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Transcript

00:00:44.45
Alan Baltis
OK. Let’s see.

00:00:46.36
Stephen Schneider
getting all set up forgotten the microphone

00:00:48.35
Alan Baltis
Let’s make sure that I got

00:00:54.41
Alan Baltis
all kinds of stuff turned off here so as to get as much memory as possible.

00:00:55.95
Stephen Schneider
all right all right yeah the the connection might have forgot how it’s supposed to work so you never know what it’ll do soft okay

00:00:59.01
Alan Baltis
don’t think that matters, but

00:01:07.29
Alan Baltis
can you hear me? You are soft. You might want to bump your volume or OK. okay

00:01:16.59
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, it’s all the way up. I’ll just lean in a little bit.

00:01:19.18
Alan Baltis
Okay, let me get the, and next you know what, if I turn my own volume up here, because I sometimes turn it down when it’s late, and I don’t want to startle Colleen.

00:01:27.07
Stephen Schneider
Right. Yeah.

00:01:31.21
Alan Baltis
Because as you know, i were watch all those guns and explosions movies.

00:01:35.72
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:01:35.76
Alan Baltis
And so there’s a lot of screaming, there’s the, you know,

00:01:39.60
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, like, yeah, there’s a big budget blockbuster special effects movie like The Notebook.

00:01:45.62
Alan Baltis
Exactly.

00:01:48.19
Stephen Schneider
So, oh, what are you wearing?

00:01:48.59
Alan Baltis
Close in.

00:01:49.95
Stephen Schneider
I mean, we’ve got multiple weeks to catch up.

00:01:52.48
Alan Baltis
So behold, the Reykjavik shirt.

00:01:54.77
Stephen Schneider
Oh, that’s awesome.

00:01:55.71
Alan Baltis
and so we we We were all over the place. you know in

00:02:00.80
Stephen Schneider
Physically this time.

00:02:01.92
Alan Baltis
yeah yeah True. um So we we, in brief, took a cruise, a transatlantic cruise, starting in Quebec City and working its way out the St. Lawrence Seaway. Do they still call it that? That’s called the St. Lawrence River.

00:02:14.28
Alan Baltis
um then did iceland ireland uh only one day in iceland unfortunately three ah days in ireland then england france and back to england and flew home so a total of 16 days and norwegian cruise line the norwegian jewel if i remember correctly um it kind of doesn’t matter you know i mean to me they’re all kind of interchangeable um but ah overall fun the boat great food great our room was fine lots of different entertainment we had um comedy and Broadway and rock and roll and hypnosis and gymnastics and all kinds of stuff, um pub quizzes and various different games to play.

00:02:51.55
Alan Baltis
And without tooting my own horn so much, Colleen and i the two of us, stood up against regularly teams of five or six and were winning.

00:03:01.48
Stephen Schneider
Nice.

00:03:01.55
Alan Baltis
So we we did okay. And um A couple weirdnesses, like we had one port canceled because of really rough seas. We had one coming back out of Dublin, maybe be Belfast, where The sea was so rough that they kept not being able to move the tenders.

00:03:18.78
Alan Baltis
Some cases you dock. In other cases, they put you on tender boats and bring you across like 50 or 80 at a time. And the sea was so rough that they couldn’t get the boat, the little boat next to the big boat to be safely level.

00:03:31.52
Alan Baltis
so like they should They needed to have like big guys just throwing people across into the hold of the ship, I guess. We ended up waiting, no lie, between like five and midnight.

00:03:42.64
Alan Baltis
waiting for them to get the right boats and the right equipment and and the seas to calm down a little bit and stuff like that and it was and that night we missed like the second time for the magician and all kinds of stuff so safety was paramount they made that all that was okay but that also when we missed cork the next day because of the rough seas as well so we didn’t get to kiss the blarney stone it uh it honestly we we were ready you know

00:04:05.78
Stephen Schneider
I was going ask you about that. Colin did that.

00:04:10.79
Alan Baltis
I think we’ve mentioned now that we’re coming up on the end of our um um United States state capitals tour, we have only one to go, Honolulu coming up next year. Now we’ve started talk about doing the objects of power tour.

00:04:23.10
Alan Baltis
And so we’ve already seen like the constitution and the bill and the declaration of independence and the Magna Carta, but, and we’ve seen the crown jewels. um we But we want to see like a Gutenberg Bible. We want to see the Book of Kells.

00:04:36.52
Alan Baltis
And it doesn’t have to only be small things. We wanted we we did see the Book of Kells. We did see the Eiffel Tower, which I guess that, the pyramids, you know, various different like Notre Dame Cathedral.

00:04:47.13
Alan Baltis
They kind of count as like something that everyone should see. And that like as you’re near it, there’s just so much… humanity’s achievement and significant changes in history and all that kind of stuff.

00:04:58.97
Alan Baltis
So we got to go back, I guess. Oh no, to Ireland. My Bonnie Colleen is going to have to go back to Ireland. But Cork was also the place that we had the best chance of finding like distant relatives of her second cousins and stuff like that.

00:05:11.02
Alan Baltis
And we hadn’t been able to find anything online to set that up. So thank God, because all I would have been on the phone saying, you know, sorry, Patty, we won’t be able to join you in the pub for a pint because we’re delayed and even been canceled.

00:05:23.30
Alan Baltis
Overall, though, yeah very it was a good cruise, but it wasn’t the best we’ve been on. The Valter cruise was much more so much that we we didn’t realize how cool it would be or things we really wanted to see, and they turned out well.

00:05:35.97
Alan Baltis
In this case, like we went on the… um the big photo tour, supposedly, of Iceland. And so we thought, well, they’ll take us to, like, the top half dozen things in six hours, and we’ll get a picture of, here’s where the mantle comes through the crust.

00:05:50.11
Alan Baltis
Here’s where the Blue Lagoon is. And instead, it was one particular peninsula that had some volcanic venting and cool stuff, but it was nowhere near the, like, do you want to see in Iceland?

00:06:01.40
Alan Baltis
The Northern Lights. You want to see like volcanism, just not be in it, you know, the kind stuff.

00:06:06.27
Stephen Schneider
right

00:06:07.41
Alan Baltis
And so it but it, it, I don’t know, maybe a rating of six, seven, eight. We had some real nice highlights, but it sure wasn’t just, you know, goggling, goggling over how much fun we had and how cool the places that we went to were.

00:06:22.81
Alan Baltis
So.

00:06:23.57
Stephen Schneider
And didn’t you go on the Baltic cruise though with a bunch of friends? Because that makes a difference.

00:06:27.38
Alan Baltis
Yeah. It really does. The Baltic cruise was like 40 or 50 of us, if I remember right. you know Beth had organized, there’s ah there’s a Hell’s M’s chapter called Party at Sea, where she’s really been able to arrange like a safari of Africa. And the Baltic cruise was the first one that we went on, but she had done a trip of the one in Africa was not only safari, but also going to the pyramids and Petra and stuff like that.

00:06:51.12
Alan Baltis
And I think there’s one coming up still for all over the Southeast Asia. And so, you know, depending on timing and money and and how much interest we have in it, like I would love to have gone on the Australia, New Zealand one, Southeast Asia, besides like Angkor Wat, I’m being a jerk here.

00:07:09.12
Alan Baltis
I’m so Western that there’s not that much. Oh, I’ve always wanted to go there. Maybe the Taj Mahal, Those are the kinds of things, but I don’t really, I’m not a lay on the beach kind of guy. Neither is Colleen.

00:07:19.97
Alan Baltis
So we really don’t care about going to Bali and seeing the crystal blue seas, which means like, oh, great, more sun reflecting. to Give me more allanoma. You know what I mean? We don’t we don’t like those kinds of things.

00:07:31.52
Alan Baltis
So we’ll just have to be more careful about like not only just getting on the cruise in the first place, but reading all the excursion descriptions and like, well, it sounds good, but me, I need to go online and see who else took that excursion and find out what’s really going on.

00:07:47.57
Alan Baltis
Because half the excursions we went on were disappointing in some way. Too much time on the bus for the payoff of where we were going to. um Warneski, hop hop off bus and various different cities would seem to be the best for us.

00:07:59.70
Alan Baltis
Chris Warneski, Ph.D.: Because we have our own list of where we want to go and we’re willing to walk between various different places and if you just kind of synchronize with the bus schedule.

00:08:03.16
Stephen Schneider
Okay.

00:08:07.34
Alan Baltis
Chris Warneski, Ph.D.: spend no time waiting and much more time doing and seeing and that was not the case with the long bus rights that we took we went to Paris from lahar, which is on the coast, and it was like ah between a two and a three hour bus ride each way and then we got like three and a half hours in Paris.

00:08:24.11
Alan Baltis
So we did five to six travel and zooming around Paris. We get took a ride on the Seine and we saw Notre Dame um and saw the Eiffel Tower. But you know what i mean? You don’t, you kind of want to like, when do I get to sit down and have a baguette? And people watch on the Champs-Elysées.

00:08:40.05
Alan Baltis
We just, everything was just vroom, vroom, vroom. How much are we going to jam into these three and a half hours?

00:08:45.53
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:08:46.58
Alan Baltis
Anyway, so

00:08:48.03
Stephen Schneider
My, my aunt went to Iceland last year. um Now she offered to take my mother and completely pay for my mother. But my mother said, no, I’d feel too guilty and blah, blah, blah. And I’m like, are you stupid?

00:09:01.57
Stephen Schneider
My aunt has plenty of money, know, 1200, $1,500, 2000, whatever, her, I’m like, go have fun. Take, no, wouldn’t.

00:09:08.22
Alan Baltis
yeah

00:09:08.34
Stephen Schneider
like, Oh my God. you know to her i’m like go have fun think no i wouldn’t i’m like oh my god But my but part of it, I think, also is my mother does get a little tired of traveling with my aunt because her focus is always shopping and shops, which, you know, is fine.

00:09:22.92
Alan Baltis
Oh boy.

00:09:24.51
Stephen Schneider
You know, you’re in Paris, you’re in wherever. But if you go to Iceland, that wouldn’t be my first choice. I want to see the the icebergs. I want to see the snow. I want to see the trolls. You know, where’s the troll in the forest, you know?

00:09:35.37
Alan Baltis
Exactly, the little troll donors and everything, that’s right. You know, we did our sheriff shopping. As you know, we have this thing about putting ornaments on our Christmas tree from all the places that we’ve been. And luckily, happily, we were able to very easily to find a place that had something that was a good ornament that was representative of the place we were going.

00:09:52.63
Alan Baltis
without spending hours looking for them. you know Another sad thing about not going to Cork is where that’s where Culley really wanted to get an Irish sweater, one of those big cable, you know I work at the sea you know kind of sweater.

00:10:02.98
Stephen Schneider
Oh, yeah.

00:10:04.41
Alan Baltis
And so we we got, don’t know, t-shirts and and various different other tchotchkes. We don’t tend to be tchotchke people. We don’t get something just to prove we were there. So luckily that’s, again, neither one of us.

