Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | Android | iHeartRadio | Email | RSS | More
RG 235
[00:00:00] Do you like conversation on a variety of topics? Feel like no one wants to talk about the things that interest you? Tired of only hearing the same political, sports, or catastrophe talk? We feel that way too. Join two high functioning geeks as they discuss just about anything under the sun. We can’t tell you what we’ll be talking about each week because we don’t know where our brains will take us.
It will be an interesting conversation though, so hang on and join us. Here comes the Relentless Geekery.
Stephen: Hi, Ellen. How are you sir?
Alan: I’m doing fine. Thank you.
Stephen: we’re in the full fledged fall past Halloween into the next holiday,
Alan: that. We saw just in the weekend that we drove to Chicago and back the leaves were more and more wonderful. That we hope for that. Sometimes it’s so late that they’ve all [00:01:00] gone, brown into the ground and so this was really nice to have weird to have it delayed this much.
’cause oftentimes I think November, but just that, so that was really pretty.
Stephen: We had we had eighties into October, so not really surprising,
Alan: Yeah. I don’t mind jacket weather. I kinda like when it’s, when you really have to check the weather to make sure that, am I gonna be shoveling stuff off the porch or am I gonna be, going 90 degree weather and can be careful about that. So these transition seasons are usually like, which jacket do I wear?
The one with zipp pockets,
Stephen: there’s, they’re calling for snow next week,
Alan: oh my, okay. That, I don’t know. I guess I’m ready for that. One of the joys of living in a place that has seasons is that you really get to have them. You get, it’s not just 72 and perfect, which sounds like paradise,
Stephen: That’s San Diego,
Alan: Exactly. And that, that where my parents lived, it really was that my dad wore shorts all year.
My mom worked in the garden all year and stuff like that. And I kinda now it’s getting cold time to stay inside and read a couple books and binge watch a few things and bake more bread and make more [00:02:00] soups and stuff like that. I like the changes, just gives you the ebb and flow of the year. You focus on different things when it’s not, it’s beautiful outside. We should go for a walk. It’s terrible outside. Let’s play Scrabble. You know what I mean? That kind of thing.
Stephen: Yeah. You could still go for a walk. I’ve hiked in bad weather.
Alan: and honestly, we, as long as we’re not getting actively sopped, when it’s like wet snow, that kind of gets into everything. But we’ve been out where the Cuyahoga, sorry the Rocky River. Was frozen and we didn’t walk on it, but frozen. And then when it was breaking up, which is a cool site to see all the icebergs, jostling for position, in, in the river and stuff.
And you just, nowadays you can get Patagonia level mittens and hats and hoods and parkas and stuff that just they’re good. The negative 20. And it’s not that you just you make sure that whatever’s going on with your face, I have a mustache that will freeze the condensation from my breath.
So I, it, we kinda like it. There’s a real and again, science, being geeks, it really is [00:03:00] quieter when you walk around on snow, you get the crunch of the snow, but all of that snow serves as kinda like big noise, DERs. And so walking through a forest is beautifully still. And you hear like, when you hear a bird or a squirrel or something moving around, it’s it like it reflects off the top of the snow so you can really hear who’s still active and the little skidding and stuff like.
So
Stephen: Yeah, I’ve done all those hiked in all those weathers,
Alan: exactly. We try to find trails where even if it ice is over, we’d be able to navigate, not slide down into the river and stuff like that. So along the Black river here, along the Rocky River. Anyway we, as we’ve talked a little bit about before, living around Cleveland, they have a thing called the Emerald Necklace.
Necklace where all the reservations formed this wonderful green around Cleveland. And you can go to any one of them. And here’s the castle that you can walk to. And here’s the, the beautiful this is where the geese or even swans and stuff like that, this field is where they nest and you [00:04:00] go there at the right time and without disturbing them, he could just see hundreds of little s There’s a cool word, little baby swans and stuff.
So I. We have become quite the good consumers of that kind of stuff. We go to Buzzard Day, they have Buzzard Day right around, I think the odds of March, right? March 15th and down in Hinkley, Ohio. So just like the swallows returned to Capistrano, the buzzards returned to Hinkley. I know. And I heard a song that was the buzzard return to Hinkley Ridge, but it really, maybe there’s a ridge there, but that’s not the name of the town and stuff like that.
So we are, again, all seasons, we are consumers of, when is the water running and when is it it gets so dry. You could walk across the Rock River by just jumping from gravel bank to gravel bank. You know what I mean? That and not sandbank. ’cause hey, Rocky River, things haven’t eroded enough that there’s, it’s still mostly rocks and gravel, so wonderful.
Stephen: Nice. Yeah. Yeah. It’s gonna be a good, hopefully a good fall.
Alan: And you have a south 40 to your property. You can just go out there to visit Hunter and really be out in the forest, and [00:05:00] so that’s
Stephen: yeah I do, whenever it does snow, I love to go walk up by the cabin up through the woods. It’s not, woods, it’s woods. But, it gives you that same feeling without having to really go anywhere. And then you’re closer to the house with hot cocoa
Alan: Exactly. Maybe we’ve talked about this. Do you use your cabin, like as your writing place, and do you do it year round or does it not have enough heat and shelter?
Stephen: It, it wasn’t really designed for year round. It doesn’t have insulation. It doesn’t have a stove or anything. And even if you use like a buddy heater, you have to keep it running constant. It doesn’t, it’ll hold the heat enough while it’s running, but once you turn it off, it’s five minutes later it’s
Alan: Immediately. Exactly.
Stephen: And I know that was a debate with others. Like Gina she was talking about insulating it and I was against it. And then Casey wanted to inste it so he could use it as a hunting cabin. I’m like, hold on, I did not buy this cabin for you to do what you wanted with it as a hunting cabin. I’m like, no.
And a lot of people are [00:06:00] like if you insulate it, you can go up year round. I’m like, seriously, who all is going to come up with me to hang out in the cold cabin? Just because, yeah, it’s fun to go camping and we go, go to a cabin in the winter, but I’ll pay the a hundred bucks or whatever and rent one for the weekend and we’re off.
I just didn’t wanna redo it all. So in the summer, I don’t write so much up there. Sometimes I do, all my stuff’s on the computer. I can take the laptop, but I go up there and read and hang out.
Alan: This,
Stephen: Hot dog roast.
Alan: I once took classes where one of the exercises was. Like, name your place of rest or your place of productivity and stuff like that. And for a number of categories, it was like a mountain cabin, where you have to walk to it so people can’t just drop in. And, but that, and it’s, of course it has to be, I didn’t want it to be rustic, kinda like what we’re talking about it.
I wanted it to be substantial and have chinking between all the rocks so there’s no wind blowing in there and bringing the 32 degrees inside and stuff like that. But that with a roaring fire and a comfy table or [00:07:00] chair, I really could see doing the Neil Gaman thing where he’d go to a friend’s house in Minnesota where nobody knew where he was.
And that’s where he’d finish his next book is that he just had needed that weeks, months of concentration and remove from the wound. I don’t know. And to be able to look out and oh, a deer just came up and checked out the window. A bear just did and
Stephen: We do get a lot of deer up there. You can quite often see deer around and I’ve seen tons of other stuff. No bear though. And I’ve heard of one over in Garrettsville, so not too far away.
Alan: And because we’re all about the segues unplanned, but they occur to us, have my latest joy. There’s a bunch of videos out there where a guy sits on a stool and plays guitar and sings near animals near this last time, I’m sorry if I, I don’t remember all those. I repeat, and there’s many, and he s sings in both English and French.
And like it isn’t, oh look, here comes some squirrels. He’s next to the zoo, and here come the elephants and the ca capis and stuff like that. The [00:08:00] one that I just, there’s one word rhino comes and rests his head on the fence and closes his eyes and it’s just the sweetest. Here’s this ton animal that is just so entrenched by the music that they lose themselves in it like I do.
And I guess me and Rhino have certain similarities.
