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Overview
We geek it up with movies and games. Stephen is getting the big Cryptozoic DC Deckbuilder that happened. Tons of great gameplay.
We talk about how kickstarter has changed gaming and geekdom. In a good way, mostly.
We cover some old silent movies like Phantom Carriage and the modern bands that have provided soundtracks.
Alan tells us about a new miracle drug that helps regulate blood sugar and also lose weight.
We talk about:
- VPN
- Kickstarter
- silent movies
YouTube
Transcript
Stephen: Yeah, and we’ve talked about VPNs, how great they are for security, how they help out with, but there’s a lot of things they really break , exactly. So that’s why I figured I would take that out of the stream here you and I talking and whatever else.
Alan: It’s I’ll turn. What I have to do is remember of course, to turn it back on before, Hey, let’s go online banking and investing, that’s right. I really have a, I don’t know how much I really needed it at home because I have my firewall in place. I have a whole, the usual cascade of important things to make sure that I’m not exposed to the world.
Where I really need it, of course, is mostly when I’m on my phone or on the laptop when I’m out of town in a, an unsecured wifi connection and all that kind of stuff. And so I’ll get better about maybe not worrying about it as much as at. , biggest things besides this thing, maybe it really will be that zen cast will be improved.
I’ve noticed that for all kinds of streaming services they’re already very suspicious about, Hey, are you coming in from the wrong zone and you really shouldn’t be able to see this content? And when, what, whatever the I use express vpn, whatever they have as their servers around the place.
Usually when I’m here in Cleveland, there’s nothing super close to Cleveland. So I connect via New Jersey, Washington, dc, New York, and who knows what, that’s still in the United States, so you’d think I’d still be in, I’ll be like zone three or whatever else it might be. But anything where they can’t identify an i an IP address that looks like it’s connected to an at and t server or something like that, they, I think have some suspicions in place.
Yeah. And so often when I use Google to search things now, , it throws up a verify. One of the little captures where I have to say, show me all the staircases or whatever like that’s their way of saying whatever I look like to them, it’s suspicious.
Stephen: And that’s a super good point, , because VPNs are getting pushed a bit more and we’ve talked about ’em.
And like you said, if you’re doing things like banking or online transactions, it’s not bad to have. But it video especially is very affected by it, because what’s happening is it goes to your router and it goes to a server in Cleveland, and then instead of where your Netflix or Zencaster, it then goes to New Jersey and then it goes to so you’re adding jumps and hops to it?
Alan: Yes. And that’s the kinda stuff that I don’t know. What does it look like to the outside secure world? It looks like the dark web, it looks like you’re using multiple relays to make sure that you obscure right. And. , and it’s not like what we’re doing is uncommon. There’s all kinds of countries all over the world that you really wanna make sure you do obscure.
Cause otherwise the secret police come and visit you . You know what I mean?
Stephen: And things like online gaming steam or Xbox, they recommend turning it off because it adds a lot to the lag and the ping which really affects gaming. Again, for all the great things it can do, there’s things that hurts and hampers.
Yeah. I
Alan: will say this. I don’t like to implement these things without just let’s see what happens. I recently did a speed test. I have at and t Fiber. . with the VPN N and without, it was still like 9 66, 9 68 in terms of, out of my gig, I’m way high up. So their speed test, however it judges both upload and download.
I was still doing really fine. And what what is two out of nine 60 0.02% or something like that. Hope I didn’t drop a zero. It didn’t seem to be Wow, I’ve been cut in half or anything like that. We’ll see. It’s, but bringing back, but not so your speed as it
Stephen: might be. What up?
I’m sorry. Sorry. Bringing back up the gaming though. , the upload download isn’t the only number. That ping number is, the latency is a little different than just the upload download. You may get fast upload download speeds, but it may be taking half a second longer to talk to get that. So for gaming, it’s very sensitive for that lag in that ping cause it’s
Alan: very chatty.
Instead of being start a file transfer and then sit back. It’s always talking back and forth. And I think I’ve noticed that I, whatever, I don’t know. I still play Diablo and I’ve noticed that it gets stuttery because it really is always talking and always saving things to the server and always tapping the server for what does this next creature look like or whatever.
A lot of stuff is downloaded to the machine, but it’s still does that and Right. Indeed it is affected by it.
Stephen: So yeah. So things for people to know. There’s VPN 1 0 1 guide .
Alan: Really it’s, I, it I probably should look for that. Like someone must have done some studies that say what is the most affected by this?
And so when it is. Chunky instead of chatty it. My guess is the VPN N affects it less. It’s old, it’s when it’s going back and forth and you’re adding that half second whatever microsecond thing it is. But you do that a thousand times in a conversation. Yeah. That adds up.
Stephen: And I know I’ve used A V P N and I actually turned it off because it’s this is just way too annoying daily trying to connect to this server to do this work or go to this website and I don’t see the info I need.
I gotta check the VPN or, and if I go to a hundred websites in a day, do a hundred services in a day it takes forever to add. And even then, like Netflix, good example. There isn’t a one url, one IP to add to your VPN n to let Netflix bypass it. There’s multiple, it depends on time of day.
Depends on what sun flares are ghosting out in the universe for the moment. it’s just, and you can’t find them. They don’t want to tell you what they all are.
Alan: That’s right. That, that is a big part of, so security by obscurity hardly ever works. But there is something about not giving away exactly how things work either.
Let the bad guys have to figure out what you’re doing to encrypt or to change end-to-end type things, and if you’re not using
Stephen: a vpn, you never notice. You don’t care. You don’t care that in the middle of your show it cashed so much and then switched to a different server to get the next little bit.
Yeah. But. Process of doing that on a vpn it’ll lock up. It’ll just sit there. Sometimes it won’t let it through. And
Alan: error codes don’t get through. You know what I mean? I’ve noticed that I just bing watched ah, I, I went back and watched True Detective. I the, each of the series was very distinct.
They had not only different plots and so forth, but different actors and so forth. And I just, I realized that I didn’t remember fully the very first one with Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson, which really was well done. It was. And so I went back and rewatched it, and I noticed that when you watched like three episodes in a row for the fourth, it will often throw an error just out of, okay, you’ve been watching for a while.
And it used to be that it would just say, Hey, are you still there? Let me know and we’ll continue the connection. Now it attempts that can’t get through and it throws an error code instead. So I, there really are I guess some of the things like binge watching might be a characteristic of.
Is this guy downloading and saving it and now he’s one of those people that’s using Netflix inappropriately , right? Okay. And actually I think it was HBO Max. And so that even varies the fact that I don’t go only to one place, but I do go to HBO Max and Disney Plus and Netflix and Amazon, and each of them seems to have different standards, different ways of handling and stuff like that, right?
So I hope to remember, ok, where am I in virtual space and why am I seeing this? Oh, because Amazon doesn’t care about that, but Netflix does or whatever it might be,
Stephen: right? . Exactly. So we got a list of fun things. What do you wanna hit on ? Let’s
Alan: see. Let’s, so actually I made a whole big list and it was very like, here’s what I’ve done lately.
Why don’t we start with, you just had a good gaming night on Saturday night and you, and We, yeah. Nothing major stuff we’ve talked about before. Yeah. We played some gaming, some tough gaming. Let me tell you, if you are looking for a highly competitive, not competitive, I’m a highly a difficult cooperative game.
Stephen: Probably the most difficult cooperative game setup I’ve played. Okay. Get the DC deck builder with the crisis expansion and play that. It could be any of the sets of DC deck builder with the crisis pack. It just ramps up that difficulty and me and Colin and Ethan were playing it and it’s cooperative.
