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00:00:43.33
Alan Baltis
morning
00:00:44.56
Stephen Schneider
Let me turn up a little bit
00:00:45.78
Alan Baltis
let me turn other things off so we get full bandwidth and everything I need to do zippy fastness to make sure that we’re okay.
00:00:52.08
Stephen Schneider
little bit. All right. Alan, how’s it going? How are you feeling? we’ve We’ve been on hiatus for a while, so let’s start there.
00:01:04.32
Alan Baltis
yeah like I think four, maybe even going on five weeks.
00:01:07.51
Stephen Schneider
yeah
00:01:08.02
Alan Baltis
Oh, for all of our faithful listeners and viewers, and and it’s kind of funny, you know, I’ve gotten used to the different looks of myself, but now that I see myself on camera and in stark relief, had shingles in my ear.
00:01:24.42
Stephen Schneider
ah Which, how crazy is that? I’ve never heard of that, ever.
00:01:28.52
Alan Baltis
I’ve heard that before. i knew, so quick, you know, shingles is what you can get if you had chicken pox when you’re a child and it doesn’t really go away. It lurks in your spinal fluid, apparently.
00:01:40.56
Alan Baltis
And then some things can trigger it, stress or other diseases or something like that. I had not had anything. I was totally in the clear in terms of, you know, no a low stress life. We’re now retired.
00:01:53.66
Alan Baltis
And yet, One morning I woke up with an earache. And so I went to the doctor and they thought, how about an ear infection and gave me an antibiotic. And then it it got worse and like debilitatingly painful.
00:02:08.47
Alan Baltis
It, um, It’s called herpes zoster otica. It really is like oftentimes when you get um shingles on you, it’s like a strip of, you know, two inches wide by five inches, and it can be on your back or various different places.
00:02:22.23
Alan Baltis
Well, imagine that 10 square inches being compressed down into one square inch of your ear canal.
00:02:29.02
Stephen Schneider
Well, it’s a good thing you have a big head. though There’s a little more room.
00:02:32.33
Alan Baltis
Melon gave me a little extra capacity.
00:02:34.28
Stephen Schneider
Right.
00:02:34.90
Alan Baltis
and And so it I then got onto to an antiviral. And of course, it’s like Valtrex. It’s the same thing you take if you get like herpes herpes, you know, where you’re um your special magic parts are under attack.
00:02:47.95
Alan Baltis
Well, it i they identified it. when I went to the emergency room as that herpes zosterotica gave me a painkiller, gave me the first of the antivirals,
00:03:00.37
Alan Baltis
um it um it wasn’t enough. I had to go back to the emergency room like three days later because it was so painful that i was like going crazy you know what i mean like ah everybody asked what’s your pain scale and it must have been like eight out of ten and constant and ears ringing and i i don’t know how to describe it except like mad dog like chewing its own leg off to get out of a trap but there’s nothing you can do and so especially laying there in bed during the day i could distract myself i could you know i have some hearing loss there but i could listen to music or watch a show or just do things but at night it’s you in the ceiling and
00:03:39.35
Alan Baltis
i i really was like like crazy jittery you know what i mean like like i so luckily then they gave me gabapentin which is and what had happened it’s got i know i’m jumping around a little bit the first time that i went to the emergency room the reason that i went there was because it wasn’t only that i had the earache my face had fallen and so that when i got there they’re like crash cart time they really thought i had had a stroke
00:04:05.94
Stephen Schneider
The stroke, right?
00:04:07.27
Alan Baltis
They immediately check for all those things, ah your blood, and they give you ah either an mr MRI or CRT, where they run you through the little loop and they check. um They determined it was not that.
00:04:18.76
Alan Baltis
And then I heard the the term Bell’s palsy. and And so, oh no, that’s like you have that forever, kinda. um It got upgraded later to a thing called Ramsey-Hunt syndrome, where it’s exactly this. You get herbe zoster in your ear and it attacks your trigeminal nerve.
00:04:34.20
Alan Baltis
And the trigeminal nerve, though it says trion, it’s actually like five nerves that run your face. And so my eye was drooping. I couldn’t fully force it to fully close. I wasn’t blinking correctly.
