
And some part of how I’ll be taking my time off is, you know that. Thank you very much for the film recommendation because I really want to go see good movies. I think you like do the cinema experience of, I don’t wanna be interrupted, I don’t want to get out and go to the bathroom. I have to give myself over to something for two and a half hours and plan on it.
Just immerse myself in and it doesn’t have to be black Adam, which I probably am also gonna go see. It doesn’t have to be a spectacle. It really can be. Wow. This is. It’s so well done that the dialogue is great. The characters are great. I don’t know what’s gonna happen next. It’s echoes, like you said, there’s a great quote.
History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes. And it sounds like that’s what they were trying to do here, is that Yeah, humanity is what humanity is. We have the same problems over and over again because, and we just kinda, now we have different weapons or the borders have changed, or it’s ladies and gentlemen have substituted for each other because the intrigue is different.
Now I’m really curious and I love recommendations from people whose taste I respect because it isn’t gonna be like, what is the lowest common denominator movie critics say, I want to hear wow, if it kept your attention and you really enjoyed seeing it, and that’s what I want.
Stephen: So it’s definitely go, I, it really needs to be one of the top movies of the year come the final tally.
But man, we’ve been going to the dollar. Because he’s working part-time right now. So we get a Monday or Tuesday, two different theaters, one’s $5 Mondays, one, $5, Tuesdays, see what they’re showing, what we have time. But man, the people that go to those are not really the moviegoers that are understand it.
The lady yesterday when we went, her phone rang six times and she had it in her purse. And so it’s ringing for three minutes before she digs into it and pulls it out. Just fumble it out. Yeah. And we kept looking at her and Colin said, I was about to throw it . I’m like, Oh my God.
Alan: How do you not turn?
We’ve talked about this too many times, but it doesn’t change. Colleen and I, one of the things that’s really affecting how much we enjoy a concert, a movie, a comedy club, is people it isn’t just people talking to the screen. Like where, you know that’s an experience that certain people have, They.
Pop up and down to go to the bathroom, get another drink, answer their phone. Have they check their email so the phone is blowing in the middle of a Yeah. I have kicked the backs of the seats. I have said, Please turn your phone off. And then when they don’t say, Turn your fucking phone off louder, because it’s just, it’s not right to be able to be so rude that you affect other people’s experience who have paid the same money.
And the expectation of being in a big dark room is not to have your light on in the middle of it. It’s keeps the place everybody, So I, the
Stephen: manners with cell phones would cause my grandparents and great grandparents to have an aneurysm. I hear you that we were watching a movie and someone’s phone lit up and that would, it’s so rude to them that would they walked up to check out at the grocery store, still talking on their phone, those types of things my grandparents and great grandparents would not have put up with.
That’s that is a no. There are certain rules to society and you act a certain way because we’re civilized and mature adults But people don’t
Alan: care. I’ve only been to a couple shows now where they actually take your phone away and put it in a locked up thing at and the latest one was Amy Schumer at our Toronto just for last comedy festival.
And there were all kinds of people grumbling in the crowd, even though like on the ticket it says there will be no phones, et cetera, et cetera. They announced all this stuff way in advance. You didn’t have to buy a ticket if you didn’t buy also the rules that went with the ticket. And everybody was really complaining.
It was like, That’s exactly who these rules are for, because you would not have been able to resist pulling your fucking phone out 10 minutes into the show. You couldn’t have given her your full attention for the hour and a half. You would’ve spoiled the show for somebody else. Yeah, man,
Stephen: that I bought these $40 tickets.
Let me check my email because there’s going to be an essential email that changes my life that cannot be answered two hours from now. I have to respond. Yes, my kid is at home and asking me where the fruit loops are. I had better answer. Yeah. It’s, I don’t know that I’ve ever seen addiction so demonstrated every single day as much as I have with cell phones.
Alan: They’ve designed it so that it raises that little burst of serotonin. Oh my God, someone cares that I exist. There’s a surprise. I don’t know what it’s gonna be. And it’s been that way in the past, people really did addictive behavior type things gambling wise, or drinking that they need.
Whatever their needs are. But after you’re addicted, it isn’t what you started doing when you needed it. Now it’s the addiction itself is what drives you. And seeing how people are unable to, to not constantly be on the phone because they’re it like any addiction, it takes more to get you off each time that it happens.
So if you are once able to check your phone every 20 minutes, then it comes 15 and 10 and five and two and like it, you are really, And when you go into withdrawal that you’re getting like really nervous at the shakes and you’re angry if someone tries to interfere with you’re precious. My precious, I need to it’s weird to see it demonstrated in so many people at, in so many ways.
They can’t stop driving. They can’t, They’re walking down the street paying attention to their phone and like bumping into poles like we’ve laughed about. They are. I, it breaks to my heart part of what Colleen and I love doing is go for a walk in the woods and to see people. They’re in the middle of this cathedral of beauty and they sat down for a moment cause they had to check their email.
And it’s not only adults, it’s for kids. And they’re not enjoying the whole thing around. They’re determined to get pictures. And I understand that. We took our share of pictures, but the ratio of, we stopped whenever there was really a beautiful scene that was memorable. Not just, I’m gonna document all of this, or I can’t not take a selfie with me.
