episode 219

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00:00:44.21
Stephen Schneider
Good morning, Alan. How you? So, 50

00:00:47.82
Alan Baltis
I’m going to have find the backdrop capability of Zencastr or clean up my office because it, well, I guess that gives you an idea of what Skynet looks like.

00:00:49.04
Stephen Schneider
million,

00:00:55.64
Stephen Schneider
huh?

00:00:57.73
Alan Baltis
You know, there’s always things at hand, perhaps too many things. So, okay. okay

00:01:05.78
Stephen Schneider
so fifty million huh

00:01:08.20
Alan Baltis
So that’s that’s the cool news. you know So we, Cleveland Area Mensa, had our nerd prom this weekend on Saturday night, and it was wonderful. We went to a place called the Emerald Event Center, and you know,

00:01:22.36
Stephen Schneider
I’ve been there for an author event.

00:01:24.31
Alan Baltis
There you go. it’s It’s really very nicely run. All the personnel that we dealt with from the center and our photo guy and our DJ and our bar guy, and all the servers, everything was just wonderfully, beautifully, professionally, carefully run.

00:01:40.45
Alan Baltis
um Ellie, um, Bachert Ausberger, who is member of Cleveland Air Mensa, was really the driver for this, our chair, and she she took care of tons of detail, took care of, like, i don’t know, Colleen and I were on the committee, so we contributed as we could, I did a little bit of publicity, um, a bunch of us ended up getting there early, so we could, like, make the centerpieces and put things on the tables, you know, because it was nerd prom, it wasn’t just get together and have a dance, it was,

00:02:07.32
Alan Baltis
Let’s do some trivia. and let’s some We had specialty drinks that were named for like, the theme was Some M Chanted Evening, so it was old Hollywood. So the trivia specialized in that, like who wrote the book that this movie was based on, or name a movie starting with each letter, that kind of fun stuff.

00:02:23.98
Alan Baltis
We had the Ginger Rogers and the Cary Grant and the Doris Day, the Doris Day being our our mocktail, our virgin cocktail, so so that was kind of fun. and You know, dozens of us got together. I there i think we had a total of like 66.

00:02:39.06
Alan Baltis
So um really nice. Great food, great tables, great company. And then the after prom, which is, you know, traditional. I remember way back in high school when I went to prom, we went after prom was like go to Warren Dunes in Michigan because I was out of Chicago or go to Great America.

00:02:55.08
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:02:55.98
Alan Baltis
Well, we went to Cedar Point, which is the best amusement park in all the world. It’s got the greatest number of great coasters and it’s just a huge facility. um So we went on, the first roller coaster we went on was the Raptor.

00:03:11.02
Alan Baltis
um um The reason it was especially wonderful is because I’ve gotten big over the years and I was unable to ride the Raptor and various other rides because some of the new roller coasters, you know they have a harness that comes down over you because you kind of sit in a seat and your legs dangle instead of being an old thing where a lap bar comes down and holds you in by the legs.

00:03:34.98
Alan Baltis
So the combination of my being big guy and wide shoulders and a large, um, long torso and my belly made it that they couldn’t close the big seat belt that held you in place.

00:03:48.23
Alan Baltis
And you can’t ride it without being really cinched in place because it does inversions and corkscrews and will throw all into the air. So, The miracle of Monjaro has helped me to lose some weight. I’m down like 50 plus pounds.

00:04:02.02
Alan Baltis
Plus I had my ear shingles that made it that I was eating like soup and coleslaw for weeks. So that helped me drop additional weight. So they have a sample seat at the start of the the serpentine line.

00:04:15.11
Alan Baltis
And I got in the seat and down came the thing and kachink, I could close it on me. So I was… just floating on air because I had been on the raptor diet haha for a long time and had not been able to do it.

00:04:29.45
Alan Baltis
So we rode the coaster and it’s a great one. You know, it really is but all kinds of zero gravity and jerks and and it’s really scary. um We get off the ride and I’m still bouncing because I’m just so happy I could ride it at all.

00:04:42.63
Alan Baltis
And then Jake and Haley, Cedar Point representatives say, hey, sir, could we speak to you for a minute? Sure. you are the 50 millionth rider of the raptor hold this sign and let us get a picture and here’s a bag full of schmuggies and so i got like oh a raptor a plush toy you know a buzzard and ah um a mug and a keychain and all kinds of cool stuff and especially interesting was They gave us um pass the line, go through exit line instead of the serpentine line for for the whole group. You know there was eight of us there together.

00:05:16.65
Alan Baltis
So we all got passes so that we could go on other rides and not wait an hour, two hours in line for something. Because we were there on Sunday and it was… beautiful day so everybody decided let’s go to a point today so i i i’ve already like cedar points um fb site and maybe website had a picture of me just you know head throwback tackling with oh my god i never get that lucky you know i mean i think the like colleen mentioned to me that the last time that i was that lucky was um

00:05:26.31
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:05:46.57
Alan Baltis
um And I’m trying to remember now because I couldn’t, I didn’t remember it offhand, but it was just so wonderful and my friends could share in it. And so then and ali only was I able to go on the Raptor, but I could go on Millennium Force and I could go on the Maverick and on the Iron Dragon. I went on like five coasters over the course of the day and we just had a wonderful time.

00:06:09.07
Alan Baltis
so and

00:06:09.22
Stephen Schneider
Nice.

00:06:09.81
Alan Baltis
um So how cool.

00:06:11.81
Stephen Schneider
did Did you tell them that that’s the first time you’ve written that one?

00:06:12.12
Alan Baltis
know what mean?

00:06:15.11
Stephen Schneider
Cause you couldn’t.

00:06:15.34
Alan Baltis
Yeah. Exactly. and And it’s, you know, cause I really said, this is really extraordinary because this was kind of 20 years in the making. i I have not been able to ride this in the past. So I couldn’t even have been the guy that got this lucky. and And, and they were very tickled by that.

00:06:31.13
Alan Baltis
And so, like I said, now it’s appeared in a whole bunch of different places. Colleen’s going to write something up for like the liquid local paper, maybe even the Cleveland Plain deal liquid man is 50 million. You know what I mean? It’s just, it’s a cool to me.

00:06:42.99
Alan Baltis
ah human interest story because it’s not just you got lucky it’s the combination of I i couldn’t even ride it for a while and and you know all the things that I just mentioned so so really fun um we ah one thing to geek it up not only 50 million there’s a lot to track you know they’ve got to have a way from all the cameras and and stuff like that

00:06:51.59
Stephen Schneider
but

00:07:03.35
Stephen Schneider
Well, I guarantee at some point it was, okay, we get about this many per year. We’ve done it for 20 years.

00:07:11.49
Alan Baltis
ah exactly

00:07:11.47
Stephen Schneider
So here’s our number we’re starting at. I mean, they they it can’t tell me that they really counted every person from the beginning, knowing they do something at 50 million.

00:07:21.63
Alan Baltis
I totally agree. I wasn’t going to be the one to volunteer. Hey, that’s a silly number.

00:07:25.49
Stephen Schneider
yeah yeah Yeah, but you know what, regardless of whether it was actually 49,875 something or other, or million, and so it doesn’t matter.

00:07:25.76
Alan Baltis
You know what I mean? but ah Right.

00:07:35.91
Alan Baltis
That’s right.

00:07:36.48
Stephen Schneider
the the designation is on you

00:07:38.86
Alan Baltis
Right. When I, when I mentioned it online, a number of people chimed in, well, I contributed three to that because I’ve written it three times over the years and stuff. So that was kind of fun. A lot of people, it just, it’s a ah fun, silly, you know,

00:07:51.11
Alan Baltis
I just had to be lucky in that way, it i didt i you know it wasn’t an achievement. It wasn’t like, hey, I’m an Olympian champion or something like that, but it was just a sweet thing.

00:07:59.88
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:08:02.55
Alan Baltis
To geek it up, one of the reasons that I really love it is that they, i think probably more parks than Cedar Point, but I know for sure, they have a great app that lets you have the entire map of where you are and how to get to the things you wanna go to.

00:08:15.92
Alan Baltis
And it actually real time information as to what the wait times are for various different rides.

00:08:20.10
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:08:20.67
Alan Baltis
You know, so, you exactly.

00:08:21.14
Stephen Schneider
Like traffic. Right.

00:08:23.27
Alan Baltis
If you’ve been to amusement parks, honestly, anytime in the last 30 years, you know that one of the strategies is, well, don’t go to the first coaster, run to the back where nobody is there yet, and go on those coasters and kind of work your way back forward, or…

00:08:36.03
Alan Baltis
you There’s overall statistics over the years over which are the most popular. Well, don’t go to those super popular ones until it’s in the evening or break time or whatever else it might be. You can get a lot more park, a lot, many more rides done.

00:08:48.35
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:08:49.57
Alan Baltis
If you give up the top two, everybody’s waiting two hours and you jump onto all the the the third to the 10th coasters are all still fantastic and you don’t have to go with someone popular.

00:09:00.52
Alan Baltis
kind of a variation on when I’ve been to Comic-Con in San Diego, Hall H is the huge hall where they really make the big announcements like, hey, here’s the new Jurassic Park movie. Here’s the new Superman movie, whatever.

00:09:13.73
Alan Baltis
And people stand in line for hours and hours to make sure they get a seat in Hall H. Well, I wanted to go talk to all the people that were languishing in Artist Row because everybody was in Hall H and they were getting to know.

00:09:24.82
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:09:25.81
Alan Baltis
So at I have regularly done that at Comic-Cons. And maybe also, nowadays, i keep calling them Comic Cons, but they’re really like Wizard World Fan Expo, the various different names they’ve come up.

00:09:37.10
Alan Baltis
It’s all the media. So you get your movie people, your TV people, your anime people, all that kind of stuff. And the various different um fan bases specialize in each of those things.