It’s completely cooperative. So it’s not, you’re not even competing for points there. It’s, we either defeat everything and win, or the game kills us. There’s a lot of co-op there and it’s very difficult. And we were playing it because I have one of those bad habits with Kickstarter, . Wow. I love that game.
Wow. There’s a new expansion. Let me get on Kickstarter. I think I mentioned this Cryptozoic who does the DC deck builder? Yeah. They it’s been 10 years. They came out, they’ve got tons of expansions. They did a Kickstarter a while back and I was keeping an eye on it and I’m like, okay, we’ve got a lot of DC deck builder.
But Colin said when he moves out, he’s taking it. And I’m like, I really like that one. I was watching. And first of all that attracted me was it’s all new artwork for all the sets. I’m like, okay. So that’s nice. Okay. then of course, what are the stretch goals? Every stretch goal is a new set of promo cards or a new expansion that they’re going to bring in.
Okay. And all that. And I kept watching. It got down to the last couple days. Now it got funded like in the first four hours or something like that. Ok. So done. They could have finished right there. I kept watching. It kept wa and the number kept climbing. And it’s not like it slowed down. It’s like people said, oh my God, how much are we getting with it?
And more people jumped on and more pe so I was showing Ethan. He is so what’s it come with? Cuz. I sank down. I said, I have gotta have this . Okay. And it’s coming next month. And he said, so what all does it get? So I pulled up the webpage and I scrolled.
He’s holy shit, you’re getting those
Alan: were all the expansion packs all the stretch goals that you were going to. Wow, okay.
Stephen: Oh my God. It is enough cards and gameplay that I, there’s two storage boxes that are coming just Kickstarter available and it’s 3,500 cards or something like that.
Wow. Wow. It’s it’s 10 main sets, 17 mini expansions, and then 190 or 200 some promo cards that they’re doing. And then a few bonus things here and there, like health dials and stuff like that. Okay. I’m just like it’s a stupid, crazy amount. But I figured the main sets at 35 to 40 bucks a piece that’s already 300, $400.
This includes all the mini expansions and the promo cards for the same price. I’m like, yeah, that’s a chunk of change. That really is, that’s like my whole gaming budget for the year. But , it’s everything you’re getting.
Alan: But it’s a, it’s funny that we haven’t really talked about this before. I really love the world of Kickstarter and Indiegogo and things like that.
Exactly in the way you’re talking about, because it’s a whole different model. It, it used to be maybe if you were a mechi in Italy and you could commission someone make me the most beautiful Cher, be Jesus that we’ve ever seen before and. Now people can do that.
They can band together and say, I want this music, I want this game. I, there’s things that they can summon into the world and the fact that the producers have become really good and cany obviously our buddy Ted Sakura with how he’s done the continued adventures of his comic book characters and the smarts of he knows what it takes to create it.
He has a realistic idea, so he never gets I got all this money but then I went over a budget anyway. Or he doesn’t have the convincing enough stretch goals and expansions and stuff like that people don’t think they’re getting their money’s worth or getting tired of that, or, there.
Yeah. There’s become a whole different discipline with I really can do this talking directly to the fans, and I’ll throw this out. Meridian was one of the very first ones to do that. When they, it used to be if you were dropped by your major label, you really went into limbo for a while, until you found another label thing and they had enough.
Smart modern people that they said in this world of interconnections with fans, we already got a hundred thousand fan lists or something. Why don’t we see what we can do on our own? Their Racquet Club offerings and all of how they’ve done their last 10 albums maybe has been pay us up front, will include you in the liner notes for the album.
Thank you. Look in the bees for Ellen Bolts occasionally and all that kind of stuff, and that’s it’s not only how, I don’t know, that’s so wonderful to have that direct connection and it’s so nice to say whatever the really vampy studio system that has existed for a long time, a lot of people still dive right into it.
There’s all manner of. I don’t know, people that just sign their lives away, the rights to their music and their all of it. But there really is another way if you want to have that little bit of extra risk for a little bit of extra reward, it’s worth doing. And I love that.
I love the fact that new methods are created based on new technology and stuff. Absolutely. They really work that they weren’t only a failed experiment and maybe there were some early failed experiments. There’s other, yes. , I’m trying to remember. There, there’s places where people didn’t come through or where the entire site just didn’t get the magic combination of people who wander around and say what other kind books could I ask to be coming into the world and Yeah.
Or music and more games. Kickstarter, I know a lot of people love it, and a lot of people are down on it. Oh, I don’t trust it, blah, blah. You’ll get that everywhere, whatever. And I understand it though, because I was early on Kickstarter had only been around a year or two. And a favorite author of mine, a new author I had discovered, was working in conjunction with this comic book company, a small company.
Stephen: They were creating a graphic novel based on some of his books. And I loved the books. And I’m like, okay, so this is a known big guy. He’s, he went from indie to tread pub to lots of books. Not Stephen King level, but still I’ve seen him in the bookstores. I know his name. Yeah.
So a lot of people jumped on, it was funded great, and it was supposed to be out like December. You’ll get. Nothing. Nothing. Oh boy. Nothing. And then come like February, they said, Hey, we didn’t forget. We’re still working on, we’re just behind. Sorry about that. Here’s a couple pages we’ve done, show you what we’ve got.
We’re going to offer some more art for everybody as a consolation for us taking so long. And then it was just crickets and crickets. And people were like, Hey, what’s going on? And they answered, said, yeah, we had some things come up but we are finishing it up. And then that was like six years ago and they’re totally gone.
Never heard about it, lost the money. But that’s the only one I’ve lost money on. All the games I’ve done have been big name companies, Cryptozoic a e g with Thunder Stone and hero realms. And so companies that already have games, those games are in the store. This is. The remaster or it’s the expansion or of a
Alan: track record that you can make that bet with some confidence cuz hey, they’ve come through before.
Yeah. And it’s funny might remember Duke Newcomb way before there was Kickstarter and Patriot and stuff like that. Yes. There was shareware and malware and phantom wear, vaporware as a candy, where places said, Hey pay for this version and we’re working on version two.
And Duke Newcomb was one of the ones that like, did it ever come out or, you know that
Stephen: it did ? It did, but it was like 15, 16 years later.
Alan: Ridiculously late that it’s did the guy go be a monk in Tibet for a while? What a couple weeks, a couple months, even a year late is understandable.
Life happens, I
Stephen: was, I forget there, there was some big name guy Ma Bezos or Elon Musk. Somebody like that, bought all of it and pushed it to get out. Cuz he was such a big fan, but it sucked for
Alan: the game. . Okay. And that honestly, that’s a danger too.
Like when something comes out 15 years later that was using 15 year old technology nowadays it’s wow, this is really behind. This is la this is not like whatever. I, when John Carne. and others were working for I Software doing Doom and Quake and stuff like that. It seemed to be that every time they came out with a new game, it was state of the art.
Yeah. It wasn’t just another game using the same engine, they kept absolutely improving that and maybe that was some part of the delay with them is that when you’re creating that kind of new stuff, it’s not fragile, but it sure isn’t. Hey, we already know what we’re doing now. It’s just a matter of characters and scenes and stuff like that.
No. Have to create the
Stephen: universe and jumping over on video games with this type of thing, it’s a big deal nowadays because games have gotten so huge. Not all games, people are discovering you can have a great fun game from a five person team that only last four or five play hours.
