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Overview
And we are into a new year. While we enjoyed some things about last year and we had a good holiday season, it’s time to look ahead and see what’s coming up.
To kick it off, it’s Star Wars month for Stephen. Time for movies, comics, books, card games, video games, and soundtracks.
Since we listened to a ton of Christmas music and Alan attended a playing of James Bond music for New Year, we have a great discussion about live music.
Have you seen the Avatar movie? Alan has.
Recommendations
StarWars.com | The Official Star Wars Website
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Transcript
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Stephen: Record. All right. Good morning, Alan. Good morning.
Alan: Lemme get my volume up a little bit cause I can’t hear you as How about that? Better? Yeah. Can you hear me? Yes,
Stephen: exactly. Okay. So we got through Halloween, we got through, and I don’t wanna say got through. We enjoyed Halloween, we enjoyed Thanksgiving, we enjoyed Christmas and New Year’s, and now it is the best time of the year.
Alan: Why do you think that? Because a lot of people think this is the doldrums, they’re waiting for it to be like warm again and stuff like that. But okay, so
Stephen: Here’s my issue. I love the holidays. That’s all we’ve talked about for four months, watching horror movies, watching Christmas horror, Thanksgiving and eating and Chris and buying presents and New Year’s.
We’ll talk about New Year’s. I love the holidays and when my kids were little. I loved it and had a great time. It was just such a great part of the year. I always look forward to school starting cuz it was, the next four months were just fantastic. And then I always got depressed in January and it just, I could barely face the new year.
So I created Star Wars month. January is Star Wars Month . I listen to Star Wars music. I watch the movies. I play video games. I play board games. I read books. I read comics. I engross myself in Star Wars. Totally look forward to it and it helps.
Alan: That’s very funny. It’s funny. I guess that’s a kind of, I like introverted things.
I love going out, as I love going to concerts and comedy shows and parties and stuff. But one of the things that I really like about having seasons, when I lived in places where there weren’t seasons, it was very weird to be out in California for a couple years and had to be perpetually, Hey, I should be outside.
I should be going for a walk I should be taking. So I really like cabin fever type stuff. I like where, hey, I just got a bunch of books for Christmas. Let’s take the time to read them. Instead of being they go in the shelves and I hope I remember that. I really wanted that when I caught it right. Et cetera, et cetera.
There, it’s recharge time. And Colleen and I still get out, we, we for instance, we love going for a walk. And this year we’re talking about finally doing cross country skiing. I’ve been snowshoeing. She has not just getting out. We have wonderful metro parks here in Cleveland that have places that you can do, that.
You can rent those things there as well as have your own. But that’s getting out because the air is clear and it’s brisk and stuff like that. A lot of the rest of the time it’s okay to hibernate. It’s okay to get cuddly and, stay in bed and read and that kinda stuff, right? So I never had the doldrums.
I don’t, I take that back. As I’ve gotten older, I think I have a little bit more sad, seasonal effective disorder. They’re being less daylight during the day. Makes it just like when I wake up and it’s not even light out yet, I’m logy. I’m like, oh, that sure is nice and warm in this bed.
Yeah. But I don’t know, especially things have changed. I’m now in my sixties when I was in school, It was, that is especially college. I really loved the start of the new year and the, I don’t know, just being outside, going to school and stuff like that. When I was in Champaign Urbana, I used to love being there for intercession.
School often didn’t start up until January 15th, but I was often down there because I was helping get ready for the b a program where I was already working at Garcia’s or I was doing things for Play-Doh, and it was a magical time to be there when you had this whole campus that’s built for 35,000 students, but there’s 5k of you there, right?
So you could I used to work on Play-Doh, play games on Play-Doh. They, you could go and take a seat, any seat that you wanted, instead of being the crush of people in the zoo you went to Zorbas or hip pocket for your Euros and instead of being get in line and et cetera, et cetera, and try to hope that by the time you get your sandwich, a seat is opened up.
It was just, You go into the union and instead of having to worry about who else is shooting pool or playing video games or pinball, you just had the place to yourself. It was that Omega man thing. And I kinda like that, if the world was like the, I don’t know, 90% die from some plague, not covid, of course, it would be okay to be one of the survivors and just have the place to yourself.
I’m sure there’s some deep psychological things there, and yet especially that where it’s not that you’re just surviving in the middle of nothing. All this has already been set up. And maybe it’s a little bit of the walking dead thing where I’m sure that the sheen would wear off and after a while you’d be like, I’m gonna start scavenging.
Here’s hope. I find stuff that’s in a working freezer, in a grocery store, instead of everything is. Gone to hell. You know what I mean? The destroyed world is nowhere near as much fun as the, it’s a working world. It just doesn’t have any people in it but me. ,
Stephen: but that’s kind of a transition then too.
, getting back into the swing of things. I think, we need those transitions and I honestly, I think it was a large part, just kids. Cause I don’t remember feeling that way when I was in middle school, high school and that or even college, I think it was started really with the kids.
Just, it was that there’s only so many Christmases, only so much time I’m going to have them as kids, and it started way, it’s it’s over again. What do we have to look forward to now? And I think that just start, so I made Star Wars Month , and that, that’s an awesome time.
Alan: Mention, that I remember, My mom and dad are now either gone or in a diminished capacity, but we had wonderful, like between Christmas and New Year’s, that’s when you’d break out the jigsaw puzzles.
You’d play hearts at night, you’d play like all the bowl game on, and we’d have a little cutting pool for know, as if we know who’s gonna be in the Astro Blue Bonnet bowl. But we’d put a little pool together that says, my mom would pick, Hey, who has the fancier helmets? That kind of thing.
And it was really it, as I got older, I guess I was often running out to spend time with friends in high school and college, but there was like golden years and that’s, of course, everybody gets nostalgic about various different things. It was so nice to be in the house where, hey, there’s gonna be great leftovers.
We can just have sandwiches anytime we want. There’s still all kinds of Christmas nuts and candy canes and stuff like that. And just the company of my parents where it wasn’t only being purposeful, but having a chance to just. I don’t know, have the conversation at the end of your conversations with them.
How’s my relationship going? Of course mom’s asked about that kind of stuff and actually my mom wasn’t really p pridey about that, it wasn’t always, where are my grandkids? . But it was it really was. And of course not with just my parents. I have two brothers and they’re both brilliant and game and fun.
And so we’d go sledding on the hill. And I had a wonderful, I had a best friend growing up too, from like fourth grade on, and it’s really cool to just be like, what do you wanna do? I don’t know, but I’m coming over . And we’d like, they, he lived in a house where, at Elk Grove Village, at the time, he was on the edge of the village, beyond him was prairie.
Oh. When you’re young boys, you’re like, let’s go exploring the prairie. Let’s see where the snow’s melting. It’s creating the little creeks and we’ll, can we jump over the creek or are we gonna get, totally GED in, in the water and stuff like that. And I just. I miss some of those things.