And then what am I gonna do? Lock the path because I’m maneuvering to take the selfie of this waterfall. I guess the next 20 people are gonna have to wait while I figure out my phone one more time. And so just there’s so many ways in which it’s now just accepted to be, you’re not thinking at all of the people around you.
And that’s not right. You know what I mean? I’m happy for you having your phone, you and your phone together are not worth 20 people’s time that you’re blocking the trail on. You must be aware that this is a pinch point in the trail. If you were in the middle of a field, you could take your sweet time cuz people could easily get around and past you.
But that’s not how it is. And people are walking their dogs and not paying attention to like their dog is ahead and already in the street. And then when they come out of their revey of being in the phone and they yank, the dog must be going crazy with, it used to be better. They used to watch what I was doing and we walk, we did the walk together and now I’m continually dealing with their lack of attention.
Yeah.
Stephen: Oh wow. Oh, and like you said, I don’t get it. I’ve seen those people. Were out festivals. Festivals is another one that, and I’ve gone to a couple festivals with people little Fair Street fairs where it’s like, Oh, that’s nice. Click and move on. It’s did you even look at what you just thought was nice to take a picture of
Will you remember it? Or you go look at this photo 10 years from now and go, I have no idea what that. Who cares then that you took a photo. You don’t need 3000 photos and no memories. It’s really true. And I I just don’t get the people that will get mad at you. It’s I texted you 10 minutes ago, how come you didn’t answer me?
I was busy doing something else. If you text me, if you send me a instant messenger, if you send me an email, I’m not going to instantly jump on my phone every single time. It can wait. And I will do that and I lose my phone so often. My son makes so much fun of me. Cause he’s like, How do you lose your phone?
You use it constantly all day. I’m like, Yes. I use it for work a lot. When I’m not working, I’ve got other things I’m interested in. My phone is, that’s job that’s done it. I’ve set it down. And we check on the iden you identify where your phone is, find my phone and the map, right?
And I’m like, Wow. How did it get there? ? Yeah.
Alan: I don’t remember, I don’t remember putting it down there. I don’t remember. I must have let’s see, I took the leftover avenue only out of the fridge and I put the phone in its place apparently because there it is on the touch, stuff like
Stephen: that. Yep.
Alan: So I guess that maintained its battery life cause it’s nice and cold
Stephen: anyway. , right? Yeah. Yeah. So what have you been up to Al You had some issues this morning and but you had, you did say you caught up with shows. So what’s been going on? In brief, cause I really do want to spend only that amount of time on it.
Alan: One of the things that you and I have had as a theme over the course of our doing this thing is as technology comes into many aspects of our life, the ability for a human being to be involved in it seems to be less and less. And that’s vague. What I’m trying to say is I want to take care of all kinds of things online because that way I can do it in my own time and I can make sure that I know before I hit submit, I really did check my spelling.
It isn’t somebody misspelling my name wrong or transposing digits in my social security number, whatever else it might be. But what happens is when something goes wrong with, even though you try to do something carefully, it’s really hard to get ahold of someone, not only in real time, but at all to fix what’s wrong with tickets at Toronto’s, just for laughs fix what’s wrong with the delivery of stuff that got shipped and it was all done online, but now there really is a human being that’s gonna drop a pot off on somebody’s driveway and is it gonna go okay?
And what’s the right timing? And it’s been very frustrating lately to have to deal with, I know that places are also cutting costs because hey the more that we can do it, that we’ve set up this system that has prompts on your phone or things on the net. But then when they have a contact thing and you have to like I have to dig four levels deep into contacts to find a place that I could actually call or send an email, and then it’s not in real time.
And so I’m, I Saunder where I stayed in Toronto, we had, it was not to our satisfaction and they offered me some, a rebate and a free cleaning in order to not have me be really pissed. And they’ve told me that they’ve paid me for those things now and I check my accounts and it’s not in there. And so they said you should check with your financial provider.
They’re not gonna tell me anything other than what I just did, which is look in my accounts and see every single transaction that’s come into my account and know it has not been presented. So now I, I don’t want someone cheerful telling me again, financial provider, now I have, and now what do I have to do to escalate and what.
One of those things that I don’t want to spend time on this. I want it to be done. I want it to be done. That they know that it’s my satisfaction, Ma, that matters. Not well, they know. They sent it. I got, I, Here’s the dates that you just said you sent it on. I check those dates and the amounts and it’s not there.
And so what do we do next? Not tell me to check it again. You know what I mean? And so it that plus how many other examples of, I really am happy for my being able to do things at one in the morning when I’m ordering something for Amazon. I don’t need to talk to somebody on the phone. I’m really pissed that there’s no way to get a hold of what, However, design their help systems.
When you get to, here are your five options on the phone, and none of those seem to cover it. So then you say let me just talk to the operator. I’ll explain, and they’ll be able to route me to the right person. And then they’ve made fun of this for 30 years. You go into phone, hell, you go into this series of getting shuffled from person to person, and you just hope to God that it’s not gonna go click because they dropped your call instead of trying to get you.