Every game doesn’t have to be 190 hours of Skyram, and they’re discovering that because those big games take so long with so many people. It’s like a blockbuster movie. We put a hundred million into it, we better get back 200, two 50 million. Absolutely. Yeah. The cost, it’s the opportunity cost of what all those people could have been doing if they hadn’t been so immersed in getting that out.
I hear you. And on top of that, then you got the company saying we need this game to come out third quarter so we can make our money. Okay, it may not be ready. Third quarter doesn’t matter. It’s coming out. Here’s the date. And then you get developers rushing to get the game out and you get the stuff that happened with Cyberpunk 2077 where it came out and it was like broke.
People hated it. Everyone said it sucked. Nobody wanted it. And then they had to come out with a day one patch, and then they had to come out with more fixes to the point now where you get a few people going, yeah, it’s a fun game. I enjoy it. But you missed that initial wave of, oh my God, this is such a great
Alan: game.
Absolutely. And that that, like at there so much, what I read about nowadays, four movies, is what the opening weekend box office is, not, is it a good movie or not right? It boggles my mind like did you just put a movie out there to see if you can get a whole bunch of people to see it the first weekend?
And then if all the reviews are bad, it’s we made our money. I want to see that it’s doing great in the 10th week. Because word of mouth had to be, Hey, you gotta go see Quantum Mania at Man in the Wasp and stuff like that. And so that’s funny. I didn’t post a review for one of the first I, we saw Thursday night at seven o’clock.
We saw it like literally opening time and stuff like that. And I really loved it, but I just wanted to see how the world treated it because it’s the next phase of the M C U. It’s Kang is the next big bad. I. If anything. So here’s my little review. I really liked it. Fantastic Special effects, a great cast of characters, but Paul Rudd, for instance, is usually as much as a goof off a wise acre.
Part of his the persona of the character is that he’s not really a heroic guy. He got dragged into being a hero and he does things so that he’ll impress his daughter, not because he’s trying to save the world, right? And so he’s wasted in that role. He’s always, he’s played very well with the tongue in cheek character.
The guy that make the ironic aside while he’s fighting and stuff like that. Minute Manny way, maybe all these characters do that but and Evangel Lee who plays the wasp, I can’t remember anything memorable that she did and wow. The, for Cobi for being his partner in heroism and stuff like that.
She was just, I thought, very wooden and and instead, Everybody else. Kang was really good. Michael Douglas as Hank Pi, who is the real ad man, if you will, the original ad man. This is the Scott Lang, that Paul Rudd place who was the guy who actually stole his suit and then became the second that guy stuff. And I remember losing your name shirt and it’s not Shirley Iran, it’s oh, she’s so beautiful. Michelle Pfeiffer. Michelle Pfeiffer. Exactly. She’s great as the original loss. So I as the Marvel universe is continually doing things now, not only with the introduction of the characters, but that they’ve been through multiple generations.
And so it’s very interesting to see who’s good at handing off the mantle and still has some heroism left in them, or has it become croy old men and women who are like, leave me alone. I don’t feel like saving the universe. This, it. So it’s really good and it, I really recommend seeing it and it’s, I will say this about superhero movies.
It really is better in the big movie house. Yeah, absolutely. The big sound and the big immersion where you’re just, they’re not wa looking at your phone, you’re not paying attention to anything except let’s try to keep track of all the things that are on the screen and what they might mean for this movie as well as the future.
Of course, it has the usual great marvel post credit scenes and stuff like that where the, I don’t know, it’s only the week after, so I don’t want to have good giveaways, but I think I’ve talked about this before. One of the Tang is a longstanding Avengers villa and he was like in Avengers eight.
And they’ve really done a good job with, he’s not only combated the Avengers, but lots of different characters in the M C U. And his usual power has been that he’s a time traveler. And one of the best things I ever saw them do, this is like Avengers, I’m trying to say maybe one 60 or something like that.
They had their, they had a knockdown drag out battle with Kang and they win the Avengers win. But while they’re like just barely catching their breath, Kang went away, healed up for six months and then comes back in like the next minute. And he’s gonna win just by wearing them down.
Just by this more attrition of all those hundred thousand flus that I brought with me before. I grew a new clone Army and here’s my new army. You guys are still licking your wounds. So there’s some aspect of that they make use of what, it’s not only that he’s got a superpowered suit, it’s that what can you do if you really can go back in time and all I or just go all around in time.
One thing I will say, a complaint about the movie is Marvel is now playing fast and loose with different big concepts. Like being in the quantum realm doesn’t necessarily mean that time goes differently, or at least they don’t explain why that would be right. Going really big or going really small makes you both cos.
Out there and cosmic inside here. And then just the what are the relative distances and what does it take to find someone in the quantum realm? They were trying to, a little bit of, they had a McGuffin where it’s we just need a beacon that can find this person in the quantum realm.
If it’s infinite, that’s a big ask. Yeah. And yet I’m good artistic license, let’s go with that. But some of the other things that they do are, they’ve expanded the multiverse so much and in a kind of a contradictory, messy way that I, why did they have to have the crisis? The DC crisis and the multiverse crisis, the in, they even used the term incursions in the movie, cuz that’s what started to happen in a Marvel universe and going on and on it.
I hope that they do more with this phase, that they keep explaining more of that instead of just. Now we can do whatever we want, right? So let’s just keep throwing new ideas as to how will Aman deal with this? How will the Black Panther, how will Thor, how will’s the fantastic force since they’re some of the ones, they’re the first ones that went into the micro verse I guess man and stuff I’m really looking forward to seeing all of that.
And I want it to be for once that it’s not just big like pyro tics on the screen, but that there really is an underlying logic and structure to how all this might work and that maybe one of the ways in which the heroes will have to win is not just big battles and fisticuffs. It’s gonna be that they’re gonna have to outthink Kang, , right?
Outthink, Thanos. You know what I mean? So we’ll see. So I think Ultron,
Stephen: anyway, , so I liked the movie. A couple things with that. I thought the story was very tight and precise. It does not take place over. Hours and days. It’s literally a couple hours of like time in the movie and so I, that’s not bad.
I liked that. I thought the storyline was, I acqui equated it to the first Thor movie that it said what it needed to say. It moved along, but it didn’t stand out with anything That was huge. Not so much. I would say it’s one of my favorites so far post end game. I like the Spider-Man movie.
And then this one rest have been, eh I do wish, like you said they seem to be already closing down a lot of the exploration of the quantum world and the multiverses. Cuz we got invasion coming up, which I don’t think has anything really to do with Multiverses so much. So I hope they didn’t just say, okay, now we’re done.
And I did think. This King should had a little more cameos in screen time, in a few other shows or something before Antman took them out. It was a little too quick for me.
Alan: Yeah. So as maybe he didn’t really take No. This version of King. Exactly. And that’s the cool thing, how they tied it into the low key series.
And I will say that, yeah. Wow. I’m loving the fact that there really is, there is if not integration, at least inclusion of the movies and the TV series and the comic books are all tying together. Yeah. So that thing we saw in Lokey with the time variance authority and how they’re trying to keep one, if you will, one true timeline to the universe.
You can’t, if there’s gonna be variance of Loki every place. And now we’re finding out that he’s not the only guy that might have variance. And so what does it mean when you can have not only those. I love the fact that I’m looking forward to seeing, like in, in Loki was almost done a bit of it as a stunt.