00:10:17.26
Alan Baltis
It’s kind of funny to be in another country where you’re looking, like you go to Paris. It’s like, well, every every book here is in French. I guess I’m not shopping for books here. You know what I mean? Which is a constant thing for me, usually. And it was okay to be like, I guess I’m not getting it in Icelandic. I guess I’m not.

00:10:33.80
Alan Baltis
You know, the places that we went to, that those things didn’t do me any good except as a you know, hey, I’d like to have a comic book. I actually have a like a Hulk comic book in Spanish, Le Mole, as I recall. Maybe it’s Le Mole, I’m not sure.

00:10:45.57
Alan Baltis
but So that kind of thing, we seem to be again colleen and are wonderfully synchronized in terms of it isn’t like okay you do your thing and i’ll do my thing or we’ll do it together while the other one patiently waits then instead we kind of like a lot of those same things a little bit of literature tourism a little bit of science a little bit of just architecture and beauty and like look what Honestly, if we write a book about this, it’s going to be, look where we are.

00:11:10.44
Alan Baltis
Every time we’ve come to like the summit, like you walk up a mountain, you get to the top, and just it’s magnificent, and you earned it. You know and I mean? When you run around Paris, instead of just being on a tour bus, it’s kind of cool to like walk around a corner and say,

00:11:25.58
Alan Baltis
there’s Notre Dame. and You know, yeah things appear that were blocked by buildings before. The first time you see the Eiffel Tower, and it’s not hard. Paris, you can see the Eiffel Tower from pretty much everywhere.

00:11:36.29
Alan Baltis
But then we’re going along the Champs-Élysées, and you get the first glimpse of the Arc de Triomphe. And it’s just very cool to have those discoveries and that like, and then you’re walking a little bit faster because you’re anticipating getting close. And I want to see those the sculptures that are on the side of it.

00:11:51.85
Alan Baltis
Paris, London, probably the most beautiful cities you’ve ever been in where everywhere you look is a photo opportunity. The old architecture, everything is beautifully sculpted and gilt and they multiple, not just generations, but centuries of different things.

00:12:06.89
Alan Baltis
You have a really modern, the Gherkin, the big pickle building in London right next to something that would survive the London fire and stuff like that.

00:12:14.63
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:12:14.86
Alan Baltis
So we really love that kind of stuff and just being agog over all the things we’re getting a chance to see. I said, you know, we’re not made of money, but we’re doing okay so that nowadays it’s where want to get a baguette?

00:12:28.48
Alan Baltis
Of course you can get a baguette. You know, $5, $5, none of that is going to do it. Even like, how much is this ornament? Man, if it’s not made out of sterling silver, I think we can afford any ornament that we find, you know? So it’s very nice to have that.

00:12:42.54
Alan Baltis
but We did. I’ve done cheaper travel. You know, like when you’re a kid traveling in hostels or when we were first doing our road trips, it’s like, how about somewhere for lunch? Because we want to have a nice dinner. Now we’re okay that we really get to just like, we want want to see this exhibit within the museum that has a little extra charge.

00:13:00.07
Alan Baltis
Sure. When are we going to get a chance to see more Monet than and we’ve ever seen before or whatever else it might be? So, so far, so good. um How was your cool trip to Chicago?

00:13:11.07
Alan Baltis
A wedding and such? What lot of times?

00:13:12.38
Stephen Schneider
No, Jason, for his 18th birthday, we went to Soldier Field ah to see Avenged Sevenfold in Drowning Pool.

00:13:16.35
Alan Baltis
Ah. Excellent.

00:13:21.74
Stephen Schneider
um

00:13:22.48
Alan Baltis
excellent

00:13:23.27
Stephen Schneider
So I’ve really only ever been into Chicago for Weems. So you drive into the hotel, you stay for four or five days, you drive out. And, you know, the traffic’s been rough, but it’s usually non-traffic times.

00:13:35.91
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, well, with all the construction and the times we hit it, I’m like, oh, dear Lord, if I never come back to Chicago, i would be fine. It was.

00:13:44.70
Alan Baltis
And going to Wrigley Field is not just get off the expressway. You’re on city streets for a significant amount of time, and everybody is happy to cut you off.

00:13:51.53
Stephen Schneider
And the construction. so we were 20 miles out from where Soldier Field is at the hotel. And it was a 55 minute drive because of all the slowdowns.

00:14:04.42
Stephen Schneider
And, and I’ve said this, I’ve got a theory about our culture that when Americans want something, when they want to do something or there’s something they want, they do exactly everything, the opposite of what they should do to get it.

00:14:19.83
Stephen Schneider
I want this line. I want to get there on time and go faster. So everybody zip around and cut each other off. So it slows us all down.

00:14:26.77
Alan Baltis
Instead of a nice zipper function where everybody just takes turns and you maximize the throughput.

00:14:28.73
Stephen Schneider
Yes.

00:14:31.88
Alan Baltis
We have, I regularly do the thing where I stay in the left lane until you have to merge, but people are already merging into the right lane like a mile back. And then they like close in and don’t let you in.

00:14:42.67
Alan Baltis
It’s like, have you never seen any of the Mythbusters shows about this is the way to do it. Here’s the way to board an airplane.

00:14:47.74
Stephen Schneider
and

00:14:49.01
Alan Baltis
Here’s the way to do traffic.

00:14:49.85
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:14:50.37
Alan Baltis
Oh, well.

00:14:50.42
Stephen Schneider
And part of that though, is you get the idiots in the big trucks that will push all, they’ll push in front of you instead of like five people would let you in and you could go, they have to push and then everyone’s laying on their horns to get mad. So people have gotten to the point they’re like, well, screw all of you.

00:15:05.38
Stephen Schneider
I’ve waited. You can wait. yeah And the worst.

00:15:07.44
Alan Baltis
that happens too.

00:15:08.52
Stephen Schneider
So here was the worst. This, I mean, this, honestly, we had a really good time, even with the problems we had, this could have made it horrible. we were driving to get to, they had a jazz fest and we were going to go check out the jazz fest.

00:15:22.71
Stephen Schneider
so we we’re driving towards there, trying to find someplace to park.

00:15:23.08
Alan Baltis
Okay.

00:15:26.09
Stephen Schneider
And it was under 50 levels of roads. We’re like in the subterranean basements with the Morlocks.

00:15:30.59
Alan Baltis
Right.

00:15:33.38
Alan Baltis
but Monroe Garage and others are like that. They really built down instead of up.

00:15:37.11
Stephen Schneider
Yes.

00:15:37.60
Alan Baltis
They have the garage. It’s okay.

00:15:38.83
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:15:39.14
Alan Baltis
Oh, my

00:15:39.64
Stephen Schneider
So people were turning the head this way um, um their light turned red. And a second later, mine turned green. I started to go.

00:15:49.89
Stephen Schneider
Somebody went roaring through the red light and pulled in front of me and stopped because the line was backed up and he stopped in the intersection, literally intro from my bumper. I’m slamming on the brakes and laying that my horn, he goes and flips me off.

00:16:00.69
Alan Baltis
God.

00:16:04.07
Stephen Schneider
And then I’m stuck because the truck behind me was coming up and I couldn’t back up. He couldn’t back up. We couldn’t get around because I couldn’t maneuver.

00:16:12.47
Alan Baltis
So you’re going to be in the intersection when it turns red.

00:16:12.55
Stephen Schneider
so then

00:16:15.11
Stephen Schneider
right. The lights change.

00:16:15.61
Alan Baltis
and for

00:16:16.11
Stephen Schneider
And then people are coming up and honking at me.

00:16:16.42
Alan Baltis
Right.

00:16:18.03
Stephen Schneider
And I’m like, honestly, i thought, you know what?

00:16:19.76
Alan Baltis
I didn’t do it.

00:16:22.88
Stephen Schneider
i bet if I just like floor it, I could push his car enough out of the way to get through. And you know, my car is not exactly new. So, and I, I, that could have set us off, but it, you know, we, we said, forget it. They’re idiots.

00:16:35.69
Stephen Schneider
We were in a, 27 level, whatever, underground parking garage trying to find our way out. We found where all the homeless people sleep.

00:16:41.04
Alan Baltis
okay

00:16:43.08
Stephen Schneider
So, you know, that’s interesting.

00:16:43.22
Alan Baltis
Oh, boy.

00:16:45.28
Stephen Schneider
But we did, we started to, we found a way out, started walking and ran out of places to walk. So we’re basically like, we’re kind of stuck. We have nowhere to go. We had to go all the way back.

00:16:54.36
Alan Baltis
Oh, no.

00:16:54.54
Stephen Schneider
i

00:16:55.04
Alan Baltis
And there’s not like a sign that’s saying exit this way.

00:16:55.24
Stephen Schneider
it It was, oh God, it was horrible.

00:16:58.16
Alan Baltis
It’s more like the Morlock tunnels.

00:16:59.60
Stephen Schneider
As far as that, we were like, just give us, give us some better signage.

00:17:02.21
Alan Baltis
Yeah.

00:17:04.78
Stephen Schneider
But it was all good. The jazz festival was fun. ah We didn’t know what we could do with the time we had because the concert was the next day. ah so we went and walked around by the aquarium and stuff and then saw the field and people were already lining up like five hours early to get in on the floor.

00:17:21.24
Alan Baltis
Oh, okay.

00:17:22.52
Stephen Schneider
And Jason and ah Johnny were like, hey, that’s what we want to do because we don’t want to be the last people in.

00:17:28.67
Alan Baltis
And be way in the back.

00:17:28.93
Stephen Schneider
if for

00:17:29.77
Alan Baltis
Soldier Field is 80,000 capacity place.

00:17:29.97
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:17:31.99
Alan Baltis
You don’t want to be back in 79,000 row. All right. All right.

00:17:34.43
Stephen Schneider
Yes.

00:17:34.76
Alan Baltis
all right

00:17:35.49
Stephen Schneider
So that was our day of the concert, sitting around, trying to not get sunburned, waiting for the line to finally move, which was okay. We were okay with that. You know, the, the focus was the concert, but the night before I went to get pizza and my breaks gave out in the pizza parking lot, not just, you know, simple, the break line gone,

00:17:46.16
Alan Baltis
right

00:17:51.54
Alan Baltis
Yes.

00:17:54.94
Alan Baltis
Oh, fuck.

00:18:00.87
Alan Baltis
Oh, man.

00:18:01.18
Stephen Schneider
That was not the best experience, but we talked about it called AAA.

00:18:04.38
Alan Baltis
So now you’re trying to call AAA or whatever you have and ah right.

00:18:07.84
Stephen Schneider
ah ah Well, no, I drove it back to the hotel. It was like late at night and I was doing like five miles an hour with the flashes on and laying on the brakes as as it slowly stopped.

00:18:19.19
Alan Baltis
Right.

00:18:19.66
Stephen Schneider
ah You could see when I pulled into the parking lot that there were drips from the brake fluid as I hit the brakes.

00:18:25.16
Alan Baltis
Draining out. Oh, man.