Someone on line posted that this is a liminal space, right? By that means it’s a transition. There’s no necessary thing that has to happen. And so make use of that. Think about where you are in your life or don’t think at all. Just take advantage of the fact that you’ve got downtime and you really can’t just wallow if you want, go running around if you want be different or be exactly the same.
Slow down, maybe hibernation is a good thing that, that once in a while, we really need to just be recharge. I don’t have anything to do and I’m not going to look for something to do. . So one of the, we, Colleen and I, unfortunately, we had all kinds of invitations and possibilities for tickets and stuff that we actually, between Christmas and New Year’s had a lot of things going on.
We went to see a concert, we went to see. and this week it’s much less. And so in, I have things I need to get done. I need to be looking for, a place for mom here in Cleveland instead of California. And so I have a whole bunch of appointments lined up, but that’s an hour or two out of the day.
And the rest of the time can be, hey what did I used to do? I used to use that liminal time to end the year do all my filing, put my comic books away into the big collection so that everything was still A to Z. Go through my books and see which ones I’d already read and see which ones I would keep out that, you kinda line up the next years, you put your on deck books and stuff like that.
And I haven’t necessarily applied myself in that way, so I was doing some of that here. Get the laundry done, get ready for the next year where there’s nothing looming over your. Take the going through stuff that you acquired is like the year in review, it’s nice to reacquaint yourself with, wow, I don’t have to go to the library.
I have my own library right here and every, I was able to just delight. I first started to collect all different kinds of stuff because the library didn’t have them. If you’re a big doc Savage fan, maybe James Bonds were in the library because those were like adult enough books, but all kinds of stuff.
Growing up, I started to get them because they didn’t carry MAD magazine paperbacks and stuff, so it was always a delight to be, and especially this is kind, maybe this is a collector’s thing. when you find a book that you bought intending to read, and it just went into the stacks and you’re like, oh, I, I really, I would, I wonder.
Another discovery. Another discovery. Exactly. So there’s a lot of that of, and the everybody has their best and end of year best of lists. And so it’s cool to say I wasn’t really clued in on Barry, which is some interesting series a thing on Apple TV about an assassin who also wants to be an actor and maybe even like a standup comedian.
And and, but when he says, I killed last night, you don’t know what he’s referring to . But, and it’s the fact that it’s not only, I don’t know to my odd taste, but is it’s winning awards as one of the top 10 TV shows of the year. Wow. I’m reminded of what I wanna put into Colleen and MyQ so that we don’t miss the latest Ken Burns goodness.
We don’t miss the latest. Nowadays TV is fractured. And so while I’m bopping around on Netflix, Amazon, Hulu H b o Max, I tend to go to things I already, like, where’s my next comic book movie and things like that. But it’s also cool just to be aware of I don’t know, Colleen watched the the Banshees of Is Insure.
Stephen: Yeah, I
Alan: saw that. Insure, thank you. Insure. And I must admit, I made a point of not watching it because I really thought that it would weird me out. I don’t like this world of I’ve just decided not to be your friend. I or that I did something so wrong that you have to stop being friends with someone, or you just say, I guess trust doesn’t matter.
I guess treating each other well doesn’t matter. And I, this is an odd reference to make, but I really didn’t watch Schindler’s List for many years because I knew it would affect me. , I knew that it would terrible to see. what had been going on back then, and that there really were people that were willing to step up and put themselves at risk to save some people.
But there were a lot of other people that just said, yep, that’s the new system. Let’s kill. I just, I didn’t wanna know that there’s that kind of crappy people in the world, and yet it’s like that, we have Nazis now. We have people that are only concerned about power now, and how many people are just willing to do terrible things.
And so in some cases, like I get enough of that in the real world. That’s not my interest.
Stephen: Entertainment bring
Alan: on Ironman portrayed, there’s great actors in it and stuff. So eventually I’ll watch it because it’s a great movie. And I really do wanna say, I just, I, my, my program that I did on last Wednesday night about how do you choose the best of the best, right?
And in some cases it really would be against my taste and my instincts to be like, I don’t want the best, depressing movie of all time. I, you I don’t want the best ugly thing. And yet you have to, as a rounded, cultured person, To go through all of human emotion, the whole range of what people go through.
Yeah.
Stephen: You know what I mean? But the Banes it’s definitely one of those that when it was over me and Colin went to the theater and saw it. We’ve been trying to do the Monday $5 day movies
Alan: at That’s so smart. You had the place to yourself and a five bucks instead of 10, 15,
Stephen: okay. And it was one of those movies, man, when it was over, we both sat there and looked at each other and said what ki what kind of just happened?
It was like o overwhelmingly powerful, but we weren’t even sure why and how, it was just different. And we had to really let it sink in and think about it some, and I’m like, oh, okay. I need to go see some explosions next week. . So for New Year’s, speaking of movies, we watched one called New Year’s Eve.
Which I had never seen. But it was advertised as basically if you like love, actually you’ll like this movie. Okay. It’s got that similar premise of multiple storylines and people and things going on. They intermediate intersecting ensemble cast. Yeah. Oh my god. Ensemble cast. There were like, every scene was a cameo of somebody.
It’s oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. It was like, dang.
Alan: Oh, I’ve never heard of it. That’s interesting. Yeah, I mean it was one of those made for Canadian summer stock
Stephen: and it maybe it might have been of the summer, so it was worthwhile. And have you heard or played the Game Hive?
I don’t think so, no. That is one you should add to your list. I’ll recommend. It is basically, it’s like chess in that you have different pieces and each piece has a very specific movement. What you’re doing is you’re a group of bugs trying to protect your queen bee. And so it’s hexagon pieces and they move around the bo it gets formed, the pieces get connected.
Okay. And they move around. What is the hive of the connected pieces, trying to capture the opponent’s queen. Interesting. Now we’ve played it a couple times at the base set and it’s kinda okay the base set is okay, but not the best. So I ordered three extra pieces that they put out, like D l C.
. And it, it changes. It’s okay, no longer can you win with that one strategy cuz these pieces changed it. So it’s a good, if you like chess, you’ll probably like this. It’s a twist and I. Interesting. And that was New Year’s for me, .
Alan: Okay. That’s we had a nice quiet New Year’s. We went out to Aladdin’s, which is one of our favorite local places.
Yes. And then we went to see the, not I thought it was c s O but instead it was the Cleveland Pops Orchestra, which is a smaller version of the full C s O. But they played the music of James Bond and they had two guest vocalists so they could pull off, the Shirley Bassey and the let’s see Tom Jones, they had, there’s various different songs that are quite famous from James La movie.
Nobody does. Simon Levon. Simon Labon. Exactly. Duran did one. And. It was really good. The odd thing about it wasn’t only the music of James Bond, they threw in some things maybe cuz the vocalist, it was like what they like to sing in their ranger, their favorites. So we heard some Frank Sinatra and we heard and those were actually the weaker pieces, kinda like when you take a pop song but you orchestrate it up, it doesn’t necessarily make it better.