00:09:47.57
Alan Baltis
But as the Comic Con got invaded, if you will, by the professional wrestlers and the Star Wars movies and all that kind of stuff, I could go talk to Martin Nodell, the creator of Green Lantern, and have a wonderful conversation because he just wasn’t as well known unless you’re a long time comic fan.

00:09:57.03
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:10:05.18
Alan Baltis
And same with Jim Steranko and same with Mike Krell. I’ve had just amazing Ray Bradbury, Stan Lee fan experiences because I didn’t go to what was only popular in the moment.

00:10:16.28
Alan Baltis
These were the guys that built the world of comic books. And Gene Colan was sitting there all by himself with his wife. Gene, I am so happy to talk to you and gush at you over how great you were on Daredevil and Iron Man.

00:10:26.92
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:10:29.56
Alan Baltis
that’s

00:10:29.72
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:10:30.99
Alan Baltis
so that’s

00:10:33.24
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:10:33.32
Alan Baltis
been one of those things I’ve adopted is know that you’re not if you really really have to ride like Robert did spend two hours plus for top thrill two because it has exactly the features in coasters or thrill rides that he likes a lot of zero g a lot of hanging out in the air and waiting to get crunched into the you know whatever zero g here 3g down here where your face is being pulled back and all that kind of stuff and yet we had a wonderful time from from all of that, you know, from being able to pass the line and we got to we got to have lunch when we want to, not fitting it in between long lines waiting.

00:11:07.53
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, that’s cool.

00:11:09.03
Alan Baltis
So ah honestly, one of my best times ever at Cedar Point, you know the fact that we’re only an hour away, we really have gone many summers, just let’s go, let’s just, you know, go have, they have a cool feature too, that they’ve extended hours into the fall, where they have like Hallis scream, or I’m trying to think what they call scream weekends.

00:11:24.12
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:11:26.20
Alan Baltis
They do it all up with Halloween decorations and they got fog everywhere and they got people jumping out at you and they’re really they’ve built that into a really cool extra weekend all the lights in the in the night rides are really transformed into how cool they are when you’ve got not only you know the the physical sensations but all the visual stimulation of lights going by you fast and flickering on ah on a big ferris wheel or whatever else thank you

00:11:50.57
Stephen Schneider
but Like the Epcot Center ball ride.

00:11:53.42
Alan Baltis
Exactly. They do similar things. You know, they’ve really learned how to stimulate you, how to over stimulate you so that you really have a wonderful, you know, overwhelmed, great time.

00:12:00.71
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:12:02.55
Alan Baltis
So I, I just, you know, hats off to the people that said, what the riders want to have so they can get around the park and get even more satisfaction. As you also know, it’s not a cheap ticket. It’s like 50 bucks to get in.

00:12:15.34
Alan Baltis
So I don’t want to ride three coasters or 50 bucks. I want to ride 10. You know what I mean?

00:12:19.10
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:12:19.63
Alan Baltis
I want to do as many as I can.

00:12:19.65
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:12:21.56
Alan Baltis
And of course we did like the the fun racing horses. i couldn’t find the bumper cars. I really like bumper cars. Maybe you don’t even have them anymore.

00:12:28.58
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, you know, the last time I rode bumper, it is nowhere near what it was when we were kids.

00:12:28.81
Alan Baltis
I’m not sure.

00:12:35.45
Stephen Schneider
You know, when we were kids, those things would like scream around and you’d hit and you’d like, now they’re they’re throttled.

00:12:39.87
Alan Baltis
but do Exactly.

00:12:42.41
Stephen Schneider
So they barely move at a snail’s pace and you just bump each other a little bit. And I’m like, this sucks.

00:12:46.56
Alan Baltis
That you’re right.

00:12:47.97
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:12:48.20
Alan Baltis
yeah That’s true. They also, they’ve taken out all the water rides except for the one that’s just like a big round boat and you float around and you go into a waterfall, but they used to have a flume ride where you’d really go down and boom, into the water and…

00:12:59.78
Stephen Schneider
eight Yeah, the log ride.

00:13:02.61
Alan Baltis
the the where where the water would splash up, they had a bridge that you could stand on and get wheeled on by the water as it hits. So I thought that was, especially on a hot day, is there anything better? Even if you, okay, there we go.

00:13:13.02
Stephen Schneider
Shamu.

00:13:15.37
Alan Baltis
Like you stop yourself, but then that cools you off. Otherwise you gotta go like hide and get a root beer because otherwise in a place that’s all concrete and asphalt and 90 degrees, you’re baking for eight hours.

00:13:26.83
Stephen Schneider
ah

00:13:27.51
Alan Baltis
You know what I mean?

00:13:27.92
Stephen Schneider
yeah

00:13:28.31
Alan Baltis
Oh my God.

00:13:28.62
Stephen Schneider
it cracks me up. You get people on the log ride, they get soaked and then starts raining and they cover up and run for shelter.

00:13:35.15
Alan Baltis
yeah

00:13:35.21
Stephen Schneider
I’m like, you people make no sense.

00:13:38.17
Alan Baltis
I got we I always have loved doing this when I was young. What I would always ask for my birthday was we had great American near us. But even before that, we had Adventureland and my mom would take me in like three of my best friends. You know, it’s so a little bit expensive, but we’d have the whole the run of the park the whole day. And it was during the week because we were off from school. So you really could get on more rides.

00:13:59.79
Alan Baltis
And we used to go on the log rides all the time because it was hot. And we’d like sneak a cup on with us and then have a water fight and get totally stopped. And then as we’re getting off the ride, we’d say to the people that were waiting for the ride, they told us it wouldn’t flip over, know, stuff like that.

00:14:15.42
Alan Baltis
You know next time we got to take a boat, you know that.

00:14:18.33
Stephen Schneider
ah yeah It’s a good thing you were able to grab on when you fell out there.

00:14:22.76
Alan Baltis
Exactly. So i just, I’ve always loved that. And i I’ve been on amusement parks where all I ate all day was snow cones. You know I mean? You didn’t even really pause for a real meal. It was so hot you had to cool yourself off.

00:14:35.48
Alan Baltis
And so you drink and drink and have snow cones and stuff. So I have, as you know, age kicks in, ah sometimes I had to say, well, let’s just take a moment in between rides because the stomach I’ve noticed, for instance, I’ve almost like the English rotor of these you know things have various different names where you you go on thing and start spinning around and then the centrifugal force holds you against the wall.

00:14:53.59
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:14:55.71
Alan Baltis
So when the floor drops out, you’re like hanging kind of in midair, not midair wall air.

00:14:59.33
Stephen Schneider
It always tilts a little bit.

00:15:01.19
Alan Baltis
Yeah. And then that’s that’s what I was going to say is there was one called the Western Roundup at Great America, I think. where you’re in a cage and starts spinning around and everybody’s facing each other.

00:15:12.79
Alan Baltis
And then the big arm goes up like this. So instead of going around, you’re going like this. And after a while, you’re going straight up. And that one was the one that my stomach couldn’t handle. Going around and around was fine.

00:15:23.22
Alan Baltis
Changing orientation, when I got off of that, I wasn’t dizzy, but I was like, okay i need a little rest here so a couple times from the coasters they’re so perfectly built they understand how to do things within the certain tensions and how your mind works and that you know if you do a little jerk jerk and then zero g you’re really disoriented when you go through it and so just that i of course i didn’t throw up but a couple times i was like give me a moment you and not just me a lot of other people were

00:15:55.89
Alan Baltis
they They don’t go as often as we did, or they even though they really like rides, sometimes you just had the wrong breakfast that morning, and it’s not settling. So we didn’t see any of that. Nobody really threw up.

00:16:07.26
Alan Baltis
But they’re very careful nowadays also about you can’t take anything on the ride. People used to lose their hats and their glasses and even things flying out of their pockets because the zero-g really, not zero-g, the centrifugal horse throws you around.

00:16:19.43
Alan Baltis
So they have lockers that you can put things in now so that nowadays it’s not just a matter of losing glasses. If you lose transition lens glasses, that’s a $200, $300 thing. And then you’re like, can I jump into the pond and find it?

00:16:29.18
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:16:31.39
Alan Baltis
No, no, you can’t go where the the coaster is zooming by. Phones or wallets or something like that falling out, that’ll spoil your day.

00:16:39.35
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Yeah.

00:16:39.60
Alan Baltis
So they’re really good at not even allowing it and… um not having it that it flies off and strikes someone waiting in line you know they can’t have that you can’t have that’s

00:16:46.57
Stephen Schneider
Well, bit ah lot yeah. and And a lot of it sometimes is not even, you know, like you’re wearing a polo with a pocket. People just, oh, put my phone here. You’re going upside down and around.

00:16:58.42
Stephen Schneider
you not understand how this works?

00:16:58.67
Alan Baltis
right that’s right exactly just one fear spasm and there goes the phone you know what I mean

00:17:00.45
Stephen Schneider
Or worse, it’s people like, oh, I’ll hold it and film myself. and it’s like, whoa. And they like, you people, it it really sucks when science can’t prove itself.

00:17:15.67
Alan Baltis
They, the, everybody waiting in line had a different story about, yeah, I lost a hat or whatever else it might be. So I did wear a hat most of the day because I have to be careful. You know, you and I both being, um, shorn on top, you can’t be out there in the sun for all day.

00:17:29.21
Alan Baltis
It was a beautiful day, but that also means, you know, UV city.

00:17:29.22
Stephen Schneider
follicle deficient

00:17:32.39
Alan Baltis
So I actually did put like someone, I thought 70 was the highest that you go. Someone brought a hundred. It’s like, give me some of that liquid lead. I’ll slather that on. and it will be Okay. So it just It was a wonderful day.

00:17:44.51
Alan Baltis
and and And all the tech that goes into making the rides even scarier, they really know what they’re doing when they ah disorient you. like They have more, as you know, it’s not just going down a hill nowadays.