Stephen: You mentioned how many people, I’ll geek it up for a second. I do videos for my writing and, I do some videos about where I’m at. I do videos about the books and the writing process and stuff. And I’ve been putting up videos about Hunter and I’ve been doing some of those
Alan: I watched the last one as a matter of
Stephen: Yeah, I also put one up once I was up at the cabin, I was working on something and I said, oh look, here’s my morning. I’m at this cabin and the light was coming through, and blah, blah. That video has gotten the most hits on YouTube, and my videos for Hunter have gotten just about as much tons of hits compared to my normal videos.
And I’m like, I’m doing stuff about writing and writing for kids and making video games and that stuff, [00:09:00] those things, like a couple people look at, I put up a thing with, oh, I’m just up at the cabin here. Look at this. Isn’t that great? And everybody loves it. And I, so there’s the SEO geeky thing,
Alan: I got, when I put posted pictures of our new kitchen, I got tons of things because everybody has a kitchen and everybody had something to say about they love these knobs or they love the way that, that the light comes through the window and stuff like that. So it’s, I guess it’s a similar thing I read about, to me interesting things, important things, but the very human things, I got a dog and everybody loves seeing people with their animals.
When we first started to have all the zoom calls and puppies or kittens or children would intrude. Everybody loves those, so it makes kind of sense even if they’re not as purposeful and as important in some ways, but very human,
Stephen: so for the SEO thing, what I’ve been working on, especially with the horror lasagna, I do a lot, but trying to integrate those. Say those other types of videos into the regular videos. Okay. The horror lasagna is a perfect example. We put up an episode, I’ll chop it up and put [00:10:00] up some little clips, drawing people to the episode and they get some hits.
But also when I’m just sitting at home in the evening watching a movie, not necessarily an episode, just some horror movie, I do the, Hey, look at this horror movie behind me. I’m watching such and such. Have you guys seen this? It’s pretty good, blah, blah. And those get a ton of hits. So I you, I’m balancing it out, because watching the analytics and that’s, we talk about that a lot.
That’s a, with the modern creators, the modern content creators, that’s the type of thing you have to do. If you’re not spending a million dollars on advertising.
Alan: I, time Magazine just had their a hundred. Next, it’s, the next generation of people that are gonna be the influencers and the important people and stuff like that. And. So many of them I’d heard of, sometimes I’m like, wow current music, I don’t know that I’m current at all, but a lot of these I had heard because they really are making an impact on the world.
But any number of them were like, they’re not in the mainstream press. They’re not on tv. They’re doing their things on Instagram and TikTok [00:11:00] and sometimes Facebook. But the other, the newer than and my, not a complaint, but an observation is it doesn’t satisfy me enough.
Satisfy me enough because they’re often so short, they’re very sound bursty instead of, there’s not enough content to them, but people love them because they don’t mind having a hundred kids saying six, seven, and that’s just fascinating ’cause you get to be a part of the tribe and because it’s the latest fad and stuff like that.
I just learned about that this weekend and when I had seen it. Some in references before. It’s what’s going on? What’s that about? And you have to do archeology to get back to the scrilla song that it came from. But and I’m sure there are all kinds of examples every set of youth has had.
We’re gonna come up with fab gear, Marv cool words that are gonna confuse the adults. And that’s part of it, is having your own youthful jargon that creates a little barrier entry. You know what I mean? This is ours, not yours.
Stephen: And that’s the [00:12:00] thing, a lot of that you, you can’t predict. I’ve seen people jump on whatever bandwagon is the big hot thing that everyone’s looking at and get 10 views, but then other people do it and they get six point 5 million. And, the same with this. I’ve put up we’ve had videos.
I told Risa, I said, Hey, such and such a video clip from the episode it just jumped like this. And it’s why? I have no clue. Because I’ve done other videos that are similar at the same time that didn’t get as many,
Alan: exactly. That’s again, oh no. Virality is something that people have been working on ever since that term came to be. And even before, there was always advertising slogans and political slogans and catchphrases from Saturday Night Live. It probably catchphrases from Ed Sullivan and welcome back Cotter and stuff that work their way into the vocabulary.
And I don’t know that you can say, I’m gonna sit down and write the episode that everybody’s gonna say Jump the Shark is a new thing. It just what why would that [00:13:00] catch on? But here’s an interesting thing, segue time, if you don’t mind. And I talked about this I’m quite the investor nowadays.
I really drink in a lot of information and I’m good at finding patterns. And so I try to see from multiple viewpoints, how would you be able to pick a good stock? And sometimes it’s fundamentals. The company is, inherently sound and managed well. Sometimes it’s just quantitative. The numbers say the patterns say that this guy is going nicely up and to the right.
One of the interesting, latest things is people have developed a way to put together a social heat score. Scan all those social media sites and they look for mentions of various different things and whether it’s positive or negative, and how often it’s getting mentioned and what the demographics are of the people mentioning it.
And then they have a wonderful big chart of, for the, they often, what gets mentioned of course is no, nobody cares that this thing was made by Dow, but they care about Gorilla Glue or whatever else it might be, I don’t think. And so they have a big map of what companies own which brands like Ugg Boots.
It’s not [00:14:00] Ugg, it’s Deck, if I remember correctly. And then they say, if you’re into consumer products, we see this trend developing and it’s as the trend works its way from the influencers, the west coast, into the center of the country and stuff like that, there’s a good chance that this is gonna do well and they’ve had really good success with it.
The latest thing from Investor Place is the people that do that have now married their statistics, their algorithms with a longstanding thing called Stock Grader by Louis Valier, who’s 50 years a quantitative analyst. And then, the intersection of those things is really a good company, but also really getting some buzz.
And so once in a while you’ll get that, that, the people that are doing the latest Cancer Cure is, I don’t know, Myers-Briggs or not Myers Squibb. Myers Briggs, sorry. And that you don’t always expect great innovation out of longstanding companies. Sometimes it’s like bearer, they make aspirin and that’s why I buy ’em.
But there’s lots of other things going on, and once in a while they still catch that, that [00:15:00] fire, that lightning in a bottle. And I have multiple portfolios that focus on different ways of looking at things. Pure AI or a little bit of like where a company that has been really good kind of gets bad news, gets downtrodden, but it’s still a good company.
So when it starts to show signs of going back up that the market has forgiven, Chipotle forgiven, then you get in on it again. You didn’t write it on the way down, you got out and they, so it is that the ultimate stock strategy USS is the one that has been consistently, the one that’s been working by marrying the mass appeal crowd appeal to the inherent quality of a company.
So that being able to distill all of what’s being said online, it, they’re looking at like 1.3 million data points every day, all those mentions and stuff, and have seemingly success successfully found a way to distill that. So hats off to the Swan Brothers and sometimes it’s that was a good idea, but it takes a certain amount of years of data [00:16:00] to be able to say.
We started off this way and then we tweaked it, we changed the algorithm, we looked at even more sources, and now they seem to have something that has, oh my God, predictive power. And that’s of course what the stock market is not only, it’s good now, but where is it going in the future? So just that an interesting marriage.
Every time that I do a comment, it’s I do, I, when I talk about hey, we like our new kitchen and I mentioned Calvis who was our constructor and that, hey, anybody in the greater Cleveland area, you should get in on these guys because great value for the money. They did a fantastic and excellent job.
And I would recommend to anybody and then anybody who reads my posts or who reads posts in general, that you hope that they’re gonna find that it’s CFUs and X, y, z and whatever, the three or five corporations. And it’s not just Angie’s, the data set for Angie is. If it’s recommended by 2000 people, that’s pretty persuasive.
What if it’s recommended by 20,000 and 200,000? So you get more statistical legitimacy the larger your sample size, so I’m just, I’m digging, I like getting geeky where it’s [00:17:00] out of all that chaos here comes maybe a pattern and you don’t have to be perfect. It, it is enough to not have causation but correlation to make a good a 51 over 49 bet, or a 60 or a 70 or an 85.
And that in fact one of the other portfolios is we don’t know why, but the numbers say that in the next 21 days, 85% chance this thing is gonna go the direction that we expect and it’s up. And I dunno if I’m a gambling man, all kinds of people bet on one out of 32 at that one out 36 at the roulette wheel, or just 51 49 on a COI flip.