You know what I mean? But the music exchange bond was very powerful. They had the medley, the overture, they had various cool things. Everybody, they had hats and Hooters for everybody. And so they had a nice, they called Foyer Fest where everybody gets the, in, in concert who together and stuff like that with the concert master, leading everybody was and so really fun.
They had a section where you could then they had both the main and the smaller lobby set up with a live band and open bar, a cash bar, but, I don’t know. We just don’t like the crush with people anymore. You know what I mean? And we’re not big drinkers. And so we walked through those places and we kept thinking, are we happy here?
Are we comfortable? Are we gonna do a little dancing? And we both just said, of what we do is we wanna go home, we’re done. We saw our thing. So we got home in time to watch the ball drop. And this was we went on to our, we have a Roku box and they had a whole Chris new Year’s Eve spectacular.
And they had multiple choices. We the biggest one that seemed to feature the ball drop was Fox News. But it was terrible. It was all choppy. Things kept repeating itself, like whatever they had done to capture it and then show it, but try to do it in real time, but eliminating somebody in the crowd swearing or whatever else it might be.
It just, Like I said, it wasn’t only choppy, it was that it would do a six second segment as if I was suddenly on TikTok or Instagram or something like that, and then go into a fuller length version. And so instead of watching the ball drop over the course of, that last minute, it was just all
Stephen: top like
Alan: an action movie.
We still, we got really too mon, too many quick cuts,
Stephen: too much New Years by TikTok sponsored by your favorite social media .
Alan: Yeah, and it’s funny, we usually, we almost all the time in the past, we’ve, we have a whole bunch of stuff on our piano downstairs, which has become our liquor cabinet based on things we’ve found at Pretentious drinking.
And this year we both. I don’t know that I care, I don’t, we don’t have any champagne in the house and I don’t need to have a shot of Bening, teen and Brandy. So we had like tea and a Sodi pop or something. Clinked, those plasticy and ceramic glasses and just cuddle on the couch and watch that as well as watch like another episode of Castle that happened to be around the holidays.
And I don’t know, that’s just what happens, right? You get to be 63 and you’re like, I’m okay to not be elbowed elbow with people. I’m okay to not have the exhilaration of the ball hits. And everybody goes, woo. We had our joy and then we came home and had our calmness as well. We still stayed up a little bit later.
We didn’t go to bed at 1202, but it wasn’t having to create that level of like manic fun. I guess we’re past that now or something. Anyway. I think it’s mostly the crowd thing. It’s, it isn’t, I don’t like, I don’t like the I agree. We were worried when we’re driving home. It’s like we saw any number of people on the road that were not staying in their lane and we gave ’em a wide birth.
Yeah. And that’s all his biggest worry is that it’s an amateur night, same with St. Patrick’s Day. Yeah. All kinds of people that they’ve been drinking since six in the morning and now they’re out driving their weapon home. We were very careful about getting home cuz it’s all the way across town to get the severance hall from where we
Stephen: live.
Yeah. I didn’t do a lot of driving but I’ve been pretty good for the New year’s so far. I didn’t really make resolutions. I just had some things I wanted to do more of and change. So I’ve been writing every day. I’ve been working on some of my programming projects. Got most of the decorations down and I’m organizing ’em and labeling things really well.
I’ve played piano and drums and guitar almost every day, which I said I wanted to do more of.
Alan: Exactly. Getting back into music. I don’t have any place to do that here. I have a, my, my Casio, big cz one keyboard that is like buried. I don’t have even the ability to hook up a monitor to it and have electricity to it.
And , I’m pissed terribly, but not enough to have said, then let’s clear a dedicated space and, I just, our house doesn’t allow for a studio until I get my act together and clear a lot of my clutter out. So
Stephen: I got for Christmas I don’t know if I mentioned those pocket drums.
So it’s just a pair of drumsticks and you can play that anywhere there’s a Yeah.
Alan: good for you. Is such an I my musical new year was, I listened to Kansas. I saw that first six Kansas albums in order. Wow. And they, honestly, they’re like 50 years old. They started in 70. And yet, man, do they hold up?
They’re complex and Steve Walsh and Rubbish Steinhardt was one of those groups that actually had two lead vocalists and yet they really were great at what kind of song is this and do we want to have the rougher bluesy or the soaring operatic or, and they wrote great songs of multiple different topics and lengths.
Not a lot of love songs. It was more like deeper stuff than that. So all the things that I loved about them when I first discovered them, they’re still all there as well as I don’t, they’re one of those groups that has a difficult history. They had multiple breakups and re gatherings because of a couple members of the band went really Christian and they wanted to make Christian rock, and that’s wow, that’s taking us off the charts.
And so they had to do some shuffling as to what, anyway, it was a delight to go back to that and just hear songs that I’ve loved for a long time. Song For America is just, An unbelievably good song, and I remember the first time I ever saw them was at a place called the Rand Hurst Ice Arena. A good named Paul Garabaldi who had he was good about finding new music and especially we had similar enough pace so that I would turn him onto Michael Ofield and he would give me Rush or Kansas or whatever.
He went to a place where it was, one of those they were finding new venues in Chicago because they had filled all the regular ones, but there was a huge surge in the mid seventies. They start off with a scrim all the way around the stage, and I think that it was in the round, but it might have just been like, three quarters around.
And they have lights from the inside, so it’s opaque. And yet they would then lower the lights and you could see movement back there. And they’d do like little spotlights where there was activity and there was music starting to play, like them tuning up, but also breaking into songs and then backing off and going all the way into it.
So it was just for a young band. This was after their first three albums left over. True. It was not even out yet. It was phenomenal stage presence and phenomenal buildup. And then they dropped the scrim all at once and they go into Song for America and it just was like, and there was nobody there because Leftover Tour was not out yet.
That was their big breakthrough album, right? Breakthrough, yeah. Everybody that was there was a total fan and everybody just wet themselves with how fucking cool it was. And then two hours of Great Kansas music and everybody just like it. One of the best concepts I’ve ever seen. Nice. In a, an ice arena, in a weird, odd venue for that.
You
Stephen: know, Def Leppard does something very similar. They, they have in the round, they do have in the round they have a curtain up. One of my favorites was rush though. They actually got south Park and they had Carman an epi. I think it’s from an episode where Carman wanted to be in Rush. And okay, they’re playing rush songs and he counts off he goes and one and two and three and four, and then everything, the lights come up, the curtains drop, and you hear that low E from Tom Sawyer.
Boom, they go right into it. So that was an, that was a pretty awesome opening. .
Alan: I lo I, I’ve seen we both I’m sure have seen so many concerts by now, and when you really see . Oh, speaking of Carman, he has like the thing where he has to sing the whole version of Come sail away whenever somebody starts it up.