And I’ve had that sad situation, that concentration of those kinds of things where I have more important things I need to be doing. I’m flying out tomorrow at six in the morning. I’m patting everything in a place here. I don’t want every one of these things to end in frustration. Then I’m going to handle it out in California where I don’t have my stuff around me here at my wonderful desks.
I’m down to my laptop and my phone, and here’s hoping I have everything in the cloud. Here’s hoping that I, it’s
Stephen: just, I, we had a situation similar to that. . On my father’s death certificate, they marked as complications of covid because he was still recovering from Covid and even though it was a heart attack and breathing issues, those were exacerbated because of the covid.
And it was a, it was just part of it, but because it was part of it, then there FEMA offers a reimbursement of $9,000 and we didn’t know about that. But the guy at the funeral home said, Yeah, I’ll send you a link. He sent me a link and we got on. I said, Oh, okay. Now my mother’s a technophobe.
She gets so scared. Even back in the day when I was 10, she didn’t understand how to play space invaders. So that gives you her level right there. And she said, Can you help me look at this? I said, Okay. And I clicked the link and I’m going through the page and stuff, and I’m looking all over. I’m like where’s the form?
And I’m like, I there Where is it? It’s a phone number. You gotta call and talk to someone and they’ll help you walk through it and set it up. I’m like, that’s weird, . And I And she’s Oh, I’ll do a phone call. I can call somebody, ok. But she was so nervous, she didn’t even see that.
And I was looking for something else, so my blinders were on and Right. And I’m like, Why the heck? Probably because they wanna do a lot of verification. They’re not just go throw 9,000 at everybody. But I was just, that was very interesting that I expected it to be a forum. Yeah.
Alan: And because we’re both enough coders, consultants, people that do these kinds of things, when I see an interface that it’s it really shouldn’t be that I can’t find this in two digs.
I should be able to go to a search function and say, Where’s the contact? You know what I mean? It should be every time that I have to do. The National MENSA website has some things that are pretty well hidden, and I get Wow I really know what I’m doing here. I’ve been here before and I can’t find it.
How badly designed is this that it didn’t stick from the first time that I found it in Triumph?
Stephen: You know what I mean? Or that you’re in MENSA and you can’t figure out the logical sequence of things to click on to get
Alan: there . Exactly. Or just if it’s, Sometimes I give feedback because I always am it’s not only me in the world, it’s if I can say a little bit of here’s how I would’ve done it.
Maybe this will help. And you know that you can’t be the only person that’s offering this, and yet something is not changing for one and two and three and five years. It’s like they really don’t care or they don’t have the knowledge to change it in the way that it really would be. Put your most common things first.
Alphabetize every list so you can scan it and find something quickly. All the things that you learn from, we, maybe we so geeked it up last time. Everything you know about how to handle data is well represented on multiple different screens. And so when it’s no matter how long the list of countries that something might be, you might wanna put your two most common choices like United States and United Kingdom at the top so that people don’t have to go down to you Ukraine and Unite and Virgin Islands and whatever else it might be.
And I’m not kidding, I just saw this recently, Ohio was down the list and it was out of alphabetic or,
Stephen: and I, How do
Alan: you let that happen? How many pairs of eyes have had to see this and said it can’t be that Ohio’s after Oregon. You know the alphabet, right? You have to know that this
Stephen: isn’t right.
You know how these technical projects go. You get the higher ups that say, Okay, we have this project, it needs to do all this and it needs it by next week. You’re like but it’s gonna be this, Yeah, we need all those things. Then you do it. And they’re like, But you didn’t do this. You didn’t tell me I needed to do that.
It needs done by Thursday raw. Then it’s like, all these things are broke. You said it was done well. Yeah, but checking it is part of that gee, part of going
Alan: into production is that you knew that you got 90% of the way there, and now we’re in maintenance mode and sometimes maintenance is adding all the features that you, that should be there in the first place.
But we had to declare, I’m in production on October 15th. We’re live regardless. .
Stephen: Yeah, it, you’re talking about all of this. One of the things that I do that’s been a pet peeve lately, so Marvel comic. Have a digital code in them, 95% of them, and you can take that digital code and add it to your online library.
So you have the physical copy and a digital copy. And a digital, Yeah, and I’ve been doing this for years. I have whole runs of stuff, both physically and digitally. I can go read it and that’s I don’t wanna pull it out or dig it up if I wanna read it. Sometimes I don’t get to these things for a couple months, or I wait until a whole run’s done and I’ll read through, so I just pick up my tablet instead. It used to be you would go to a page, put in the code and hit submit, and it would just add it and keep adding and onto that page. As many as you put in. Then you get done, hit finalized, and it puts ’em all in.
Then they changed it. So you had to go to a whole different. Fill out a 10 part form with your name and this and your email and put this in, then put the code in, and then you had to choose from a dropdown what comic it was, and then you had to choose like where it was from. Then you had to get send in a picture, so you had to take a picture of that page and a picture of the cover and you had double those separately.
Alan: Verify that you really owned the thing. Yes. Okay.
Stephen: Then once you submitted it, it went to support and you had to wait for them to get it and send you a code that you can then go to the other page and put it in to get added to your library. I’m like, who thought of this? Why is this a better system?