And you think it’s maybe not a true coin and yet eight five is. You do 85 consistently and you’ll make little incremental gains add up over time. So I’m all, my math brain and all my emotion brain and all my ability to distill information brain, they’re all working together. And I don’t know, there’s people that have figured this out long before me, but I didn’t want to just [00:18:00] tap into what they had done.
I wanted to see if my brain would start to work interestingly that way. And as a, I know I’m talking, I think mentioned long ago I did gambit, which was genetic algorithm first. Some of the early AI stuff that really did have, finding very good patterns in data and that it wasn’t a single solution.
It was like, here’s a colony of creatures that look like this is the raptor and this is the herbivore and this is the, and based on that, your environment will do well. ’cause you need to have all those things in a working environment. And the difficulty of the super AI system is.
Try to explain that to people. We don’t know why, but it just seems to work. That’s the exact same difficulty that I had with Gambit. You don’t get people to bet on you to bet a lot of money on you. If you’re like trust me, I’ve run many simulations and models and it really seems to work, but I can’t show you the equation.
’cause it really isn’t an equation. It’s a dynamic system of emergent behavior. And then the more you talk about why it works, the more I glaze over or [00:19:00] arms get crossed because I don’t think I fucking believe you. Smart boy. You,
Stephen: It’s the same thing. I’ve talked to different companies, whatever, about just things like SEO and getting rankings on
Alan: You’re frozen.
Stephen: Oh, I’m here. Hello?
Alan: Ah,
Stephen: Oh, I
Alan: sorry, Steven. I’ve
Stephen: No, it’s me. It’s always me.
Alan: Okay.
Stephen: Am I here? Am I back?
Alan: You’re back. Exactly.
Stephen: I don’t know what does it but I’ve talked to a lot of companies and they went Google, SEO rankings and, it’s okay we’ll do this, we’ll do this and we’ll check in, but no, we just tell us what to put on there.
So we’re number one. It changes even what you’re paying to get number one ranking, it’ll change tomorrow. No, we just we wanna know what the budget and what’ll get us there. I, I can’t really tell you that we have to work on it and keep an eye on it and keep adjusting.
Especially if you’re not just straight out paying for it. I do that right now with the books. I take a look at the books. I see the categories I chose. That category is doing well, [00:20:00] and this one’s not so let, why is that one not doing well? Let me change it. Are the keywords not conducive to that category?
When I have to go look at a hundred books in that category, what keywords are they using? It’s, there’s not a. And it’s so hard to explain to the uppers, the upper management people. That SEO stuff is a constant everyday thing that you have to work on and check and change and adjust, things that we’re doing well, how come, are we dropped in rankings?
That keyword was doing great. Yeah, it was doing great. In May, it’s not doing so great in August, people aren’t looking for it. We need to do it different. Why is that? I don’t know why that is. People are searching different, and I don’t understand why they don’t understand that it’s not, the other big one is DNS, you have to update DNS Repoint something or whatever.
They’re like when’s that gonna be ready? Sometime in the next three to 72 hours. We can’t wait. Call somebody and fix it. There’s literally nobody go. Literally nobody. I can call.
Alan: The mural of the [00:21:00] internet.
Stephen: yeah, I can do a couple things that might trigger it and speed it up, but I can’t even guarantee that.
No, you need to find somebody that we need this right now. You should have told me last week when we were talking about it, not the last minute, and they don’t get it, it.
Alan: Yeah. It, I it’s an interesting discussion that I’ve tried to become more skilled at, to talk about, there’s systemic risk and inherent risk in various different things, and so much investing is, how do you. Conquer that, but it’s not conquering it. It’s knowing that there’s gonna be inherent risk and that you’re always gonna be taking a bet and you just try to hedge your bets.
That’s why they even call it a hedge fund, that it’s never a certainty. And then that whole thing of risk versus reward, that I want to give you a certainty and yet I can’t. And so you have to share some of this risk with the market and with me telling you these things. And if you are risk averse, this might not be the field for you.
We do. We just guarantee that you’re gonna get something over the course of time. You’ll see that you’re making money consistently and there will be some [00:22:00] downtimes and you’ll be what went wrong. It’s honestly, so see, your SEO example, it really could be that everybody else discovered what those good terms are.
And now you’ve got not five books or companies, but 50 and you get diluted. And there’s all kinds of, in the aftermath, you can often explain what happened in the patterns, but it doesn’t have predictive power. It has explanatory power, and you have to always take a bet as to.
I want to get it on early, and so there’s even more risk if you’re not certain and all that kind of stuff. So I, we, there are some people that really understand that, but a lot of people just want, who can I yell at louder to make this happen,
Stephen: Yeah. Yeah.
What my favorite example was I was doing a website for a company that did mobility accessories for Vans. You’d get, you’d buy a van and they’d convert it with these different mobility accessories, depending on what your dis disablement was. Okay, great. They wanted to do SEO work, and I was working on it, and they’re like we’re not ranking.
Oh first of all, they said, oh my gosh, we’re ranking number [00:23:00] one for our domain name. Great. You should, there’s a big problem if you’re not, this was before everyone started stealing that stuff and they’re like see, we did that without your help. You did that without anybody’s help, including your own.
It just happened,
Alan: and isn’t that the other side of the coin, that when some, something happens inexplicably, but they want to claim credit. We’ve got somebody in, in, high office that just seems to always deflect the things that he did wrong and claim credit for something he had nothing to do with. So
Stephen: I know
Alan: it’s all rages.
The,
Stephen: But the best part of it was that they started getting mad. ’cause well, we’re not ranking number one. I’m like ranking number one for what we’re doing like 150 keywords. You can’t expect to have number one for every single one of these. What are your most important keywords?
What are the ones? We’re not rank, we need to be number one.
Alan: in everything never will be
Stephen: I’m like, tell me what the, so the word they do these mobility accessories for vans. The word, they insisted that they rank number one for is Vans. And I’m like,
Alan: [00:24:00] oh, that’s.
Stephen: If somebody is looking for a van, 90% of those people are not looking for what you have.
You’re wasting money. And they insisted on it. One of the sales guy says I can get us to number one. How right here? Click. And he, they were at number one. They’re like, yes, that’s what we want. And I’m like, you are spending a hundred dollars per click. We’re number one.
Everybody’s gonna see us.
I’m out. You’re good.
Alan: Honestly they’ve never learned from advertising that targeting advertising is the key, not broad, that you really want to get people coming that are not gonna get to your site and say, this isn’t what I was looking for, and immediately click away.
Stephen: I think the problem was the same problem you get with self-publishing and self movie publishing is that the internet made it easy for everybody to get a Google account and start looking at it instead of just hiring a professional to take care of it and do it. So before, when they were doing newspapers and billboards and radio and everything else, they had these professional guys come in with their fancy suits and their stuff said, look, this is how much we will do.
[00:25:00] This is our campaign. This is what we’re gonna do. Okay, great. Go do it. Because you can’t show numbers for radio or billboards or even newspaper. You can’t show numbers. But they’re like we spent this much on the campaign and look, we made this much money. Obviously it’s a win. But on the internet, any fool can get a Google account and start looking at the numbers and they start getting micro, like freaking out.
Oh my God. We had a million people visit, but only 20,000 clicked. Do you really think those million that look for vans are all going, I need mobile accessories, or do you think maybe 5,000 of them did the other 20,000 were clicking to see what, it’s you gotta think, folks it’s dangerous.
It’s so easy. It’s dangerous.
Alan: I hear you like that’s great analysis that the more that you, I really want everybody to be able to make music. And yet people think I’m gonna write a hit song and then I’ll retire. And it’s they have people that are really skilled, the Carol Kings of the world, and even they, out of the 500 songs they wrote, they might have had 20 top, [00:26:00] 10 hits, which is an amazing number, but the other 480 of their songs were really nice and pleasant and they came out of why she’s a good songwriter, but they didn’t have whatever that spark was that made it everybody hums ass.