Yes. I remember seeing Sticks where they played like an hour and 10 minutes, they totally phoned it in. It was the most prefabricated, nothing, maybe they already weren’t getting along. Maybe somebody was sick with the flu and they had to get off the stage. But that was one of those where while it’s going on it’s okay.
And then the shoe just ends so abruptly and everybody in the audience is going aren’t they coming back? Like, how did, how is it already now ending? Is this intermission? Is it, and then they come back for an encore. It’s like that. So we’ve had Moody Blues. I saw two different times. One of which, same thing after maybe, let’s see, maybe after Seven Sojourn or something.
They really seemed to be tired. And then they took a break for a while and they came back. , whatever the album is that has long distance Voyager and time no see, and they were just totally re-energized. Maybe it was Patrick Morra, maybe it, whatever it was. It was like, I really went with trepidation in my heart because I was like, are they gonna fool me twice?
They love their music, but am I really gonna give ’em this chance to disappoint me again? And then we were just all smiled. So it’s very cool when you’ve seen a group multiple times and you get to compare between, we, we saw Kansas besides that wonderful opening. I remember they had some tough times in the nineties where they were off the charts, but they were still a touring band.
And we saw ’em at Cream of Wheaton, one of those local state fair type things in Wheaton, Illinois, cream of Wheaton, a very witty ni that’s . And they’re just, it’s okay if they are playing out of 5,000 people instead of 50,000, but I’m here and they’re still playing as if it matters.
And so I loved discovering that. There were certain bands that if you’re worried about, some bands are like the revival where the whole band is dispersed, but somebody retains a name, the drummer, and he got a whole bunch of roadies, to play with ’em now. And then it’s, I saw a Steppenwolf where it was just a shadow of themself.
But there’s others where they just, they’re still cooking, they’re still doing great. And wow, you get a chance to see ’em from up close instead of from back in the.
Stephen: That’s one of the things I tried to instill in the kids when they were doing music and taking lessons and stuff. I’m like, it’s not just learning the notes, it’s not just playing everything.
Sometimes it’s okay to make a mistake if you’re really putting your heart, soul, and energy into it. And there’s no way you can learn that. There’s no way you can teach it. You either have it or you don’t. You hear it or you don’t. And we went to the Streetsboro Family Days and there was a band playing, and it was a song we liked and stuff.
And we’re sitting there listening. The kids go, this is boring. I’m like, yes, but they’re hitting all the right notes. Do you see it now? And exactly. I remember I went to a hair metal thing blossom back in the nineties, and this was after hair metal died and they were coming. The one band
Alan: right head Bangers Ball.
No longer
Stephen: being done, but I forget the name of the band. Paul The Angels, or Send Me The Angels, whatever, but that was like their only big hit. They were the opening group and I was like, wow, these guys are awesome. Okay. He’s running up and down there doing, these, this sounds really good.
Then Cinderella came on and I never really listened to Cinderella and I’m like, my gosh, this is some of the best bluesy rock I’ve heard in a long time and became a big fan. I didn’t like Cinderella until after Cinderella was dead and then docking came on and they were the big openers. They were the big name.
And I’m like, this is a boring, they stood there just playing and it’s every song album cut, move on to the next one. No, the contractual
Alan: obligation show, oh, it was, was
Stephen: horrible. Oh boy. But opening bands were great. They loved being in there. They wanted to do it. And that’s a big difference.
Alan: Exactly. I’ll tell you, there’s so many stories. I went, we, Colleen and I went to see the Black Crows at the house of Oh,
Stephen: they are so good or were so good that, that’s the
Alan: problem. They weren’t that
Stephen: night. I don’t Oh
Alan: really? It was The brothers weren’t getting along cuz they’re another contentious like Oasis, there’s all like the kinks.
Yeah. Was like, you know what I mean? It’s funny. People handle fame differently and whatever else it might be. Living with someone for 30, 40 years ain’t easy. . And you’ve already doing it when you were kids and you got all the kid issues. Having said that, I just was so happy. It’s House of Blues.
We’re gonna see Yeah. This fantastic band in a small venue. and it was like, wow, this is going nowhere. They were just noodling around. It wasn’t even good blues. It was like, oh, that’s sad. Four or five, cge. Oh, it was, I can’t tell you how disappointed and one of those things, like I probably will see ’em again if they ever tour because they’ve broken up and now the brothers are doing various different things and yet that was one of those big disappointments as compared to, I remember, I, we’ve had the privilege of being able to like scene Magazine in Cleveland.
It’s kinda like a reader in Chicago. There’s all kinds of great. Music coverage and especially you go and you read the Little, all the mar various different venues and sometimes you’ll find out, wow, iron Butterfly is still going and they’re
Stephen: gonna be at beginning. They’re still playing that one song.
They haven’t gotten to the end of it yet. , that’s
Alan: true. Exactly that. Apparently the drum solo continues , and yet I had, there must have been like two different summers where I saw Lost Lobos before they broke it big with, and it’s funny because it wasn’t even really, their song didn’t Peewee Hermann Tequila.
Lost Lobos had three great albums before the world decided that they were worthy of notice. But I loved When Will, how will the Wolf survived anyway and saw them like, I don’t know, from me to the screen. We were like right on the edge of the stage at a, and they were so good. And it’s one of those things where I tried to convince all my friends, just please trust me.
This band is so good. And even though you might think that you’re gonna hear like Mei music, they’re more than that. They’re the best of what’s going on in that way and. Saw iron, butterfly saw Spirit, like where some bands come as long as it’s still the distinctive vocalist, like the guess who, as long as it’s Burton Cummings, they sound great.
And we just, some recently, unfortunately, but in the last six months or so, saw the guess who, where it was a different vocalist and it was like, oh, they didn’t even, they didn’t talk about that in the advertising. I figured they wouldn’t be allowed to use the guess who name. And it wasn’t Randy Bachman either.
And so it’s one of the things that we’ve, we, I have always loved reading the liner notes and learning about who’s in the bands. Cuz then that’s also an early warning system for the Steppenwolf debacle where it’s it’s not even John K it’s not anybody who wrote the songs or really is the distinctive guitar or corporate name.
Name. Yeah. And it just, someone is has the name. Exactly. So we still have good luck in that regard here. I, there’s some things like Nectar came to the Beachland Ballroom, at and Nectar was a K, they’re like a great German prog rock kind of space rock. and they were not only great, they had the full multimedia extravaganza where they had war patterns playing in the background and so much that I thought I’d never get a chance to see live because I’m pretty sure they’re German Navy Dutch, but they don’t leave Europe.
And how they were enticed to come here and put together a little tour and how that tour included Cleveland, I couldn’t believe
Stephen: it. Cleveland has, s back in the day was a pretty powerful force. I agree. That’s the reason Rush came to America originally. It was the working man. One of the, you lured over
Alan: The lake there, brought here.
Okay.