Alan: Honestly, that’s not user friendly. That’s like user host was horrible. It almost felt, Remember back when they used to have copy protection schemes that were so crappy look up, that would make you, I’m not 3m, I’m, Oh my God. And Wow. I I subscribe to Comicology, which I know isn’t everything out of there, but I get enough to read that I do, that I guess was offered Marvel Unlimited.
And I’m like I really wouldn’t mind having more current stuff and everything like that. But every time that I go and look at the sample, the teaser that they have, it’s this is a miserable experience. I want, if I’m gonna read it on my tablet, I want it to be that the page fits on the tablet at a reasonable resolution.
Not that I have to move the page around in order to see the full page. And that might be now that tablets are big enough and resolution has been tuned enough that’s not, But when they first did it, it was like how many times are people going to have to move this page just to get to the lower right hand corner and page to page?
I don’t know. I haven’t, Colleen and I both, there’s nothing about reading a book or a comic book in physical form that needs an improve. Except the convenience, like you said, of I have it now that I can carry 500 issues with me cuz I’ve got access on my tablet. And yet making it that, getting to that point is that onerous all the crap that you just talked about that is not just a matter of scanning in and going comic book collections software has it, that you can have a scanner that looks at the barcode on the front page boom.
And you don’t have to type in 10,000 issues like you used to have to. You could really of automate, not automate, speed up that process incredibly by being able to go with the code has all the information that you need, right? I’m sorry that they’ve, because of sales concerns have taken a step back.
And what happens is there really are reasons that people shouldn’t be allowed to steal. There’s a whole new way of thinking that people think digital content, everything digital is free. Yeah. And it’s not, somebody still has to like, so Netflix, as had to find a way to make it so there wasn’t Netflix sharing of individual log downs.
And I guess comic books might be suffering that same thing of one guy buys it and then distributes the code, do all of his friends, and they lose how many 10 sales because of one sale from a guy that, But
Stephen: once, once you redeem the code it’s done, It doesn’t redeem again. I’ve tested it, I’ve tried it just to see, to put it in twice.
Okay. And it won’t take it, That’s not, I don’t understand other than control issues and words is how often I’m peeling off the little labels so I can get to the code. It doesn’t peel off and rips up part of the code, or there’s, I’ve gotten quite a few lately where there’s no. Label there at all.
There’s no code and I have to contact support for that every, you can do 10 a week and get the points for it. And out of the 10 I pick, I put ’em, I go through my stuff, put ’em all in order, and then every week I take the next 10 And. Cause
Alan: you’re limited
Stephen: by that. Exactly. Yeah. Out of those 10, almost every week there’s one or two where I have to contact support and get a new
Alan: code.
And then it’s to get your right because you bought the thing and you should get the digital copy as well. Way more
Stephen: cumbersome and ugh.
Alan: What’s funny is I know that they have people that are studying to make sure that it isn’t just selling to the masses. Sometimes your product is enough of a niche product is for a specific demographic.
Go with the stereotype of that and make it as easy for them as possible. And that way you don’t just get compliance, you actually get raving fans like, Man, it was the easiest thing in the world to get both the physical and digital copy and everybody should be able to do this. And somehow they don’t seem to have the empathy or the insight to be able to say, Who is our biggest fan base here?
If we’re selling cookbooks, you don’t sell it as if it’s a mystery novel. You sell it to cooks and cook people. And I can’t think of things offhand, but I know I’ve had examples of did they not think at all? It used to be this is, I’m in the field for a long time now, 40 plus years. Who are your users?
What’s your use cases that say this system will be used by administrators and data entry people and report generators and whatever else it might be. And the mode that you might go into has to be different and tuned to each of those different places instead of having each one of those kind of get lost in all the options when they don’t need to see all the options.
Maybe that’s fading away now. They’re trying to do one interface to rule them all and in the darkness binds them. And if they aren’t differentiating between
Stephen: these things anymore, I don’t know. I think they’re they are trying, I think somebody thinks that if we’re giving ’em a free digital copy, we’re losing money.
Not really , That’s not how that works. But part of the reason I get the comics is because I get both the digital and that And I like the physical and. Here’s the thing. let me tickle your O C D for a moment. So besides this problem, which is one thing and continuity’s, Okay. Cuz it kept going.
It’s just cumbersome. Oh. And not all their comics are doing it that way now, so that makes it worse. Wow. But for a while they decided, somebody must have said we’re losing money and instead of getting a code for the comic you were holding, it was a code for some other comic that they were promoting in some way.
Okay. For three months, lots of my series are missing three issues because that’s when they changed it. And so it sucks. I’m like, okay, do I go pull those three issues out to read or do I buy these three digital so I have a complete run here and that.
Alan: And they couldn’t do it like, okay, you get what you’re used to and an additional thing, which is the promotion.
No, they substituted the promotion for it.
Stephen: Stink. They used to always do the comic you were holding and an extra one Wolverine movies coming out, or Logan, here’s Logan number one to read. But then every comic I had, it was the bonus was Logan number one. So I only, got it.
Alan: Once you can promo every single time. Yeah. Yeah.