Everybody knows that song. Honest.
Stephen: the Beatles did not hit it out of the park every single time. And for all those Elvis hits, that’s two, maybe three on an album, there was five other six other songs that nobody knows or heard of.
Alan: Absolutely. So this again, totally outta digression, Colleen and I have an amusing thing that we do that when we pull into parking, if it’s really great parking, we’re like this is the spot they reserved for Sir Paul. Paul McCartney gets this spot. Whereas the Greg Kin spot that’s maybe like an aisle over and we starting to talk about, who are God, what’s our rank order?
I think it’s probably Sir Paul. And then I think it may, is it Sir Mick Jagger? But at least Mick Jagger. And so then there’s rock and Roll royalty, and then there’s British is different than American. Who is it for the United
Stephen: Yeah, you gotta go Imperial, not [00:27:00] metric.
Alan: Yeah, that perfect. Exactly. So we were like, I think maybe Steven Tyler, he’s been head of Aerosmith. Many albums sold. Everybody knows his name. ’cause there’s some people like a group like the Eagles many hits. But would you pick Glenn Fry or Don Henley? There’s multiple
Stephen: They’re just one
Alan: Joe Walsh.
Stephen: beast.
Alan: Exactly. And this is interesting. It has to be, this is the one they reserve for. Someone that could go park there. And so it’s like we took us a while to get to Elvis. He really might be the American Rock royalty, but he’s been gone for 50 years. So no wonder he’s not the one we thought of for the parking spot.
’cause he’s not touring, he’s not putting out albums and music and stuff. So that kind of thing of if you’ve lived 65 years, you have an idea of multiple generations of music. And who are the ones that bubbled to the top? So is it Bob Dylan? He’s been an influence for many guys, but I don’t think he sold as many albums as Lou Graham and Foreigner.
I’m not sure about that. I have to really look about, so what an interesting exercise. Everybody loves ranking. Everybody loves reeling. [00:28:00] The rolling stone list of here’s the top 20 guitars of all time. That’s bullshit. They left off him and him.
Stephen: Yeah. I was just listening to an old Casey, K from Top 40. I like to do that Sunday mornings. It’s on one of the radio stations, and they had a trivia question somebody wrote in, and I love some of these. The people were like has there anybody the Grammys had just happened? And it was like Michael Jackson or somebody like, has anybody ever gotten more than Michael Jackson?
And they’re like actually, and this was like 87 or so, actually at this time, Michael Jackson ranks 13th. There’s 12 people that have gotten more. The first number one spot was some German band director that directed all these hits from like the forties and fifties and got like 29 Grammys. And it’s like nobody ever heard of them, so that’s the other thing. These awards and stuff, the people getting them aren’t necessarily the people making the most money. Oh, did I tell you my quote? Did I tell you my oh my gosh. Ken, was it Ken Fett? [00:29:00] I think, recognize that name author,
Alan: the war Exactly. Good War history books or, fictionalized war.
Stephen: So this, I was watching RL Stein’s Masterclass, and he was at some panel or some whatever, and Ken Follett was on stage with, and he didn’t name him, but some really famous literary giant author. Like one of those guys that they are the American author, type thing. And this author being a little egotistical is I only write for myself.
I write what I wanna write when I wanna write it and put it out there. And if nobody likes it, that’s fine. I’m just writing what I want. Ken Fett goes, that’s great. And that’s why you’re one of the big great ones. But that’s why I’m rich. Okay.
Alan: That’s, it, there really are people that, what they have is fame, but they didn’t necessarily capitalize on fame or they weren’t at the time when things could go. Quickly to best seller status and sell, I don’t know, a million versus 10 million versus a hundred million. You do those [00:30:00] there’s a different level of wealth and influence and are you an influencer to everybody?
If everybody read Herman woke books, I don’t know, people don’t read big books anymore, so they don’t sit down and read Harmon Walk, which is a terrible thing to say,
Stephen: that’s so funny you say that because I was at the Maplewood Christmas in the Woods Craft Show over the weekend set up, and. It was so interesting. Did quite well. It was a good event, but I had multiple adults asking about my books and get my fantasy book because they’re like, you know what? I need to read more.
This sounds interesting, but I don’t want something huge. I don’t want something that’s like too complic. I wanna relax and just read, and this sounds perfect. And I had never had it that before. I’m always pushing the kids and I’ll say, oh, adults who read it to the kids love it too, type thing, but these were like adults buying both of my books because they wanted to read it with no kids in sight. And I was just a little,
Alan: It’s not, they’re not making their brain really work. They just wanted [00:31:00] like literary candy, a
Stephen: How is that different than James Bond or Max seriously,
Alan: absolutely. And it’s funny when I say nobody reads big books anymore, and then it’s Harry Potter and Source sold an entire generation of kids with things that were
Stephen: The first book was a normal size. It wasn’t huge. It was two.
Alan: expanding. Yeah, she had more territory to cover, more characters more, describe Hogwarts and its surrounds and all that kind of stuff. So I, Brendan Sanderson is an author that I like that he’s one of those guys that I still, I’m gonna make a commitment and read the 500 pager there.
They’re really, he is good at not, oh God, he milked it. We maybe we left about this recently and some part of going to a Cool Men event over the weekend was I continually pull out my phone. Not to be annoying, but to make note of, I love the question. What’s the thing you love that unless you told me about it, I wouldn’t know about it.
But it’s great that I should seek it out. And this book, this game, this TV show, these, this music and I pick up 10 [00:32:00] recommendations and I’m gonna like hop on Amazon and say, I can find some lowered Huron music. I can get, these books are like Freakonomics, but they’re not that. And it’s I always like that concept of apply data to the thing and then it’s not just jelly Green, giant, sold a lot of cans. You wanna find out why or how many it really sold. And sometimes it’s really, van camp’s, pork and beans, it was the big winner, but they didn’t advertise as much or whatever else it might be. Back to this, it’s the for ev every, there’s a, to every rule there is an exception and you want to find out there, everybody wants the, Netflix has a thing where it’s not the kind of movie, it’s not whether it’s a, an Oscar winner or a TV Emmy winner, it’s 90 minutes.
That’s what people are willing to devote from seven 30 to nine o’clock, after dinner, but before they have to put the kids to bed or whatever their criteria might be. But that’s the thing now is I don’t want a two hour movie. I want a 90 minute movie. I, the first time I saw that that just seems so, like you don’t have the attention span, but there’s other [00:33:00] factors that go into why it could be a 90 minute thing.
Stephen: Me and Colin went and saw Napoleon a couple years ago in the theater
Alan: And it’s like a four hour guy, right? It’s a long movie.
Stephen: the extended version now on Apple Plus. The original was just right around 3, 3 15, something like that, and it was quite long. But then I told Colin, I said, Hey, they got the extended dish on Apple. He’s oh, cool. I’m gonna have to watch it.
I’m like, yeah, it’s four hours and five minutes. You’re like, holy crap. What the heck did they add?
Like that. That movie was long,
Alan: They had, as the Lord of the Rings trilogy big in theaters and some of the longest movies, but then when they put out like the 16 disc box sets that every one of them was enhanced and Colleen really was like, what did they add? Just more marching, just more, I don’t remember anything like now that explains why this person did this, that it all seemed to be, we put all this stuff on film and in order to get our money’s worth out of this special effects, we’re gonna throw it at you.
Stephen: So I love that you mentioned those because there are some movies that I would say maybe it’s a personal thing, but I [00:34:00] would say really we’re better with the extended enhanced edition. And those are some of them, a few of the scenes, if you know the Tolkien books, there’s a few scenes that they cut out that actually do help explain and make things better.
Alan: that’s a great way to put it. I, if you know the books you really missed, oh, they should have gone into this particular, a heartfelt between father and daughter, and then they had to cut it out, okay.
Stephen: the best example I had of that is the Superman versus Batman movie from several years ago. They, it got, it was like, didn’t do super well in the theater and stuff. We saw it and I’m like, yeah, that was okay. But then they released the director’s cut and I watched that. I’m like, oh my God, why didn’t they put that in the theater?