00:04:46.88
Alan Baltis
My eyebrow was down like it still is kind of now. I look sinister because not doing exactly that.
00:04:50.34
Stephen Schneider
You look very serious.
00:04:52.34
Alan Baltis
You know, like if this is my eyebrows, like here it is.
00:04:53.12
Stephen Schneider
hidden Thank you, Spock.
00:04:56.07
Alan Baltis
I can do this one up. That guy kind of stays in place. um My mouth was drooping and I didn’t like my voice was affected. My addiction was affected. I couldn’t eat well because kind of like after you get a shot at the dentist, things aren’t numb.
00:05:11.67
Alan Baltis
And then your tongue and your cheek, all that coordination that you don’t even think about while you’re eating, it’s off. And so I kept biting the inside of my cheek or the edge of my tongue.
00:05:22.27
Alan Baltis
And so I switched to like soups and soups. coleslaw and things that required like no chewing pretty much um so happily i ducked down under 250 pounds for the first time in a long time because i really wasn’t i wasn’t able to eat anything hardly so you know it’s kind of funny but whatever you try to look at the the happy side of this hey i’m down a little bit of weight so at least that helped um The gabapentin apparently does help with um helping your nerves to recover. And so I really am in better shape now. I can like i can smile mostly.
00:05:58.33
Alan Baltis
And I can flare my nostrils. And I can pucker. like When I would brush my teeth, I would like put water in there. And then in swishing around, water would come out because I couldn’t force my lips to be closed all the way.
00:06:08.14
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
00:06:10.67
Stephen Schneider
I remember my father had Bell’s palsy, ah not with not with shingles, but just Bell’s palsy.
00:06:13.60
Alan Baltis
OK. All right.
00:06:16.05
Stephen Schneider
And he had all those problems trying to eat and ah yeah you’re talking and all sorts of stuff.
00:06:18.38
Alan Baltis
Yeah.
00:06:22.46
Alan Baltis
Exactly. So luckily I’m on the road to recovery. Like i said, I think it’s about four going on five weeks now. I’ve seen my doctor. I’ve seen an ENT, an ear, nose and throat person. I’m seeing a neurologist later this afternoon because it really is, there’s it’s a complicated thing and they want to help you recover in all those ways.
00:06:40.48
Alan Baltis
Like, you know, as I mentioned, when I bailed out of doing these things, I really look pretty elephant manny and I couldn’t talk well and stuff like that. And so I think a little bit out of vanity, but a little bit out of, God, just don’t do anything that is straining. You know what i mean? Like I really couldn’t force all the autonomous things that you don’t even think about, like to smile.
00:07:04.08
Alan Baltis
You know what mean? I really didn’t have that. And so I was concerned. and And the complicator was we’re we had a big cruise to Alaska planned.
00:07:11.86
Stephen Schneider
Right.
00:07:12.84
Alan Baltis
And so I’m like, well, I’m not going to sacrifice that, but how do I get myself in the shape that I won’t be the, you know, oh, God, don’t look upon me, you know, while I’m on the boat.
00:07:21.63
Stephen Schneider
you You need the surgery to get the hump and then you’ll be set, you know?
00:07:25.29
Alan Baltis
Exactly that. You know at least I would have, like, cleared a table for us to sit at everywhere I went.
00:07:29.68
Stephen Schneider
um want to sit here.
00:07:31.27
Alan Baltis
Exactly, exactly.
00:07:31.69
Stephen Schneider
sure. No problem, man. Oh, you.
00:07:33.24
Alan Baltis
you
00:07:33.68
Stephen Schneider
ah Use it to your advantage, you know?
00:07:37.07
Alan Baltis
Somehow i I was suddenly like half moose, half human, you know. So we and so we did go and And if you’re looking for wonderful distractions, how about see some glaciers?
00:07:48.54
Alan Baltis
How about see some wildlife? So I kept recovering, but while on the boat, it really wasn’t clearing up. And I went through not one round of antivirals, but two before leaving.
00:07:59.68
Alan Baltis
And then I shouldn’t say boat, it’s a ship. On the ship, I actually went to the ship’s doctor and got examined. And he gave me a third round. And before it had built Valcyclovir, which is Valtrex.