Here’s the alligator, Loki, here’s the child. That kinda stuff. We’ll see that the fact that one of those, like in the movie theater, one of the. Downsides of being in the movie ears. You can’t pause it and say there’s a hundred on screen. What does each of these look like? Guy’s got a metal suit and that guy looks like Wizardly robes and that guy woman , just give it.
Stephen: Just give it what? What is it now? Two, three days? It’ll be on Disney Plus. That’s how fast
Alan: it goes. And this is one of the ones that I real will rewatch because I wanna see more that I was overwhelmed by the spectacle, but I like the geeky of all the little bits too now. You know what I
Stephen: mean?
speaking of that’s one of the great things with this movie. There’s new technology they used for this movie, and it might be the first one in the M C U or fairly early movies using this, but instead of a green screen that they’re acting behind, it’s like a surround screen that the that, that it’s being projected on from the back.
It’s not filming from the front and then added later, so they’re actually seen and reacting to the special effects. Beforehand. I don’t know enough about the technology, but it’s new and it made it look fantastic. It didn’t look like we’re in front of a green screen . That’s a
Alan: great way to put it. Cameron obviously has pioneered that with the Avatar movies and other things.
Yes. And I got a feeling that whoever his studio and industrial light and magic and whoever they are all pushing towards what you just said, that it’s no longer here’s a relatively static background that they’re acting in front of and then we’ll fill that in later. No, it really is that they’re immersed in it and it does like the in avatar the way of water the scenes where they’re like underwater and flying through the air and all that kind of stuff.
They really weren’t just the hacky old 3D of oh no, a spear is coming out of the screen at you. They said it was, wow, this. Really immersive. It really is real . Yeah.
Stephen: How did they do that? Another reason to go to the
Alan: theater. Yeah. Yeah. And it didn’t require 3D goggles. At least I didn’t go to a show that required three.
I don’t even know that it has variations on that. Does it have IMAX version and a It does 3D version. Okay.
Stephen: It does. I did go see it in 3D the second time. I saw it twice over the weekend. Okay. Because I wanted to see 3D for the sole purpose that I wanna support 3D to continue being in the theater. Okay.
But I think our local theater either doesn’t have as good of equipment or it’s just the size of the screen. The 3D was not that impressive. I think if I went to valley View cinema and had the right 4,000 foot screen or whatever it is exactly. Uh, It may look different. I may actually do that if I get some time over the weekend and they still have it, I may go see it in 3D up there, just cuz I wanna see what it looks like compared to my local.
Alan: Yeah, I think Colleen is wonderfully game and tolerant of how I drag at her, everyone of the comic book movies, even if she’s not the biggest comic book fan as I am. But that might be one of those things that I will do, like the one o’clock in the afternoon show play hooky and I’ll be the guy with the goggles in the theater, right?
Myself. Cause I, I really didn’t check into whether it had upgraded variations on it. And now that you’ve said how I thought it was already convincing and immersive in just regular movie version, the fact that 3D might even be better. I’m really curious about it now. I wanna
Stephen: check it out more because a couple times I took the glasses off just to see how look, cuz you know, they got the two images and it puts ’em together with the way the glasses are.
So I took it off the look and I’m like, wow. Like over half of this doesn’t even look like it’s separated in the two images. You could probably watch the whole 3D movie without 3D goggles and not get too thrown off. Okay. Uh, So that I was like, eh, but I remember. Like the Thor movie, right?
How much I loved the 3d and that, because like you said, it’s not the hokey things jumping out of the screen at you. Woo. Look at that . It was more they focused on making it depth away from you instead of things jumping out of the screen. And that I thought was fantastic. Yeah. And the Thorne movie, I remember with Asgard, it just looked so, so dense with everything.
Alan: That’s a great way to put it. Exactly. By the way, sorry about this. Can we pause for a moment? I.
Stephen: We’re in the multiverse. It’s a different.
Alan: I, I should have changed my shirt just to see if anybody noticed. Know what I mean? So I actually wanted to jump back on something, back on the Kickstarter thing. Sure. Our typical, let’s go off on 20 tangents, . Now I don’t know if we’ve talked about this or if you heard, but Brandon Sanderson, the fantasy writer he did a Kickstarter a while back.
Stephen: Now he’s a very popular, big name fantasy author. I have many of his books I really like. Yes.
Okay. And he did, he’s traditionally published, but he has done some independent eub type stuff. He did a thing on Kickstarter. This was not new books. He took old books of his and was doing like new covers and new hardback versions, gold Leaf, whatever.
It was like a collector edition of a book he’s already published and put out. Okay. He had four of them or something like that. Okay. And he was basically I have control of these books and the stories. I can do whatever I want with them. I wanna see what happens. This is for the fans. This isn’t because I’m trying to get super rich or whatever.
Okay. And he’s really popular and a lot of people already own these books, but he wanted to try out Kickstarter, so he put ’em up. I believe at the end of the month it was like 6.4 million biggest Kickstarter ever. Wow.
Alan: Yeah. really unaware of that. I really like his works, but I just, I hadn’t been tracking on and I honestly, I don’t know that I’m his best audience cuz now that I have all his books and I’ve read ’em all.
I don’t know that I need the gold new gold stuff like that. But I guess like when I bought re bought albums because hey, we got a whole nother seed anywhere, so what was going on in the studio while we were creating sunlight or something like that, okay.
Stephen: So it was a great experiment and I give kudos to a Sanderson.
He is one of the, and not the only, not the there’s a lot of authors that do this, but he is probably one of the biggest name authors that throws his weight around in support of smaller authors, independent authors. Very good. He has, he did he taught at Brigham Young University some classes and he recorded all of them and put ’em on YouTube for free.
Didn’t charge people a course cuz people would pay money to get a course. For Brandon Sanderson it’s free, it, I mean it’s 16 videos or something like that. Fantastic. Uh, His class. I’ll go
Alan: watch those. I didn’t know those existed either. Yeah. I I am aware of so much stuff, but the okay.
Stephen: And more recently. He was doing looking he doesn’t need to worry about how much he sells and all of that. He’s got people that do it. Obviously, if you’re going to sell four books that you’ve already sold and make 6 million on it, then you’re not worried about that. Yeah. So he delved into audio books and not just, Hey, my, a agent and my company go put out the audio books and send me a check.
He looked into it and said, you know what? Audible’s practices are unfair. He is they, and he approached this I don’t think he just jumped into a lawsuit, but he threw his weight behind it to bring attention to it and say how it’s unfair and tried to get people to go elsewhere and made Amazon look bad because of their practices.
It helped everybody, especially smaller independent people who never could have afforded fighting it so fantastic. The man isn’t just existing and taking his money, and I’m not saying. King and JK Rowling, that’s all they do, and that’s all they think about. But he really is making that extra effort to get out there and make the world a better place for the author community.
I
Alan: hear you. There’s there’s people that have fought that same fight. Robert Fripp fought is it e g whatever. He, for many years had to fight about. These practices are unfair. Yeah. And the divvy is not right. The disposal of the rights is not, and for a long time he really did create discipline, global mobile, to not have to participate in the concert scene, the music scene, and so forth.
And so for a while, it took a while to, to build that system, to, it was in the weeds, if you will. And yet the world has turned its face towards him now. So now he does indeed. He was wise. He did things like recorded every one of their concerts and had a good idea as to quality control, the direct from the sound board recording and stuff like that.
And by putting them out regularly from his own company, he said, we don’t have to worry about only the concert venue making all the money, or the concert promoter actually being the one that does it. We still have th this thing that we have the rights to, we’ll put it out there for the fans.