It was only like 15, 20 minutes difference, but it was so much better. It flowed better. It made sense.
Alan: Yes. Watchman is the
Stephen: by cutting it.
Alan: Yeah. Watchman had a director’s cut that was I think it’s Zack Schneider. It seems to be, there are certain people, Zack Snyder, Joss Whedon, jJ Abrams that they really [00:35:00] told the story right the first time. Then the executives said, oh, we needed it two minutes.
We were gonna not get three showings in evening. Were only at two. But then it isn’t as good a movie exactly what you’re saying
Stephen: Zach Snyder Justice League, that’s another great example of the other direction because they, he had an extended director’s cut, but it was close to four hours and they cut it down to an hour and 45 minutes and cut a bunch of stuff out. And the movie didn’t do super well in the theater. But the thing was, he, okay, so Marvel, they introduced Iron Man in his own movie.
They introduced Captain America in his own movie and most of these guys then they did the Avengers movie. They had introduced everybody through so well. Zach Snyder was told to do Justice League before introducing the characters. So he tried to throw it all in one movie and it made it this big, long, almost mess.
So they cut a lot of that crap out and just gave us the Justice League. They really should have done at least a Cyborg movie and a Flash movie before
Alan: Hawkman [00:36:00] movie Exact. I was like, I had that honestly, exact same impression of they, they did it wrong, they didn’t do the build and then have the gathering of the superheroes for a menace that’s too big for any of them to handle on its own. And just because of the amount of time it takes to develop the origin story and the relationships between them and their, all of that.
It really was DC almost did it like, like showcase used to be we’ll just try things and if it sells well, we’ll give you more issues of Green Lantern or more issues of, Viking prints. And there’s a whole kinds of showcase and brave in the bold that fell on the cutting room floor because they didn’t do well.
Stephen: Yeah, that’s Spider-Man. The very last epi or issue of Amazing Fantasy
Alan: fantasy. That’s right. That it, you’re revived and change the name of the title. ’cause they were like, what’s going on? We thought we had to fulfill our contractual obligation.
Stephen: there. There, it’s 30 years before viral videos on the internet. That was the same thing happening right there. They made Spider-Man. Okay, great. Wait, what? How many did that sell?
Alan: Yeah. And I love that when someone finds the anomaly, you going back to our [00:37:00] stock talk and has to explain it because they want to capture what was the magic, what was the thing going on in there.
Stephen: Never happens,
Alan: we the, I guess also segue, that thing about going to the MENSA thing and getting, I just, I love, I already am so omnivorous, but I still love what, there’s some things that aren’t just the bestseller or the Oscar winner.
They really are interesting, quirky, not even maybe independent, but they’re like this director. I do, we just talk about this. There’s a one called Bear with Me. It’s by Shane Black. And he had a heyday, it’s like number two on Netflix, but they used to say Shane Black Presents and the people would go to movie just because of him.
Now he does a lot of movies where he lets the quality of the movie and the quality of the dialogue and whatever he’s good at, and he doesn’t try to trade on the name because the name almost got punished. You know what I mean? And yeah it’s like something, no, not Patty cake painted black. It’s something, it’s two words maybe PB peanut butter and [00:38:00] jelly.
I’m just teasing.
Stephen: Play Dirty with
Alan: play dirty. That’s it. Exactly. And
Stephen: which looks really good.
Alan: I must have mentioned it last time because I think one of your comments was Marky Mark. You know what Mark Wal has done?
Stephen: always call him that. He’d probably
Alan: I know.
Stephen: me if he ever met me.
Alan: Yeah. And that it’s funny. Again, I guess another, the Russo brothers did all kinds of good Marvel movies and they’re still doing great movies, but now they do some things associated with Bollywood or they have done, boy, there was another one, and remember I laugh about this, Ryan Reynolds and Ryan Gosling are not the same personnel but a Ryan.
And so Ryan Gosling was in that, the one where it was an adaptation of the Gray Man books, I think it was maybe called and it was really good.
Stephen: Was that Netflix or Apple? ’cause there’s been a couple similar on both.
Alan: I’ve lost track. I, that’s, I I always have Netflix and Amazon Prime because the price is so reasonable for the infinity of things that you get. And I turn on and off Apple or Paramount, or HBO Max or whatever, based on now I gotta watch the next Ted Lasso. Now I gotta watch the Lord of the
Stephen: You can [00:39:00] get a lot of those as channels under, so you don’t.
Alan: seen that. I, it’s funny, Colleen and I are just getting to the place at that. I really try not to ever spend money on movies besides the subscription I’m already getting. ’cause I outweighed them. Eventually Supernatural will come to someplace and I’ll be able to watch every season without having paid a dollar 99 an episode.
You know what I mean? That kind of thing. So the I don’t always keep track. We try to like, we try to keep track of whether the Break Baking show is on Netflix or Amazon or wherever, and then you find out, they have Seasons one to four over here because they bought those early ones directly from the BBC.
And then when it went to BBC four and Love Productions, now that’s five through 13. So a lot of times we just use the search function and it shows you where it’s available, I think. Okay. I think that’s the one. That’s the first and that’s the one that’s the second set.
Stephen: I love that in today’s world. Okay, so go to Prime to Get, or seasons one, and then you gotta go to HBO to get season two, but go back to Prime for season three
Alan: yeah, because they bargain [00:40:00] their way. It is a little annoying. Exactly.
Stephen: So tell me about Ween here. We, that was one of the things we were gonna talk about.
Alan: Exactly. So for those who don’t know, Halloween is the Halloween party that Mensa in Chicago. Chicago area, Mensa Throws, and it’s the biggest of what are called the regional gatherings. Mensa has an annual gathering that moves around the nation, different cities, but certain cities have a regional gathering every year, and it’s Mensa In Chicago, usually it’s 400 to 500 people.
It’s really a good party. So there’s lots of smarties to play games with and have great conversations with and just enjoy their company. Lots of programs going on. Great hospitality, endless food, and drink like 24 hours a day. Great tournaments, if you’re not wanna to play games, we wanna see if you are the best in the world at Seven Wonders of the world.
You there’s people that will really give you a good competitive game ’cause they love it and they’re good at it too. A great hotel, the Western Chicago North Shore, which is all the way up in Wheeling instead of being downtown Chicago. But it’s a great hotel to I’ll just stay here for the weekend and if I want to go outside the [00:41:00] hotel, there’s a couple places with an easy walking or driving distance.
The highlights of Halloween are, there’s a costume parade on Friday night that is the most cool burst of creativity and execution that I see every year. There’s, it used to be that it was just what happened to be in the news or whatever episode. It’s supposed to be puns, it’s supposed to be visual puns.
And they, this year’s theme was, it’s the 49th Halloween and so it was seven squared or 49. And so Colleen and I won a prize free, like best or worst pun, depending on how you think of it. She dressed up as in San Francisco, 49 er colors and Kaepernick on the thing. And I dressed up as a big orange, and she was a and also she was young, so she had a beon and a balloon.
So she was a minor 49 er, and I was her darling Clementine. And it’s a good PO thing where not many people guess it, but then when they hear it, there’s a wonderful explosion of laughter or groaning depending on how good the bun is. So [00:42:00] they have a set of six, judge, I think six or seven judges, and you get best pun, worst pun, best traditional, best group, pun that kind of stuff.
And so it just is I try to sit in the front and get pictures and I should bring those pictures up, but it’s people came up and that were dressed in Egyptian garb and made little, so they were Pharaoh moans and one by one, they’re just so witty and they really the Egyptian thing wasn’t, Hey, I held a little scepter with an ass on it.
They really had the right Pharaoh headdress and the colors were just great and like real gold lame type stuff. And so the people that I remember, like friend Rick put together a so not cyborg, the who were the guys on Star Trek? The Borg. The Borg. And he really had like tracings of blinking lights on him and the thing over one eye, and he looked.