00:08:10.02
Alan Baltis
And then he gave me Acyclovir, which is a different antiviral And that really seems to have helped me because it’s just two different things and you it’ kind of attacking it from two different angles. But having said that, I’m still in pain.
00:08:21.79
Alan Baltis
My hearing is down like 50%. I have constant ringing in my ears. which It’s one of those things that it really, it affects you it it like not being able to hear well when you’ve had pretty good hearing all your life i am the gap of penton makes me dizzy so as you might imagine you know 250 pound l lurching around you know every time that i stand up i have to like take a moment to find my new orientation, take a deep breath. And like when I, this is kind of funny, you know, when you walk and you, what you’re thinking of is I’m going to walk to there.
00:08:54.76
Alan Baltis
And then you like take a step left, slightly out of the way. Like what the hell’s going on that my kilter mechanism is giving me false information or I can’t will myself to be balanced.
00:09:07.42
Alan Baltis
So that’s still, I have to be careful about sitting up and getting out of bed. i have to be careful about getting up from my desk. I fell. For the first time in my life, when we were in our hotel in Vancouver, I didn’t realize how bad it was.
00:09:15.69
Stephen Schneider
Hello.
00:09:21.49
Alan Baltis
I got off of bed and started walking. We got like a cool condo where we had a little kitchen facility. I was going to go, you know, make the coffee. And felt myself getting woozy and I didn’t want to fall. So I kind of overcompensated to right myself. And I just fell over backwards and bonked myself on our footboard.
00:09:39.08
Alan Baltis
I didn’t bonk myself. I didn’t hit my head. Thank God, because that’s when you go into like uncontrolled fall that’s what you most worry about is that you’re gonna break yourself you know i hit my back luckily I have a lot of meat back there and so I really didn’t seem to get hurt
00:09:46.23
Stephen Schneider
right And in Colleen’s like half your size. She can’t really boost you up. Yeah.
00:09:56.93
Alan Baltis
That’s exactly, you know, she immediately came to my aid, but kind of when I sat there on the floor swearing because, you know, I’m just so angry that this is my plight and fuck.
00:10:08.65
Alan Baltis
so it And I yelled so loud that I’m like, well, my neighbors now know that I’m, you know, insane. So, so
00:10:15.93
Stephen Schneider
you know the guy that looks like a serial killer? he sounds like a serial killer!
00:10:18.28
Alan Baltis
right even angrier, exactly that, clear the area. Yeah. Luckily, ah i i have been okay. i yeah um We did our vacation.
00:10:30.31
Alan Baltis
you know yeah it’s It’s a wonderful Holland American boat, food, a window, um wonderful shows at night, good dance troupes and good music and good comedy.
00:10:40.66
Alan Baltis
Actually, the comedian was the least of them, which is sad because we love stand-up so much. And the comedian was like 30-year-old hackneyed material. It’s like, wow, this this he’s really on the borscht circuit. You know what I mean?
00:10:51.12
Stephen Schneider
He’s still doing Watergate jokes.
00:10:51.39
Alan Baltis
Right. like that honestly like we’re colleen and i were looking at each other and completing his jokes while he was telling him because we knew them all you know and so luckily now i’m back and um had to mow the prairie that our lawn had become.
00:11:09.74
Alan Baltis
And I’m like, okay, this is a good thing. It’s kind of like having a walker. You know, I’m just holding onto my lawn mower and I’m not going to fall underneath it.
00:11:14.48
Stephen Schneider
yeah
00:11:16.87
Alan Baltis
It’s got a dead man switch. It’s an electric, you know, all the things that I never really think about, I’ve had to think when you walk into a room, where’s the counter and make sure you hold it or make sure you don’t fall into it.
00:11:27.100
Alan Baltis
You know what I mean? And it’s sure.
00:11:29.76
Stephen Schneider
And segue on that real quick, side note, in the month of May, I looked it up.
00:11:35.51
Alan Baltis
Yeah.
00:11:35.67
Stephen Schneider
We’ve had 22 of 29 days with rain.
00:11:39.29
Alan Baltis
Wow.
00:11:39.98
Stephen Schneider
you know, Northeast.