00:17:56.75
Alan Baltis
They have you hang, and not even at 90 degrees straight down, they have you hang at 100 degrees where you can’t even see the tracks as you’re hanging there in midair.

00:18:05.57
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:18:06.77
Alan Baltis
Oh my freaking God! So I, on the steel inventions was the one where my nervous reaction is I laugh. I laugh through coasters and I say things like kill me, kill me. You know, like people around me are like, is this going on?

00:18:22.05
Alan Baltis
So on the steel ventures, I was swearing at the designers at the universe in general, because there were so many times that it was like, Oh, that was far worse than I guess.

00:18:28.85
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:18:33.36
Alan Baltis
I’ve never been on that one before. And,

00:18:35.07
Stephen Schneider
Let’s do it again.

00:18:36.32
Alan Baltis
Let’s do it again. Exactly. So they I really had a great time and I’m i’m glad that I still can do them, even if I have to slow down and ration them and stuff like that. You know what I mean? I haven’t quite given up.

00:18:51.15
Alan Baltis
It was, that just seems to be one of those cool, how they know how the human senses work and how they can disorient you and stuff like that is real science. And it’s fortunately all the, It’s material science to say this, of course, can never go off the track. it can we got We built a big modern coaster. The old wood ones really had the click-click-click factor where you could really hear the speed as it increased because it was doing that.

00:19:15.82
Alan Baltis
They even had an old wooden one there maybe millennium force where they’ve replaced the main track with not just a cart on wood it really is a steel track that’s amid all of the wood scaffolding and stuff like that because they they must have some statistics on hey that wood is now 20 30 50 years old and we can’t count on it and we’re not going to have a train get stuck we’re not going to have a train fly off

00:19:20.03
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:19:36.83
Stephen Schneider
Really…

00:19:41.32
Alan Baltis
et cetera, et cetera. So I love the fact that’s such great evidence of they know what they’re doing physics wise.

00:19:43.14
Stephen Schneider
It…

00:19:46.49
Alan Baltis
They really have this down to the erg and the jewel and the whatever, all the forces are they’re acting on these things. Metal is strong. And as long as they check all the bolts every day, you know, anyway. Right.

00:19:57.64
Stephen Schneider
Remember, remember at Geauga Lake, the old Model T Fords that you could drive on the track?

00:20:03.71
Alan Baltis
right

00:20:03.77
Stephen Schneider
yeah I remember when I was a kid, I was like, oh my gosh, I can get on and drive this. And my dad just sat there. He’s like, yeah, you go ahead and drive. And I’m like, oh, I’m driving the car. You know, then later I like got older and I’m like, wait a minute, there’s a track under there and they have bumpers.

00:20:17.73
Stephen Schneider
You don’t even have to touch the steering wheel.

00:20:17.84
Alan Baltis
Right.

00:20:19.57
Stephen Schneider
But when I was six.

00:20:20.02
Alan Baltis
I couldn’t go off with me, exactly. I’m gonna go into the pond. No, you can’t go into the…

00:20:24.14
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, you know.

00:20:25.32
Alan Baltis
I was only at Geauga Lake once. you know I didn’t grow up here. i grew up out town, but really early on, Progressive, if I remember right, had their employee day was at Geauga Lake.

00:20:29.03
Stephen Schneider
Oh, right, right.

00:20:34.33
Alan Baltis
And so Colleen and I went, and she had been there before. ah So that was one I remember, instead of being asphalt and and dark hot, everything was gleaming white concrete. And like yo know your sunglasses, you need to have the wraparound Terminator sunglasses because otherwise you were going snow blind.

00:20:50.01
Alan Baltis
But they had lots of good rides there too. I never got a chance to go to SeaWorld. You know, there was a SeaWorld down there right next door.

00:20:54.52
Stephen Schneider
oh Yeah, i worked there.

00:20:57.37
Alan Baltis
Did you really? How cool is that?

00:20:57.97
Stephen Schneider
went, I went there a lot when I was a kid. I remembered it fondly. And then I worked there when I was out of school in the fish pond because nobody wanted to work the fish pond and touch the the fish and cut the guts and stuff. And I’m like, I do that with my grandpa all the time. Yeah, I’ll take the job.

00:21:13.40
Alan Baltis
Good for you That’s cool.

00:21:15.08
Stephen Schneider
And the best part of that was it was all rainbow trout. So you got a lot of people on vacation living in hotels. They can’t take the fish with them. So at the end of the night, anything left in the freezer, we got to take home.

00:21:26.37
Stephen Schneider
I ate rainbow trout for a year.

00:21:26.49
Alan Baltis
Wow, that’s a ballsy. I really like it, but he hears a lot. Okay.

00:21:31.91
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, we were about done with Rainbow Trout by the end of that year because, you know, we have the big body freezer so we could keep it frozen.

00:21:33.06
Alan Baltis
Right. Exactly. Yeah.

00:21:38.76
Alan Baltis
right

00:21:38.74
Stephen Schneider
And it was just, OK, I need a little different fish or something. But I love SeaWorld when I was a kid. ah We went quite a bit. i was so excited ah when my kids were born to take them. And the year Colin was born, they closed

00:21:52.07
Alan Baltis
Oh no! at that you know i guess I never went to the one here, but when my parents moved out to San Diego, I did get a chance to go to that one out there. and it It was great. you know It was really huge and extensive. and

00:22:02.32
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:22:02.44
Alan Baltis
They did back then still have the whales and the seals and the corpuses, various different things. that i don’t know how many of those are still open because they’ve been shown to be kind of cruel and kind of captivity is not good and all that kind stuff but what i like for instance where they had a petting pond you know you could go in and like touch a manta ray and touch a sea cucumber and that when do you get a chance to do that when you live in the midwest in chicago or cleveland do you know what i mean so that was really cool arizona exactly like so i like a lot of things there without and i don’t

00:22:13.93
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:22:21.38
Stephen Schneider
Starfish, man, yeah. Or

00:22:28.100
Stephen Schneider
Arizona.

00:22:35.75
Alan Baltis
i’m I’m glad that things have gotten better for the animals, ah but I’m glad i had the chance to see like a cool seal show and stuff like that.

00:22:42.41
Stephen Schneider
Right. Yeah. They, they were nice and you know, I’m torn on that. You know, I understand the captivity and stuff. And if the, their lodgings were bad and the instructors were bad with them, trainers.

00:22:56.89
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. I don’t want that. But you know, if they were taking good care of and they were safe and all that and fed, I get a little torn because a lot of people wouldn’t get to see those type of animals and gain appreciation for them.

00:23:08.80
Stephen Schneider
You know, so people grow up thinking, eh, so what’s an animal? We’ll just kill them. We don’t care. You know, ah so there’s there’s good and bad with it both ways.

00:23:13.46
Alan Baltis
Exactly.

00:23:17.19
Stephen Schneider
ah There’s things you can do to mitigate some of the bad stuff.

00:23:17.22
Alan Baltis
ah hear you.

00:23:20.32
Stephen Schneider
And I don’t know if they always did that.

00:23:22.66
Alan Baltis
That’s right. And, you know, contrasting that to, we just did our Alaska cruise and we really saw animals out in the wild. And and of course they have human a presence, but not intervention. you know what I mean? They’re not hunting in Denali national park.

00:23:35.79
Alan Baltis
And so it was very cool to see like beautiful reindeer and caribou and, you know, um where, caribou are the wild ones reindeer are the tame ones, if you will, you know, raised in captivity, but seeing porcupine just out porcupining around and not worrying about that, that some, you know, a human’s going to like, I’m going to go up and touch it because I’m going I’m so brave.

00:23:57.74
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:23:58.41
Alan Baltis
And I really like seeing the David Attenborough nature programs where they show all the cool things that aren’t about, can we capture them?

00:23:58.78
Stephen Schneider
Well,

00:24:05.64
Stephen Schneider
yeah

00:24:06.96
Alan Baltis
Can we eat them? It’s about animals in their nature.

00:24:09.18
Stephen Schneider
I took, I took caught Cassie out for a walk yesterday morning and and there was some deer down by my grape arbor eating leaves and stuff, scared them and they went running off and she’s like, Oh, I’m like, Cassie, you’re 15 years old. You’re not going to catch them. Yeah.

00:24:23.71
Alan Baltis
You know, I remember that when I was young, that coming up on wild turkeys and wanting to like run up and visit with them. And of course, they immediately scatter, but as a kid, you I don’t know, now this is kind of there’s so many videos nowadays where they show someone one that raised a lion cub, and then they release lion into the wild, but then they go visit with them, and this huge lion comes up and like tackles the guy, but not to eat him because he remembers him.

00:24:50.63
Alan Baltis
Well, I hope that that doesn’t embolden people to say, let’s go give this huge lion a nice little scritch under the chin because people die from bison attacks and lion attacks and hyena attacks and all of this kind of stuff.

00:24:58.09
Stephen Schneider
Well,

00:25:02.84
Stephen Schneider
we were just we were just talking about people going on the centripetal force rides, holding phones and wearing glasses.

00:25:03.18
Alan Baltis
They’re not cuddle animals. They’re wild.

00:25:11.22
Alan Baltis
Right.

00:25:11.85
Stephen Schneider
So, you know, ah are they, so oh yeah, we’ll just get a quick selfie.

00:25:13.26
Alan Baltis
Right.

00:25:16.41
Stephen Schneider
Look how great that is.

00:25:18.27
Alan Baltis
Right.

00:25:18.31
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Think think of it like this. you You see that wood, see the forest? There are gang members of caribou in there. Would you go up to a gang member in an alleyway in ah you know Michigan, in Detroit?

00:25:32.05
Alan Baltis
schedule

00:25:32.76
Stephen Schneider
No, that’s his natural habitat. You don’t go there. You don’t go into the forest of these places because, yeah, it could be bad.