Stephen: Yeah. And we’ve had that experience with first Snow, I went and saw it one year and I’m like, oh my gosh, this was as good as t s o this was. It was just, it sounded good, look good, energetic, wonderful. And then we said, come on, you gotta come with us. And we went with you the next year and we got the intermission.
We’re looking at each other this kind of sucks. Totally different. And same group.
Alan: Yeah. Yeah, it, I don’t know. That’s I’m, we’re not looking we’re also very aware, so I don’t know how, what’s happened in your family, but both sides, both Ma Colleen’s and my family had people get covid this year.
Some people right after the Christmas gathering that we were at, and so I guess we’re fully booster eyes and we just are lucky, Hardy, whatever it might be, but we did not come down with it. But one guy really had to go to the hospital and stuff because it was so in his lungs and all wrong. And on my brother’s side, he had his son come up from Florida and he, Bruce thinks he got it from going to Walmart when.
That wasn’t the wise thing to do without a mask. And there, there are holidays. We had this last year, that is previous year to this last one where we went down like a day after Christmas. And that’s what we did between Christmas and New Year’s was recuperate, hide. We’re wanting to the world is opening up.
The world is declared that we’re in the endemic instead of the pandemic. I know I’ve talked about this before, but we gotta be careful because when we were at our James Bond concert, we stayed masked up. Even if it’s people going to see the orchestra, there’s just enough people that are that are certain they’re right without doing the right thing.
And that’s, I, that’s just the state of our country is Yeah. How what people we have that are just science resistant or uncaring about others. You know what I mean? There’s a
Stephen: mental, or like you’ve said, it’s, this is my beliefs and I’m only gonna believe that no matter what you tell me. This is what’s Right.
Alan: Unable, unreachable. Exactly. And, but, and I’ll. Soapbox time. It’s not, this isn’t the first time this has been around. Think of all, how many people think they’re a good driver that suck, that are continually not paying attention or continually hyper aggressive and tailgating and cutting off and whatever.
Think of every smoker in the world that for the last 50 years, 60 years since we knew that smoking was bad for you and bad for others, people are just like, Nope, I’m in service to my addiction and I can’t stop. And so you get to share it. And it’s really a shock now when, it’s all banned in restaurants and stuff like that.
But we’ve been in places where for whatever reason, they just decided to not enforce it that night. And we are like I’m getting out here. I can’t be in this anymore. I’ve had cancer. I don’t need cancer again. And it isn’t only a venue where, it’s anonymous. It’s that we have people that we know that can’t stop smoking.
Because if you’re in that kind of thrall to an addiction, it just, it affects everything that you do. Yeah. You know what I mean? You make concessions. You stop. Really caring about others because you’ve gotta do what you’re doing. And so there’s whatever that mentality is that we’re willing to be addicted or willing to not care about others, it’s still all out there.
And nowadays, you can’t even ask Haven even been vaccinated because they would, they’ll tell you, yeah, I was vaccinated. They were vaccinated twice out of the five times they could have been. And so those variants that they, I guess if you don’t believe in evolution, you don’t believe in mutation either.
And then you don’t think that it’s still out there and ravaging the world despite a billion people in China now being in trouble. Because they’ve, I just, oh
Stephen: Oh I
Alan: just, Colleen and I have to be careful enough for all of us because people are not being careful, truly for other people.
You know what I mean?
Stephen: It’s f fyi and this reminds me the last Tuesday in January, right before February, probably no episode cuz I’ll be down in Florida, the yearly conference. But this is the first time we’ve had the conference in three years because of Covid. And we get people from other countries and I know the management isn’t wanting everybody to wear masks all the time because they feel it’s impersonal, blah, blah.
So we’ll see what happens. , it’s going to be interesting, I hope.
Alan: Yeah, I have been for a whole month, by, I’m heading back to California on the 14th. I was really home for almost an entire month. And it is that being in the airport, being out in California where they got different cooties and people are not paying attention and I need to be the one that’s careful.
I wear my mask all the time. I sit, not where the gate is, but away, but where I can hear announcements, just cuz you know, the more that you and this is interesting people I, oh I’m philosophical this year about what’s going on with people’s brains because I just got a pretty cool book about how being reasonable.
It doesn’t matter. I have all my life thought that if you get enough facts and get enough analysis and you can come to a conclusion that everybody would just say, that’s right. That’s the best laundry detergent because consumer reports looked into that for you and here’s how it works on all these various different things to why would you not buy that?
Oh, because my mom always bought Oxid. But it’s not the best. Yeah. And it’s there really that whole, you can lead people to water but can’t, a horse to water, but you can’t make ’em drink. And it has been a perpetual frustration. And it’s just now that final realization of, I, I don’t think you can, I think that most people really do make up their mind and then gather supporting data for what they already think and that the way which they make up their mind is so specious, so flimsy in some cases that it’s, I can’t get frustrated by it anymore because it’s breaking my heart.
I just have to say then, I guess because I use consumer reports, I have an edge up on everybody because my washer is gonna last for 15 years, not five, and my car is better than yours and my toothpaste is better. And maybe you luck out and get the same crest ProHealth that I get. And yet it, that thing that I thought I was doing, even this whole, I just did my talk about how to, consume the best media and yet I had someone in the audience that was willing to say that’s subjective.
It’s maybe if you heard all the rest of the talk, you found out that there are ways to take subjective in multiple instances and combine them together into an overall opinion from multiple learned sources. And you can really get to it like, that’s what science is. It isn’t just what you think and how much, how hard you’re willing to witness for something.
It’s how do you get to where there’s shared facts and a shared conclusion for all this, and the people who immediately. Deny that, but I guess there really is no reaching, you don’t use the scientific method or the opinions of others as well as your own or that there’s no value to expertise.
There’s so many flaws in how they act and think and operate, and yet one of those flaws is that unin Kruger effect. When you’re incompetent, you don’t realize how incompetent you are at judging those kinds of things. ,
Stephen: right?
Alan: Yeah. I just, I hate to think of, I’m gonna write off some 50% of the world, but that’s what the votes tell me is that how much of the world just doesn’t try to make the world make sense and be consistent and correspond to known facts.
So off soapbox, but I just, here’s hoping that there’ll be enough people that are saying, I really would like to know what some of the good books are to read and good movies are to see, and good TV shows to watch, because I can’t get through it all on my own. And I’d rather that. I don’t know, at least hedge my be.
It’s not that you then become a slavish devote day of Roger Ebert, but it’s wow, there’s at least a way to hedge your bets on all these things. And that itself is a way of thinking about it, that it’s percentages, it’s not yes or no right or wrong, but if I’m gonna watch 10 things, I’d seven or eight or 10 to be good.
Instead of, if it’s just random, then what will random give you
Stephen: maybe five.
Alan: You know what I mean?
Stephen: Oh, so speaking of best movies and best and good avatars out, and I take it, you saw it the first avatar this like 10 years ago, right? What? Didn’t it come out? Yes. And it kinda ushered in the new 3d.