00:11:40.51
Alan Baltis
Luckily, that wasn’t the case where we were, but that’s why we had this sprouting. We must have had, honestly, a foot and a half tall of grass. It was was a prairie. And then I’m like, with the electric, you have to like be careful because you don’t want it to labor and cut out.
00:11:55.10
Stephen Schneider
Right.
00:11:55.25
Alan Baltis
And it was, you know, and then and anyway, it was it was funny to get it done because it was like twice the length of the usual lawn mowing.
00:11:58.43
Stephen Schneider
yeah
00:12:03.64
Alan Baltis
It’s like, well, and, and, I didn’t cut it right when we first got back. I gave it like two or three days and it really did dry. It had been raining so much that as you know, when you cut it, then it’s like I’m out there, I should have a scythe for how heavy the wet grass is.
00:12:18.22
Alan Baltis
Luckily that was accomplished. and And i I guess I’m kind of like, I, uh, I’m going to take still months to recover. It is a slow recovery when you have nerve complications. You know i mean? Your muscles and et cetera, et cetera, can really get well.
00:12:33.85
Alan Baltis
But nerves are tricky business and your body has to muster the forces. but We did also at the end of our trip, kind of like get the sniffles. And so now I’m coming home with the Klondike crud and…
00:12:44.78
Alan Baltis
and I’m actually on an antibiotic now because especially with things being compromised there, you don’t want to have, you know, congestion in your ear and that kind of stuff. So I’m just being careful.
00:12:58.96
Alan Baltis
and And the overall philosophical way look at this is, man, life can turn on a dime. know I mean? Colleen are like, we’re having retirement.
00:13:06.46
Stephen Schneider
You woke up and boom.
00:13:07.85
Alan Baltis
okay Our is okay. Our finances are good. We have trips planned. And then all of sudden, this thunderbolt out of nowhere to to wake up in such pain and then to be like, well,
00:13:21.36
Alan Baltis
they They misdiagnosed it at first, et cetera, et cetera. So I guess as you get older, more and more, like, well, as long as you have your health, i I am determined to have my health so that we can go on our trips and go on our hikes and stuff like that.
00:13:33.71
Stephen Schneider
Right.
00:13:36.62
Alan Baltis
That was a treat. When we go hiking, you know, there’s some places where it’s a rocky path. It’s not just ah a paved path. And so I’m like, okay, the key here is keep moving forward.
00:13:47.51
Alan Baltis
Your momentum carries you on a straight line more than if you’re trying to like hold on to a rock where there’s not really a way to hold on and going over the edge here, you know.
00:13:53.40
Stephen Schneider
Right.
00:13:55.36
Alan Baltis
So I really found a new way of hiking that and accommodated and we didn’t go on any cliff sides. I wasn’t going to be really stupid to risk things.
00:14:03.10
Stephen Schneider
ah Yeah. Colleen’s like, no, I think you’ll be okay on this cliff. Wait, hold on.
00:14:06.78
Alan Baltis
spark
00:14:07.22
Stephen Schneider
Let me call the insurance agent real quick.
00:14:08.62
Alan Baltis
ah Exactly. Let me get back to our policy because I could be a winner. So we we she she has been so wonderfully supportive. You know what I mean? i just I’ve slowed down a little bit and and it’s kind of funny.
00:14:21.75
Alan Baltis
I have a good sense of humor. So while all this… horror show stuff is going on you just keep saying well at least i lost some weight well at least i you know what i mean i was very selective instead of being a total glutton on the boat i was still selective about what i was eating you know for my health and for how much it’s going to be just i’m going to exhaust myself chewing you know what i mean you
00:14:31.20
Stephen Schneider
Right.
00:14:43.100
Stephen Schneider
Right.
00:14:44.81
Alan Baltis
So I guess it it’s interesting to look inwards and decide what’s the most important things you can be doing. Because any number of things in life are just momentum. You just keep doing your habits and stuff like that.
00:14:56.97
Alan Baltis
And so this has been a very interesting reset for and thinking about, well, what if this is permanent? What if now I have partial hearing loss and and I got ringing in my ear? and all the And then you read about it and it’s like,
00:15:08.100
Alan Baltis
It can lead to dementia. It can lead to bad results when your senses are not all operating. And so thought, well, I don’t want to rush into dementia. What do I do? So the neurologist, it’s kind of funny, part of what we’re going to talk about, and my doctor had mentioned this, is You kind of want to do PT.