00:25:40.20
Alan Baltis
Absolutely.

00:25:40.20
Stephen Schneider
no, I something I was going to tell you.

00:25:40.60
Alan Baltis
yeah You know, please go ahead, Clark.

00:25:45.11
Stephen Schneider
What were you going to say?

00:25:46.75
Alan Baltis
it uh and now it slips my mind it it there is whatever the thing is that that um if someone sees something done then they think they can do it too instead of there should be the little disclaimer that says this person is a trained like natural wildlife expert and they know how close they can approach and they know these animals and so that’s why they’ve been able to bond with the wolf pack or something like that it’s heartening to see that animals can be okay with human being human beings being around but I don’t know. we we Colleen and I have never had a problem, but we’ve also not gone up to cuddle the bison.

00:26:21.75
Alan Baltis
There’s lots of signs that say the bears don’t you don’t want the bear to lick jelly off your face. They are there.

00:26:27.71
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:26:27.86
Alan Baltis
You’re there. you’re.

00:26:28.87
Stephen Schneider
Yogi is not here.

00:26:29.82
Alan Baltis
and europe yeah You’re a good meal. You know what I mean?

00:26:32.94
Stephen Schneider
yeah

00:26:33.96
Alan Baltis
Anyway, I ah guess that’s, I’ve been using lately a lot, something from Freakonomics. And by the way, yeah we always try to include these things. Folks, if you haven’t read the Freakonomics books, you really should, because they really are great at, here’s the truth behind various different things work in the world.

00:26:51.07
Alan Baltis
About sumo wrestlers, about gang members, about natural wildlife. And one of the things they have in there is thing called the self-weeding garden. that you don’t necessarily have to have big police forces and monitoring all the time.

00:27:04.56
Alan Baltis
You just create the incentive for those things to reveal themselves and then you know to beware of them or to capture them, whatever. And nowadays that sure applies in politics that when I’m online and I’m seeing I put a thing out there there was an immediate crazy overreaction.

00:27:20.45
Alan Baltis
i don’t really care what they said. i care that they revealed themselves as being nuts and that I will never get anything out of an interaction with them in the future. So, boop, block. I have become quite liberal.

00:27:33.11
Alan Baltis
I’m not totally like, oh no, I can’t handle any dissent or anything like that. But you can tell the difference when it’s a difference of opinion versus someone is stark raving fucking loony in conspiracy world.

00:27:42.15
Stephen Schneider
So theyre they there was there’s what i i you know I’ve said to others and I’ve tried to say, I’m like, look, I have no problem with you having a different thought, different opinion, different whatever, and having an adult mature discussion, even if I still don’t agree with you.

00:27:43.64
Alan Baltis
You know what I mean? So,

00:27:55.07
Alan Baltis
ready

00:27:59.74
Stephen Schneider
But if you’re laying out, here’s why, here’s some reasons, you might even convince me if they’re logical, make sense, and I can understand it.

00:27:59.92
Alan Baltis
Right.

00:28:07.52
Stephen Schneider
you know But I might not change my mind for my own reasons and feelings or whatever. But if the first thing you’re going to is scream in my face and yell, like, and bully your way with power to prove your point and make me wrong or whatever, i have not, I don’t want to, I’ve never liked those people.

00:28:26.02
Stephen Schneider
That’s the jock bullies from high school still, you know, and nothing.

00:28:29.42
Alan Baltis
right the name calling and the intimidation and the exactly, you know, it’s like you, that it,

00:28:32.43
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:28:35.66
Alan Baltis
I hear you. I have as few interactions with those people as I can. And we’ve laughed about it. You know, when when do Colleen and I voluntarily go to, what’s the stereotype? The tractor pull or the NASCAR thing. There seems to be a higher number of them there.

00:28:49.34
Alan Baltis
But we go to a lot of concerts that we like the music, Allman Brothers or whatever like that. But then if a certain amount of Southern rock, there’s a certain amount of, and here’s the sweeping generalization, Southern assholery that goes with it.

00:29:00.88
Alan Baltis
And just, my, tolerance for that and my need to see that band if I know all I’m going to do is have people standing up in front of me, people getting drunk and stupid, people, et cetera.

00:29:12.67
Alan Baltis
I just like, maybe I’ll enjoy the albums at home and not go into a place where the crop is higher.

00:29:12.83
Stephen Schneider
Right. The

00:29:16.56
Stephen Schneider
but The problem is, the problem is like, you know, at a concert, you know, or even tractor, well, we’ll cut out tractable a concert.

00:29:18.62
Alan Baltis
Right, right.

00:29:25.24
Stephen Schneider
You get a mix, you know, even if it’s only 50% of them are the asshole rednecks that don’t think of anyone else or getting drunk, spilling beer on people, bumping into you and cussing in loud and in front of you.

00:29:26.34
Alan Baltis
right

00:29:38.71
Stephen Schneider
if Even if it’s only 50%, I mean, well, that’s out of the 10 people in front of you, that’s five of them. And that’s enough to be distracting and make it not fun.

00:29:47.28
Alan Baltis
Right, exactly. So we we really have kind of voluntarily taken ourselves out of going to where the worst concentrations are. And sometimes you don’t know, but I don’t know, it’s always startling when you go to and arts and crafts fair, and you think that’s going to be maybe people that have a little more arts and crafts in them, you know what i mean, that they’re appreciative of that.

00:30:06.32
Stephen Schneider
Thank you.

00:30:06.96
Alan Baltis
But then you go to the beer tent there, and it can be a little weird.

00:30:09.27
Stephen Schneider
the

00:30:09.63
Alan Baltis
It’s like,

00:30:09.84
Stephen Schneider
the worst thing there is, you know, the, the, the stereotype redneck that that’s going to go to the tractor pools, you know, 75% of them are these rednecks you don’t want to deal with.

00:30:20.66
Stephen Schneider
But at like the art thing, like you said, maybe it’s only 25%. The problem is they don’t fit in. They don’t really really like it. So instead of being respectful and letting other people enjoy what they enjoy, they, they try and ruin it for everybody because, well, I’m right. Well, this is stupid and sucks.

00:30:36.20
Stephen Schneider
The, you know, my kids could do better than this.

00:30:36.50
Alan Baltis
right

00:30:38.16
Stephen Schneider
And, you know, just not, like, shut up, dude, go away, go watch your tractor pull.

00:30:42.29
Alan Baltis
Right.

00:30:42.30
Stephen Schneider
And yeah, like you said, sweeping generalizations, but the problem is there’s a lot of times it’s exactly like that, you know? So-

00:30:49.81
Alan Baltis
Yeah. The reason that it occurs to us is because after you’ve seen that 10 and 12 times, it doesn’t have to be that it’s only a stereotype. It’s based on, well, my personal observation is that the guy with a Confederate t-shirt, he’s not going to be my favorite person.

00:31:02.86
Alan Baltis
You know what I mean?

00:31:02.91
Stephen Schneider
right

00:31:04.16
Alan Baltis
So…

00:31:04.56
Stephen Schneider
Right. So I’m going to jump back. You you mentioned ah ah Hall H and the creators and all stuff like that. So down in Columbus, every June, they have Origins Game Fair, ah which is huge.

00:31:12.35
Alan Baltis
Yeah.

00:31:16.63
Alan Baltis
Yes.

00:31:18.20
Stephen Schneider
It’s one of the big ones in the country, right?

00:31:20.46
Alan Baltis
Right. That and Gen Con are the two big a gaming conventions.

00:31:23.33
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. And they’re both like our back door, you know, Gen Con’s just over in Indianapolis.

00:31:23.54
Alan Baltis
That’s right.

00:31:26.26
Alan Baltis
Yeah.

00:31:27.25
Stephen Schneider
It’s four or five hour drive. They’re both really close.

00:31:28.98
Alan Baltis
Right.

00:31:30.37
Stephen Schneider
um So I went to the Columbus origins a couple of years ago, loved it. I met Kevin J.

00:31:35.22
Alan Baltis
Mm-hmm.

00:31:36.15
Stephen Schneider
Anderson. I met a couple of game designers that I had had some interactions with and stuff like that.

00:31:37.14
Alan Baltis
Yeah.

00:31:42.74
Stephen Schneider
So that, You know, I didn’t go last year just because busy and and stuff this year. was on the fence. i was like, yeah I don’t know if I’m going to go. was was at my buddy Kevin’s house the other day and his son for a class at college made a game.

00:31:57.26
Stephen Schneider
That was what their assignment was. And the instructor was,

00:31:59.27
Alan Baltis
yeah

00:32:00.48
Stephen Schneider
pulled him aside afterwards and said, I’ve been doing this for many years. That is one of the better games I’ve ever seen come through here. You might want to think of doing more with it.

00:32:10.97
Alan Baltis
okay

00:32:10.97
Stephen Schneider
And I guess the kid is like really into, ah you know, doing this type of thing. He’s very creative. So I said, well, you know Origins Game Fair is in a couple of weeks.

00:32:21.35
Stephen Schneider
If he wants to go, I’ll meet up there and, you know,

00:32:23.96
Alan Baltis
right

00:32:24.33
Stephen Schneider
Not that he, you know, he’s almost 18, not that he couldn’t figure out, but can be overwhelming. And I’ve been there. i’m like, yeah, I’d meet up with him and walk around and stuff.

00:32:31.91
Alan Baltis
Well, chaperoning is just being a guy that can help make him connections and introduce him.

00:32:35.49
Stephen Schneider
Exactly. Yeah.

00:32:36.35
Alan Baltis
the way the land.

00:32:36.49
Stephen Schneider
yeah

00:32:37.55
Alan Baltis
Exactly.

00:32:37.90
Stephen Schneider
Right. So I may go back down in a couple weeks, only on Saturday. I’m not going take off because it’s like Wednesday through Sunday.