It
Alan: very well done and immersive, instead of being tacked on after filming where they do camera trickery Yes. Processing trickery, naked, that things come out of the screen at you. And,
Stephen: and what I liked about it wasn’t so much I threw something and it burst out at you. That was, 3d.
This was more depth. It gave you, look, everything looked like it was, a depth to the whole screen and not so much things popping out. And that I liked that a lot. That’s
Alan: exactly what I thought too, that if you’re gonna show flying or swimming or various different things where depth of fields really matters, it, they, boy, he did it fantastically.
Whatever the new cameras are that he’s working with, and however he stages his. to capture that kind of stuff. The action is like that, that it’s not two guys like sword fighting, where it really is like a side scroller video game. , right? That it’s swooping around and being in each other’s and the fact that some of the stuff, it wasn’t oh, a spear coming at you from the screen.
It was, there’s like a fire and there’s little Flinders in the air and they look like they’re in your air. They look like they’re in your space. It
Stephen: was like, that is, it was using 3D maturely as opposed to just oh, it’s a gag. And I think the same thing. The thinking was, oh, 3D is a fad.
We’ll just throw these gags in. That’s what’ll get people in. That’s what they used to think of, like superhero movies. Oh, it’s a kid superhero movie. Just do whatever with it. It’s goofy. And then someone made a good one that was mature and people went, oh, that’s pretty good. And Cameron did the same with 3d.
It’s oh, that’s really good. So it changed things. And that was what I liked about the original. I didn’t think the story of the movie itself was anything super. It was okay, but without the 3d, it was kinda like, eh, so what’s this new one? I
Alan: would see it again, is to see it like, yeah, I Colleen really didn’t like it because the story was shallow.
It really was like one, know, if you’re gonna go with a sequel, you can’t, you shouldn’t just retell the original story with a new. Two, 2% change or something like that. But that was so much what this one was. It was once again, the colonial resource abusers trying to take over a planet.
And the native, the noble savages on the planet are fighting for their life, their live, their livelihood. It’s visual candy. It is not great story. And and, but good and it’s not terrible. It just isn’t, the story isn’t as good as the breakthrough technology that we just talked about, so I, I don’t know if people have expectations of movies.
I don’t mind going to a place where it’s wow, I’ve never seen that on screen before. That can be enough for me. Will I see it? Kinda like the people that saw Titanic a hundred times. It’s like it wasn’t good enough story to be like five times, much less a hundred and yet not, my taste is not everybody’s.
Cameron has done better movies. Aliens was really great. Terminator really great. He, maybe because he’s so into the technology now, he’s. Immersed in it, distracted by it and doesn’t like, and if he’s the one that’s doing the screenplay, instead of bringing up bringing in better screenwriters and helping him punch it up and tell a better story.
But he’s an ur kinda like Rodriguez, r Rob Robert Rodriguez, that he’s really great at making movies where he does everything he does, not only the filming and the editing, but he does the soundtrack and he does like the kids’ costumes and everything for all I know. And yet, so it’s really fun to see a particular vision, but it’s also that while there really are you, maybe you’re not the best at everything.
Like when somebody like Eddie Murphy plays every role in a movie like Jerry Lewis used to, like that kind of stuff. And it’s, I guess it’s an interesting thing when you see how people can be that mercurial to take on multiple different roles like Alec Guinness has done. We can start naming, there’s Peter Sellers did it.
And so it’s a stunt to see that you really can lose yourself in that many different roles and be convincing in all of them. , but there’s also something to be said for bringing your cronies that are really good at what they do too, , and make sure that the soundtrack really serves the movie and things like that.
Anyway I can I don’t know. We’re jumping around. John Carpenter has always done the movie music, and his music is great. He’s really accomplished that knowing what makes for good.
Stephen: Movie music. He’s, he’s great in a different way from like John Williams. John Williams absolutely puts this stuff that’s huge.
And it, it’s such a part of the movie that without the music, the movie almost doesn’t exist. Carpenter is simpler. He’s not the big orchestra so much, but he has just what’s needed to set the mood. And sometimes that’s all you need. But I, I’m not gonna go back and listen to the soundtrack for Halloween because it’s some great tunes as opposed to Star Wars
Yeah.
Alan: What’s funny is, the people that are really good at that, the kind of, the motif, the hook, it’s like when you think of Halloween, you’re really doing the Yeah. Like you can hear Psycho and other things that were such an arresting part of the movie. Anyway, it, I think that Colleen and I are gonna get, look, one of the things we look forward to as the New Year Blossoms is there’s gonna be like the Oscar nominations and we love going to see the Oscar shorts.
you know what I mean? Where it’s the documentaries and the animations and the short subjects and that just, it’s a big part of the Oscars. There’s incredible high quality, but they’re not that well known. And so we like to be out there in support of that, we’re looking for it as a Ban Mountain Film Festival, much like we said about your conference that used to be, it happens in Banfield and they take it on the road.
They cather the best of the festival and they do a two, two hour programs and we go see ’em all. Can’t do that in an auditorium full of please don’t cough on me . And so here’s hoping that those things have been revived and that e even if it has been, we will wear our mask then be careful and stuff like that.
But I’m looking forward to that little bit of return to normalcy. We actually have a cruise coming up in, I think September, October, where we’re gonna supposed to go to the Baltic and do a bunch of, and I’m just hoping so much that the world doesn’t have a resurgence in a new variant, a new mutation of C O V D.
For that. Ukraine hasn’t blossomed into a full scale war of all of, there’s so many things that can go wrong and as if my cruise doesn’t matter as much as any of those big things, but it is our thing that we’re looking forward to. And I’m so hoping that the world calms down and gets decent and rational instead of, Nope, the craziest one, we’re going to World War iii
Yeah,
Stephen: no. You
Alan: know what I mean? I just, Ugh, . So we will, on a, on that small scale, it’s we’ll, we’re gonna do all kinds of outdoor stuff, like I mentioned, some snowshoeing and stuff like that, but also everywhere that we wanna go to a comedy club, there’s people coming to comedy clubs and be careful.
We will be, continue to be careful, yeah. Cause we wanna do more. We want to, I
Stephen: Like we’ve said for the last two years, I don’t wanna. It, like we said, for the last two years, it’s it’s going to be an interesting year. Let’s see what happened. .
Alan: Yeah. Yeah. Let’s see. What, which
Stephen: do we have on our list?
Let’s see, what do we have on our list? Let’s see.
Alan: We got, we covered New Year’s. We got we have a, to
Stephen: calendars strategies. Oh, yeah,
Alan: I, this, I think we might’ve talked about this in previous incarnations. I love calendars, multiple calendars because I like seeing new artwork on my walls every month. And they, I went out as usual, like post Christmas, maybe even post New Year’s.