00:18:26.85
Stephen Schneider
So, and then it was Monday, which was Labor Day.

00:18:26.95
Alan Baltis
Okay.

00:18:30.09
Stephen Schneider
Nobody’s open. we and We were supposed to go to the concert and then leave the next morning, but we have no working car.

00:18:31.03
Alan Baltis
Right, right.

00:18:36.55
Stephen Schneider
So we Ubered, which with all the traffic and the parking, I said, you know what?

00:18:38.23
Alan Baltis
Okay.

00:18:41.03
Stephen Schneider
We probably should have just Ubered anyway. Pay the cost. It’s so much better, you know?

00:18:45.57
Alan Baltis
Right.

00:18:46.02
Stephen Schneider
Um, and But I was talking about, I’m like, you know what? All this traffic we’ve had, all these stupid, crazy drivers, what if we had been driving and my brakes gave out?

00:18:56.23
Stephen Schneider
we We could have been dead. Others could have been dead. We could have held up traffic for hours with an accident. So I think based on my karma, that was the best my guardian angels could do. They’re like, look,

00:19:09.41
Stephen Schneider
You’re going to lose your breaks. It’s going to be Chicago, not at home, but you’ll be in a pizza parking lot and you’re not going to die.

00:19:15.91
Alan Baltis
Right.

00:19:17.42
Stephen Schneider
That’s the best deal we could work. You got to deal with it. So I was like, you know what? Thank you, guardian angels. And then, and then I got a meme sent to me that said, I don’t have guardian angels. I’ve got drunk raccoons.

00:19:28.28
Alan Baltis
but

00:19:30.22
Stephen Schneider
So that was a, yeah.

00:19:31.87
Alan Baltis
Wow.

00:19:32.63
Stephen Schneider
But so in the last month I’ve had to get, yes.

00:19:34.23
Alan Baltis
I’m very glad you’re safe. You know I mean? Because I have actually no lie coming back from a canoeing trip at Turkey Run, going back to University of Illinois. I had my brakes fail in traffic, like you’re saying.

00:19:44.89
Alan Baltis
And I ended up, so as not to like hit other drivers, hit the busload of orphans that I could, I plowed into a traffic signal and knocked it over and had like sparks coming out from underneath. Like, is this where now it ignites my gas tank like a bad movie?

00:19:59.41
Alan Baltis
It was the most exciting thing that happened in Champaign that day. So the cops were all like gathered around while waiting for the and it, there’s nothing more when like terrifying than when your foot goes to the floor, when you’re like, oh my, and I was using my,

00:20:10.100
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:20:13.97
Alan Baltis
emergency brake and scraping and I could hear, you know, I did everything I could to slow down. And even then I could not absorb, get rid of all my momentum. And luckily I did not anybody else. I just hurt my gremlin.

00:20:24.55
Alan Baltis
I had a gremlin at the time.

00:20:25.68
Stephen Schneider
Oh, wow.

00:20:25.92
Alan Baltis
Yeah.

00:20:26.24
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:20:26.42
Alan Baltis
Yeah.

00:20:27.29
Stephen Schneider
but Yeah. That’s, you know, I was like, Hey, this is good.

00:20:28.45
Alan Baltis
yeah

00:20:29.71
Stephen Schneider
as a parking lot. The last time I lost breaks, cause this happened to me once before years ago, I was in long-term parking at an airport. I come back from a trip and it’s like 1230 at night and I go and it goes to the floor and I’m like, okay, it’s January.

00:20:40.13
Alan Baltis
yeah

00:20:44.08
Stephen Schneider
It’s 10 degrees out. And I’m at, you know, I’m like, I didn’t want to call and wake people up to come and get me and stuff. So I slept in the car until like six, seven in the morning, freezing my butt off, but it made for a good Christmas present because my sister got me blankets to leave in the car for Christmas.

00:20:52.70
Alan Baltis
Oh, man. Wow.

00:21:01.39
Alan Baltis
yeah

00:21:02.70
Stephen Schneider
ah

00:21:02.95
Alan Baltis
You only need to have that happen once before you get really good about blankets, water, road flares. You know what i mean? The whole emergency set.

00:21:10.21
Stephen Schneider
Right, right.

00:21:10.78
Alan Baltis
So, okay.

00:21:11.97
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. So, you know we made it, we survived. It was a good concert. So all all good, but man, I’ll tell you, I’m telling this to everybody, anyone listening.

00:21:16.48
Alan Baltis
Okay. Good for you.

00:21:23.23
Stephen Schneider
I am not trusting crest Mount Hyundai in Bedford ah because this in the last month I’ve had to replace the gas tank and it’s only six. I’ve only had the car six months so from now.

00:21:35.79
Stephen Schneider
I’ve had to ah get brake pads and rotors, which is fine.

00:21:37.01
Alan Baltis
Oh, man.

00:21:39.35
Stephen Schneider
That happens. But within a few months of buying it, it’s kind of like, and then a whole hard brake line, ah you know, which costs an hour 1500 bucks. So I’m like,

00:21:48.10
Alan Baltis
Yeah, that’s, yeah I mean, you can’t invoke the lemon law because if you bought it used, I think that’s, but still, that’s a lot of crap to go wrong.

00:21:54.81
Stephen Schneider
Not to mention, I’ve got a check engine light on from some sensors.

00:21:55.65
Alan Baltis
man.

00:21:58.62
Stephen Schneider
um in ah oh Oh, better yet. You know what I realized?

00:22:03.73
Alan Baltis
Yeah.

00:22:04.24
Stephen Schneider
all that I understand people, you know if you make comments, well, that’s all on you. You buy it used as is. i get that. But my side view mirrors are duct taped on. Or not duct tape, electrical tape.

00:22:16.75
Stephen Schneider
I didn’t realize it until I bumped something and tried to shift the mirror, and it won’t.

00:22:19.21
Alan Baltis
And it gave a little wobble. Oh,

00:22:23.21
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, so Crestmount Hyundai, don’t bother. you know I’m recommending not going there.

00:22:28.62
Alan Baltis
It is just as important to give dis-recommendations as recommendations because there really seem to be some places that as a as a brand, as as a how they do business, it’s skating on the edge all the time.

00:22:40.90
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:22:41.38
Alan Baltis
And oh I’m so sorry. Thank God it wasn’t like, don’t know, losing breaks when you’re on the edge of a cliff or something terrible.

00:22:50.10
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, I might have been driving through those stupid curved hills in West Virginia.

00:22:55.20
Alan Baltis
Oh, man, honestly, just so I i’ll remember that for Crestwood, we’ve had none of that matters. what whenever we’ve had we haven’t had i haven’t had a disaster in a long time where it really was life risking and stuff like that you know the worst that we ever did was take the mochi dugway and my car responded just fine it was just what have i done once we got onto this thing you know that was the one with the the packed gravel switchbacks down the side of a cliff colleen i think really hurt her shoulder with how much she was hanging on to the safety strap because

00:23:27.99
Stephen Schneider
but Because the stronger you hold it, you’ll be better going down a cliff.

00:23:32.15
Alan Baltis
Yeah, but you know, yeah, the mind is not operating. What’s operating is your body is like, get me out here.

00:23:38.14
Stephen Schneider
yeah but How many times did you hit the invisible brakes on her side?

00:23:42.34
Alan Baltis
It was all of that. And I was so careful. I put it in, you know, double low.

00:23:47.27
Stephen Schneider
And you got people behind you beeping at because you’re not going fast enough.

00:23:47.71
Alan Baltis
Yeah. Luckily, it wouldn you one of the joys of doing things in the off-season kind of and midweek and stuff is that we didn’t have any of that. We only met one car on the way coming up that was actually where we could pass each other in one of the pair pins instead of having to like pass and have maybe one tire from somebody go out in the midair or something terrible or like lose the the side mirror I was scraping on the clip side because we had…

00:24:12.66
Stephen Schneider
Yes.

00:24:14.72
Alan Baltis
All those images that you’re like, I’m prepared to do whatever is necessary. And then it was just a matter of take it slow, take it slow. So I’m glad it was worth it. you know We’re about to drive to Weird al you know tomorrow, and that’s like a five-hour drive. Kalamazoo or Grand Rapids, I think where we’re going.

00:24:31.89
Alan Baltis
And like you know I don’t know, for a two three-hour show, but we’re trying to make the best of it. We’re going to go to stop by Bronner’s and various other things in Michigan.

00:24:38.38
Stephen Schneider
oh

00:24:38.60
Alan Baltis
It just is when we had to miss… the one here at Blossom, I just couldn’t do it.

00:24:42.37
Stephen Schneider
Right. Yes.

00:24:43.55
Alan Baltis
I love him and he only tours like every five to 10 years. So you went to see the Blossom show. What’d you think?

00:24:49.43
Stephen Schneider
yeah

00:24:49.62
Alan Baltis
Was it good, good, good?

00:24:50.74
Stephen Schneider
it well It was, I mean, we, me and Colin together have seen him five or six times and I’ve seen him three or four on top of that. um So his last album was long ago, like 2016, like 10 years.

00:25:01.70
Stephen Schneider
And he toured for that album and then he wasn’t go tour, but everyone was so, Oh my God, we need more Al. And he’s toured a couple of times, but the last tour we went on was the self indulgent tour. So it was every song you’ve never heard him play live, like hardly any hits.

00:25:18.40
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:25:18.48
Alan Baltis
we We actually drove to Pittsburgh for that because we couldn’t miss that, that it was it was all of his acoustics or like you said, not the parodies, but his own songs with One More Minute and all that stuff that I really love.

00:25:25.17
Stephen Schneider
Yes.

00:25:27.83
Alan Baltis
So, okay.

00:25:27.94
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. So the show was good. i mean, it was a Weird Al concert with ah costume changes and, you know, lots of good songs.

00:25:34.68
Alan Baltis
Right.

00:25:37.12
Stephen Schneider
they They have a couple songs they throw in that we looked it up that is different at different shows. So for us, they played You Can Call Me Al by Simon.

00:25:42.14
Alan Baltis
Interesting. Okay.

00:25:46.27
Alan Baltis
Very good.

00:25:46.31
Stephen Schneider
So ah that was pretty easy. He’s like, you know what? People never know if they call me, you know weird or weird hour.

00:25:52.26
Alan Baltis
That’s

00:25:52.37
Stephen Schneider
you can So here, let me clear it up for you. And they played You Can Call Me Al. So that was good. um

00:25:57.26
Alan Baltis
great.

00:25:57.92
Stephen Schneider
You know, and it again, kudos, man. That’s the same band he’s had since the 80s. those And those guys play every style of music, you know?

00:26:05.04
Alan Baltis
Absolutely. i mean we that but when i When I talk about one of the best bands ever, they really can do everything.