And it turns out there were lots of fans that were. See the show again, hear the show again, and stick it to the man circumvent what all the things that were put in place to make sure that fr being the one that created him and King Crimson, all these good things. It wasn’t that they were getting the Tiny Sparrows share , that they were getting the Eagles share.
And Frank Zappa did that a lot, but he had, he started his own Barking Pumpkins records and then just got out of the studio system and would Reg would tell everybody, in fact quick, Steve vie in an interview fantastic guitarist. I love him. He said that he had worked in Zappa’s bands a number of times and so what’d you learn from Frank Zappa?
And it wasn’t really about musical technique. He was about Zappa said, make sure you hold onto the rights to your music, the publishing rights, to everything you know, there. There’ll be a certain amount of concessions you have to make to the studio, to the record companies, but don’t give away everything.
And so there really are people like Steve I that. Once they have enough money that they can do whatever they want and they don’t have to be I owe somebody an album and I gotta now I’m just kinda like trapped. I’m really talented, but I’m a slave still in, or at least a minor partner in how these deals have been cut.
I love seeing people get to that of how did r e m get to where they could say, Hey, we’re gonna put an album out and pay whatever you’d like to and they, that they use their money to gain independence and then also show people the path to that independence. That’s really cool.
Stephen: Another one was Tom Petty in the early two thousands, he brought a lawsuit against a M c I think the record company. What? Whatever that company A and m, I think a and m, right? A&m Is that, yeah. Okay. . That they were still charging artists breakage fees for LPs when they weren’t shipping LPs.
It was just DVDs. Exactly. Yeah. So he got that changed. So I like that. If you’re a small young band and you see this fee that’s 3% what are you gonna do about it? They’re gonna say what do you wanna do? We did all the work. You’re famous. Too bad. It takes these big guys that care to do something about it.
It,
Alan: I know I’ve read also, Tom Petty was one of the guys that at one point he came to them. This is not in 2000, it’s like back in the eighties when he was quite popular and the, it’s the album that has the song, I won’t back down on it because that was exactly it. He would pretty much said, if you won’t release this album exactly as I delivered it, then it’s not gonna get released.
And like that was a big thing to say. I’m willing to torpedo myself, tank my career. Once you start to get big enough that you get all those people that are gonna give you notes as to how it could be improved upon I’m the taste master, not you, the artist. And there’s some people that just know you’re not and I know that there’s good collaborations, Clive Davies and I met GaN are like renowned for having a golden ear.
But the way that they do that is they identify this is really a good artist. They don’t then take them under their wing and say, and now you’ll be an extension of me. From what I understand, mutt Lang was of Svengali ish, right? About Shania Twain and maybe about others. And so I, you don’t know how much of that is the gossipy trade rag music stuff or how much of it really is.
I like people that say, wow, I really like your work. How about if I take away real world concerns and let you create something beautiful instead of, how about if I make you. My, my thing, my, an extension of
Stephen: my taste. I don’t mean, I don’t know everything about Mutt Lang and how he worked and all that, but I know he worked a leopard to get his Py Romanian hysteria up and help.
Okay. And they gush about him. Like he taught us how to think differently. He taught us how to do this, so it was so perfect. And I don’t think it was ever, definitely he has that ear that says, these guys could have something good. I can help him get there. And all the, there
Alan: are good collaborators.
It’s not only Bengali or only leave him alone. There are some people and groups talk about that, that you one of the reasons that we kept working with this producer was because he always brought out the best in us. He always challenged us, that it wa and it wasn’t, here’s what I think roundabout should sound like.
It’s more wow, that’s really great, but it could be even better. So
Stephen: yeah they even say he was like the sixth Def Leppard Martin or whatever was the fifth Beatle yeah. And Elton John and Bernie Toin that, that was a definite collaborator.
You think of Elton John, but really, if Elton John’s stuff Bernie’s just as big in there as Elton John is at certain points in his career.
Alan: The fact that it is Elton John’s name on everything, but that Bernie, some, most people who know anything about him know that it really was co-writing with Bernie Toppin and a lot of stuff. I just read something about that. Alan Parsons has just reissued on LP things that like a 10 record set, his first 10, and they were all very much collaborations with Eric Wolfson and again, Alan Parson’s project, Alan Parson’s name very well known.
You have to know a little bit about his music and how it was done to know that really couldn’t have come into existence without Wilson. And yet I think that maybe that’s one of the things that’s going on is the reason they put out this box said is that it says that in the liner notes, the libretto, these are the albums that me and Eric created, and they deserve to get a perfect stellar golden box set treatment because I, oh, I, and it, I don’t know, I.
Boy, it’s just nice to find out the people that are talented are also decent . Yeah. You know what I mean? There’s some good, some people that, boy, they get so many people telling ’em how great they are, that Yeah. They believe their own press and then they think that means I can do and get away with anything.
So how many rapist football players? I don’t mean to immediately go to a crappy way of talking about it, but and that’s a whole different world, the world of aggression in sports. It really does encourage you acting as if the world is at your feet and maybe money does that in the music way or in the gaming way for all I know.
There’s, there are stories that any number of people comedy people that you think they’re comedians are, I don’t think of them as being abusive or egotistical, but you find out that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts Absolutely. And then when they have that opportunity to be the guy that can close the office door and.
And abuse their position. Whatever their position might be. It, I guess it’s this, that they’re human, yeah. So people are decent and will pave the way for others, and others will be like as long as I have power of you, I’m gonna, I’m gonna do wrong. Countries of the world, the yeah.
Stephen: Anyway lighten it up a little bit. The other aspect is sometimes you get these great, huge, big artists that are even more so than you realize. A good example is Prince. He had a successful career, had tons of successful albums and songs, and top 40 and all that. But when you delve into it and find out all the songs he wrote for other people, it, it gets to be crazy.
The big one I remember is Manic Monday for the Bengals, but every now and then you’ll hear a song and find out that it was written by Prince for some country artist or some rap artist, not just a pop star, so he’s another genius that did a whole lot music wise that, heck, we may not even know
Alan: Exactly. It’s kinda a variation on this. I wanted to mention this. So I went and saw, heard Paul, and it’s B Lavi. I hope I got his name correct because I heard him say it out loud. And I, it’s I gotta remember that Keith, the guy that in Carl Palmer’s current band, they play Emerson, Lincoln Palmer Music, and he on guitar plays Keith Emerson’s keyboard.
Which you’re saying that out loud is what? What are you talking about? That’s impossible. . And yet he’s an amazingly talented guitarist and he, we went to see at Visible Voices bookstore, maybe 40 seats in a little section of the store where he’s a one man band. He has all of his effects, pedals and synthesizers and a thein and everything else.
And videos of his various different collaborators. So it really was a six piece. He had a bassist and a Chapman stick and a drummer and a cellist and all that kind of stuff. And, but, Synchronized and put together so that he could play what he would propose as a soundtrack for the movie Nosferatu, which is like the original Dracula.
It actually is a ripoff of the Dracula story that they actually had legal battles about how close it was to that. But it was a silent movie. Hey , there wasn’t one of these and it was coming up on its hundredth anniversary and the way he explains it, cuz he was talking to us at dinner beforehand, we didn’t have dinner with him.
We, we were one table away. And so you start overhear and you’re like, oh hope you don’t mind, but we’re curious. He talked about during Covid, he had to shut down performing. And for any number of smaller artists that’s wow where’s my money gonna come from if I’m playing? So he had established a Patreon thing where every week he would write a new song live.