I should have waited because some places were 40% off instead of 50, those bastards. And but I got all kinds of national parks and all kinds of fractals and all kinds of superheroes. I really, all of my quirky interests are represented by getting a calendar that represents each one of those.
And so they’re up on the walls. Now. I probably, I should turn off my backdrop so you can see that, here’s where I’ve got my Marvel superhero and I got and I, it, I won’t go into it except it’s. It seems like a small thing, like for seven bucks, if you get it for a $15 calendar for half off, you get for 60 cents a month, you get cool new artwork.
And I love my optical illusions, I love my national parks, I love my mandalas. It’s just cool. I don’t know anybody else that does it really. Most people get one calendar cuz they use it as a calendar , keeping track of their dates and appointments. But somehow that thing of, I like variety and this is the way, instead of buying a piece of art and putting it up and that’s what I get.
I get a new Leonardo or Michelangelo every month. I get a
Stephen: new do Are you talking the artist or the turtles? .
Alan: Yeah. . I should do that , but no, I, you go to the fine arts section of the calendars I like Magrid, I like, and in some cases things that I really like. They don’t put ’em out every year.
So I’m like, Beset by. Wow. I really was looking forward to having I don’t know certain things that I’d like to see, even if I’ve had ’em up before. just like being able to see that level of quality. Boy, I’m once again, sorry about this. I really need to use the restroom.
Yes, but not finish my podcast and then home.
That was ridiculous. . One of the things about getting older is that just becomes an issue. I’m a grown man and yet if you have a little bit of caffeine in the morning, my body is very efficient in saying, that’s a diuretic.
Stephen: Here we go. Yeah. It’s not only that though, but diabetic also that happens that it’s a sign of diabetes oh, it’s speaking of, okay, for Christmas, I mentioned my mother got me a pizza stone, even though I’ve been trying to avoid lots of bread carb type stuff, car things. Exactly. So I ordered the Carlo’s flour and I had some wheat flour and I mixed it to try. Okay. And it was King Arthur Wheat with some carbos like you recommended. I’m go work on adjusting the amounts of each.
So it has a good consistency in texture, but lower carbs. And so I normally, if I have Ginos, I order pizza delivery and I eat two pieces. My blood sugar is one 60 and up. It could be 180 and it just depends on the day, whatever. So I ate the two, I made homemade with the carbos.
Again, I want to adjust it a bit, but it was 1 44 and I was like, oh, it’s better. So it really does help a little bit. That’s good. Yeah. But that was with. More of the wheat flour than the carbo. So I’m gonna try and adjust it and see if I can get more carbos. And, if I’m in the one 30 s after I ate a couple pieces of pizza and stuff I’ll be fairly happy.
But here’s the weird thing, you wanna know the crazy ass thing? , I’ve been eating oatmeal every morning and I did it this morning and my blood sugar is one 14. Okay? That’s very acceptable. I’m good with that, right? Yeah. Last night I still had some of my ice cream cake from my birthday last month.
So I said I’m, I don’t care. I’m gonna have a piece of that, but I’m gonna check my sugar afterwards. You wanna know what my blood sugar was after eating ice cream cake?
Alan: How about terrible, like 300. Try
Stephen: like 1 0 5. Explain it. How does that work? Yeah, I don’t know
Alan: because ice cream cake is mostly fat. Nu sugar.
Stephen: Maybe it’s
Alan: that, it’s high butter fat ice cream and stuff like that.
Stephen: Okay. But that’s the thing. That’s what, I’ve told people, you gotta check this stuff because yeah, in that regard, I could eat ice cream cake, but I better avoid mashed potatoes because they’re horrible for me. So it’s, that’s why you gotta check, because it could have been, maybe cuz I ate a bigger salad for dinner, it didn’t affect as much with the ice cream cake later, or because I exercised earlier in the day.
It’s why you gotta check this stuff to know, not cuz I’m worried or anxious and paranoid, but I wanna know, Hey, this ice cream day didn’t affect me. Next time I can have a bigger piece, but if I’m got mashed potatoes, I better just go easy on it, exactly.
Alan: I, it’s, I for a while was I’ve never fucked fingers, but for a while I was wearing my li breath.
Device. And that gave me a good I have not worn this consistently because 90% of the time I was in my target range. I had certain things that spiked me. And like you said, I learned that if I’m gonna go out for sushi, all that rice will really affect me more than I would’ve ever expected. I thought I was eating mostly meat and things like that but it’s I really should start the new year off in data gathering mode again and say if you’re in hibernation mode and you’re eating more, I don’t know.
I, my breakfast, I’ve switched over to being very keto. I have like little omelets and little sandwiches that are like, with Turkey sausage and stuff like that. And I make all of our breads with carbo flour for half of the bread flour and stuff. But there still have to be things.
We just had leftovers from the family Christmas, and like some of them were potatoes, some of them were. Whatever. I should examine each of those things in the same way. And I guess if I have, I make a platter so that it’s most of the stuff is safe if it goes up. It must be the potatoes. I hope that’s the case instead of the few onion things on top of your green bean casserole.
You know what I mean? Please did me in it. It’d be worth, I stopped doing it because I was satisfied with what I had learned, but I don’t have all of my data in, I really should put it on like I should do where while I’m in California and say, if I’m doing more, eating out more fast food, is there any safe fast food?
You know what I mean? I gotta I don’t I’m trying to be careful about that, but I know that it’s gotta be, Worse than at home where I really control what I’m
Stephen: putting. And so here, that’s the other thing. People, and we’ve talked about this we know this, but people think, oh, that’s sugar free.
That’s okay, I’ll have that. No, that’s not always the case. Hot chocolate is a great example. So if Swiss Miss Hot Chocolate, it’s ridiculous. It’s 40, 34 40 or something. Carbs per cup of hot chocolate. And that’s just like woo. But the sugar free isn’t too much better. It’s like 24. So it’s you know who if the carbs is the main thing, not the sugar, like people should know, then sugar free.
That’s not a big difference. But Nestle hot cocoa is like 14 carbs per glass.
Alan: What do we just centrifuge the chocolate down to have the essence of chocolate, but not all the carbs. That’s,
Stephen: but it, it tastes way better than the sugar-free Swiss mist. Sugar-free Swiss mist tastes like gas, whereas Nestle hot chocolate at least tastes like hot C.
That’s the thing. Look at that stuff and people like, oh, fat free. It’s healthier. Not necessarily sugar free is not healthier. Gluten, you gotta look at this stuff. We’ve, prophesied this to everybody for the last two years. It’s really looking at that because I got out the Nestle Hot chocolate and somebody’s that’s got sugar.
And I’m like, yeah aren’t you diabetic? I’m like, look at this. And I explained it to ’em and they didn’t grasp it. And I’m like, I’ll check my blood sugar. I’ll show you. This will not spike me like you think it will. I, it’s those things you gotta learn.
Alan: Yeah. If anything, one of the reasons we’re getting back on the horse is a lot of people myself include, It’s the holidays and so you gotta give yourself a break.