00:26:10.80
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:26:10.91
Alan Baltis
and And they used to talk about like if you could get an Alice Cooper’s band, there were certain people that were known for it. They have not necessarily a band. They have hired guns. But they were the guys that you bring in the Steve Vise and the Wadi Wachtels and stuff like that, where they were just…

00:26:25.58
Alan Baltis
Jackson Brown was another one that whoever he had on his tours with him were the best guys you could get for that kind of music. And Al can do every kind of music. So it’s just amazing.

00:26:33.73
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:26:34.87
Alan Baltis
That’s wild.

00:26:35.57
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:26:35.75
Alan Baltis
Okay.

00:26:36.33
Stephen Schneider
It’s a great show and pity or puddles, the pity clown. Uh, we didn’t know what to expect from him.

00:26:40.42
Alan Baltis
Right.

00:26:43.02
Stephen Schneider
ah you know, ah we, I had been like, Oh, too bad. not emo Phillips, which I think you’re going to go see.

00:26:49.18
Alan Baltis
Right.

00:26:49.41
Stephen Schneider
Um, but we enjoyed him. He was funny. He was good. ah

00:26:53.83
Alan Baltis
Does he have like a deep bass voice? I think I’ve seen a couple of videos where he’s like operatic almost.

00:26:57.88
Stephen Schneider
Yes.

00:26:58.67
Alan Baltis
Right?

00:26:58.67
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. We were like, wow, this is not what I expected, but it’s all like tongue in cheek, depressing songs, you know?

00:26:59.20
Alan Baltis
Okay.

00:27:06.09
Alan Baltis
Okay.

00:27:06.69
Stephen Schneider
So, and he does some fun stuff with, uh, people in that. So it’s enjoyable. I think, I think doing a full, like two hour concert with him, I’d be like, oh, come on, I’m ready to go.

00:27:17.85
Stephen Schneider
But the 45 minutes we had was like, perfect, you know?

00:27:21.39
Alan Baltis
Interesting. umm I’m looking forward to that because I’ve watched videos. I’ve never seen him live, but we’re going to that. And as you mentioned, we’re about to see Emo Phillips and Tim Cavanaugh opening for him.

00:27:30.34
Stephen Schneider
Nice.

00:27:30.41
Alan Baltis
and And, you know having been to a couple of Weird Al conventions or other, the the Fump in Chicago, the Funny Music Project, you just get so so many good guys. This is the place that they’re going to play. You know what I mean? Wherever their opportunity is to not only play, but to sell all the CDs to a discerning audience.

00:27:46.28
Alan Baltis
So we’ve like… um John Paravonian, Rob Paravonian, I could start naming him. It’s really a delight to come away from there, not only having seen what you’ve seen, but like have a dozen CDs that you’re going to listen to.

00:27:59.09
Alan Baltis
And like, man, Stephen Lynch has so many great songs that he’ll also only see me on the LD tours every 10 years or something. So whenever we’ve seen him, he’s not a big guy, does the House of Blues.

00:28:09.90
Alan Baltis
But I have never seen a guy that that had a better rapport with the audience for he knows everybody is there, like they know his music and they’re going to love it. And his chatter in between is not only just the canned stuff you hear the same at each show.

00:28:23.21
Alan Baltis
really It seems to be an ongoing conversation. And what you just said about Weird Al playing various different songs, I don’t think he goes out there. He must have some kind of idea of a set list. But he just like, so what’s the mood in the room tonight? And then he kind of caters each show to that.

00:28:38.45
Alan Baltis
I just, I love comedy music because it’s not an easy thing to do.

00:28:42.92
Stephen Schneider
No.

00:28:43.15
Alan Baltis
To be like witty in three minutes. You know, if you ever see Tim Gavinaw on the Bob and Tom show, that’s here.

00:28:47.84
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Yeah.

00:28:48.53
Alan Baltis
It’s just, he’s, it’s very cool to be that prolific that can come up with the news of the day and all things that are worth talking about and just, and all the different, like it can’t be the same guitar strumming for every single song.

00:29:01.63
Alan Baltis
So to make ditties, to make catchy things again and again and again, it’s I just love people that have that, that have that song craft in them. You know what I mean? I’m going to make a good three minute thing.

00:29:11.85
Stephen Schneider
yeah

00:29:13.22
Alan Baltis
So.

00:29:13.60
Stephen Schneider
So one of the fun things you’ll see at the concert and be prepared because I was like, uh, um, the, the bassist and the guitarist for weird Al have like some solo stuff and they were on sale at the merch tent, but on USB sticks.

00:29:31.25
Alan Baltis
Actually, I’ve gotten that a couple of times now. Like at Progstock, which I think I mentioned I go to, they’ll have people that like, here’s our entire catalog for 80 bucks. And it’s like, well, that’s a lot of money.

00:29:42.80
Alan Baltis
But if that’s 10 albums, that’s pretty good per CD.

00:29:44.88
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:29:46.17
Alan Baltis
As you know, I have a thing about it.

00:29:47.08
Stephen Schneider
Right. Just $1 over your price limit.

00:29:49.26
Alan Baltis
Exactly. i I really have. Have I mentioned that I’ve kind of broken that?

00:29:54.35
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:29:54.65
Alan Baltis
Nowadays, I don’t want to wait three years to get when the new Jethro Tull album finally goes on sale. I like give it for 15. Give it to me. I’ll do it. Find it on Amazon or whatever. So, okay.

00:30:06.57
Alan Baltis
It is a cool thing to have. Like, that’s such a, compris mean, since the iPods first came out, The fact that you could fit so much music into something that’s the size of a pack of gum is one of those ongoing miracles.

00:30:18.96
Alan Baltis
Like if aliens landed and they want to see how civilized are you, I got a lifetime’s worth of music in something that is this. It’s one of my fingers.

00:30:27.71
Stephen Schneider
Right, right.

00:30:29.04
Alan Baltis
You know what I mean?

00:30:29.70
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:30:30.21
Alan Baltis
That’s an amazing achievement.

00:30:30.44
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Colin got a new MP3 player, which they still have. You know, a lot of people just use their phone, but we have the CDs and I don’t like tying up my phone ah necessarily because it’s doing the mapping and whatever else.

00:30:43.89
Stephen Schneider
And he got this really nice MP3 player that’ll hold like 15,000 songs or something like that. And it does not just MP3s, but like AUG and FLAC and some of the other variants.

00:30:55.46
Stephen Schneider
So, and I said, with all my driving back and forth to Baltimore and halfway to Baltimore and all these events I’m going to, I’m thinking of getting a nice dedicated MP3 player and just throwing everything and audio books and, yeah whatever else.

00:30:55.72
Alan Baltis
Exactly.

00:31:09.31
Alan Baltis
That’s right. And every car nowadays has a USB port so that, you know I mean, you’re able to to get on.

00:31:12.76
Stephen Schneider
Right. Oh yeah. Yeah. that With the the nice screens. I had to show my mother how to do that. You know, you know, she always got the ah GPS once she learned how to use it, got a dedicated GPS. It does the mapping and I showed her, well, you got it built in on your phone. And she was nervous about it. I showed her, look maps, put it in the address.

00:31:33.19
Stephen Schneider
Here it is right here on your screen. And it talks to you.

00:31:35.08
Alan Baltis
Right. And yeah, and this big, not little tiny phone, you know, exactly.

00:31:37.74
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:31:39.26
Alan Baltis
That’s great.

00:31:39.44
Stephen Schneider
And then, you know, I showed her, she has Spotify. She never uses it. And I showed her, look, here’s the songs you like. You can pull it up and play it. You know, so trying to show her some of this stuff.

00:31:47.67
Alan Baltis
Right. That’s right. I hope that whenever a little bit of nervousness, trepidation gets passed over by like, wow, I can hear Englebert Humperdinck wherever I go. know what I mean?

00:31:58.15
Alan Baltis
People have their things and that’s…

00:31:58.95
Stephen Schneider
I’ve been jonesing for that.

00:32:04.35
Alan Baltis
i We still have dedicated GPS for much of the same reasons. I don’t like tying up my phone and and whatever the form factor is and stuff like that. We currently have Garmins. For while we had, bear with me, tea. You know, it doesn’t matter.

00:32:18.100
Alan Baltis
Garmins are the best thing out there nowadays.

00:32:19.91
Stephen Schneider
um Tom Tom.

00:32:21.17
Alan Baltis
Thank you, Tom Toms. And for… how it retains your recent destinations and how it really like now it’s voice activated and it gets it right two thirds of the time. Sometimes it’s amazing to be like, I’m trying to go to Clegg Road and like, it’ll try everything except spelled Clegg U as you know.

00:32:37.58
Alan Baltis
and And so it’s like, how how much do I have to then cater to the machine? Take me to, you know, 960 Clegg U Road. And then it sometimes gets it. So i I just like that that’s a dedicated thing that I can glance at and everything is, they really put a lot of ergonomics into,

00:32:55.48
Alan Baltis
like it tells you what lane to be in on an expressway.

00:32:58.77
Stephen Schneider
Yes.

00:32:59.58
Alan Baltis
It it signals what’s coming up, know, you’re going to turn right or turn left and it’ll even tell you it’s time to start moving over whatever like it be. um it Ours is well tied into whatever the traffic reporting system is.

00:33:10.92
Alan Baltis
So it’ll actually like reroute you sometimes when there’s a big tie up or something like that.

00:33:15.09
Stephen Schneider
Police up ahead object on the road from reports and stuff.

00:33:15.50
Alan Baltis
All of those things have been very, very useful. Yeah. And the algorithms have gotten better and better. I remember what we’re used to. It wouldn’t take you past a place to come back, even though it was a shorter route. You know what I mean? that it would like we’d always try to So we’ve had a couple of things where it took us through like tiny mountain roads down in Great Smoky Mountain National Park instead of taking me on a main road and only have me do the least amount of torturous driving.

00:33:39.84
Alan Baltis
Sometimes we’ll have avoid ferries and avoid things. How about ah avoid cliff sides? How about that?

00:33:43.53
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Yeah.

00:33:44.24
Alan Baltis
Yeah.

00:33:45.09
Stephen Schneider
I’ve been noticing that a lot that it’s like, why is it taking me this way? And it’s like 0.1 mile difference, but you stop seven extra times. And I’m like, ah you know, can we put a a smart driving click checkbox on there?

00:33:54.09
Alan Baltis
That’s right.

00:33:59.49
Stephen Schneider
Cause that’s not the route I would take. Yeah.

00:34:01.44
Alan Baltis
Yeah. We might have talked about this before, but that’s what we just said. you know Hey, Aliens landed. you know Here’s my little music stick. And also, here’s the device that everywhere on the planet, it can tell me where I am within two meters.

00:34:12.56
Alan Baltis
Do you know what I mean? Whatever that thing is about, which sometimes people talk about, are we funding NASA? Well, because the spin-off benefits of what NASA produced are what run the world nowadays. You’re never lost.

00:34:23.85
Alan Baltis
We have whole generations that have grown up never having to pull out a paper map from AAA, print off something from MapQuest or Google Maps or whatever and have it in the car.

00:34:32.64
Stephen Schneider
It’s a good thing because the gas station attendants no longer know how to tell you where to go.