00:15:26.75
Alan Baltis
You know, I’ve always done little experimental things too. How’s my eyebrow doing? And how are my forehead wrinkles? They actually like reasserted themselves. You know, this had been a very flat, like Botox side of my head.
00:15:37.94
Alan Baltis
And as the lines moved across, Colleen and Dave and Shirley, who we went on the cruise with, were like, you really are looking better every day because there’s kind of a monitor on your head. There’s of It’s funny.
00:15:49.21
Alan Baltis
so and And so i can I can speak relatively with full diction again. and that’s you know And even though I got, like I said, this little perpetually surprised look, perpetually I look like ah who Tim Misney, the guy that’s on all the billboards around, that you know he’s a lawyer that is going to go after people.
00:16:05.85
Stephen Schneider
yeah
00:16:07.04
Alan Baltis
And he does that to one eyebrow raise. So it’s like, apparently I’m doing a permanent Misney impression.
00:16:11.51
Stephen Schneider
I actually know him. I met him a few times.
00:16:13.97
Alan Baltis
Oh, okay. Yeah.
00:16:15.33
Stephen Schneider
He was like best friends with Gina’s father. they They were best buddies.
00:16:19.12
Alan Baltis
All right.
00:16:20.67
Stephen Schneider
So you you need to, you know, the prescription, eat more oranges, get some chicken noodle soup and tea with lemon and honey.
00:16:26.65
Alan Baltis
right.
00:16:27.97
Stephen Schneider
I mean, those things like cure just about everything.
00:16:30.45
Alan Baltis
Everything.
00:16:30.46
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
00:16:30.81
Alan Baltis
you know respect and And so we’re going to be speaking at the AG on our capital idea thing. And and that you know for again, for viewers at home, you know Colleen and I have been to 40 out of 50 state capitals.
00:16:42.93
Alan Baltis
But wait, it’s now 49 because we’ve made it to Juno.
00:16:44.84
Stephen Schneider
I was going to say, yeah.
00:16:46.39
Alan Baltis
And we got our picture on the steps of proving we were there. And we actually sat in on a joint session of their… uh, Congress because they were doing all kinds of committee appointments and stuff. So for like the first time we saw work being done, government being done in a state capital, instead of it being a pretty building, where is everyone?
00:17:03.66
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
00:17:05.95
Alan Baltis
We’ve still never seen a governor in his office, 49 out of 50. So maybe when we finally make it to Hawaii next year, that’s our big finale is Hawaii next year. um but so, what you said, I really am like, okay, uh,
00:17:22.14
Alan Baltis
eat healthy, you know be healthy, go for walks, make sure that all those things that exercise, and again, the PT is like, okay, do 10 face scrunches, do 10 eyebrow raises, and all that kind of stuff to make sure that I’m telling my body, use the nerves to activate this and reassert connection and control and stuff like that.
00:17:41.86
Alan Baltis
And here’s hoping that in three months, this will be ah really scary story, but it’ll only be a story instead of, well, that’s just Al now. He looks a little funny. Yeah.
00:17:51.24
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
00:17:51.58
Alan Baltis
Exactly. so
00:17:53.91
Stephen Schneider
i My father, his Bell’s palsy did get better, but he always had trouble. And, you know, for the last 15 so years of his life, my grandmother had shingles ah bad ah and she had to have surgery for it or something like that. So, I mean, both of those, the the the Bell’s palsy isn’t like painful.
00:18:14.55
Stephen Schneider
It’s just yeah you look like you had a stroke, like you said, but shingles can be very, very painful.
00:18:18.23
Alan Baltis
exactly Yeah, it is funny. A good friend in high school, beautiful girl, had Bell’s palsy, and it always just seemed like that’s just the unfairest thing in the world that her beauty was compromised. You know, she’s still beautiful, but it just is compared to how how radiant she was.