And had powered his skin with a little bit of vein work. So he looked kinda like a living dead person. It was all electronically [00:43:00] combined. It was as good as anything I’d seen on the show. And so sometimes just for execution, for quality of the costume, and the judges actually will often, they’ll have a judge’s award because they don’t know what category to put it in, but we can’t leave this good thing unacknowledged how good it was or how funny it was or whatever.
So that’s a blast that goes on for about an hour and a half. Saturday night, as I think I’ve mentioned before Colleen and I host an event called Pretentious Drinking that, shout out to Gary Crico. He and I originated that. I think this was our 30th year. So it’s really cool to be involved in a Long Running Men event because that means it’s really stood the test of time and it’s still doing great.
It’s not we just
Stephen: I think a large part of that is Mansons like to drink.
Alan: Yeah, it, I think so. But it’s funny, they have free flowing beer. Like they have good craft beers as well as wine and all kinds of White Claw and all the sch Spitzer and stuff like that. But at there, that’s where we serve Leurs and cordials. And they are, the rarefied things.
You’re gonna get an elder flower liqueur that really tastes like that [00:44:00] essence. But of course, it’s been distilled, so it happens to have an alcoholic kick. And we, over the course of two hours, people get a punch card that gets them like five shots. And so you can sample amongst all the things at the bar, but you’re not sure you want to try it for six, seven, $10.
And so people come for the classic classics, they have their grab buoy or their Benedictine or Theo, or the Amaretto, Deno and others. We get probably 15 or 20 new ones a year. And it used to be that I really tried hard. To try everything new. So I could say best thing New Year is the banana cream liqueur over there, but I 15 or 20 shots is a lot in two hours.
Even for a big mose like me and especially I’m on a couple things that say, don’t have alcohol with this and then
You know what I mean? So it’s yeah, I had a great time and then my liver jumped out my body because it was objecting to the ill treatment that I was giving it. So we we found a pistachio laur this year that was really good and found, some, one of the thing that’s happened is places know about brand awareness that if you’re already Bailey’s, you don’t just continue [00:45:00] selling Irish cream.
You say here’s Bailey’s Peppermint and here’s Bailey’s Dark chocolate and Bailey’s coffee, and those kinds of things. So a Sam’s flavor really stood out from all the Bailey’s or Mozart or RumChata we like the RumChata coconut even better than the original. Which tastes kinda like an oatmeal cookie with a kick and that kind of stuff.
And I have big signs on the wall that say, here’s the classics, here’s the drink your vegetable section, here’s the chocolate, the creams, and that kinda stuff. And w without at all aggrandizing, it really is a successful event. I think we’ve, we probably had four 50 people this year, and we had 200 people at the event.
Half the event attendees come to this thing and nobody gets drunk and sloppy and stupid. Nobody, crashes the table. Nobody gets combative. It’s just such a mingling and a, there’s just such joy and chatter, like when the room is loud with sounds of joy. It, I’m just so happy that this thing that Gary and I gave [00:46:00] a try with an initial, like dozen bottles, it has blossomed over the.
Stephen: Call it pretentious drinking. So people dress to the nines. Sometimes you get a lot of the twenties, flapper era type dress or, top hats and tails and stuff.
Alan: Exactly. And, because it’s Halloween weekend, they dress up with the cool pung things on Friday night, and then as you said, they’ll dress up with various different generations of what was fancy. We had, a person that like had a mole in a top hat and a can. And so he is like going for a Victorian level fancy.
And the tails I always dress up. I wear a, a black kilt and a tuxedo shirt, and I have like little arm garters on, so I look kinda like a bartender and I often have a bow tie. This year I couldn’t find it, so I had to wear just a regular tie, but I’ll have a bow tie, but it’s really either a bat or a big spider, to embrace the Halloween and it just the. We have a wonderful crew of poor Meisters. We couldn’t do it without, it’s not Colleen and I serving, it’s us and 20 of our friends. So we have people manning the tables and everybody has their favorite [00:47:00] sections. So they get to know their product. And when people come up and say, what should I try, you should try the 43 or the ante E three or the C Man or the Mozart double the triple chocolate this year was a big hit down at John ER’s chocolates tables and I don’t know man, it’s just really a fun event while still taking care of our friends.
Why is it a great event? ’cause it isn’t, everybody gets drunk in a bar and then drives their weapon home. All you gotta do is be able to hit the elevator button. You’re back to your Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And I think maybe twice we’ve had someone that was a little bit overserved and that, someone actually went to their room and then came back down in their row because they were, they didn’t wanna miss the rest of the good time.
What was interesting also this year was, to me at least interesting, we’ve had to have a negotiation with the hotel about we’re allowed to serve alcohol because we have people that were bar like professionals if you will, that are part of it, and their certification would cover everybody.
Illinois has tightened things up now so that everybody that serves had [00:48:00] to be what’s called TIPS certified or Bassett certified in Illinois. So all of my poor meisters went and took a four hour online course and got certified and then Halloween sponsored, it was like $13 it cost, so you gotta add another $260 to the budget for the event.
But so everybody is safe. And then what we just talked about, it’s not only that you think they’re overserved, the course has things about how to recognize people that maybe you should slow them down. Maybe you should. Gentle gently tell them you, that kind of stuff. And so we just seem to not have that problem.
And, if there is any kind of problem, they just call me over and I’m not like a bouncer, I’m not menacing. But when I come over full of bonami, but I’m big and they like me, then they tend to not have an argument with someone. They’re like, okay, Al, I get it. I get that I’m being a little boisterous.
Stephen: So what good talks were there?
Alan: A number of things on AI and very interesting, like for beginners, for medium, for advanced. And so I went to two of those three to just [00:49:00] see, I really like getting the survey of what have they used, what’s the graphic one, what’s the writing one, what’s the coding one? And how we’ve already got three years of everybody in the world having access to Jet GPT.
So there’s history now as to I tried, people, for instance, have been coding with vibe that apparently really produces great code really fast. But what they’re discovering is it’s unmaintainable. You don’t know how the code came to that. And so if you tweak it, you don’t know what you’re changing in all the ways it ripples through code.
So it’s almost like going back to old basic programs. It doesn’t reveal like that. And that’s some of the things you’re finding out. We can whip out new code and maybe if we’re gonna have to redo something, you have to let it regenerate code with these two new features instead of trying to have a human being tweak the existing code and add two new features.
Some limitations there. Leo Doyle, a friend from India, Indiana that has had a really great career in finding tech things. He like ran the first ISP indi Indiana indy net and stuff like [00:50:00] that. And so he’s been playing with these things and. He was doing things where, here’s how you take existing photos and tweak them to a little bit along the lines of deep fakes or remove, oh, I took a good shot of the Grand Canyon, but this person walked right in and then you can really excise them and have it all.
He took pictures of me and played with, here’s how we could make al dance like a cloud or whatever. So that was I didn’t get a chance to see it ’cause it was opposite something that I had to do. Maybe oral’s, logic puzzle tournament. That’s what we’re talking about. And those were very interesting ’cause the people really know their stuff and there’s a lot of people in the room that also know their stuff, so they don’t ask questions only to show off how smart they are.
It really engendered good discussions about, A lot of people are afraid of it, and so here’s why the benefits right now are out weighing the cost, but you gotta be, A lot of people are talking about how do we put OVS three laws of robotics into things so that they will not harm humans, will not allow a human to come to harm with through their inaction, all those kind of things.
Stephen: I give [00:51:00] whoever was doing the AI talks, a lot of bravery, big balls credit, because knowing mens is also, they’re very opinionated sometimes in my opinions is what is right. And I can imagine right now with ai, they probably got some people what about this? And this is wrong, blah, blah. And just attacking them and you’ve had that happen.
Alan: Exactly. What’s funny is that’s very much the exception instead of the rule to use that
Stephen: It is very much
Alan: most of the time I love men’s audiences because they’re very friendly and accepting and they might know a lot, but hardly any ever, does anybody try to take over the presentation or really?
That’s so long I can throw a shoe at
Stephen: but AI right now is like getting up there to talk about why politics is matters in today’s, I done.