And his Paton fans, I was one of them, would be like, wow, this guy, he just, he’s made a music. He just is so able to create things of beauty so interestingly and effortlessly, but there was a certain amount of, it wasn’t, it was directionless, how many three minute perfect things do you have to have?
So that’s when he said I could do a big overarching project. And Thatto was his idea. So it was just very cool. And he is the kind of guy. And there’s others, like you said, prince had albums where he played everything on it. So has Michael Oldfield, so has Todd Rungren, so has Thomas Dolby.
There’s people that just are able to do everything, their native music and to be. Two feet away from them and see them doing that in live in real time. It’s, I just can’t tell. I’m just smiling the whole show over. He really can do this. He really can keep track of complex orchestrated compositions and bring everything in.
He not only has, he has some prerecorded parts, but he’s continually playing live music over them and was having a great time while he was doing it. You know what I mean? He’s smiling and he’s loving that the audience is loving what he’s doing and saying as well as play. And just so hats off to that.
This world, this new technology has enabled people to be a one man band in a way that they’re not Dick Van Dyke wise wearing a symbol for a
Stephen: hat and thanks.
Alan: I highest recommendation for not only that, like Carl Palmer has a couple live things, and if you want to hear that phenomenon of someone able to play.
Great gates of Kiev, classical pieces, Emerson like and Palmer pieces. I Keith Emerson had five hands. How do you do that on guitar, . And yet he can. And so wonderful, just
Stephen: wonderful . The thing with the silent movies, Reese and I reviewed a movie called The Phantom Carriage, which was a groundbreaking movie from like 1921 because it had special effects movie overlays.
It had this ghostly carriage that would go across the screen and you could see through it. Yeah. And it went across the lens. That’s the first time that
Alan: was ever done on film of any kind. Yeah,
Stephen: exactly. And i, a lot of those movies didn’t have a set score A lot of times in different cities they would play different music.
Alan: It’s not even the organist at the theater would be playing the soundtrack. Yes, it would. Yeah.
Stephen: Yeah. And so there was a band that recorded an album to go with that movie for its hundredth anniversary or something like that. And so when we were watching the movie we chose one of the soundtracks to listen to, to go with it.
That was different than the one that was in the movie we watched. Interesting. So it was interesting how there’s still people taking this heritage of these great movies, yeah. Was the special effects great? Not really. Was the story wonderful. Not really, but it was a hundred years ago.
And it was a groundbreaking movie at the time. Exactly. So I like that some of these people are still doing this, and I think they actually. In some local areas from where they were, they had the movie shown at a theater and the band set up and played their soundtrack with it. Exactly. That would’ve
Alan: seen right here in Cleveland, that the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra played like a whole bunch of Warner Brothers cartoons, the bug bunny cartoons.
And so they really did play the marriage of Fig. They really did play the William Overture and stuff. And like in sync withy, there’s no room for error, you gotta on that train and you gotta play that piece perfectly or suddenly. It’s not in sync with what’s going on screen.
Fantastic. Really well done.
Stephen: Yeah. And I love that they’re just doing that type of stuff. I like old movies and stuff, so I like that we’re keeping it around. Yeah, and
Alan: I’ll say this too, one of the things that Paul mentioned was he’s doing a lot of house concerts where it really is like corporations or bookstores or people can say, Hey, if I.
Two dozen friends over and we each pay you, I don’t know, 20 bucks, that’s 500 bucks. Would you do a show for us for 500 bucks? And if he’s a one man band, he needs like his equipment in a car and that kind of stuff. I I don’t know what the economies of the music business are, not at the stadium level, but at the touring musician level.
He puts together tour of 10 of those, and he’s got $5,000 and a hundred of those. He is got 50,000. That would be a pretty good earning for a year and I and he sells, of course, a little bit of merch here, some t-shirts. And I, he didn’t have recordings of this, but I’m sure that’ll come out.
So the, I am so amused. Our house is not necessarily set up for that. But I know for instance in most of the neighborhood in Cleveland, they have porch concerts where they regularly have local artists that just, they set up and they play for the yard full of people. And I don’t know, again, what the economics of it are, but how cool that music is not only.
Locked away and you have to get a ticket through Ticket Bastard, I’m sorry, Ticketmaster and et cetera, et cetera, that there really are still people that are like, sure, come on over. Levon Helm from the band used to do what does they call them? In a barn in Tennessee. Rambles. Rambles.
And he just was like, whoever happened to stop by and be in town, right? Play like all of a Saturday night, like really 4, 5, 6 hours. But then you get these collaborations of, I don’t know, Levon Helm’s pretty famous voice and great drumming and so forth. So maybe people from Little Feet would like to collaborate.
Maybe Bonnie Ray will show up, maybe CS n y will show up, and they, I wish they would’ve been recording those because I’d have every one of a hundred. I just don’t wanna hear what. And amazing talented people when they’re goofing off, are still making art. They’re still making incredibly cool things.
So I’m curious, , right?
Stephen: You mentioned about that backyard thing. It only costs about $35,000 to hire Mc Hammer to do your event. See that seems if you’re a rich person, that’s a birthday
party. . Yeah. You know what I mean? I was like, I would never pay $35,000 for one artist, but that is not stupid crazy money that I just laugh at.
I’m like, that’s almost attainable. If I really tried, I could. Exactly.
Alan: Yeah. We we just saw Jerry Seinfeld at Playhouse Square, and again, I don’t know how much it. How much he bills for, but what equipment does he need? A mike and a stool . Yeah. There’s not a lot of other overhead on the part of the theater, and yet I think our tickets were like 70 bucks or something like that.
So a place of 5,000 people times 70. That’s good wages. You know what I mean? What are, how are the divvy is of that? And I know that I comedians often will talk about it’s not only those big venues that they get paid at, they do corporate shows. They do a lot of other things.
And sometimes artists get chatted about this. You vote with who you’re willing to perform for. So if you’re an environmentalist and Dow invites you to perform, you really might have a conflict of moral about that. Or if you’re against a apartheid and yet they’re calling you to South Africa.
You know what I’m trying to say? Yeah. Some, the Arabian princes that are billions of dollars at a time, it’s really hard to turn away. A million dollar concert or something like that, unless you think that, oh, women are human beings and maybe I shouldn’t go to a country where that’s not the case.
Stephen: We talked about sellouts a couple weeks ago. That’s more of a sellout than an artist making an album that sells a lot. Boy, that I, yes, you’re exactly right. and I know that I don’t always mean to make, some of this is not only gossipy, it really is when you get power, what you just said, you can still help others to come up in all the ways we talked about earlier in our little chat.
Alan: But it’s also, if you’re still in pursuit of money, like I, I don’t know. Some people, they get themselves in trouble because they live large. They have a whole revenue that they pay for everybody that travels with them. And so since you mentioned Mc Hammer, didn’t he like burn through all of his money after the initial career?
And so now it’s like how much are you really having to do certain things cuz you didn’t sock it away and have a life of leisure for the rest of your life. dunno that you shouldn’t have to be doing IHOP commercials or something if you love. that’s a different, one of the heard a little bit about some of the mistakes he made and he wanted to be nice and have his family involved and help them out.
Stephen: But he like put people in charge of things they had no clue how to do and they weren’t interested in doing correctly and they were more interested, ah, he is a superstar and we’re all now rich. And that was the end of it. We’re all now rich. Yeah. And I think the one thing was like a cousin wanted to do horse racing.