Stephen: But yeah. Ugh. So anyway what you watch ol which I know
Alan: exactly. Let’s go to the fun part of Geekery. Exactly. I did watch Ol by night, and it does the thing, the Marvel usual intro was starting and then it gives the, and it goes to black and white.
So that was funny. Okay. It had that and the slashes and That’s right, the slashing and stuff like that. And I thought it was good, but not. One of the things I don’t want everything to be an origin story, but I also don’t like to be thrown into the middle of things and have Wow, I recognize some of these characters, but not all.
I would like to add just a little bit of backstory or a little bit of relationship between various different things and man’s thing. Appear without, see I just what’s this? Who’s this? Why this? And just a, I don’t know how they would do it, a little vignette and then come back. little voiceover to say whatever knows fear burns it to make things touch.
Stephen: There, there are ways to do that as a writer in story and include it without it bonking you over the head. There are ways to do that, but I really kinda like that and I think that’s because I’m coming from the heavy Star Wars days when there was so many things in Star Wars that we talked about for ages and the little things in the background.
So I’ve more Very comfortable with, I don’t know who all these people are. Let’s find out, let’s watch. So and
Alan: so I get, I likes that, but then when I’m at the end of the episode and I still haven’t learned, that’s not right. You know what I mean? Maybe it is. And if it would’ve been, Hey, episode one out of 10, then I’m like, All will be revealed.
I’m happy to wait. I know that it’s gonna be good. Paced as to how they’re gonna do this. The fact that it was thrown as a one-off special and so many things were left up in the air I just, I was dissatisfied with Okay. I would’ve liked to know a little bit of everyone of the monster hunters a little.
And like some of the casting, like I thought whoever played Alyssa, Eliza Bloodstone, she really looks like how they portray her in the comics. Yeah. And not only from Bloodstone, but there was a great series called Agents of Atlas that was all kinds of like minor characters that they put together to be this monster fighting.
But, and also a. Secret agent E type stuff. And so the interrelationships all that was really good. And so I was thinking but those aren’t all those characters. So that’s not, it’s not a monster interpretation of agents of Atlas. I thought Jack Ryder was not the right guy.
Really. I just didn’t think that he was good for that. And it’s I am so like he didn’t sound like he should to me. Okay. In my head, he always had almost like a southern twang or a good old boy voice. He didn’t have the accent that he did and he didn’t have the I thought that he was like a simple guy cursed with this instead of being almost like, so it’s like a count from an eastern European country that’s been cursed it.
I found the casting inappropriate and he’s the main character. Oh, okay. And so I don’t wanna have my preconceptions be. That I wasn’t gonna no matter who it was, but it just was jarringly different than what I expected. I kinda couldn’t get past it. And I
Stephen: can appreciate that because you read the comics and know the character much more than I do.
So from my viewpoint of knowing just a little bit about it, no different perspective on viewing that. That’s my first big introduction to some of those characters really. Different viewpoints because of experience. Definitely.
Alan: So it was still good. This as usual, special effects, good plot.
Relatively good. You know what I mean? It had enough that I’d like, Oh, I wanted to see more but I just, it, it wasn’t fully satisfying as compared to, I’m still digging the prequel to Game of Thrones the House of the Dragon. There’s still really great characters and really great drama going on and that whole generational warfare, nest warfare between siblings.
There’s just all kinds of good stuff going on there, and I’m really looking forward to seeing more. Okay. And I think I mentioned this last time, it seems so much more like George Martin is involved than the last couple seasons of the previous one, right? It’s like the writer willings of it, the good vocabulary, the real understanding of human nature in all of its odd forms that people aren’t only noble, they’ve got flaws.
People aren’t only evil, they’ve got virtues, right? And et cetera, et cetera. I’m really seeing that he has. Quickly the ability to like have a whole character there, not just a cardboard cutout. And I really like that. I like seeing people not only having conflicts with others, but having internal conflicts as to don’t know what way he’s gonna go.
Is he gonna choose good or evil? Because he has aspects of both, it Anyway,
Stephen: I, So where was by Night Man Thing is one of Colin’s all-time favorite characters and he was ecstatic. Thought they nailed it. Did a really good job. What’d you think of Man thing? I thought. A mystery by that.
Alan: Meaning they didn’t explain well, he’s Ted Salas from the swamps swing equivalent a super soldier formula that made him, he’s the guardian of the nexus of realities. I don’t think that was mentioned in the, that he really is in the comic book, he’s mindless, he really is a shambling swamp creature.
Instead of having a sense of humor or trying to communicate greeted him up a little bit. Gave him limited communication. Absolutely. So that you think he’s got a consciousness in there. I don’t think that’s true from the comic books. In the comic books. He really is just a reaction machine but he looked great. He looked appropriately too brief faced and swampy and stuff and like physically imposing shambling Bigger than everybody else in the room. The fact that they even included him I’m always amazed and amused by, Wow, that’s like. Not a major Marvel character, and yet they’re finding that he’s good for this project.
Yes. So they’re bringing things in like that. And I
Stephen: like that. And that’s, that was one of my comments after watching the whole thing. And now I’m curious to go see what some of the comments are from people who knew the characters or were fans and people who weren’t, and what the differences might be in thoughts.