Alan: it does have flash points. What’s interesting is look, often, of course, when I do a presentation, it’s not, what am I gonna include? It’s what am I gonna leave out? You’ve only got an hour to cover, often lots of territory. And that’s what every one of them began with a disclaimer of, even though I’ve done a lot of stuff, and I’m gonna give you three examples of each of these stuff, there’s 10 examples for many [00:52:00] of them.
And so if you discovered another thing, you might wanna join these various different discussion groups to contribute your own smarts and experience, and to also look for what you might not know about yet. So I need that it the field is moving so quickly that I can’t keep up unless I did it full time.
And I have other things like sleep that I do. Exactly. So those are really good, a great talk about iconography, about what are the things embedded in famous monuments or churches or various different things that if you go to an art class you’ll hear about this. It isn’t just a picture of Jesus on the Mount.
They’ll have all kinds of things around it. This meant these various different not states whatever parts of Israel, that each one is represented by a representative person based on the clothing they wore or some things. Surrealism often has all kinds of references. Religious art has all kinds of references, and he was not only pointing those out, but finding like similarities across cultures that these Mayan [00:53:00] things had some of the same things as these Buddha things had.
And because if they’re based on astronomy the whole northern hemisphere gets the same sky with variations, slight variations. And so that’s why Orion looks very similar, A hunter cap capture looked very similar because everybody saw a ride in the sky. Everybody saw the big dipper.
Maybe it’s a bear here, maybe it’s a dog here, but and I’m, they had he would often point things. He would say, Hey, what do you see in this picture? And I have a funny mind. And so I’d say that kinda looks like the Sistine Chapel where God is reaching out and it was like, you’re the first person that said anything before I said it.
You know what I mean? And it was fun to see all the discoveries that he made. One author where he let’s see author, artist that he not only did it for his treaties, that he then sent it to the author saying, I, I wrote this without your input. ’cause I didn’t want to be too influenced by you, but here’s what I put together, what do you think?
And then the author [00:54:00] sent it out to 90 people because he was like, this guy got it. He got my word. Noah was the author, was the name of the artist. And so I really like that kind of smarts and where they share it and he really did hop all over and digress. But come back to the Maine, this name is Christopher Kilgore is his name, and he’s one of those guys.
He did a talk about rope and the origins of rope and its impact on society. And at first it’d be like. Huh, really? And yet he made it fascinating and he’s done that with multiple topics now. And so when like there, there’s him, Cynthia Clampett, certain people that I try to be one of them where it’s no matter what he’s talking about, I wanna go hear him because he’s gonna say some cool stuff and I want come away with, look what I learned this weekend.
You know what I mean? So that very menon, you want to be able to say, when people say what’d you do? We played a lot of games. Know once in a while I really went to a colloquium on nuclear power or cosmology or the weather and it was the state-of-the-art good learning type stuff. And so that was good.
[00:55:00] Oral Maxime has a logic puzzle tournament and it’s where I go every year to have a great time and also get my ass kicked and be humbled, ’cause I love puzzles and I’ve done a lot of them and. And there’s lots of other people there that are really good at it. A friend, Michael Collins.
Again, shout out to Michael Collins and thank you again for letting us stay with you when we were coming into town for a wedding, but every hotel was gone because Northwestern was having its commencement or whatever, blah, blah, blah. So he won and I think it’s, he’s won a number of times. He just has that wonderful.
Makes the, he’s very fast and very accurate. And so there’s six different puzzles and oftentimes I’ll get like the first one or two so quickly that people at my table will curse. And then I’ll get maybe I, I almost get three and maybe four, but I grind to a halt in getting the really difficult, or it’s got a trick that it’s not like anything I’ve seen before.
Instead of it be like, this guy owns this dog, it’ll be, this guy owns either a dog or a cat and this guy owns either a giraffe or, and then by having that little bit of ambiguity, you gotta [00:56:00] go multipli deeper into what could be until it narrows to, oh, we know this guy has the rhinoceros and then you can work your way back out to say, what, how does that resolve other?
And he had lots of good stuff, a diagram where there’s directionality and every, everything has to get back to this core hexagon without there ever being, it’s all hexagons to get to this, but then you can’t do a, sharp turn an oblique, no acute turn. You can only do oblique turns and it’s just enough with the arrows already placed that you’re like, okay, I’m pretty sure that I can say this one for sure, but there’s 30 other decisions still to make and you gotta work it.
So it’s like nothing else that I’ve ever been to. They’re all new. He creates ’em just for this event. Then maybe he’s gonna collect it into the coolest puzzle book ever in the world, because I think he’s been doing it for 10 or 15. It must be 15 years, I think. And so again the people in the room are all a particularly interesting kind of brain power when you can do abstract reasoning and multiple kinds of, [00:57:00] is it inductive?
Deductive? Is it looking at a diagram and saying, I’m gonna put the dominoes in the right place so that it’s the only solution. ’cause you the six could have gone here and here. Oh, but it can’t go here. ’cause that blocks the four that you have to still, oh my god.
Stephen: That type of thing. It’s hard sometimes to explain to people that thing there is, what is the more determinant factor for the IQ intelligence rather than the memorization of trivia facts. People always think, oh, you think you’re so smart, so you probably know everything. No, but I can figure stuff out.
That’s where it gets determined and not memorizing facts, not jeopardy trivia but that’s a part of it. There’s a lot of people like that. I am not really great at trivia, so Star Wars trivia, I’m there, but General World trivia, nah, not so much, but that doesn’t change what my IQ number is based on all the testing and stuff,
Alan: that is a great meta statement that is such an thing of exercise. And really to go back to our, the AI talks, what they’re trying to do, the reason that some of these things are so amazing is they’re going [00:58:00] for a general intelligence, not an idiot savant that could play chess or solve, do play jeopardy or whatever like that.
Solve very specific crypto problems that instead they’re going for, they’re aware of everything that’s ever been written and said. And if you say something like, Hey, tell me what it figures out what the most probable next word in a sentence. And it does that enough times. So it actually writes things that are very human-like.
’cause that’s how our minds work. We learn from all the what will nurture. We have read. So I did, we went to a cool pub quiz trivia, and it was really good, high quality questions, but exactly what you’re saying. Whenever I do well at trivia, including Jeopardy, it just was I happen to have the experience with those six or 12 categories.
It just matched. But there’s all kinds of things that, I just don’t know the French term for mashed potatoes, and there’s no way I’m gonna be able to logic that out, bring them towards it, jeopardy questions are often written that they give you clues towards that, but you know it or you don’t in a lot of ways.
And so actually, so you’ve heard of the concept of the ego, right? [00:59:00] Someone has won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony, and who was the first one to get that? And like the entire room was wrong. Everybody thought it was Rita Marino because she’s well known as, maybe that’s why they created that term because she did it.
It was actually Richard Rogers of Rogers and Hammerstein. Isn’t that cool? So sometimes those are the cool questions. It’s not only singular things, it’s if you have a long list. Who was the first, who was the one that got it twice? Who was the one, whatever, those kinds of things. All kinds of sports trivia is based on that.
Everybody knows who won this game, who was the loser, or who was the last batter that struck out to give them the victory and all that. Some people have a mind that really retains all those bits. I’m happy that my mind does it, but I don’t know that I ever like, and that makes me a smarter, it just means that I’ve taken in so much and for some reason it sticks instead of getting sloughed off.
You know what I mean? It’s coincidence yet cap hats off to Kenya for doing such a great if you’re gonna have a trivia thing for Mansons, it can’t be that all the [01:00:00] scores are 90% and above. There has to be some kind of stratification of the scores and that sometimes you do that by, you gotta name five of them instead of one.
It’s a timed thing. So if it puts their paw up first, then they get to answer. And if they don’t get it right, then the next paw. So she did, has done really good things to make that high quality men event instead of a pub driven event where it’s hey, not only can you answer the question, but if you buy the room a shot, you get free points.
So that was a ton of fun. I had wonderful conversations at the tables, like I, as I’ve mentioned, the and actually this is sad. We’re, Colleen and I are 66 and 68 now, so we’re starting to have people that are gone or people that have health problems. And if they’re not there, you’re like, oh man, I missed them.