But now that you’re back in the nuclear mode, it’s time to relearn some good lessons and relearn what you should and shouldn’t have in the house. Have lawyer at a restaurant, whatever else it might be.
Stephen: Yeah. And diabetes, from what I’ve learned, what I’ve lived over the last couple years it really is simple.
It’s not difficult. Lose some weight. So you’re in your target range. Exercise because that helps your blood and keep the metabolism the whole day, not
Alan: just while you’re doing it. Yeah. But whole day effects. Exactly.
Stephen: And just watch the carbs. Don’t go spastic and crazy like you, you never have a single carb, we’re not cheerleaders or anything, and just want, that’s it, that’s all you really have to do.
Put some more green vegetables on instead of some cake. And, that’s, it’s simple. It really is not that difficult. Yeah. I,
Alan: I’m still. I still out of peace of mind, refer to myself as pre-diabetic because I continue to stay under seven and I haven’t ever advanced to where I really need insulin and various other things, but I’m on multiple prescriptions to help me with that, and I’m looking on losing weight.
One of the good things about it is out of preventative maintenance, my doctor has me do all the things that check to see if there’s any signs of diabetes. I just was at a podiatrist and there was nothing. I don’t have any numb toes. No. Oh, you broke a toe and didn’t realize it because none of that.
I and whatever they do a little stick test and I, yes, I could feel every one of those things poking into my foot. I went to the ophthalmologist and I did for the digital retinal retinopathy. Where that can, you can actually start to affect and no, no problems there.
So it’s not only that my numbers are good, it’s that also the ways in which it evidences itself that really start to fuck with your life. I don’t have any of that yet. I might have, I am chubby. I need to lose some weight still, but luckily I’ve rested it soon enough that it hasn’t advanced. Instead of I just saying, oh, it’s fate.
You know what I mean? No, I really do want to be hiking and not worry about that. I like got a blister and then I didn’t even realize I had a poster. And really screwed myself up. I won’t
Stephen: let that happen. And people don’t realize the glucose and the metabolizing in your blood, if that’s spiking and jump how horrible that really is.
I saw my father go through that and I’ll grant you, my father was a medical miracle. He lived the 84. They didn’t think he’d reach 60. That was something. But it really did mess with his health a lot, and I’m hoping to avoid most of that, all of that if I can. And y I’d love my, a friend of mine.
Had gout and they gave him medicine and he said, I don’t wanna take medicine. And he changed his lifestyle and lost weight. Eats healthy and does not have to take any medicine cuz he have no symptoms. I don’t know if I’ll ever get to the point where I have no diabetic systems symptoms and I don’t have to take medicine.
That’s probably just not in my genetics. But I might be able to lower it. Some, I might be able to control it much better. So you know
Alan: it, and it’s isn’t only about diabetes, it’s also like everything that you’re doing to fight the diabetes is helping you. Yeah. Your lung and heart function is better.
Your, everything about how your body processes things. Your internal organs are happier because you’re not pounding them with Yeah. Work. You know what I mean? You don’t, diabetes is, your body loses the ability to produce insulin correctly in, in proper homeostasis response and all that is important.
Anything you can do to make your endocrine system work correctly instead of being outta kilter and it. That so for both of us that, losing weight and watching all these things, it’s just, I don’t, I’m not happy that I have pre-diabetic stuff, but it sure is all the things I’m doing to combat it are having multiple benefits, and I’m happy about that.
It can be share of atrial fibrillation. I don’t need to go through that crap again. I don’t. Again I, you. There’s that top 10 list of things to die from and I don’t need to tick off each of those , right? I need I’ve had enough, how would if I calm the heck down and I stick around so I can be with Colleen longer so I can read Exactly.
Books, all that stuff. ,
Stephen: Hey before we go, something we started long ago, we never kept up with. I wanna try and bring it back and do it. We used to do top 10 list and put it up on the website. Here’s our, this, here’s our that, here’s whatever. Yeah, let’s try and do that. Maybe we don’t have to do it every week, but maybe every month we get something.
So I thought of two that would be perfect for us to start with since we just got done at the holidays. Come up with our top 10 favorite Christmas songs and why they’re our Christmas songs, and it could be anything, but, and then also, let’s do our top 10 favorite James Bond songs since you went to James Bond.
And then maybe later I thought we could do Star Wars, but I’m like, yeah, who really knows all the classical Star Wars stuff. So James Bond is a better choice
Alan: as a well, so that’s a great idea. And I’m with you on that. We now, whatever, we, when we first started this up, it was like, let’s try it.
You know what I mean? Would this format work for us? Would we get along all that kind of stuff? It’s, we’re now 130 plus
Stephen: episodes, so Yeah. Close. Yeah. Up there
Alan: let’s, more than two years worth of stuff. , it would be great to start fleshing out the website, make it so that it’s, interesting to visit, not just to pick up the latest copy of this, but that we start to accumulate some of the artifacts that we’ve talked about.
And yes, top 10 lists and recommendations. And look, I don’t know you, you’re great at when we do summaries of the episodes to mention things, but I should pop in there and say and if you’re interested, here’s where to get it on Amazon. Here’s where, here’s the, that’s just band is touring.
Here’s the tour schedule, or whatever else it might be. Yeah. Yeah. It’d be fun to make that a nice geeky destination. Yes. For a clearing house, for that kind of information. And and I don’t know, I’m rusty with. Web editing. And so I need to get out there and take a look at how things are and hope to change things without screwing our
Stephen: No it’s easy.
I’ll look up and resend you all the credentials. Okay. And that would be very helpful. Yeah. And yeah, so let’s do that. My
Alan: little just environment here, honestly, I’m the ways in which I’m rusty is not only just the act of doing it, it’s the discipline that comes from, Do it online.
You do it in development, then you test the heck out of it, and then you
Stephen: you graduated tomorrow with WordPress. It’s just as easy as add a new page and put down the page so it doesn’t affect other stuff, okay. So let’s do that. Top 10 Christmas songs are favorite personal favorites and top 10 or as many as we can get, out of 30 movies or whatever it is.
I
Alan: was just say not only the songs, but like this famous, the favorite movies, right? Is that where we’re Sure.
Stephen: Top 10 James Bond. Whatever.
Alan: I, I, yeah I could def I could do two different lists because I really do have, for those who only know Daniel Craig, there really was some good James Bond before that.
And yes. What a, just a great historic thing to go back to, say when Jaws was in it, when odd job was in it. Some part, it makes a good James’s Bond movie is the quality of the development. You know what I mean? Yeah. So that’s, I’m gonna have to do a little review there. I might have to rewatch a few movies.
Oh.
Stephen: Oh, darn . Okay. All right. So cool, man. Very good. Happy New Year, Steve. Happy New
Alan: Year to you. Very good. See you soon. Okay. We’ll see you
Stephen: next week. All right. Bye-Bye.