00:32:44.54
Alan Baltis
Right, it’s a big thing.

00:32:44.57
Stephen Schneider
It’s really, and they have, they have D and D games. They have workshops. They have author area artists. Um, and, uh, for authors, they have the game vendors.

00:32:55.85
Stephen Schneider
Uh, they have play testing areas. I mean, it’s, it’s really huge. It’s, it’s three big halls at the Columbus convention center.

00:33:02.73
Alan Baltis
Got it.

00:33:03.01
Stephen Schneider
Uh,

00:33:03.27
Alan Baltis
Honestly, it’s been a long time since I’ve been to these, and a little bit is because Colleen is not as much into it as me, so I have gone by myself to my pinball convention, my prog rock thing, that kind of stuff.

00:33:15.32
Alan Baltis
It might be that that’s one of the ones where, hey, Pook, if I head down for a couple of days, do you mind if I go just geek it up totally and to this gaming thing?

00:33:22.85
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:33:24.20
Alan Baltis
she She likes going to mind games and doing playtesting with our mental friends stuff that, but Gen Con and Origins, a whole other level of great

00:33:31.41
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, that’s a totally different type of thing.

00:33:34.01
Alan Baltis
Yeah, yeah.

00:33:34.63
Stephen Schneider
But I was looking, so I was looking at the list and I’m like, I’m not really seeing any names that I’m like, oh, I got to meet them until I got to one author i saw. and um’ and i And so this is an Ohio author.

00:33:47.21
Stephen Schneider
And I know there was Ohioana book festival that happens every year. And I know this author was there. I just didn’t make it down to meet him. So ah her name is Amy Schneider.

00:33:59.79
Alan Baltis
Okay.

00:33:59.91
Stephen Schneider
Now we know her from, she was on Jeopardy and she made it to contest the champions.

00:34:05.71
Alan Baltis
I remember that. Exactly. Okay.

00:34:07.94
Stephen Schneider
And, and, and we were like, well, someone with the name of Schneider from Ohio.

00:34:12.03
Alan Baltis
Right.

00:34:11.100
Stephen Schneider
and so we all started watching.

00:34:13.06
Alan Baltis
Through the whole network. Exactly.

00:34:14.41
Stephen Schneider
Exactly. um And, you know, did well. And I knew she was an author, wrote a book, but I miss seeing her. So I’m like, oh, she’s going to be at Origins. I’m like, I should go down and meet her and just say hi. And, you know, our family followed you.

00:34:29.83
Alan Baltis
That’s very cool. So like, you know, I know, like you said, it’s Wednesday to Sunday.

00:34:31.11
Stephen Schneider
So.

00:34:34.51
Alan Baltis
Is she like Friday or something like that? And that’s the day you’re going to go? Cause I’m going to jump into your adventure, but I’m like, if I’m going to go down there and put a toe in, I wouldn’t mind.

00:34:38.63
Stephen Schneider
No, no, I think she just basically.

00:34:44.22
Alan Baltis
don’t have to paddle around all the time, but I wouldn’t mind going to see Amy Schneider and being your bud for a while.

00:34:47.50
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:34:49.22
Alan Baltis
Okay.

00:34:49.32
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:34:49.80
Alan Baltis
most

00:34:49.84
Stephen Schneider
So I think she’s just a like a vendor, ah not not like a featured. So I think, you know, basically set up in author alley for the whole week, whole time.

00:34:59.37
Alan Baltis
okay

00:35:00.94
Stephen Schneider
So ah hopefully.

00:35:02.05
Alan Baltis
I would have thought they’d want her to be speaking about your Jeopardy adventure and stuff like that.

00:35:02.24
Stephen Schneider
because

00:35:06.70
Stephen Schneider
Well, keep in mind, this is all game focus.

00:35:06.89
Alan Baltis
Okay.

00:35:09.39
Stephen Schneider
So, you know nobody probably cares that you were on TV as much as they care.

00:35:12.99
Alan Baltis
Right. Jeopardy is not a board game, if you will.

00:35:14.81
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Yeah.

00:35:15.37
Alan Baltis
like Okay. Okay.

00:35:16.71
Stephen Schneider
So, so I, you know, i’m like, okay, now maybe I’m going to make plans and, you know, I’m looking at my schedule for the summer and I’m like, oh my gosh, I have so many things going on.

00:35:17.09
Alan Baltis
Interesting.

00:35:24.76
Stephen Schneider
i’ve got a whole lot of, uh, paranormal cryptid type festivals. I’m taking my books and and soaps to, uh,

00:35:31.65
Alan Baltis
Okay.

00:35:32.74
Stephen Schneider
You know, so i I love doing that and they’ve been going well. I’ve enjoyed it. You know, I made that cryptozoologist field kit, research kit for kids.

00:35:42.72
Alan Baltis
Okay.

00:35:42.87
Stephen Schneider
and And the last one I went to, I sold one and the little girl was so excited. i think that was when, you know, we weren’t doing it for a while. Yeah.

00:35:49.70
Alan Baltis
okay

00:35:49.78
Stephen Schneider
ah So I got a… ah research kit that has like a magnifying glass, a compass, a whistle. Um, and, uh, I’ve got a little booklet written, uh, that Ron Murphy helped me write some Stan Gordon helped write some, I wrote some, so it’s got articles in there from these people that people know.

00:36:07.72
Alan Baltis
Very cool.

00:36:07.76
Stephen Schneider
And I added to that, like a jungle explorer vest and a hat. And, you know, i sell them as separate little kits or, know,

00:36:15.65
Alan Baltis
That’s kind of the door of the Explorer for Cryptid.

00:36:18.60
Stephen Schneider
Yes.

00:36:19.35
Alan Baltis
That’s pretty cool.

00:36:19.43
Stephen Schneider
and And then you’ll love this.

00:36:20.29
Alan Baltis
Yeah. Yeah.

00:36:22.30
Stephen Schneider
i I made a ah like Justice League membership card, except it’s Young Cryptozoologist membership card.

00:36:28.100
Alan Baltis
yeah

00:36:29.49
Stephen Schneider
But to earn it, the kids have to go around to some of the other authors, vendors, presenters, and ask questions and get answers.

00:36:38.19
Alan Baltis
Right. get a Get a stamp, get an initial proving.

00:36:40.57
Stephen Schneider
No, no, no, no.

00:36:40.78
Alan Baltis
We’ll just get the answer too.

00:36:41.45
Stephen Schneider
It’s questions. They have to, they have to get answers to this, like interact and talk to them as research.

00:36:44.42
Alan Baltis
Okay. That’s cool. Yeah.

00:36:47.49
Stephen Schneider
Then they come back and they get their membership card. So I’m having a lot of fun doing that with the kids and stuff. um And I got my picture book out that I was working on and I’m,

00:36:58.59
Alan Baltis
el

00:36:59.32
Stephen Schneider
I got my second book of town magician and I’m working on the first book of the oddish quest or series ah with the investigative team. So hopefully I’ll get that sooner than later with all these upcoming festivals. ah But my summer is just like, bonk, bonk, bonk, you know, I’m,

00:37:15.37
Alan Baltis
Yeah, well, what that’s you know we have talked about, Ted Sikora goes to a ton of shows, not just comic book shows, but all different kinds of, anywhere that that that um material of his might play. So does Bill Keith, so does, yeah we can start naming the the folks that either we’ve had on or we want to have on the show, that Ian Strach goes to all kinds of science fiction conventions. And um who are buddies from um Midnight Guardian?

00:37:42.100
Alan Baltis
John Bruning, right?

00:37:43.92
Stephen Schneider
Oh, John Bruni, he just got a website I saw.

00:37:46.41
Alan Baltis
like that so you know it’s that’s the way you get known and interact and make connections and stuff is by going to all these different kinds of shows a guy named burke manning that i like some of his comic book work he’s like one of the questions we always have is every time he goes to he finds the best ice cream in town and i’m i’m thinking of doing either ah brain freeze or of the ohio chocolate trail coming up and going to like the six best chocolate places in ohio as a big you know 300 all during the day journey um so it really is cool that you have you’re getting more and more material and reasons to like justify the show you’ll make some money you’ll you’ll make the connections you’ll you’ll whatever it is to go from independent author to actually oh my god having like these are on various different sites and and they’re featured and stuff like that i wish the best for you that’s really really cool

00:38:24.57
Stephen Schneider
right

00:38:36.24
Stephen Schneider
Thanks. we We should talk about marketing again sometime because I’ve got a whole bunch of things I’m trying to do ah for marketing outside of the, well, I have a booth. Why aren’t people coming to buy? you know

00:38:48.47
Alan Baltis
Okay, exactly. You know, honestly, how long for Melendinous Ski Kree now? Like five years? 200 and something?

00:38:54.87
Stephen Schneider
so Yeah, it’s getting close to that.

00:38:54.91
Alan Baltis
200 episodes?

00:38:56.22
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:38:56.79
Alan Baltis
Exactly. yeah but We have done only word of mouth. We haven’t ever bought ad space to encourage people to come and stuff like that.

00:39:02.62
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:39:04.31
Alan Baltis
So it would be as we… you I’m fully retired now, but you know I’m not sitting here inert. It would be kind of cool to start to say, we’ve talked about it.

00:39:14.48
Alan Baltis
What are the lists we want to put on the website of here’s the recommended books. And it’s not only our current topics, because that we we try to stay relatively current.

00:39:18.45
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:39:21.80
Alan Baltis
as So go see a Mission a Impossible and stuff like that. There’s something to be said for if we’ve got 50, 60 years worth of knowledge about the field, You want to guide them to some of the things that have held up well over time.

00:39:34.25
Alan Baltis
You know what I mean? Not not my personal favorites, but I really think this is a seminal work in the field that everybody should read.