I hope that they’re not gone. Gone. ’cause sometimes you don’t know if they’re not on social media. I don’t keep track of people in Portland, Oregon, that kind of thing. So not quite a memorial service, but there’s a little bit of, are they okay? You know what I mean? I hope that they come back next year.
But more than enough good friends and new friends, mensey is still one of those places. Here’s a great [01:01:00] shout out to Halloween. At the annual gathering, they’ve now gotten sweets where they tend to break it up into, here’s the Gen X, gen Y, gen Z, millennial. The hells thems, here’s the gay sig, here’s the firehouse.
And instead of having one big wonderful room where there’s that energy and that cross pollination of ideas and generations and laughter, they segregate themselves. And then it never seems to build to that really cool mass of, wow, this is great Brainy energy. Halloween still has that. So even though it’s got 500 people instead of 2,500 people are in the main hospitality suite.
And you can browse amongst the tables and sit down and, I haven’t talked to you for a while and it doesn’t, it real says this, but it doesn’t matter to me as to whether they’re black or white or gay or not
Stephen: even tell you.
Alan: older, young. Exactly. It’s more like I love mets of conversation and there’s nothing like being able to sit down with a diet Dr.
Pepper or an ice cream bar and just start talking about [01:02:00] astronomy or start talking about, and even politics is sometimes it can. Constraint is Mensa has fanatics at each end, and sometimes they shouldn’t be at the same table, but a lot of times the discussion is about facts and what does the Constitution say and what’s the best solution to this problem?
Instead of just saying they’ve taken over and we’re fucked you there. There really were good things about what people are doing to try to get our country back on track. That’s not just a matter of kill ’em all or something ridiculous. You know what I mean?
Stephen: You did forget to mention the most dangerous part though, of the weekend, Halloween is that book table with the book sales. And it’s,
Alan: In resisted.
Stephen: oh yeah, I always have a problem ’cause it’s books. Other men since have read but are passing on. And so there’s always something of interest or I’ve been looking for and it’s quite often like the one year it was I forget the series, but it was like a fantasy series I’d been wanting to read and somebody like dropped off nine books.
There they are all nine books. [01:03:00] I’m like, oh my gosh, how much are they? I’m like, oh, here’s a 20. I, forget it. It would’ve been like $6 or something.
Alan: nine different bookstores. I would’ve had to hunt for these in all the small towns that still carry them. So
Stephen: and it goes to the kids. It’s scholarships for the kids. So it’s just, I will, after the first year that I went, I just would stop at the bank and just pull out money. And then I just go, okay, here, here’s a five, here’s a 20, here’s whatever. ’cause I got these books.
Alan: I have brought back boxes or bags where it’s like someone that really loved puzzles had all these old puzzle books and not written in, William Espy or Francis Es Ney, all kinds of people have done all kinds of puzzle books and that sometimes. It’d be like an addition before mine was.
And so it would be in more complete, it wasn’t the bo not ized, but like sometimes they condense something so it will sell more because it’s not as big on the shelf. One year it was all James Bond books, but that not the Ian Flemings, it was the ones written by Raymond Benson, who I really like.
And [01:04:00] seeing them all in one place was like, I’m gonna fill in my collection. And it’s like I lost track of which if I have and don’t for two bucks a book, I’ll just buy ’em all and be sure. And then I opened him up and they were like, property of Bill Lanker, who’s a good friend. And so when I saw him, no, it was like, bill, thank you so much for being done with these, because now I have them and they’ve gone to a good home.
Stephen: Yes. Yeah. Always good and fun times. Yeah. I’ve missed Weam the last couple years. I think it’s been three or four years since I’ve been to one. I need to start coming back. I need to go to another ag. It’s been way too long since I’ve been to an ag,
Alan: yeah, I’ll tell you, you love gaming and the games room is extensive. They got the Chicago area immense collection, which is just a to z hundreds of games and and people who are really good at it. So you get a really good game instead of being the one that always has to explain to others ’cause they haven’t played it yet, and stuff like that.
Almost always we have a longstanding double deck cancellation hearts game that there’s probably, 12, 16 of us. And then depending on how many people show up, we split into two, two tables or play at one and just the convert, instead of [01:05:00] being all quiet and staring at our cards, there’s longstanding aldry between us.
There’s teasing as to the always do well, so you gotta nail ’em with a queen early to keep him in the game and stuff
Stephen: was I forget the game. Maybe it was Queens or something that I knew about. I hadn’t played in a while, and it wasn’t a tournament. It was just some people at 12 o’clock at night wanting to get together and play. And I was just walking through the room and your wife grabbed me and said, here, you’re gonna play. And I was. I in my mind, I’m like, oh God, I really don’t wanna
Alan: I wanna go to bed.
Stephen: I had such a great time. I’m like, oh, thank you. Thank you for getting me outta my stupid doldrums here.
Alan: Honestly, it almost certainly was double day cancellation house. ’cause like I said, that’s the way we end each night of the gathering is with that game and that set of friends and the dynamic of you’re not just staring and waiting for your next turn. Everybody is in on every trick of every hand and just it’s just a joy.
Even though some people would look at it and say, haven’t you played that before? Is there any new juice in it for you? Because it’s so much not about the game, it’s about the friendship and the, just like when [01:06:00] you play poker or something like that, it isn’t about how much you win, but it’s about the teasing about, look at your money in my pocket judging you.
Stephen: Yeah. The best hand of that game I remember was everybody’s looking around, sitting there, and then it was like, quiet. And I’m like who won? Said you.
Alan: Yeah, what happened, how I, that’s in brief for those who have never played it before. All of our listeners, it’s, you play with two decks of cards combined and then if the same card is put on the same trick, they cancel each other out. So ordinarily you’ll never play an ace or a king of spades ’cause it might take the queen.
But if you play an ace early, somebody else that also wants to get rid of their ace will play it. And then the queen could be the highest card on the trick. And so there’s real changes to what’s going on. You gotta pay attention and it really helps to keep track of cards. So you can say there’s 26 different hearts out there, but someone’s been holding onto lot big hearts for a long time.
And if you’re playing hearts late every time that they’ve ducked under now they can’t duck [01:07:00] anymore. And you can make ’em take a whole bouquet of hearts and they get any points at once or something. So it. I don’t know. It just, I, that there’s John Messer and I regularly go after each other because they’re both pretty good at it.
He really memorizes every card. He’s such a great card player, and I try to keep up with them, and so when there’s that little dynamic of, in the big game, there’s also specific people that really are watching each other. ’cause that if you just let ’em go, they’ll win every time and that kind of thing, and, but we’re such good friends that it’s always teasing or it’s almost like I I don’t know how it worked out, but you had such protection, but I had more spades and I was able to pump the queen out of you. And it should have been, if there was a good distribution, that was impossible. And yet it didn’t.
Oh, so in every aspect we, we were. So happy. Everything worked out well. And then in brief, we had a Sunday that we stayed an extra day because we were gonna go meet friends and go to Second City. And then, because where we were, we like walked through Lincoln Park Zoo on the way to dinner and just [01:08:00] was another day of, oh boy, I missed this about Chicago.
It has such good things, high quality restaurants, things compressed in different neighborhoods that are really a delight. And so honestly the drive home Monday was just the recap of the weekend and we were just glowing with how, what a nice time we have. Sometimes you get the depression of, oh, I’m back to the real world.
You know what I mean? But we just were so filled of remember this and it’s great. This is a good line and such good times. So thank you Mensa. Thank you. Chicago area, Mensa, Heather and Susan and all the main principles gave that they just, they put on a great party and everybody has a nice time. You really gotta work hard to have a bad time.
Stephen: Yeah. Oh yeah.
Alan: You gotta do it to yourself.
Stephen: Alright man.
Alan: alright. Take care. Steven. Thank you very much. See you. We Okay. Same for you.
You have been listening to the Relentless Geekery Podcast. Come back next week and join Alan and Stephen’s conversation on Geek [01:09:00] Topics of the Week.