00:34:36.95
Alan Baltis
And boy, is that true. You know, when when we occasionally, when we’re walking around the city, there still seem to be people that really know their city. So walking is different than driving. But that I just I love the fact that how do we do all of our state capitals?

00:34:51.18
Alan Baltis
Because we have the boldness to say I could be in the middle of North Dakota and I won’t be lost and head into the Badlands and die of thirst. You know what I mean? Whatever those Oregon Trail things about dying of dysentery.

00:35:02.11
Alan Baltis
We don’t have to run because we will always be able to find our way to gas and water and a place to stay the night.

00:35:02.35
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:35:06.66
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:35:08.04
Alan Baltis
So.

00:35:08.52
Stephen Schneider
Speaking of dysentery segue, they just re-released a new version of Oregon Trail on PlayStation and Xbox.

00:35:17.16
Alan Baltis
Oh, man. i would

00:35:18.04
Stephen Schneider
And it doesn’t.

00:35:18.68
Alan Baltis
What nostalgia thing that would be to go back and do that one more time.

00:35:20.75
Stephen Schneider
Yes.

00:35:22.20
Alan Baltis
Oh, my God.

00:35:22.38
Stephen Schneider
And from just watching the trailer, it doesn’t look like they tried to add a million things of functionality because that’s the problem. Oh, we’ll remake it. We’ll completely change everything about it. And nobody likes it.

00:35:33.40
Alan Baltis
Right.

00:35:33.44
Stephen Schneider
It looks like, well, we’re going to keep the same basic formula.

00:35:33.53
Alan Baltis
Right.

00:35:36.81
Stephen Schneider
You stock up on supplies. You only have so much room. We’ll send you across and things will, you know, you’re, you’re, A wagon will blow up or you’ll get snake bit or dysentery.

00:35:46.56
Alan Baltis
right

00:35:46.75
Stephen Schneider
and And that’s really the game right there. And that’s what it looks like it does. So I’m like, Oh, I’m very tempted to get this. It’s very pretty, you know, compared to the old version, but it looks like it’s very much the ah same gameplay as the old one. So.

00:36:02.28
Alan Baltis
That’s wonderful. i Long ago I must have mentioned this. You know, i a book came out called The Friendly Orange Glow that was about the births and I went and I found that there is a plateto place where Plato is still running in simulation.

00:36:09.29
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:36:15.85
Alan Baltis
And I went back and I played a couple of my dungeon adventure games that I hadn’t played since college. and graphics are primitive all of that and yet the gameplay was so well done well balanced right number of magic items and monsters and that kind of stuff that i really um sitting there not auto mapping but like i brought out my graph paper and i’m making the map and it just i didn’t continue i did it for like maybe a couple weeks a month and then it was okay I’ve had enough again. I’m gladed glad to get this taste.

00:36:46.92
Alan Baltis
And it’s kind of funny. I really was like, well, finally, I’m going to win. I’m going to go defeat the 30th level vampire. And then I just was, you know, the amount of time that I’m putting into this, I can’t do this anymore. It was in between classes and I had no other other responsibilities. But nowadays it’s not.

00:37:01.43
Alan Baltis
And yet it was so nice in exactly the way you’re talking about that they didn’t update it and make it like a new skin on it so that it didn’t have the same look and feel and joy.

00:37:01.46
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:37:11.50
Alan Baltis
It really was fun to go back in and fall down a chute for levels more than you are capable. You’re still kind of a pod. And then you’re like around every corner that could be a werewolf, a golem, much harder monsters that I can handle.

00:37:21.67
Stephen Schneider
Run!

00:37:27.90
Alan Baltis
and And just that like really used to be heartboundingly bad when you met like a face spider and it has one, you know, when it hits you, it’s like one to 20 hit points and I’ve got 11.

00:37:31.60
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Yeah.

00:37:40.21
Alan Baltis
So there’s half a chance that anytime it hits me, I’m going to get killed. and And oh man.

00:37:45.17
Stephen Schneider
Part of the the greatness of those is because a lot of it’s in our imagination, running a movie in our minds.

00:37:51.53
Alan Baltis
Absolutely.

00:37:52.58
Stephen Schneider
Nowadays, it’s you know they have the graphics that look real, and you know I think it loses something. And I heard something the other day that the majority, this is weird, the majority of people that read just read words. They don’t picture movies and pictures in their head.

00:38:11.01
Stephen Schneider
They’ve done a study and I’m like, are you kidding me?

00:38:13.17
Alan Baltis
Right.

00:38:13.27
Stephen Schneider
No wonder people don’t like to read.

00:38:16.11
Alan Baltis
Wow. It’s, I mean, it’s always been that that’s what I do. And it’s always been that when the movie comes, like, that’s not what Aragorn looks like.

00:38:20.44
Stephen Schneider
yeah

00:38:24.44
Alan Baltis
You know what I mean?

00:38:24.98
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:38:26.45
Alan Baltis
And, and,

00:38:26.57
Stephen Schneider
He looks surprisingly like me.

00:38:28.92
Alan Baltis
ah And that’s true. I’m sure I was the hero in it.

00:38:32.67
Stephen Schneider
right

00:38:33.24
Alan Baltis
but and But also we’ve talked about, you know, after you’ve read all kinds of books, then you play games and you get an idea of how it can vary. And then one of the things i just had this revelation within the last 20 years of my life,

00:38:45.80
Alan Baltis
I used to play characters that were similar to me. I’d play the magic user because I was a bright guy, or I’d play the big hulking brute that I’m going to just wade in and give damage. And once a was fun to play the thief. That’s all about dexterity and and quickness and stealth.

00:38:55.50
Stephen Schneider
that.

00:38:58.74
Alan Baltis
And like so much not me, I’m kind of like a human eclipse. You know what i mean? i My presence is known the minute I step into a ah dungeon room. And so it was very fun to just like put on a different persona and see what what would that be like?

00:39:12.22
Alan Baltis
You know Colleen and I talk about that, that because we’re both rodents of an unusual size, what’s it like to be that tall or that short? And especially like on an airplane, well, I can reach the high stuff and put things away from people, but I also bonk my head if I try to stand up in the wrong place and heard just the opposite.

00:39:26.45
Alan Baltis
So it’s fun to take a different, you know, a path in life that could have gone.

00:39:26.84
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:39:32.79
Alan Baltis
It’s fun to take that out for a spin and see what that might’ve been like. So

00:39:36.05
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, see, when I play any RPGs, I like to go for the story aspects and do something different and silly with my guy.

00:39:43.82
Alan Baltis
Yeah.

00:39:47.32
Stephen Schneider
And, you know, if I rolled, okay, out of 18, well, I only have a nine dexterity. I’m gonna be a thief. and And my buddy Brian, his whole goal in every game is to build up and be a big and impressive and powerful.

00:40:01.30
Alan Baltis
Right.

00:40:01.42
Stephen Schneider
So games that you, yeah, games, you can’t do that.

00:40:01.72
Alan Baltis
Max your stats. Right.

00:40:04.18
Stephen Schneider
He doesn’t enjoy. he says that game sucks, you know, and stuff, but it drives him crazy when it’s like, yeah, our thief is going to roll.

00:40:06.33
Alan Baltis
Okay.

00:40:12.34
Stephen Schneider
Forget it. I’ll do it. And he gets irritated, but I’m playing it up to the hilt and just having fun with it.

00:40:16.78
Alan Baltis
Thank you.

00:40:18.29
Stephen Schneider
ah You know, I, I mean, I got, we were healing once and I’m like, well, I don’t need healed. He’s like, of course not because you can’t fight with shit. He’s like, get out of my way. So um he’s like, we got to spend three days in the end to get everybody healed up. I’m like, Oh,

00:40:31.24
Stephen Schneider
I’m going to climb out the window and go explore. He’s like, no, don’t do that. And I rolled the dice and the DMS like, yeah, you trip and fall right in front of guards. And Brian’s like, what the hell?

00:40:38.91
Alan Baltis
like

00:40:40.50
Stephen Schneider
And he’s like all pissed at me throwing his sheet and stuff. And I’m like,

00:40:43.42
Alan Baltis
you yeah Honestly, the rest of your party must have hated the randomness of what you did sometimes.

00:40:48.55
Stephen Schneider
Oh, no, the rest of them love it because Brian gets so upset and they just laugh.

00:40:52.06
Alan Baltis
Okay. That’s funny.

00:40:53.35
Stephen Schneider
You know, they’re like, it’s very memorable because and I tell that I’ve told this to my kids and stuff. It’s like, tell me all the games you played where everything went perfect. You had no problems. You don’t remember them.

00:41:03.45
Stephen Schneider
They sucked in the long run.

00:41:04.22
Alan Baltis
That’s right.

00:41:05.69
Stephen Schneider
Tell me the game where Steve tripped out the window in front of the guards and ended up burning the whole in down.

00:41:10.77
Alan Baltis
I hear you.

00:41:11.20
Stephen Schneider
That’s a story, you know, the time we were, we were playing giants.

00:41:12.16
Alan Baltis
That’s the story. Exactly. Okay.

00:41:14.100
Stephen Schneider
We were all a group of giants and our village got raided and we had to escape through tunnels in the mountain. Now I didn’t know any of that before I created my character and I created my character afraid of the dark.

00:41:27.06
Stephen Schneider
So I slowed us all down going through these tunnels in the mountain. And it was just Brian’s like, leave them, just leave, you know? So, but I’m like, that’s part. I figured out why, because an early book I read that has stuck with me was the dragon Lance books.

00:41:43.71
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:41:43.72
Alan Baltis
Sure, exactly.

00:41:44.25
Stephen Schneider
And Raiceland in those books, he’s very powerful, but he has golden skin. He sees everything as death and he whispers. and He doesn’t talk real loud. And I remember the writers saying when they were playing the campaign in real D&D before they wrote the books,

00:41:59.99
Stephen Schneider
that the guy who was playing Raceland just did that, just started talking in a whisper and everybody would shut up and listen to him because he always knew the answer and what he was. And they put that in the book. And I remembered that like, that made it so much more interesting than the typical magic user. That’s all powerful.

00:42:17.18
Alan Baltis
I hear you.

00:42:17.25
Stephen Schneider
So I always do that with my D and D stuff. I try and do it with the books I write, you know always a problem or, you know, something that you got to deal with.

00:42:26.23
Alan Baltis
Yeah, that most of us, you know, I played D&D really early on, like mid 70s when it first came out, the books from Gygax, the little set of three and stuff. And, you know, once you started doing things on the computer where you could reroll a character until you got something that everything was in the teens and you had a good chance of surviving.

00:42:43.58
Alan Baltis
We used to just play, you sit down for the campaign and you roll and that’s what you got.

00:42:47.53
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Yeah.

00:42:47.72
Alan Baltis
and So one time, you know, between three and 18, right? Three six-sided dice. I got a charisma of three. So really like the ugliest fucking creature in the village.