00:39:35.03
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:39:40.50
Alan Baltis
This amount of Heinlein and Asimov and maybe, don’t know, once an author dies and he doesn’t have anything new coming out, there sure is a tendency to have them just kind of ghostly go away.

00:39:51.40
Alan Baltis
You know what I mean? And some of that great music and whatever is worth saying.

00:39:52.20
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:39:56.33
Alan Baltis
Rick Derringer just died. And i was reminded of, I’ve always loved him. I loved him on his own.

00:40:01.22
Stephen Schneider
yeah

00:40:02.18
Alan Baltis
I loved him with the Edgar Winter Group and Johnny Winter. And he he worked with Meatloaf. and You know what I mean? he He really was like a go-to gunslinger guitarist. You know what I mean?

00:40:12.20
Alan Baltis
So i That’s the kind of stuff. Someone even just made a comment on that. but Another friend, Robert, that said, you know, we got all this wonderful stuff in our heads. And when we have conversations, those things pop out.

00:40:24.100
Alan Baltis
Well, when we die, that vault closes.

00:40:28.87
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:40:28.95
Alan Baltis
And it would be so nice. And I said, my rejoinder to that was, us doing this podcast has given us such a chance that if anybody ever, like, starts at number one and listens, they’ll get a ton of great information about what what to play and where to go and what to listen to and what to eat and whatever else.

00:40:43.99
Stephen Schneider
And recommendations. Yeah.

00:40:48.08
Alan Baltis
and And with the geekery aspect of it that we we’ve always loved, yeah I think, I hope that that’s some part of my legacy is that it really is out there. You what i mean?

00:40:58.18
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:40:58.31
Alan Baltis
Maybe I have to convert it into books and make it into a more salable, you know, package and stuff like that. But just a little bit of attention. You for a while I had the smart life that was early before social media, before Facebook told took over the world.

00:41:15.66
Alan Baltis
And we really had good discussions at a lot of places that I posted. Hey, here’s my top 10 comic book series of all time. And of course, it isn’t only about saying that, it’s about the discussion that comes up.

00:41:24.53
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:41:25.39
Alan Baltis
with like And now I always say, well, here’s the 20 that are in my top 10, because you always have to leave things off that really are great.

00:41:32.95
Stephen Schneider
right

00:41:33.75
Alan Baltis
that Maybe that’s something that, you know, not only marketing for your cool stuff, but just a little bit more of putting things into relentless geekery. I, for my, might despite my being ah real tech guy, you’ve taken care of almost everything.

00:41:46.87
Alan Baltis
And as I mentioned from the very start, that’s a huge reversal to me. I was always the guy that would make sure it gets posted and has all the right metadata and that kind of stuff.

00:41:54.21
Stephen Schneider
right Yeah, we should talk about that because I’ve been…

00:41:55.40
Alan Baltis
And so I’ll be happy to help or at least investigate what’s our current state. And if we start to do things that are, more marketing, more web aware, all that kind stuff. How do you found in search engines correctly? And that has changed over the course of 25 years of Google. You know what I mean?

00:42:14.33
Stephen Schneider
keeping up with that a little bit and that world is okay. So ah there were multiple ah podcasts, multiple gurus for the last 10, 15 years ish on, you know, what to do to ah promote your business, market your business, you know, make yeah earn money online.

00:42:35.41
Stephen Schneider
Essentially they’re all entrepreneur type things.

00:42:37.64
Alan Baltis
Yeah.

00:42:37.71
Stephen Schneider
The one I liked was called the authority hacker and their whole premise back in the day

00:42:37.82
Alan Baltis
Yeah.

00:42:43.42
Stephen Schneider
was you you pick a topic. like um ah ah ah whatever dogs, greyhound dogs, specifically greyhounds. yeah

00:42:54.23
Alan Baltis
yeah

00:42:54.37
Stephen Schneider
And you make a website about greyhounds and you put up every bit of information, make articles, write articles, and you have literally thousands of articles posted just about greyhounds, getting every SEO keyword. And whatever and then Google essentially puts you as an expert, the authority,

00:43:14.55
Alan Baltis
Right.

00:43:14.71
Stephen Schneider
Uh, and, and when people are doing anything, looking for greyhounds, your site comes up and then you have affiliate links to where you to buy it, or you’re selling your own product or, you know, something like that.

00:43:14.78
Alan Baltis
Okay.

00:43:26.26
Stephen Schneider
And that’s what they basically did. Well, at the end of last year, and they had, they were, they were big, they had a podcast and they’ve got thousands of subscribers. They had courses that they sold and like the big course they had was like $1,900.

00:43:41.74
Alan Baltis
okay

00:43:41.85
Stephen Schneider
So, you know, it was, they were big, big guys. And in the last year, they said, we’re shutting it all down. ah We said, we can’t in good faith, continue to promote our courses and what we do because it no longer works.

00:43:57.60
Stephen Schneider
This is not how Google works anymore.

00:43:59.42
Alan Baltis
Oh, my. Right.

00:44:00.37
Stephen Schneider
And everybody is using ai to search and this just does not work. And they shut down, which I hated, but I’m like, major respect. I feel like I i latched onto the right guys that were you were trying to help people.

00:44:13.29
Alan Baltis
right

00:44:14.81
Stephen Schneider
that Yes, they were making money, you know, that’s fine, but they weren’t just doing it ah without knowledge. They weren’t just, you know limited amount of anything. They really were trying to help others.

00:44:25.68
Stephen Schneider
They knew what they were doing. So,

00:44:27.32
Alan Baltis
That’s honestly, so for that period of time, they were just what you needed, but they were aware from web traffic and whatever else was guiding their stuff that they could see that they were like not dawning, but dusking and that there was new things that were going to be necessary.

00:44:39.92
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:44:42.66
Alan Baltis
I often talk about haven’t talked about lately, you know, investing. That whole world is changing because of AI, because of technology. disruptive events in the world that are making all kinds of black swan ripple effects. You know what I mean? When you have tariffs, you got to go back to 1910 to compare and there wasn’t enough data from 1910 coming forward. There’s hardly any people often talk about since the Great Depression, here’s how the market is done.

00:45:06.60
Alan Baltis
Well, yeah it’s it’s different enough now. So reason for saying that is I guess I I’m learning a lot via the way AI is impacting things about something that I’m really into because I have come to the conclusion that it’s not only about making money and making sure that Colleen and I are safe and stuff.

00:45:27.25
Alan Baltis
It’s that I kind of like it. I like the gambling. I like seeing the patterns. I like being the one that got ahead of a cool bet and stuff like that. And so what’s the best way to do that nowadays? It’s not to read prospectuses from companies and hope that my reading ability is gonna be what helps me absorb things.

00:45:45.25
Alan Baltis
They’ve got instant summarization, keyword use, all kinds of AI. You know what I mean? you can can um motley fool who i still make use of even though they’re not my main guy they’ve got a real interesting thing now that they just talk about the amount of data you can get through the amount of companies you can cover the amount of individual data points that you can capture per each company has exploded because ai can call all that out and and simulate you reading 10 000 things a day instead of the 100 that you really can so i’m enjoying

00:46:11.51
Stephen Schneider
i

00:46:15.34
Alan Baltis
learning about that and getting ahead of it and stuff like that and how will it be used not only in that but i’m sure that there are scripts for our various different wonderful movies that you know nowadays they used to have a script doctor like bruce valanche come in and and not only punch it up with humor but actually just like make it a tighter movie and stuff and nowadays as you know there’s ai that’s being used to do that and it might be that it generifies movies because it thinks after it’s looked at all 100,000 movies, here’s the right way, the one right way to do a movie.

00:46:47.84
Alan Baltis
And you don’t want that. You want the independents creating something startlingly new and stuff like that.

00:46:50.03
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:46:52.74
Alan Baltis
You want the Wes Anderson’s to do something that like nobody else can do. just like There’s always been auteurs like that, the Woody Allens and the

00:46:59.71
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:46:59.95
Alan Baltis
the Cohn brothers and stuff. So I don’t know that AI can simulate them really well, but for many other things, they now know how to do standard three act play, how to do story arcs and story beats. Exactly correct. So that you’ll draw and loop the the viewer in, the listener in,

00:47:18.04
Alan Baltis
Anyway, i I want to stay on top of that. i don’t want it to be, oh no, I got old and I got scared and now the world has changed and so I rewatch old Johnny Carson. I won’t be that guy. I like learning and I like being…

00:47:31.65
Alan Baltis
kind of competitive with the kids you know what i mean i’m not a young brain even if i might have funny face now with my trigeminal nerve but anyway by the way that’s about 70 better i’m in much less pain and you can see i’m still kind of droopy like i really do have this perpetually eyebrow tim misney look because this guy just doesn’t obey me as much as he should and my

00:47:34.47
Stephen Schneider
Good.

00:47:46.41
Stephen Schneider
good Yeah.

00:47:57.50
Alan Baltis
my My smile is a little bit down, but at least I’m not terrible. It’s the pain, the ringing in my ear, the hearing loss that has me a little spooked that I’m on gabapentin and it should take care of that.

00:48:07.52
Alan Baltis
But it’s taken its sweet time doing

00:48:09.43
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Well, yeah that’s a lengthy recovery.

00:48:11.13
Alan Baltis
oh Ramsey Hunt, you know, please go away. And and you have it in your family and and direct experience with it. But I just kind of, i I hardly ever look at myself in the mirror, but I can’t help but see myself because we’re casting, we’re capturing this.

00:48:25.93
Alan Baltis
It’s like, that’s not me. That’s a version of me that I kind of want to go back to Mimi.

00:48:29.91
Stephen Schneider
ah Honestly, it’s not excessive. It’s hardly noticeable at all.

00:48:35.99
Alan Baltis
Okay.

00:48:37.51
Stephen Schneider
Your beer and goatee stuff cover up anything with your mouth.

00:48:37.68
Alan Baltis
Thank you.