So Mc Hammer gave him like 6 million and the guy just went out and bought a bunch of horses, started a ranch. They raced for two seasons, didn’t win a single race. Wow. Couldn’t sell the horses and ended up 25 million in the hole. Right there, there is still a reason to surround yourself with competent people.
Yes. He would’ve been better off just handing that guy like 3 million and telling him to go enjoy it. Exactly
Alan: that. Go ahead, piss this away. But at least you won’t drag me further into the hole. Exactly. .
Stephen: Yeah. Which MC Hammer is an interesting choice too, because honestly, he seemed like the kind of guy that would’ve stuck around longer than he did, even though it was rap.
He seemed to be an artist that could flexible and be more flexible and continue in the industry, and that just really didn’t happen. . Yeah.
Alan: Yeah. But what else we have on our list today? Let’s see. We we talked about Aunt Man, we ah I’m really enjoying the last of us. That’s another thing that’s big happening on H B O Max.
I must admit, I, it’s, it, I really wanna play the game and I’m gonna have, I wanna, do, I have to break down and get myself like a real. PlayStation or whatever the platform gaming is that I want to do. But I’m really loving the story. It’s odd that because Walking Dead was so big and so popular and 10 seasons in, it’s of hard to have an idea about a postapocalyptic world where in this case it’s zombies not based on an infection, but based on a fungus.
But there’s already very similar stories going on. Here’s a little enclave of Civilization in this case up in Jackson, Wyoming, if I remember Jackson. Doesn’t matter. I, it’s not Jackson Hole. They call it Jackson. But I wish it wasn’t already derivative or at least repetitive of other things.
But it’s hard to tell a fully new story. Acting is great, the characters are great, et cetera. But I’m getting this weird deja vu thing of cuz I’ve seen all the Walking Dead and various other of movies like this. When are you gonna surprise me?
Stephen: And I liked the first episode and that’s all I’ve watched so far is the first episode.
So I’m way behind. And when that came out, the Walking Dead, I’m not even sure if this show was on it. I think it was just comic book. Okay. Because it’s PlayStation three originally, so I think it might be before the show started getting big and all that. And yeah I think it’s hard to do zombie, a good zombie show that doesn’t do some of the same stuff.
And it was a video game and Walking Dead was a comic. So I think it’s interesting now to compare, like you said, the two as TV shows. What makes some good what and what would’ve been like if they had done this before The Walking Dead got big. It, who knows? It may not have been as good because.
We weren’t like spending as much money on good TV shows. . Yeah. There’s so many different
Alan: variables. Exactly. There is, what an interesting phenomenon that’s been going on, like pretty much all my life of it used to be that something like a book existed as a book, and of course it could be adapted into a movie or a TV show, but now it seems to be that there’s a, an amazing universe of things that they say this could also be a video game.
This could also be a Broadway musical. You know what I mean? That, that someone has the vision and maybe the Machiavellian ability to say, We can keep repackaging this in various different ways to the public. And I, when I saw like spam a lot the musical, I was like, please don’t just be a ripoff. And it wasn’t, it was really great Broadway musical quality while still being a loving homage to Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
And so I think some of that is, are the original people involved. If you’re gonna have a remake of the producers, having Mel Brooks involved is probably a good idea, or whatever else it has been that way. We’re about to go see Ghost the Musical. Which is oh, wow. I, that’s, I hope that works.
You know what I mean? Like I, yeah I’m very, I like the movie a lot. And so what have they done? Some mo we’ve seen all different kinds of musicals that were jukebox musicals where they collect, oh, here we’re gonna see Tina, which is all of Tina Turner movie. We’ve seen The Temptations, we’ve seen Elvis, all that kind of stuff.
But a new work that is a musical adaptation of something that before was only a drama. I’m always curious, I hope they can pull this off. I hope that they got people with the right sensibility that it’s identifiable as the original work. It’s just that people happen to sing instead of Right. The dialogue.
You know what I mean? I’m digging that, I’m digging that, especially when there’s things that I like. I don’t mind seeing kind of three, four variations versions of a thing, because each of them is their own. Is its own thing. , sometimes when I’ve seen it, like we’ve talked about it seeing a 3D movie where it’s just.
3D effects tacked on in the post-production. It’s just not as good as if someone was doing it from the start to do the field or to do The characters are, that’s exactly what that character would sing if they were to break into song , instead of they’re forcing a doer character to sing a Happy King Herod song or whatever else.
Stephen: It just reminds me of the Avengers musical they had in the Hawkeye show. ,
Alan: there you go. Exactly. ,
Stephen: that was, I, it was perfect. That, it was the exact perfect thing for that show. I love it.
Alan: Yeah, that’s, peacemaker was very funny in that the opening credits every single time we’re like, this really is like a whole dance routine, and they keep introducing each of the characters in the show.
In a I thought that, Very tongue in cheek, but if you just take the irony out of it, this is still very entertaining. Yes. And they’re all brave. It isn’t. I don’t, it used to be that actors had to be multiple threat. They had to be able to sing and dance and ride a horse and shoot a gun and have a romantic scene and all that kind of stuff.
And we maybe we got away from that as people started to specialize. But then you start to see people that really can do it all. And I the Sammy Davis Juniors of the world, where it’s wow. He really is amazingly talented in every way that the world would care to see
Stephen: I was gonna say we may have talked about this who came up with that dance routine?
Alan: Oh yeah. You did tell me it. It was Josh Whedon. No, it was Alan
Stephen: Tu.
Alan: That’s who it was. Exactly. Yeah. .
Stephen: And he just happened to be on set cuz I think he was dating someone that was in the show and he was just on set.
And I think Gunn said, we need an opening thing, you take care of it. And it really was just a happenstance and it was so perfect that, so
Alan: much better than thought. Exactly. Yeah.
Stephen: I couldn’t get enough of that for when I first saw it. I have
Alan: to share this fun anecdote since I just mentioned Sammy Davis Jr.
I once read that it used to be because lot, like I mentioned, they were in westerns, they were in horses. You ever seen like Rio Bravo, hey there’s Elaine Delan, there’s Dean Martin, there’s Robert Mitchem, et cetera, et cetera. So a lot of people had a career in westerns as well as a career in other tough guy movies or TV series or whatever else it might be.
They used to have quick draw contests and Sammy Davis Jr. Never lost. Apparently he was amazingly fast before and I could see it. He’s an amazingly coordinated guy and was always very witty in the rat pack scenes where it wasn’t scripted but it was just them riffing and stuff like that. And so hats off to say my name’s Junior for being like, he would’ve been the fastest gun in the West.
That’s pretty cool.
Stephen: Real. Yeah. And I’m not being a jerk about this. I wonder if his lazy eye actually helped with that because he didn’t have to worry about the depth perception. He could I get monocular vision is it thing? Yeah. Maybe it helped out. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. And it’s funny you say that cuz we mentioned Prince a bit ago I forget the band, but it was a band recording and Prince was like in the next studio over and they said during breaks they’d all go out and shoot hoops in the court. And they said Prince was phenomenal on the court. And he was a short dude. He was like 5 4, 5 5. He wore six inch high heels and he would clean up the court with these guys playing basketball.
pretty, That’s pretty damn cool.
Alan: Yeah. . So let’s a couple things I wanted to get to today. Yes. I’m, I’ve been on Manjaro for a while. Okay. Since we talked in the past about diabetes and ways of handling that. And it’s I’ve read a lot of press about Manjaro because apparently it’s really effective.