00:42:58.95
Alan Baltis
The guy that’s walking around with like, he’s got ear discharges and like kids run screaming from him and stuff like that. And I, Thork was what I named him. And we had the whole table, had so much fun with not only me, but the DM was great about, you know, the guy doesn’t want to trade with you.

00:43:17.64
Alan Baltis
he He thinks you’re so ugly that you’re driving other customers away. So what are you going to do to have to bribe him or, you know, all that? And we just both played all the role playing that goes into the role playing games. It was so much fun.

00:43:29.34
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:43:29.82
Alan Baltis
that not not uh you the avatar the paladin that is you know so beautiful that you he’s god like it was very fun to play the guy that’s like a mutt and and oh well i i still remember so so many good times we had where people just They talk about you know books and these kinds of things. It’s what helped develop empathy.

00:43:51.94
Alan Baltis
like Not everybody gets to be beautiful and powerful and and have the bard voice and all that kind of stuff. Some people are just trying to get through, but you put six people together who all have various different capabilities, and you you make this colony that’s going to get through it together.

00:44:07.34
Alan Baltis
You know what I mean? it Wow. i I hope, just like there was a revival of… fantasy books from J.K. Rowling and stuff like that. I hope that there’s enough D&D going on nowadays that people rediscover just like they rediscover board games. Things kind of go in and out in fads.

00:44:22.93
Alan Baltis
And so that, you know, hey, everybody, watch The Hobby because it’s a real good movie about board gaming people. That that’s just… You get a chance to like, in this game, I’m going to be a space but adventurer.

00:44:34.86
Alan Baltis
And in this one, I’m going to be a dungeon crawler. And in this one, I’m going to be the guy that builds a colony and i have to manage my resources. And to put on all those different hats and persona, it’s so much important to life that you’re not just you, that you not only are not you, but you can understand how somebody else, and isn’t that the birth of empathy? And isn’t that…

00:44:53.99
Alan Baltis
There’s a famous quote from some guy that did like the Nuremberg trials that said, I’ve been working on trying to understand just what evil is. And it looks like what evil is, is a lack of empathy. When just don’t have the ability to think what might somebody else think and feel in this situation, that you’re your own little solipsistic sociopath.

00:45:13.20
Alan Baltis
And we sure are getting a lot of that nowadays. And don’t want to tell you, know politics could have been the entire thing we don’t need to talk about.

00:45:16.42
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, definitely.

00:45:20.20
Alan Baltis
It’s so terrible.

00:45:20.32
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, we know what’s going on.

00:45:21.65
Alan Baltis
yeah

00:45:21.82
Stephen Schneider
So like so you mentioned the D&D and dan stuff. Since Colin moved out, I’ve been rearranging some things.

00:45:25.11
Alan Baltis
Great.

00:45:28.32
Stephen Schneider
and I’ve been rediscovering some of my books because when Gina and her kids moved in, we made room and I boxed up and put a lot my books out in the red shed. Well, now the house is pretty empty.

00:45:39.23
Stephen Schneider
so I’m bringing that stuff back in and I’m organizing it. And what do I have? What don’t I have? What do I want read and get rid of?

00:45:44.32
Alan Baltis
yeah

00:45:44.92
Stephen Schneider
I’ve gotten rid of like five boxes of books, most of which were duplicates. but, but I discovered all my collection of the choose own adventure books and not just the standard, you know, kids choose your own adventure, but there’s the fighting fantasy from Jackson that, uh, where you have a character and you roll and you do D and D elements.

00:46:00.06
Alan Baltis
Right.

00:46:02.44
Alan Baltis
hu Huh.

00:46:06.99
Stephen Schneider
I found my Deadpool one, uh, that, uh, you know your Deadpool choose your own adventure and it’s snarky and fun.

00:46:07.08
Alan Baltis
Right.

00:46:13.97
Stephen Schneider
Uh, there’s Sager the, van the, um, Barbarian. i got Zork, ah Choose Your Own Adventures. ah just So I’ve been having fun with those.

00:46:21.12
Alan Baltis
Excellent.

00:46:23.39
Stephen Schneider
i’m not reading them as voraciously as when I was a kid because the stories are fairly you know simple and stuff.

00:46:29.64
Alan Baltis
Simple, right?

00:46:30.13
Stephen Schneider
ah Goosebumps, Choose Your Own Adventures and stuff. So that’s been fun.

00:46:34.77
Alan Baltis
I’ve never read a single Goosebumps, and I really think I should because R.L. Stine created a whole empire of just scary enough, just creative enough, all that kind of stuff. And it might be that it’s kid lit, but I’ve read some other things, you Maze Runner whatever like that. There’s like, well, this is, I can understand how if I was young, I would love it. And I haven’t really lost my ability to child myself up.

00:46:56.27
Alan Baltis
You know what I mean? To just put aside the the grown concerns and say, what would it be like to be like in love for the first time again?

00:46:56.89
Stephen Schneider
you

00:47:02.53
Alan Baltis
To to to you find the first time that someone really betrays you.

00:47:03.03
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:47:06.33
Alan Baltis
What does that fucking feel like?

00:47:06.80
Stephen Schneider
Well, I mean, I think it’s a great idea.

00:47:07.53
Alan Baltis
You know? Right.

00:47:10.82
Stephen Schneider
i enjoy the books. Again, you you mentioned Maze Runner. Goosebumps are like the level but before that.

00:47:17.44
Alan Baltis
Right.

00:47:17.65
Stephen Schneider
You know, kids hit. ah They’re short. They’re like 15, 17,000 words. You could probably get done fairly quickly. Read one.

00:47:24.45
Alan Baltis
Right. It’s a bowl of oatmeal in the world of literature, you know, okay.

00:47:25.54
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

00:47:28.29
Alan Baltis
Right.

00:47:28.43
Stephen Schneider
And they’re, they’re not super in depth, obviously in that few of words, trying to get a whole story, but yes, it’s that, that fun, that family, scary fun, the stuff you can get scared with kids without scaring them so bad.

00:47:28.71
Alan Baltis
Okay.

00:47:41.67
Stephen Schneider
They’re you know scarred for life.

00:47:43.47
Alan Baltis
right

00:47:43.52
Stephen Schneider
and And that I’ve actually he’s got a masterclass on masterclass.com and I’ve been watching it.

00:47:49.01
Alan Baltis
okay

00:47:49.07
Stephen Schneider
And basically, it’s like, look, I want something scary for eight year olds, but not to scar them. So it has to have humor in there. And they always know it’s going to end up well.

00:47:57.54
Alan Baltis
right

00:48:00.38
Stephen Schneider
ah In fact, he he had one book, he says that he ended negatively, that it was the the mean girl turned around and betrayed the good protagonist and sent her away to like ah mental hospital and won the day.

00:48:15.14
Alan Baltis
Oh my god.

00:48:15.82
Stephen Schneider
And he says, I got flack from the readers so badly. They kept saying, you got to finish this. Why did you stop in the middle of the story?

00:48:22.11
Alan Baltis
Great.

00:48:23.60
Stephen Schneider
And he’s like, that is the end. They’re like, no, she can’t win. So he had to write a whole sequel just to resolve it. And the protagonist wins, but that’s, you know, kids want that black, white, good evil and, you know, good triumphs and snarky humor and, know,

00:48:39.10
Stephen Schneider
cliffhangers on every chapter and you know right

00:48:41.98
Alan Baltis
That’s wonderful. That’s, you know, I don’t know. There’s so much to read that I’m not sure that I want to do something easy less, you know what I mean? And yet I i really am I a worldly person if I can’t say I’ve read our Al Stein, just like I read Agatha Christie, just like, you know i mean?

00:49:00.37
Alan Baltis
There’s, there’s authors that you really want to know their style and all that kind of stuff.

00:49:01.15
Stephen Schneider
he’s from ohio

00:49:04.19
Alan Baltis
it, I, I really should do that just to get, I don’t know, either read the very first one or like read reviews and say, which was the, which is his pinnacle book?

00:49:12.51
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, he’s.

00:49:12.59
Alan Baltis
And then say, well, it’s the one with the werewolves and the vampires, you know? like

00:49:16.13
Stephen Schneider
And he even said that I’d have to look again to see what it was, but he he’s like, I’m always asked what’s my favorite. And the couple that I think are my favorites are never the reader’s favorite. So those aren’t the ones that everyone talks about in that.

00:49:27.11
Alan Baltis
Interesting. Okay.

00:49:27.76
Stephen Schneider
So, yeah, I think that happens a lot.

00:49:28.09
Alan Baltis
Yeah. One the things I like about series like that also is you know, it’s the monster of the week, just like what drives Supernatural or X-Files or whatever like that. And so it’s very cool to see people, how well read they are, because they really know of all the mythologies and all the the spooky stuff that has gone past.

00:49:42.53
Alan Baltis
And sometimes they’re really good at, well, you think it’s a vampire, but actually what it is, is an energy leech something. You know mean? That kind of thing. So…

00:49:50.34
Stephen Schneider
It’s funny you say that the the movie recent I just watched for the podcast was a girl walks home alone at night. um And it’s interesting because the movie inspired a graphic novel and Collins read the graphic novel, but it’s Iranian, but it was filmed in the States and it’s black and white and it’s interesting, but it’s,

00:50:03.14
Alan Baltis
OK.

00:50:11.07
Stephen Schneider
what I’m watching I’m trying to figure out what movie, what type of movie is this? Is it a revenge movie? Because it seemed like this girl was following people and it was go get revenge on a hooker and a pimp and a drug a gang Lord and, you know, stuff.

00:50:26.44
Stephen Schneider
And then she, she goes to the apartment to the pimp and he thinks he’s getting lucky that night. And she’s just not saying a word, just dead face stuff. And he’s like, come on, baby. And she goes with fangs. I’m like, holy shit.

00:50:40.67
Stephen Schneider
It’s a vampire movie because Reese does not like vampire movies. So we typically don’t do them. He said the only vampire movies he does are the non-typical vampire movies.

00:50:48.70
Alan Baltis
Okay.

00:50:52.58
Alan Baltis
Got it.

00:50:52.81
Stephen Schneider
And I didn’t even expect it. And it was, that’s such a good movie.

00:50:54.32
Alan Baltis
Like, let the right one in, right? Where it’s the little girl and stuff like that. yeah i Sorry, spoilers. If you haven’t seen it in 25 years and it’s been out, I didn’t mean to screw it up for you, but okay.

00:51:02.76
Stephen Schneider
Too bad. That’s one of them we watched. It is such a good movie. But this one, i think, has become one of my top horror movies.

00:51:06.99
Alan Baltis
Yeah.

00:51:11.02
Stephen Schneider
i just The whole movie I was engaged with and loved every bit of And it’s not for everybody, but yeah.

00:51:13.67
Alan Baltis
Interesting. A girl walks home at night. Okay. That’s what we’ve talked about. One of the fun things about genre stuff is that oftentimes it’s not only the hammer stuff. The first time it was made, it’s second.

00:51:24.17
Alan Baltis
And then third generation where they’re well aware of what has worked and not worked in the past.