00:18:39.24
Alan Baltis
Now there’s just that little, what’s going on there? That’s a little different. and and And I think she’s as recovered as she’s going to get. So like, I really… you know It’s one of those things when you when you meet people, you kind of want to lead with your best self.
00:18:54.12
Alan Baltis
And I don’t want it to be that the first thing they notice is, well, that’s got a funny face. You know what I mean?
00:18:58.84
Stephen Schneider
but But also our society, a large majority, and you know I’ve probably done it and been accused of it. they They see somebody like that with drooping face and they like avoid you like you have the plague or they stare at you like, oh my God, what the hell is wrong with you?
00:19:11.93
Stephen Schneider
like it’s It’s mutating radiation sickness and you’re going to kill us. you know And that’s like the reaction.
00:19:17.12
Alan Baltis
I… totally agree
00:19:19.03
Stephen Schneider
But, but then you get like these ugly people, the Karens, the you know stuff like that, that are like ugly, ugly inside and they’re tolerated or looked up to for some reason.
00:19:30.66
Stephen Schneider
and don’t get it sometimes. Yeah.
00:19:31.88
Alan Baltis
that is a very philosophical way to look at it i i say this with some i don’t know pride is not the right word but like i’ve always tried to not be the guy that only judges a book by its cover that there are people that just have you know um I don’t know, someone had an operation and they and they have like a scar on their head.
00:19:51.78
Alan Baltis
do You know what I mean? And it was like, I don’t think that means they’re lobotomized. They certainly they sure seem to be. They’re in meds.
00:19:56.33
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
00:19:57.12
Alan Baltis
So they have to have a lot on the ball. and And so there’s been times when Even when you see someone at first glance and you have that, I guess it’s innate to have revulsion for what looks like sickness.
00:20:10.66
Alan Baltis
We avoid illness. You know, we avoid people to have the plague and stuff like that.
00:20:12.76
Stephen Schneider
um
00:20:14.95
Alan Baltis
But then some people just had a bad go. You know mean? That they they had like ah a doodling scar on their face or something like that. And you’re like, they’re still wonderful people. i have to get past the fact that that’s who they are now, you Yeah.
00:20:26.52
Stephen Schneider
And you’re probably like me, and I know Dave and Shirley probably were with you on the cruise ship.
00:20:31.59
Alan Baltis
Yeah.
00:20:31.66
Stephen Schneider
ah yeah I know Al. We’ve been friends forever. he looks He’s got this problem. I know I’m not going to catch something and die. It’s not catching. I feel bad for him. But in a very short time… you don’t even really notice you forget all about it.
00:20:44.97
Stephen Schneider
It’s, you know, you, and I try and do that. I, I, I guarantee I’ve probably reacted poorly at first glance to some people, but totally forget about it after I get to know them. And like, I have scoliosis. That’s the most visible thing i have in my one shoulder. My shoulders go like this when I walk and no one ever notices it, but like,
00:21:07.09
Alan Baltis
I wouldn’t have been able to say, what does Stephen have? I couldn’t, you know.
00:21:09.57
Stephen Schneider
Right.
00:21:10.55
Alan Baltis
Yeah.
00:21:10.94
Stephen Schneider
Right. But, but sometimes if I talk about it or if someone does say something’s like, wow, your shoulders are off. I’m like, oh yeah. You know, Quasimodo and I’ll go into the master. And what are you going to do? You know, I’ve had it since I fifth grade, I got identified with scoliosis.
00:21:27.87
Alan Baltis
okay
00:21:27.100
Stephen Schneider
If you look at my back, my right side, the muscles are bunched, but on this side, they’re like stretched more. ah And yeah, you know, I, I will sometimes try and, you know, make myself sit almost a little crooked. But, yeah but the point is most people don’t notice And once they do, it’s like, oh, okay.
00:21:47.02
Stephen Schneider
And the, when you get to know somebody, if you’re a good person, it’s no, it’s really no big deal. That’s just who they are. You get used to it.
00:21:55.09
Alan Baltis
That’s exactly right. And in fact, like again, philosophically, but absolutely truthful, you know, Colleen and I are now 65 and 67. And like, looks don’t stay. She is still beautiful.
00:22:07.29
Alan Baltis
But she is the one that most talks about, you know, when she was young, and she kind of misses it. And yet, I don’t, I don’t see anybody but beautiful Colleen.