It is becoming in short supply because people are using it as a weight loss drug. And I’ll tell you, it really has worked for me, not so much in terms of, oh, I lost this many pounds, but it’s turned off my appetite. It really is an appetite suppressant. It has two components, one of which is to slow down your digestive system.
So you get to satiety and stay there for longer. But it’s also just, you don’t have that as when you think your body needs to re-put energy in you. And I had not realized how much that was. If people talk about, Hey, what’s the song in your head? People have like circus music always playing , my friend Kevin has that.
When you turn something off that you’ve had all of your life, it’s amazing to be like, aware of the silence. Now it’s when am I gonna go to lunch? I’m not driven to be like, oh, I’m really hungry. And then sometimes my body will say you really need whatever happens to be in Sesame Chicken, so go to the Asian place.
You really need a fish sandwich. And whatever it is, either it’s the fish or it’s the mayonnaise the tartar sauce or whatever to be. Where I just don’t have what I the desire to have, and not only the eat, but to let’s eat a lot. It’s so nice to have that turned off, and I’ve been really good at finding cheap things so that I could have a McChicken sandwich used to be a buck at McDonald’s.
Wow. That plus a drink. I could get four McChickens and a drink for five bucks. And so somehow that satisfies my cheapness need. But who in the world needs to eat four McChicken sandwiches? And yet that was, I really wanted it because after two, I really wouldn’t be done eating yet. Right now it’s like down to two, down to one, and it’s so, man, is
Stephen: it great
I haven’t heard about Manjaro. Is it prescription over the counter? It’s prescription
Alan: only. Okay. And it’s one of those things that it’s relatively new, so quite expensive. And I have like for the first year sponsorship from the manufacturer. I get it at a reasonable price and reasonable is still like it’s supposed to be.
So I think I get it for 25 bucks for a month at a time. So in the course of the year, it’s $300 and that’s not nothing, but it’s really like an $800 prescription. Wow. Like I, when I had to get my Jardiance to go to Canada to get that price down from 800 to 900 to 300, that’s what I’m willing to do as well.
But the other things have helped me, Metformin, Jardiance there really my walking more, my, my watching what I’m eating. I’m much more Mr. Salads instead of Mr. Pizza and stuff. But this moon jar is the first thing that I’ve ever had that really turned off in me the biggest problem, which is the joy of eating.
I just love to eat. There’s never a time that I wasn’t like I’m for pizza, and now it really is less of everything and not the. , like I said, the urges I used to get once I really want chips and dip. And it’s I’m sure that’s the fat and the salt. That is what that’s all about. But man, you couldn’t name a worst thing for spiking your A1C and your blood glucose.
Like that. And haven’t wanted all kinds of former vices. Peanut M and MSS couldn’t care less. Whoa. Wow. .
Stephen: Wow. So just, I had my blood work done cause I had to change cuz of insurance I had to change over to Okay. My old doctor, I went back to him and my A1C went from six four to six zero this last time.
So I was very happy about that. Yeah. But how does I guess from my understanding, how does turning off your wanting to eat. Help the blood sugar because if you go too low, if you don’t eat, that’s bad
Alan: too. Yeah. See, funny I’ve never suffered from that. I think I’ve mentioned before also that I have freestyle Libra, which is, and you can’t see, right?
The little guy that I’m wearing currently. I don’t always wear them, but I’m about to have my next visit with cinema. That is the cross discipline pro that U H S has set up for diabetes plus heart plus overall I’m a big guy, obesity and stuff like that. And I put it on yesterday and I haven’t had anything except everything in range the entire day.
And in the past it was like, if I’m gonna eat popcorn, oh, might spike if I’m gonna eat and sometimes at night it would drop because then when your body throws the insulin out there, it makes it go lower than it should. I’ve been absolutely within my like 75 to 200 band or whatever your blood glucose is supposed to be.
And really, Kinda like not even spiking up and down just like one 30 all the time. Wow. So I, maybe it’s this cocktail that’s doing it. Maybe it’s that I really have become quite disciplined in let’s have a bowl of mashed potatoes. No, nobody does that anymore. You’ve mentioned that really is the thing that is the torpedo , so I’m waiting. I’m gonna have give them like four weeks of data by the time I have my appointment, I really want to be able to account for, the one time I really bought it was because I had pancakes or whatever else it might be. But I’m the eating less. It really is that, I guess some of the things that I really had a yen for were some of the things that weren’t always the best for me, like chips and dip.
And now that it’s like I have. Apples with a little bit of peanut butter. I have popcorn. don’t think popcorn is at really a high trigger herb because it’s so much fiber as well as carbs. It really is like the perfect snack. Maybe I have to wear a little bit about it if it’s too salty, but we get like the smart pop where it really is lower in sodium and stuff like that.
I’m enjoying that when I ha when I eat now I really have choice instead of driven to what am I picturing that I need in my head and having to refuse that to myself, sometimes the way you fall out of a diet is the deprivation, not the discipline. . So I, there’s only I’m one day on the My little freestyle Libra, but I’m like, this is my third month of Manjaro.
And they actually had me at a low dose to start with. I tolerated that well. So it went from 2.5 to five milligrams or micrograms or whatever else it might be. It’s an injection. So that’s its own kinda like, oh, I can do this at home funk. You do like belly leg and then repeat that cycle in a month.
And it, it’s never caused any weirdness like that. And I don’t have a weirdness about needles, but I could see how somebody does that. That would be a, a limitation. Yeah. And yet I just, the fact that I’ve never, ever had something that turned before. I thought the way that you had to turn your appetite off was to take something that changed your metabolism and that you kinda vibrated the weight off.
I never wanted to be that’ll kill my heart too. That’ll be I’m gonna be sitting here constantly adrenalized or whatever the fight or flight reaction is, I have been pretty much living like I want to, but with the addition of. Not being driven to have a specific thing, especially anything that’s bad for me.
Oh, wow. And it heads off hat off to Manjaro. Here’s hoping that as it, like when my year runs out, will I have lost enough weight that I can go and be Now I’m less pounds and so diabetes doesn’t affect me as much or do I now? Now good. You got me addicted and now it’s not 25 bucks a month.
Now it’s a hundred dollars a month. Am I really gonna stay on it? I’m gonna have to see, it’s hard to turn away from a miracle .
Stephen: Interesting. Alright, cool. Okay, I think we I think we covered a lot. Finally today
Alan: it up as August. I’m seeing Neil deGrasse Tyson tomorrow night a lecture on what, when how does science treat the movies?
So I’m sure I’ll have lots of grist for the mill based on Yes, that’ll be awesome. Which is realistic and which is ridiculous, and stuff like that. And he’s, how cool there was the science hero. You know what, maybe he’s, the current Carl Sagan that is selling actually is knowledgeable enough and charming enough that people don’t mind hearing the truth.
I I’m curious to see if he mentions the Fast and the Furious Toyota in Space . That, that I’m all for these big blow up movies with action scenes in stupid, crazy stunts in that okay, fine. But when you put a Toyota in space with a rocket and you hit the gas pedal to make it go in the steering wheel to fly even, I had to roll my eyes at that one.
Stephen: If
Alan: there’s a chance for questions from the audience, I will be happy. ? Yes. Excuse me. Dr. Tyson? Yes. I saw Fast Ne Furious nine and yes, .
Stephen: I’d love to see if he actually has seen it and mentions it. Lemme know.
Alan: Alright man. Take care Steven. Thanks very.