00:48:40.38
Alan Baltis
I guess that’s true.

00:48:40.78
Stephen Schneider
ae Yeah, you know.

00:48:41.53
Alan Baltis
but but and Even though like my eye doesn’t droop anymore, which was a really like that makes you look like either crazy or sad, dangerous or whatever else it might be.

00:48:42.24
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:48:45.92
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:48:51.24
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:48:51.35
Alan Baltis
And now I really do have full blinking and and that is in sync again instead of being, oh God, I melted. and So thank you for saying that.

00:48:58.44
Stephen Schneider
Right. Yeah.

00:48:59.55
Alan Baltis
um

00:48:59.91
Stephen Schneider
So it’s hardly noticeable.

00:49:01.54
Alan Baltis
OK.

00:49:01.61
Stephen Schneider
Of course, I also shrunk you down. So you’re like three ah inches. So, you know, yeah.

00:49:05.04
Alan Baltis
Exactly. Yeah, those those little tiny data points on the exactly.

00:49:10.39
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. So, so, uh, uh, you mentioned my buddy, Kevin, I was down visiting him in Columbus cause we went and saw vampire weekend, the other day.

00:49:19.06
Alan Baltis
OK.

00:49:20.43
Stephen Schneider
I don’t know if you know much about them. They’re more a modern, ah band, ah kids, uh, like my son said, yeah, they’re, they’re more, you know, for a younger crowd, but their musicality is, was amazing.

00:49:34.62
Stephen Schneider
I had listened to it a little bit to get into it, but the concert was really good. And let me tell you, they did ah over 30 songs. It was just song after song, after song, after song, hardly talking.

00:49:45.92
Alan Baltis
That’s fantastic. if i get

00:49:47.21
Stephen Schneider
ah

00:49:48.30
Alan Baltis
If I get 15 20, I’m usually happy with the concert. That’s fantastic.

00:49:50.64
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:49:50.72
Alan Baltis
fantastic Okay.

00:49:51.35
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. They were just going and going and going. And they’ mut this guy, he had two pianos ah there that he used and a synthesizer. Almost everybody played a synthesizer at one time for a song.

00:50:04.03
Stephen Schneider
They had a violinist, two drummers, Uh, you know, so i was very impressed and their, their music choices is not just strumming chords.

00:50:16.03
Stephen Schneider
Uh, you know, they’re not pop hits necessarily.

00:50:19.45
Alan Baltis
Okay.

00:50:19.62
Stephen Schneider
Um, so if you like that avant garde stuff, like I said, this is kind of like avant garde, grateful dead. And my buddy says kind of like modern progressive rusted root.

00:50:31.87
Stephen Schneider
So that’s how we kind of described them.

00:50:33.83
Alan Baltis
Interesting. i but well I’ll give them a listen online and stuff like that. I think I might have mentioned this. One interesting things that’s happened with Facebook lately is they have all kinds of things that they start a music video for you.

00:50:45.14
Alan Baltis
And if you like it, then you can go and get it for free, only the cost of shipping. So I’ve gotten like 10 $6 CDs now where Neon Fields was interesting enough. um Matt Steady, you know, like and all different kinds of genres. This was, you know electronica. This was Celtic rock.

00:51:02.80
Alan Baltis
um This was, you blues. um And i don’t know, for six bucks, I’ll try it. You know what I mean? So i will, I like that where I have a chance I don’t have to invest 15 or whatever else the standard cost is and stuff like that.

00:51:15.75
Alan Baltis
And any number of things when I discover a band that I like, I tend to like, well, let’s get them all. And so then I go, hit Amazon and get, like, I think I mentioned I found a band Mystery at a couple of Prague stocks ago that i really loved and they’re out of Canada and so they were a little bit overshadowed by Rush, if you will, but I i got like half a dozen of theirs, a couple live and a couple of their good stuff and I am

00:51:28.76
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:51:40.79
Alan Baltis
they have become one of my go-to things because as opposed to emerson like and palmer which i’ve already listened to a hundred times every time i listen to a mystery cd i hear good new things you know what i mean there’s there’s depth there’s musicality there’s all kinds of i like the virtuoso i like the synth aspect so i will check into vampire weekend and do the same kind of maybe they’ll catch on that’s kind of cool all right

00:52:00.37
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. You know, I don’t think I’m going to listen to him a ton in rotation. It’s not going to be my go-to all the time, but I’m glad i listened something. My son loved him.

00:52:11.43
Alan Baltis
yeah

00:52:11.47
Stephen Schneider
Kevin loves it. Kevin got listened to a lot more music than I ever would have guessed back in high school, knowing him, you so, so yeah, he,

00:52:18.81
Alan Baltis
Interesting. yeah It wasn’t just hair metal and on and on, but it was like branching out. Yeah.

00:52:23.62
Stephen Schneider
Oh yeah. Yeah. He definitely has varied music tastes. ah yeah And he goes to, I mean, cause we went to this and we’re going to bare naked ladies ah later this summer together.

00:52:35.12
Stephen Schneider
And last fall we went to ah this duo that was singing violin and and acoustic guitar. And it it was, you know, a different feel, but he also went to the ACDC concert.

00:52:49.19
Stephen Schneider
So, you know, big variety going on there.

00:52:49.29
Alan Baltis
Right, right.

00:52:52.14
Alan Baltis
Yeah, Colleen and i have a certain amount of that, and and I guess me even more. like um

00:52:59.38
Alan Baltis
I’m always looking when I go to my festivals to not just be going to the ones I really was looking forward to seeing, but like when you go to Prague, the Cruise on the Edge has all kinds of um minor bands, but they they fill out the schedule.

00:53:12.99
Alan Baltis
And I like Haken, I like Marben, I like… ah you know um Same kind of like, oh I like for instance, I had a chance to hear Goblin. Goblin is one of those that are kind of like symphonic rock.

00:53:26.79
Alan Baltis
They did monster movie music like Suspiria and a couple of those.

00:53:29.01
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:53:31.54
Alan Baltis
And that, as you might imagine, their show was big because their music is big. It really is symphonic and doom laden, if you will. And I don’t know that I i don’t like music where I’m getting yelled at or growled at, you know, whatever that death metal, thrash metal that has a little bit too much doom for me.

00:53:52.85
Alan Baltis
But these guys were still very musical and that it just, ah the way you structure music is it’s all minor chords and oh, something’s coming around the corner. You know what I mean? It doesn’t to be.

00:54:02.26
Stephen Schneider
i

00:54:03.11
Alan Baltis
So it was a wonderful thing. When did I ever think I’d get a chance to see them? They’re only in Europe out of Italy, I believe, and or maybe France. And so was like how they really do get things like focus that their time has kind of passed, but boy, they still put on a great show.

00:54:12.16
Stephen Schneider
yeah

00:54:18.61
Alan Baltis
And hearing Hocus Pocus live is like everybody in the crowd is yodeling. Everybody’s there. you know what mean? So wonderful.

00:54:24.28
Stephen Schneider
Nice.

00:54:25.24
Alan Baltis
Okay. All right.

00:54:26.33
Stephen Schneider
So, um and I think you mentioned the the Tom Cruise, Ed Reckoning.

00:54:30.77
Alan Baltis
Exactly. Folks, if you haven’t seen Mission Impossible yet, you really should. If you like those kinds of thrillers at all, it’s a great one. Like all the dollars that they put into the movie were not based on stars. They were based on, it’s all on the screen.

00:54:44.42
Alan Baltis
They have fantastic, not even special effects, but like that’s really Tom Cruise hanging off of an airplane or under getting bonked around inside a sub while like torpedoes roll around. really, really amazing.

00:54:57.81
Alan Baltis
really really Well-paced, great plot. You mentioned this from last time. It really wraps up the entire ah Mission Impossible series. They make all the back references to, oh, that’s what was going on there.

00:55:07.30
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:55:10.24
Alan Baltis
That’s the villain that we thought we killed, but he’s actually still around and all that kind of cool stuff.

00:55:14.33
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:55:14.86
Alan Baltis
And it was a three hour movie, but it wasn’t checking your watch because every single it was really well paced.

00:55:19.26
Stephen Schneider
Well.

00:55:22.59
Alan Baltis
And Colleen and I both loved it. You know, we tend to now nowadays go like middle of the week during the day when there’s hardly anybody else there. But so you get the whole big enveloping Dolby Atmos experience.

00:55:31.22
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:55:34.84
Alan Baltis
I loved it. So s it’s a good tough summer movie.

00:55:36.68
Stephen Schneider
and and It is part two. So you really probably should see part one if you haven’t.

00:55:43.67
Alan Baltis
That’s right. it it It is a direct, like, it pretty much picks up where the last one left off. But how many were there?

00:55:48.95
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:55:49.74
Alan Baltis
Five or six total then. It really does make references.

00:55:51.18
Stephen Schneider
No, I think that that’s number eight.

00:55:53.47
Alan Baltis
Oh, wow. Okay. i So what a great franchise. And they actually do have, ah I don’t think it’s a giveaway, like, you know Jim Phelps, the original Mission Impossible TV show thing.

00:56:04.65
Alan Baltis
They have ways of bringing in. Well, what happened to… the Phelps family line, if you will. And so it isn’t only the movies, they actually had all kinds of, and of course, Mission Impossible, the the Lalo Schifrin theme is one of the best things ever done musically, right up there with James Bond, you know, so it,

00:56:21.05
Stephen Schneider
So,

00:56:23.76
Alan Baltis
I just, it pushed all the buttons that I wanted to get out of a Mission Impossible. Instead of being, oh, they lost the best star, so they brought in the B team and stuff like that. Tom Cruise is amazing.

00:56:34.60
Alan Baltis
And whoever wrote and directed and everything about it, just highest quality. It’s absolutely worth seeing in the theater. So you get the big screen and the big sound to really overwhelm you.