But I also, for using the minor characters that a lot of people may not know about and aren’t big in the world, I think it’s perfect. Let’s find a story that works with both of ’em so we can include ’em. And that’s, I love it. Do that because just having the Avengers battle everybody and win all the time,
Alan: honestly.
Yeah. So I thought that, I like the fact that it was a little bit the, an Christie, okay, let’s lock some people in a and then there were three and 10 little Indians type thing that are gonna have to stick around. Here’s this garden they’re gonna fight it out in.
They have varying different motives and stuff like that. Secret society. You don’t know who’s on whose side and how this all came to be. So all that aspect of kind of a EEN made large only one gets to survive and therefore win everything to bloodstone. All that was a standard trope and yet they played it out well.
Yeah. And if I’m taking this as a test, Of them saying, Look, we have Disney plus streaming. We can put content on there cuz they have the, like I am group little vignettes now. That’s one thing. What can we put on here that people will enjoy? So I look at this as almost like a beta.
Stephen: Okay, let’s see, they don’t know these characters, they’re not in the universe. We haven’t mentioned them. Let’s see what people think of it. How it comes across. And maybe they’re gonna learn from it. Maybe I would if they came out with one of these a month and kept that going with different characters.
They’re go get better, that some are go be better, some are gonna be worse obviously. What’s very interesting is that’s so much what Marvel Comic has done. They have the regular the big 12 let’s say of what they have going on. Then they have seasons where series where they just say, let’s give it a try and maybe it’ll run in 18 issues and then we’ll decide if we’re gonna keep it going.
Alan: Garnered enough sales or whatever else it might be. And they had tryout books like Marvel Spotlight, which is indeed where were with by night and Ghost Writer. And we could just start naming them that they had a good idea, but they weren’t gonna commit to it being even like a six or a 12 issue series.
They had regular trial out books that they just, everything. And they look for blips in sales to say, Oh, there’s more interest in Guardians of the Galaxy than we knew. Or something like that. So I like if Yeah, Kevin, if I, It’s funny now that we’ve been introduced to Kevin show, Hey.
Stephen: Yeah.
That that not
Alan: that next . Exactly. And it’s if he’s the guy that has a really good feel for what made Marvel so ascendant in comic books so good that this is one of the things they’re gonna do tryouts and not, and it’s funny to geek it up. Google has always been like this.
They don’t have endless meetings to come to the perfect solution and. Do it and commit to it. They are the internet. They try things and they do a whole bunch of AB testing and they like, they build in feedback loops so that you can see what works better? I’m not myself committed to, should this thing be on the left or the right?
Should it be blue or green? Should it be busy or simple? And they let the public say, This is what people find out, they’re using it more. You know what I mean? It’s a more successful version of it. And I hope that Marvel’s gonna do that, that they’re not only putting these things out there and hoping that they’re saying what was the viewership?
And they have things nowadays where they can be like, Oh, did people click away after five or 10 or 20 or an hour? When did we lose them? And then what was going on the screen? That would be, what can we tune for future, Not based on character and story, but just based. What’s the right length of time? Is it a half an hour episode instead of an hour or whatever else it might be?
I don’t wanna be like SP on demographics, but you know that they’re watching that kind of stuff. Yeah. With the click through and the click away rate are time outed stuff for the internet forever. Ever since they first started doing, how do you get attention? How do you keep eyes that you’re paid? What makes it
Stephen: sticky?
And I hope if that’s what Disney is doing, that they’re not like Netflix, where Netflix will drop eight episodes of a show and then three hours later say, Oh, it’s a failure. Cancel it. We’re not doing anymore . It’s what? Yeah, I think I’m not sure about this that seems to be sometimes in service to what’s the best way to tell the story.
Alan: Then instead of cramming things into a two hour movie, they’ll say we’ll make eight one hour episodes, and that’s the way it gives us cliff hangers at the end of each episode. It gives the characters a chance to grow a little bit, all that kind of stuff. But it is very frustrating when it’s like thought that was a commitment.
And then you find out that they’re not making a season too. It’s Yeah, but you made me you bastard, you fooled me into loving them and now I don’t get more . But she daredevil, that so much of what she’s done is a little bit of bringing elements of the Marvel universe.
And not having everything be serious. It’s obviously a funny comedy character driven type thing, and especially the LA that everybody’s seen the final episode no, sorry. Spoiler time put it off. She’s to break the fourth wall. She literally does, literally
Stephen: on my, I saw
Alan: she steps outta the Marvel Splash.
Stephen: Anyway, it, it it’s that mad magazine feel making fun of what is in everybody’s world that she literally is on the screen where all the little sp scrolly blips are to do stuff and she punches it out and goes to another one. She enters it Exactly That is you can’t do that.
That’s not right. But it was so perfect for her and then she visits the boardroom, and I thought that was even funnier that here it’s a fictional character and she walks into the boardroom and they’re all just Oh, hi. How you doing? This is lovely .
Alan: Exactly. Here we are supposedly controlling your life.