00:51:27.83
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:51:28.34
Alan Baltis
And they have those cool variations and combinations that are like, well, didn’t see that coming. How clever. I love clever. Yeah.

00:51:35.06
Stephen Schneider
but One of the cool things about this movie was ah they’re listening to a lot of American pop music and they have posters on the wall, like from the eighties. And there was Madonna with her teased hair.

00:51:45.91
Stephen Schneider
And ah there was ah the police and the Bee Gees and Michael Jackson, you know, the white suit laying on the side stuff.

00:51:51.83
Alan Baltis
Right?

00:51:52.92
Stephen Schneider
And, ah You’re like, okay, but as you look it, you’re like, wait a minute, that’s not quite right. So they they purposefully took iconic ah posters and altered them just a li little bit to make it uneasy feeling to you.

00:52:03.85
Alan Baltis
To

00:52:07.56
Alan Baltis
set you ill at ease. Exactly.

00:52:08.84
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:52:09.51
Alan Baltis
That’s very funny.

00:52:09.54
Stephen Schneider
And I was like very cleverly done because I didn’t even realize it. My brain just saw it and said, oh, that’s such and such. But when you really look it, you’re like, wait a minute, that’s not quite right.

00:52:19.62
Alan Baltis
That’s very good. I did, by the way, just yesterday, go down the rabbit hole of I hadn’t heard some in excess in a long time. So I went to YouTube and I started to watch and then whole bunch of those. And then that leads you to, well, let’s hear a little bit of Sweet Dreams Are Made of This and all those like early MTV and and It Isn’t Only Music. It’s some of those.

00:52:43.18
Alan Baltis
videos were very very creative and i just once a while it’s like i don’t know i don’t think i’m nostalgic all the time i’m actually kind of a futurist but it’s fun to go back and say well that really holds up it really was creative and not only creative for the time but still creative today and like i don’t know michael hutchins you from in excess a sad end right auto erotic association but i could also see like it is no wonder that every lady in the country was like oh my god

00:52:45.42
Stephen Schneider
Yes.

00:53:08.62
Alan Baltis
You know what I mean?

00:53:10.11
Stephen Schneider
and

00:53:10.80
Alan Baltis
Some people have that Panther quality that they just exude attractiveness.

00:53:15.90
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:53:16.74
Alan Baltis
And I’m a guy, and I’m like, I could see it.

00:53:18.62
Stephen Schneider
Yes, exactly.

00:53:19.18
Alan Baltis
There’s some guys that are considered handsome, but like, really? But that guy i could see, well, I guess Jason Momoa wins again.

00:53:25.75
Stephen Schneider
yes

00:53:25.80
Alan Baltis
you know what

00:53:27.23
Stephen Schneider
it that that’s an interesting group too, because their big hit record at the end of their eighties and almost the end of their careers um was very different to to the like three, four, five albums or whatever they had before it.

00:53:41.66
Stephen Schneider
They were like skate punk in some of that before.

00:53:44.65
Alan Baltis
Right.

00:53:44.66
Stephen Schneider
And there were a few.

00:53:45.12
Alan Baltis
Great riffs, great three minute songs.

00:53:46.24
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:53:46.92
Alan Baltis
You know what I mean? Right.

00:53:47.74
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. But that album just blew up like every bit of that album and the videos were fantastic for that album.

00:53:53.82
Alan Baltis
A little bit of they had money, they had time, they weren’t under pressure from the record company to just churn out hits or whatever like that. I think I like some Duran Duran that isn’t the stuff that was popular on MTV.

00:54:04.10
Stephen Schneider
That’s the best stuff.

00:54:04.17
Alan Baltis
Their later albums are like, well, this is great stuff. And eat Meatloaf, there’s a couple of people that they kept making albums long after they weren’t really radio loved anymore. And yet they had talent. They had that, you know, and and they worked with good people and stuff like that.

00:54:16.57
Alan Baltis
So, oh, well. i been

00:54:17.88
Stephen Schneider
I went and saw Duran Duran like two and a half years ago, something like that.

00:54:21.95
Alan Baltis
Oh, I wish I would known.

00:54:22.44
Stephen Schneider
And it was so good. And Niles Rogers opened for them. And it’s like, I know that name. And you look it ups like, oh, dear Lord, did he like control 80s music?

00:54:34.27
Stephen Schneider
It’s like he did everything, you know?

00:54:36.23
Alan Baltis
Just like Max Martin is the guy now that is the hit maker behind everybody else. It was Nile Rodgers and, you know, ah who did Rockets? It doesn’t matter. You know, there are certain producers that they’re, Todd Rundgren, made all kinds of other great music for other people.

00:54:46.73
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:54:51.33
Alan Baltis
You know what I mean? Like the Meat Loaf album is, he he’s the guy. You know, so anyway.

00:54:54.70
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. And Steinman, the producer of it or record, whatever ah he originally was going to do was tasked with doing the Def Leppard hysteria album and they weren’t clicking and got rid of him.

00:54:59.32
Alan Baltis
Yes.

00:55:09.61
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:55:09.87
Alan Baltis
Oh my, too operatic. That’s twice I’ve used that word, but his stuff really was bigger.

00:55:12.11
Stephen Schneider
it Yeah.

00:55:14.99
Alan Baltis
You know what mean? it It’s okay.

00:55:16.79
Stephen Schneider
yeah But Meatloaf.

00:55:17.40
Alan Baltis
Did you ever see Streets of Fire? A movie called Streets of Fire with Willem Dafoe in his maybe very first appearance and Michael Paré and Steinman does a lot of the songs.

00:55:19.82
Stephen Schneider
Maybe.

00:55:27.34
Alan Baltis
Like that’s the first time that you got that, a song that builds really well and it’s going to have the big climax and the fight scene and all that kind of stuff. And it’s like there that was a whole bunch of people made their bones in that movie and then went on to big things.

00:55:39.35
Alan Baltis
So…

00:55:39.70
Stephen Schneider
Right. Yeah. i I’ve been in a bit of an 80s movie mood, but, you know, it’s Halloween season and then Christmas horror season. So I’ve got ah yes i’ve got a list of movies.

00:55:49.48
Alan Baltis
Christmas horror, okay.

00:55:52.56
Stephen Schneider
I’m waiting till next year to get back into it, you know, instead of watching them now. And I keep this time special.

00:55:58.53
Alan Baltis
Very good. we One of the joys of us being away for two weeks on our thing was we came back and, oh, the British Baking Show has started up. And and i’m tre you we were looking, are there any more resident aliens?

00:56:09.62
Alan Baltis
Are there any more rookies? Certain things that we, when they put them out every week,

00:56:12.17
Stephen Schneider
Not rookie yet, but a Resident an Alien, it’s winding down.

00:56:13.27
Alan Baltis
Not yet. We’re looking for what’s the next season that we can recapture. a new season of Peacemaker has come out. And I’m only like two episodes in and I’m already loving it

00:56:20.77
Stephen Schneider
yes.

00:56:23.30
Stephen Schneider
la La, la, la, la, don’t tell me. We and Colin are watching ah Alien Earth.

00:56:25.02
Alan Baltis
I know.

00:56:29.04
Stephen Schneider
on

00:56:29.13
Alan Baltis
Okay.

00:56:29.60
Stephen Schneider
So we we’re finishing that before we do another series. So we’re both avoiding ah Peacemaker because we know that’s going to be fantastic.

00:56:35.18
Alan Baltis
Okay. it’s it’s It’s James Gunn still, if not writing everything, he’s definitely involved and he really understands the Marvel and the DC universe and what makes them good and not good. And he really just is, he’s having fun.

00:56:51.84
Alan Baltis
You know, the whole, you can just, i’m i I haven’t binged it.

00:56:52.13
Stephen Schneider
good yeah yes yeah yeah i heard they do a different dance on different episodes now

00:56:55.24
Alan Baltis
I’m trying to do like one a night so I don’t use them all up and then I’m sad, you know, so that can, you know,

00:57:05.38
Alan Baltis
It’s I, in fact, I’m trying to think before there there was a consistent one done choreographed by Alan Tudyk, as we know.

00:57:13.39
Stephen Schneider
yes yes

00:57:14.30
Alan Baltis
And so I haven’t, i haven’t seen enough of them because I’ve been not binging it to see that they really do a different thing instead of a consistent one. That’s the opener. That’s cool to know. That’s a lot of work to do, you know, a nice little.

00:57:24.43
Stephen Schneider
but But, I mean, people will so… It exploded unexpectedly, I think.

00:57:29.71
Alan Baltis
Right.

00:57:30.29
Stephen Schneider
And, you know, I think they’re trying to do some fan service, which is great. You know, we need that in the superhero realm as far as movies and TV shows go.

00:57:39.09
Alan Baltis
That’s really true. So James Gunn, hats off to him, took Guardians of the Galaxy, a relatively unknown set of characters, and made that as big as any Iron Man and Thor movie, and now doing it with Peacemaker, where Justice League is the real thing, but like and when he like they have they have crossovers, if you will, to the Justice gang.

00:57:49.39
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:57:51.98
Stephen Schneider
yeah

00:57:57.83
Alan Baltis
And here’s, you know boy, it’s kind of funny. I didn’t picture Nathan Fillion as Guy Gardner, the jerk Green Lantern, until I saw him, and he’s perfect.

00:58:03.100
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:58:07.90
Alan Baltis
he was a little bit

00:58:07.98
Stephen Schneider
yeah

00:58:08.99
Alan Baltis
Did you ever see the, what’s the one with Bad Horse, Bad Horse, Doctor, right, except where like all the writers were on strike, but some people, Josh Whedon and Huthers were making, no, maybe it was J, doesn’t matter, he was ah Captain Hammer and was like the perfect, overconfident, jerk superhero.

00:58:13.87
Stephen Schneider
ah Dr. Horrible’s blog.

00:58:31.13
Alan Baltis
And like, after having been so relatively noble in everything, I’d seen him, butna I was like, well, I guess he can play that too.

00:58:36.96
Stephen Schneider
sir So I just watched Death Race 2000 from like 73. And Stallone.

00:58:43.13
Alan Baltis
Okay. Oh, David Carradine. And yes.

00:58:44.96
Stephen Schneider
and stallone

00:58:47.08
Alan Baltis
Yeah.

00:58:47.19
Stephen Schneider
Yes. And I had so much fun with that movie. It was surprisingly fun. I thought it was just going to be this, you know, eh, movie, but it was so much fun. um I’m like, I really love this, but I was laughing because I’m like, oh my God, now I see where the Hanna-Barbera Laugh Olympics came from.

00:59:07.98
Stephen Schneider
it’s It’s that. And the Twisted Metal game, the Carmageddon game, all came from that movie. Yeah.

00:59:14.35
Alan Baltis
That is a great observation. you know what I mean?

00:59:16.05
Stephen Schneider
but better yet the movie was it partially inspired from things like the road runner and coyote because it’s all these weird cars and they’re all trying to kill each other through the whole movie.