00:56:47.05
Alan Baltis
Okay.

00:56:47.12
Stephen Schneider
So I made a, ah not a huge stretch, but a little connection that I hadn’t thought of before. So the original Mission Impossible TV show had Leonard Nimoy on it.

00:56:58.52
Alan Baltis
That’s right.

00:56:58.55
Stephen Schneider
And we all know Leonard Nimoy from Star Trek.

00:57:00.74
Alan Baltis
Paris, exactly. Okay, it was a character named Paris. Anyway, yes.

00:57:04.22
Stephen Schneider
Simon Pegg was in Mission Impossible and he was also on Star Trek.

00:57:08.24
Alan Baltis
The new Star Trek, exactly. And in fact, I don’t know, you know, they, it comes down to, there’s a MacGuffin, if you will, they a drive that you have to put another piece into so that it will take, capture the entity, this AI, the Pentagon rogue.

00:57:21.24
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:57:23.08
Alan Baltis
And they made a point of that looking, like the old cassette player that was and then the the the tape within steams itself away this thing will distract self-destruct in five seconds they made a point of that even being though being a modern device it sure looked a lot like hearkening back to the very first tape player so they were very respectful and clever about how to make it so that they really they loved those movies and they showed you why and they made a new one that’s just as good and all that kind of stuff so

00:57:30.95
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:57:42.41
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:57:49.64
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Right. be Me and my buddy Reese were talking about that. He said, I never watched those because I didn’t like the first one. I’m like, well, why didn’t you like the first one?

00:57:58.08
Alan Baltis
Okay.

00:57:59.31
Stephen Schneider
now I’ll grant you the first one’s probably the more confusing plot line out of all the others. You know, I liked what they did, but it wasn’t smooth. um He said, well, because they made it all about Ethan Hunt.

00:58:12.12
Stephen Schneider
They killed the team in the first five minutes and it was all about him. He’s like, the whole reason I watched it back in the seventy s was this team and you never know which team members were going to be on it, different missions, you know, and here they kind of got rid of that.

00:58:22.81
Alan Baltis
moving

00:58:25.87
Stephen Schneider
So I never watched it. Well, I guess Shannon wants to go see the new one. So they’ve been watching all of He’s like, they they get better, you know, for an action movie and all that.

00:58:34.35
Alan Baltis
hear

00:58:34.58
Stephen Schneider
So, but I thought that was an interesting perspective that, you know, I liked that team aspect and all the different people that would be on the different combinations and they kind of killed it.

00:58:43.17
Alan Baltis
ah here Yeah, they did. you just Ving Rhames is still there. you know all the All the people that were part of the new team, like part of the reason they killed off the old team was to be able to introduce all these new guys and have it be that there was not automatically at a comfort level if we worked together before, but they had to learn to trust each other and to to respect each other and stuff like that. So um I thought, i and the danger of the Impossible Mission Force is…

00:59:08.09
Alan Baltis
that you really can die you know mean like it really isn’t hey don’t worry they’re always going to be okay at the end part of part of let’s see hellstrom’s hive you know like there’s a couple of books where it’s like game of thrones is based on well ned stark who we thought was going to be the mainstay of the series he gets it literally in the neck you know at the end of the first episode or whatever and so it it throws all that upsets that cart of expectations and i kind of like that so yeah

00:59:26.69
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:59:34.60
Stephen Schneider
I, my buddy, my other buddy, Brian was saying, well, that’s the reason i didn’t like, uh, walking dead because they just killed people off all the time. I’m like, that was kind of the point. I’m like, they killed the same people off in the comic book. Well, they, they killed all the best characters and they kept the bad ones.

00:59:52.76
Stephen Schneider
It’s like, and then that scene, you know, with Glenn, what happened with Glenn, he’s like, that killed viewership.

00:59:56.44
Alan Baltis
oh if with

00:59:58.07
Stephen Schneider
It dropped off. Nobody watched. I’m like, dude, it went for like eight more years after that. I don’t know.

01:00:03.78
Alan Baltis
You might have stopped watching, but exactly.

01:00:05.43
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I’ll i’ll grant you, i got a little, you know, long in the tooth, didn’t watch everything past the last couple seasons or so, but I wouldn’t say it died, you know,

01:00:15.10
Alan Baltis
Right.

01:00:18.18
Alan Baltis
I never watched the spin-offs until I tried Darrell Dixon, who somehow floats across the Atlantic and ends up in France, as ire very exactly.

01:00:23.42
Stephen Schneider
to Paris.

01:00:25.36
Alan Baltis
So it i’m I’m curious about that. But if I remember right, it’s on one of the TV suppliers that I don’t have a subscription to. They had like a teaser of the first episode or the first three episodes.

01:00:35.91
Stephen Schneider
Oh yeah.

01:00:36.11
Alan Baltis
I’m going to be like, all right, when I choose to go back to whichever one it is, Peacock or Paramount or or Hulu or whatever, I’ll pay the year. I’ll binge watch them so that I get them all in.

01:00:47.14
Alan Baltis
And that’s that’s how I’ll end up catching up because I just i just can’t be subscribed to 10 different, I don’t want spend $300 month on TV.

01:00:48.95
Stephen Schneider
Right.

01:00:52.16
Stephen Schneider
You can’t watch that much in a month.

01:00:53.02
Alan Baltis
So anyway.

01:00:55.51
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

01:00:55.89
Alan Baltis
no

01:00:56.53
Stephen Schneider
Especially now, like I said, I’ve got almost every weekend booked through the summer, you know,

01:00:56.64
Alan Baltis
and you

01:01:01.51
Alan Baltis
Exactly. There’s always new Star Wars. There’s always new, you know what and I mean? ah Another good BBC series that I have to watch because there are hardly they’re always of quality about the BBC mystery, etc.

01:01:12.43
Stephen Schneider
Right.

01:01:12.47
Alan Baltis
i yeah we By the way, I think I mentioned this one too. just saw the first episode of The Residence where ah murder takes place in the White House. and A great cast of quirky characters and and it really is a mystery like what happened and who did it and when and and and big stakes because it’s like a state dinner is going on on the ground floor when this happens up on the third floor so it really could be international incident and stuff.

01:01:36.42
Alan Baltis
m Just that the that good characters like Cisco and Niebuhr always used to say, the reason you watch a movie is because you want to find out what happens to people you care about. And I am curious as hell about some of these people and I am siding with them already or I’m wanting to see someone get justice because you know there might be the bad guy.

01:01:52.37
Stephen Schneider
Right.

01:01:53.32
Alan Baltis
So we and we made a point of not binge watching it. I really like, as we talked about, to see it like maybe every night, maybe every week, something that forces you will be laughed about, you know, the rookie, we have to wait each week.

01:02:01.18
Stephen Schneider
Right.

01:02:05.69
Alan Baltis
This will be one of those things I think we’ll dole out to ourselves ah one episode a night and maybe when we’ll we’ll return and finally finish the Columbos. We’re on the last season of all the Columbos. So we really, it’s kind of cool to be able to say, yep, seen every X-Files, seen every Columbo, seen it.

01:02:19.81
Alan Baltis
You know what I mean? The things that I really love, i like being able to say, and and i everyone, I watched everyone.

01:02:20.78
Stephen Schneider
right

01:02:25.47
Alan Baltis
wrung that towel out as tightly as I could. Okay.

01:02:28.41
Stephen Schneider
so So the the fifth season of The Boys should be coming out soon, and it’s a supernatural um get-together because Padalecki and what’s-his-name that played the dad and Negan on Walking Dead, they’re all on it.

01:02:36.37
Alan Baltis
You mentioned that with ACLs. Yes, exactly. Okay.

01:02:43.51
Alan Baltis
Right. Okay.

01:02:44.55
Stephen Schneider
ah But also Jensen Ackles has a new show called Countdown coming out in a couple weeks. It’s a cop show.

01:02:49.76
Alan Baltis
Interesting.

01:02:50.72
Stephen Schneider
Looks pretty good.

01:02:50.97
Alan Baltis
Okay. Okay, I’ll look for that. I’ve been taking notes here, of course, about your Vampire Weekend, Countdown, Origins. you know i i really might, like you said, it’s so cool to be here where the two biggest gaming conventions are just within a couple hours drive. So I probably will do a full day down at Origins.

01:03:09.23
Alan Baltis
just and And I don’t even know that I’m to try to choose what day to go, but just how a Thursday? How about go and then just go to the games room and spend hours wandering around the vendors and stuff like that.

01:03:18.32
Stephen Schneider
you

01:03:18.97
Alan Baltis
And…

01:03:19.74
Stephen Schneider
They got games that you can jump in on and a game rental library.

01:03:23.98
Alan Baltis
There we go thatd be i i I am missing that kind of experience now that pinball has kind of come to an end. and I haven’t been, like I said, to either Origins or Gen Con for a long time. and i And I really have always loved immersive events like that, where we’re just like, I didn’t know they were still making additions of Cosmic Encounters.

01:03:42.92
Alan Baltis
You know what mean? I can actually get two more expansion sets. i That’s a very dangerous place for my wallet. You know what I mean?

01:03:49.91
Stephen Schneider
Yes, yes, yes, yes, it is. All right, I got to get going.

01:03:53.13
Alan Baltis
Okay.

01:03:54.57
Stephen Schneider
I see emails coming in. So you too, man.

01:03:56.23
Alan Baltis
Very good. Always a pleasure. Glad you had a great weekend. We’ll see you.

01:03:59.58
Stephen Schneider
I’m glad ah we’re doing this again.

01:04:00.60
Alan Baltis
Okay.

01:04:00.94
Stephen Schneider
It’s fun.

01:04:01.61
Alan Baltis
Absolutely. Thanks, Stephen. Okay.

01:04:03.16
Stephen Schneider
Later.

01:04:03.92
Alan Baltis
Bye-bye.