And she’s I don’t like the life you’re writing for me. We’re gonna make some changes. Besides all the fourth wall stuff and the comedy and just the direction it went in, what I loved the best about that episode. Was that there never was a big final confrontation and battle
and I It didn’t fail to an explosion.
Exactly. That it was, Yeah.
Stephen: Yeah. And I thought that was great too, because that subtly is making fun of all the other ones that we always have to have a big battle. And they didn’t. Not at all. They just skipped it. then went, That’s
Alan: right. Again, Yeah. I think it was John Burn in the comic books that did a lot of the He health stuff where she was indeed like breaking through the panel and stuff like that.
And again Kevin Feig, whoever the various different show runners are, they read those same things and they had affection and they said, Let’s find a way to bring that in. Because that really was haha, a breakthrough way of storytelling that it wasn’t, This is only unreal that it really is. I don’t know.
And Marvel used to do things way long ago where they. Pictures of Marvel’s creators, like in the bull hand, you got to know Sa Brodsky and Jack Kirby and Stan Lee cuz they’re sitting there at their desk at their artist Eagle and that kinda stuff. And I, so that was an interesting way of personalizing it, that it isn’t only that these characters exist in the universe and were writing all these stories but when they first had Stan Lee, not only doing the cameos and the movies, but appearing in the comic books and various other real world aspects where it’s like Spider-Man swings by Marvel Comics office or something like that, but when Mad Magazine did this often where they, so it’s cool that they took that trick and said, We can do that in movies too. It’s an affectionate thing. It’s a way of being able to bring in for Bush man. Irving for Bush was supposedly like Marvel’s janitor and then in not brand a comics became a superhero with a catalog on his head and wearing long johns and stuff and, About the absurdity of we don’t, we know this is not real
We know that this is just comics and we’re gonna make real fun of comic book conventions because while we’re writing it, we can little arbiter of taste on our shoulders going, All right, this might be too far, this might be ridiculously unbelievable. And then they speak to that. So I’ve always loved spoof type things like that.
Stephen: Yeah. And for all the people that are not, whatever, with Haw, I thought it was perfect. It was nicely timed for something different. It brought in Daredevil, it it started the sprawl, Secret war and secret Invasion or whatever, exactly. Which we mo I’m sure a lot of people don’t realize yet.
And it brought, and it surprised everybody with Hulk son that that wasn’t leaked and that was pretty amazing.
Alan: Scar making an appearance. Exact, yeah. And I just read somewhere that. At one point, they weren’t just gonna bring in Mark Ruffo as the Hulk. They were gonna bring in like Edward Norton or not and look like a Bill Bixby ask animated and just like they did multiple Spiderman, because now the multiverse is leaking.
Yeah. They were gonna have
Stephen: multiple versions of the Holk. That
Alan: would be cool. So that would’ve been amazing. A little bit disconcerting, but It who knows what led into them not doing that? Was it story, Was it actor negotiations? Was it, We just didn’t have time. Who knows? They did have
Stephen: the little homage to the old Hulks series at the beginning there.
That, which I thought was pretty fantastic. I love that. Yeah.
Alan: Yeah. And I dunno, after doing something as serious as moon night where, okay, is this guy really insane and there’s a lot of death and stuff like that. Maybe they needed the rollercoaster, has to have, he peaks and valleys.
It has to have the mosaic that they’re building. That’s how Marvel always was, that they had some things that were dead serious, other things that were comic relief. And sometimes it was this same series depending on who took it over. Justice League was not always fighting star. The conquer and dead serious stuff.
Justice League International, my Keith Ginright and however was like Mar Marsh, Man Hunter is addicted to Oreos. You know what I mean? , they had they I like when they give people a chance to say, We don’t know how it’s gonna work out, but you have the title for a year. Do whatever you want. John Byrne, do whatever you want.
Keith Gin, et cetera, et cetera. So
Stephen: Wonderful. And the last week’s episode of Andor, I don’t know if you’ve been watching that. Was I fantastic? It was really good. They were a little slow at the beginning. There were a lot of buildup, but this episode made up for it. And. Down at the comic store.
They just got in and X-Men 1 0 9 with the first appearance of Guardian. And that’s one of my I’m like, I’m looking at that going, How much is that ? Very cool. I’m well behind on all kinds of things I want to catch up on one of the fun things about going to California for the first times this time is gonna be, I’m not gonna be in the house and having to be beset with what are all the things I have to address myself to, to get things packed and cleaned and whatever else it might be.
Alan: So while I’m in my little extended Stay America, I could easily binge things not only on my laptop, but I’ll get myself my Roku box or a Chromecast, throw it up onto their tv. I’m sure I can find their htm I port, and that’ll be me at my most geeky, is how do I attach things here so that I know it’s gonna be okay?
And then I’ll be able to dismantle it and put it back to it’s working again. You know what I mean? So I don’t record the TV for the next user. And
Stephen: One of my major accomplishments this past. Was showing my mother how easy it is to move her RO acoustic between TVs and how easy it really is to get the Hulu or something because you already know how to use the spectrum dvr.
This is no different. And look, it’s custom chosen what stuff you want and you don’t have to spend time recording, you exactly.