00:59:16.45
Alan Baltis
that Yeah.

00:59:28.28
Alan Baltis
Right.

00:59:28.84
Stephen Schneider
But the, the one team sets up on the side of this cliff, an arch but that is not really an art. And I’m like,

00:59:36.07
Alan Baltis
Looks like the fake tunnel, exactly.

00:59:37.50
Stephen Schneider
Yes, I’m like, oh my God, that’s hilarious. And it’s just so over the top, tongue in cheek, goofy ah that I really enjoyed watching it. So Death Race 2000 was fun.

00:59:46.63
Alan Baltis
That’s funny. I have to go rewatch that. Honestly, I remember seeing it like, well, this is like wacky races on steroids.

00:59:52.91
Stephen Schneider
Yes.

00:59:53.10
Alan Baltis
You know what i mean? and And gone wrong, if you will. So is, is, uh, not Suzanne Plachette.

01:00:00.53
Alan Baltis
Darn it. I’m, I don’t know why in while I get like name tied, you know what I mean?

01:00:04.65
Stephen Schneider
Well, we got enough.

01:00:05.52
Alan Baltis
Um, let’s see who was the heroine in the swamp thing movies. Um, you know, uh, and, and also she was on,

01:00:09.07
Stephen Schneider
Oh my God, Colin would know.

01:00:13.100
Alan Baltis
huh, you know what? It doesn’t matter. There are certain police people that when you see them, they’re like, they must have said, well we’re going to need like a bombshell race car driver that has the, the, the zipper open down to about here.

01:00:27.94
Alan Baltis
And there were certain people that you called on them because that’s what they did. Okay.

01:00:30.99
Stephen Schneider
and So, so I’m, I’m now watching cannonball run, not nearly as much fun and goofy as I thought it was when I was a kid in the seventies.

01:00:31.32
Alan Baltis
Okay.

01:00:34.81
Alan Baltis
okay

01:00:39.81
Stephen Schneider
It’s it’s I’ve not chuckled really. I’m like, eh, but Adrian Barbeau is in that one. And yes.

01:00:44.06
Alan Baltis
That’s what i was trying to think of, Adrian Barbeau, exactly.

01:00:45.28
Stephen Schneider
Okay. Yeah. And Farrah Fawcett is in it, you know, Burt Reynolds and Dom DeLuise and Jackie Chan is in it, in his first American movie.

01:00:49.81
Alan Baltis
That’s right. Right?

01:00:56.51
Alan Baltis
I didn’t know that, okay.

01:00:57.31
Stephen Schneider
And it was it was the outtakes bloopers that they put into Cannonball Run at the end. That is the reason he did it in all his movies after that. But it was really interesting because ah that was in the 70s.

01:01:10.46
Stephen Schneider
He didn’t get his own first starring American title until like 70 or 95. And it was Thunderball.

01:01:17.48
Alan Baltis
Wow. Because everything was Hong Kong imports, right? It was that you had you had to go to the the specific store and find his stuff.

01:01:20.09
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

01:01:23.06
Stephen Schneider
Right.

01:01:23.84
Alan Baltis
Exactly.

01:01:24.68
Stephen Schneider
So it was Thunderball. It’s a racing game or a racing movie, but it was only like two years after that, that he came out with Rush Hour with Chris Rock.

01:01:27.41
Alan Baltis
Okay.

01:01:33.65
Alan Baltis
Okay.

01:01:34.12
Stephen Schneider
And then ah the Owen Wilson Westerns um that he did, all of those were all in that time frame.

01:01:40.65
Alan Baltis
Got it. I had a good friend. Dave and I had our business Langmar Corporation and we did. We had a friend, Anthony Ma, that was a designer company. And he was the guy that had the in in going to Chicago’s Chinatown and getting all those things as import and like no.

01:01:56.87
Alan Baltis
oh dubbing or anything like that it really was just the movie but the first time that you see like operation condor i think it’s called where there’s like huge wind fans and they’re like fighting in midair you know and and just like nobody else was doing he jumps out of a plane and lands on a balloon and he did such amazing things and not only in the the bloopers where they show him getting hurt but just remember always talk about this he’s like running down a hallway and he jumps up and he goes through a transom

01:02:04.17
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

01:02:25.54
Alan Baltis
above a door that’s got to be like two square feet and just goes through it It’s like, I would have caught and ah shoulder and killed myself. I would have caught a toe tip.

01:02:33.60
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Well, the first 57 takes, that’s exactly what he did.

01:02:38.17
Alan Baltis
and That’s right.

01:02:38.87
Stephen Schneider
ah Yeah.

01:02:39.91
Alan Baltis
Now, when we’re like, he jumps up through a shopping cart, you know like where it used to be the thing could go up and like, I don’t i don’t know how you coordinate yourself enough. that that you could even do that much less do it multiple times in case somebody else was missing their cue.

01:02:55.06
Alan Baltis
You know what I mean?

01:02:55.17
Stephen Schneider
Right.

01:02:55.58
Alan Baltis
So he he is an amazing guy. That’s very cool.

01:02:58.02
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, very amazing. And so, you know, bringing up all these movies, so I’m also re-watching the early miniseries It with Tim Curry. And with tim curry

01:03:09.34
Alan Baltis
Yes. Before this version of Pennywise.

01:03:10.20
Stephen Schneider
and

01:03:11.82
Alan Baltis
Exactly.

01:03:12.03
Stephen Schneider
Yes.

01:03:12.74
Alan Baltis
That’s right.

01:03:13.40
Stephen Schneider
And i mean, it’s been good, but I saw a thing where the little kid who played Georgie and Tim Curry was Pennywise, you know, they’re doing the scene at the, um, um, the, the, the, the sewer, you know, the sewer grate and all that.

01:03:18.87
Alan Baltis
Okay.

01:03:27.09
Alan Baltis
okay That’s what we’re here for.

01:03:28.68
Stephen Schneider
And the little kid’s like, Tim, you’re really scaring me. And Tim Curry’s like, well, that’s kind of what I’m supposed to be doing.

01:03:36.68
Alan Baltis
exactly yeah

01:03:36.74
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. You know, so, I mean, that’s interesting. You always wonder about kids in horror movies, you know, and.

01:03:42.99
Alan Baltis
Yeah, how much they’re internalizing it. instead of there might They must be aware it’s only a movie, that it’s only fantasy. And yet if they’re doing it right in the moment, it must be just a lot.

01:03:51.22
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Yeah. You know, you get into it.

01:03:53.36
Alan Baltis
That’s wild.

01:03:53.37
Stephen Schneider
but I mean, you got to know it’s fantasy when there’s 500 people and lights and stuff all around you.

01:03:58.29
Alan Baltis
Yeah.

01:03:58.49
Stephen Schneider
ah So.

01:03:59.14
Alan Baltis
I have to mention this. So Cannonball Run was one of the first ones that had bloopers that they showed at the end. Do you remember this? Burt Reynolds, you him and Dom DeLuise were a team. And there’s a scene where Dom DeLuise is trying to say something and Burt Reynolds keeps slapping him.

01:04:14.28
Alan Baltis
And honestly, I didn’t think it was funny. I hated Burt Reynolds for years after that for like, this guy is, he’s your friend. And you’re like, I i just, or maybe I identified with Dom DeLuise too much. Maybe I just didn’t like that.

01:04:28.37
Alan Baltis
it was one slap too many like just let him get his joke out let him get i just something really affected me from that that blooper scene of like man and i know i’ve seen other things first like i would never let myself be slapped that much whenever i’ve seen someone kneel there’s something really deep inside me it’s like i would not kneel you know what i mean i just i have things that i i the movies have been very effective about what ah

01:04:34.40
Stephen Schneider
that That one. Yeah.

01:04:44.59
Stephen Schneider
That one. Yeah.

01:04:57.24
Alan Baltis
a bad thing that was what a humiliation it was and it’s like i’ll fucking die before i’ll let that happen so i can say that i can say that so all right yeah as usual we had lots of we got to lots of stuff very very good um i’m thank you for recommencing i’m sorry that so much stuff had to be put off but uh now we’re going into you know fall and winter and we we have christmas horror i don’t mean to take away from horror lasagna you’ll have lots of good conversations over there

01:05:03.16
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, the 70s were definitely a different time.

01:05:08.56
Stephen Schneider
right.

01:05:11.84
Stephen Schneider
yeah

01:05:17.67
Stephen Schneider
hey

01:05:25.47
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, well, I mean, there’s so many things that go on in the fall, and I’m sure you’re going to go a lot of things, you know, corn maze maybe. And, ah you know this weekend I’m going out to Dairy PA. They’ve got ah um festival a railroad days festival, and they’re also incorporating Bigfoot into their town.

01:05:43.36
Alan Baltis
Interesting.

01:05:43.57
Stephen Schneider
They’re using it to try and revitalize the town a bit. So setting up a booth, doing a talk about getting kids into the cryptozoology and stuff.

01:05:46.30
Alan Baltis
Yeah.

01:05:49.52
Alan Baltis
Very good.

01:05:51.24
Stephen Schneider
So that’ll be fun. And then… Oh my gosh, I got to do this. ah Coming up, the wads were Wadsworth Thriller Fest that you can go and dress up like a zombie and be part of the Michael Jackson Thriller Dance of 350 people last year.

01:06:03.84
Alan Baltis
Oh, man.

01:06:06.31
Stephen Schneider
so

01:06:06.90
Alan Baltis
Wow. Colleen and i talked about, like remember, who was it? Spencer Tunick, that does like a whole bunch of people naked on the pier. And we were like, you know, I’m not like a nudist, and yet it’d be cool to be part of something like that.

01:06:23.93
Alan Baltis
Will we ever be bold enough to do something? Maybe 30 years ago when I was in better shape. I don’t know. Some part of it is just not caring.

01:06:30.55
Stephen Schneider
Right.

01:06:31.91
Alan Baltis
It’s just being, I want to be there. And so to be part of that big thriller dance would be kind of cool. you know what I mean? there’ There’s various different, I, uh,

01:06:37.67
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

01:06:39.41
Alan Baltis
The Spinal Tap movie is either out or about to come out. got to go see that.

01:06:42.28
Stephen Schneider
Yes.

01:06:43.27
Alan Baltis
we have I have a whole list. Every time that we talked about these things while we were on vacation, I kept on. I know that I don’t mean to be interrupted with the phone, but I don’t want to lose that we want to do this. And so, you know, various different concerts and comedy and whatever else we have coming up.

01:06:52.95
Stephen Schneider
Right.

01:06:56.39
Alan Baltis
So very cool.

01:06:56.90
Stephen Schneider
Right.

01:06:57.73
Alan Baltis
All right.

01:06:57.91
Stephen Schneider
right, man.

01:06:58.63
Alan Baltis
Take care, Stephen. Always a pleasure.

01:06:59.42
Stephen Schneider
Later.

01:07:00.15
Alan Baltis
Okay.

01:07:00.35
Stephen Schneider
Bye.

01:07:00.90
Alan Baltis
Bye-bye.