Alan: Yeah. Especially that like that, that she’s the one that owns the stick. Her stuff is on it. When I go over here, it isn’t that the TV is different, it’s that the stick makes it all constant.
That you plug this in and this is your little repository that’s you or did or a good service
Stephen: man. Yeah. And she was so nervous about it cuz she’s Oh, I don’t know how to plug it in. I’m like, Nanny, you plugged in the DVD player all by yourself. It’s the same thing. It’s all, it’s yeah, it’s my big accomplishment for the week.
Alan: very. All right. As usual, a great episode. I, like I said, I’ll be out next week. We’ll probably we’ll do, I’ll do my Tuesday remotely from California. I’ll, we’ll see what I’ve been able to get up to. There’s a couple meta meetings. I’m gonna see a couple movies. We’ll do a view of Black Adam, almost certainly.
I’m gonna see Black Adam. Yes. Amsterdam is now on my list. Very cool. We always have good things to talk about. I’m bringing a
Stephen: whole bunch of books. Today is Colin’s 22nd birthday and he’s got friends coming. And we’re getting tickets to all go see Black Adam next Monday very cool. Yeah, I’ll definitely be able to
Alan: make feedback and I am thinking of that too.
I’m gonna see Black Adam, but not like Friday night when the whole world is there. I’m gonna go see it Monday afternoon when it isn’t I wanna see, I just laughed about this some part. Colleen and I wanting to stay away from the worst of the, I don’t want to va I’m a smoker and a drinker and a bad driver and a bad phone user.
Some part of how we’re responding to all that of just stay in the hell away from a bad element. It’s starting to seem like we’re old people. We’re going to four o’clock Golden Corral type things instead of up higher. Exactly. And I don’t wanna do it, but that’s some part of it is I don’t wanna fight with people in their theater anymore.
Yeah. I don’t wanna all of that. And so that’s my guess is I’m gonna start time shifting so that I have the place more to myself. The other people that are there are like crazy like me, that they want to get an uninterrupted performance instead. Everybody’s been out drinking, they were out tailgating and then they came to the movie.
Oh, I, what a delight for all of us. You know what I mean? So I hope that Monday night will be a better night than trying to see it on opening night. Hey, real quick before I sign off I did watch Halloween Ends, which is the last Halloween movie of the trilogy.
Thank you.
Jamie Lee, Curtis
Stephen: aunt. Okay. Supposedly of the whole series. Especially the way it ended. But it made me appreciate the middle one of this trilogy more because I see where they were going with it and tied it into the end a little bit. And I really liked it. I know a lot of people are complaining about this, that, and the other thing and don’t like it.
But I ignore that cuz you hear that with absolutely everything now, but I was like, wow, this is actually a pretty good Halloween slasher. Especially because a little spoiler alert is Michael is not top form anymore. He’s old. He has some trouble moving and getting back up and stop.
Interesting. Okay. Privately, Yeah, I would like, Huh. And there were a couple horror tropes that they of blew out of the water, so he was like, Wow,
Alan: that’s, he’s not the unstoppable engine. He doesn’t loom suddenly out of the darkness. Okay. Very interesting. All right. Yeah. So
Stephen: this whole trilogy I felt was fairly worthwhile to watch, even though I’m not a big slasher film.
I would say if you’re interested, definitely watch the first one and then watch this trilogy and you have a much better positive a respect for the Halloween movies rather than watching all the middle stuff.
Alan: Okay. I’ll you, it’s, I would not be a good like Netflix movie reviewer because what are 80% of my reviews?
Three or four stars? You know what I mean? I hardly ever have one where it’s like, Oh my God, I wouldn’t scrape this off my shoe. And I don’t often have a five. Sometimes I really love things un unreasonably, but most of mine are like, it was entertaining. Good enough, three or four. You know what I mean?
I just, I wouldn’t be able to guide other people just by my ratings. I’d have to be like if you’re looking for this, then this is a good one in that slot of that type. But just by my ratings, I got a big skew. Distribution of everything is pretty good. . You know what I mean? Speak. I’m to be entertained.
Stephen: I do not recommend the movie Dark Harvest to anybody. It’s probably one of the top three worst movies I have ever seen in my life. So bad that they even had some scenes out of order that you could like, it’s wait a second, and you realize that when they edited it, they put it in order and left it.
And
Alan: they just write. Everybody has their favorites. Kevin once challenged me to go see a hobo with a chainsaw. Yeah. Like Rooter, Howard’s last movie. And he said, It’s done. I’m, I don’t want you to see it, but if you really wanna see how bad things can get, you should see this movie. And he was right.
It was terrible. You know what I mean? Just every performance was bad, Every special. It just, and yet I sat through it cuz I wanted to be able to say, I’ve seen Hoba was a chainsaw, caution tale nobody else should see. It’s exactly that.
Stephen: Oh, we’ll talk about this next week. But I went to the reformatory Halloween blood
Alan: prison.
I think I saw post from you about going to blood prison. That’s pretty cool. Okay. Yeah,
Stephen: we’ll, I’ll talk a bit more about it, what I like didn’t like about it, sounds great, man. Okay. Take care, Stephen. Bye-Bye.