00:22:17.97
Alan Baltis
And hopefully she still sees me as as handsome Al, you know what I mean? And so,
00:22:21.44
Stephen Schneider
That she has to put up with. Yeah.
00:22:22.98
Alan Baltis
ah Exactly that. you know If all I had was looks, then I’d really be in the dumpster because, oh my God, you’re…
00:22:24.75
Stephen Schneider
yeah
00:22:29.41
Alan Baltis
um By the way, a final thing is we got the vaccine, by the way. They came out with a new Shingrix or whatever. I’m trying to think what name of it was that was much better. The old one was only like 60% effective.
00:22:41.75
Alan Baltis
This one was 95% effective. Well, I guess I got that lucky 5% because it snuck past the vaccine. Dammit, know what I mean? I’m really a big vaccine believer is not the right word. It’s science.
00:22:54.73
Alan Baltis
And so we are up to date on every other vaccine that we could be with the the latest pneumonia and and of course all of the COVIDs and stuff like that. And yet this snuck through my defenses. What the hell?
00:23:05.78
Alan Baltis
So, you know,
00:23:06.03
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. And then you’ll you’ll get you’ll get people going, well, see, that stuff doesn’t work.
00:23:11.11
Alan Baltis
and And that’s, i like I’m loath to admit it because I know I’m going to have the people that say, well, you know, thank God you didn’t get autism as well. That’s not how it is.
00:23:18.89
Stephen Schneider
Right. Right.
00:23:20.83
Alan Baltis
And so, but it it is, i I’m happy to have been like, you know I’m blessed to be in the top 2%, but I don’t want to be in the in top 5% in terms of, oh, I have very muscular shingles and it got through my defenses.
00:23:31.89
Stephen Schneider
right yeah Yeah, it’s too bad we haven’t figured out the stupidity vaccine yet because there’s ah that you’d be rich.
00:23:38.42
Alan Baltis
I hear you.
00:23:40.33
Stephen Schneider
You’d be super rich.
00:23:42.71
Alan Baltis
it this you know of course terrible you know we still have lots of covid deaths in the united states and we still have new covid strains emerging and all that kind of stuff there’s just a new one out of china coming and again terrible but at least the people that are having trouble with it now are not the elderly and not the children and not the unwilling victims it’s now everybody who has heard and read all the things and they choose to not get vaccinated man you’re kind of bringing it on yourself i
00:24:12.17
Stephen Schneider
what
00:24:12.41
Alan Baltis
i’t think that fully there were still are people that just they don’t they don’t go to the doctor often enough or they don’t intend to get it but the people that are anti-vaxxers when they get something it’s kind of like man that’s that’s kind of the way it should be you did not listen to sense you did not take care of yourself and your family and um no one should die and yet if someone has to die i’m okay with it being you instead of mr and mrs innocent you know what i mean so
00:24:37.23
Stephen Schneider
Exactly. And here’s the scary thing. I read this. ah news thing that, ah you know, there was an outbreak of measles in Texas ah for a while.
00:24:47.37
Alan Baltis
Yes.
00:24:48.28
Stephen Schneider
And covid like you said, COVID’s still around and there’s other things, but we really haven’t heard anything. So it seems like everything’s better. the The problem is the CDC has been defunded so much.
00:25:01.37
Stephen Schneider
They used to put out daily alerts and they haven’t done that since March.
00:25:03.84
Alan Baltis
That’s right.
00:25:06.37
Alan Baltis
Exactly.
00:25:06.49
Stephen Schneider
So it could be killing hundreds of people in Austin, Texas with the measles and spreading. We don’t know a thing about it because ah we don’t get these any longer from the CDC.
00:25:18.26
Alan Baltis
I hear you.
00:25:18.41
Stephen Schneider
There’s the scary part, folks.
00:25:20.97
Alan Baltis
The damage that we’ve had because of the crazy current administration in terms of the risk that we’re at and that we don’t even know about it and the systems that we used to have to see something was happening and contain it, that’s been stripped out.
00:25:34.09
Alan Baltis
So we we are, some people just want to see the world burn. and they’re going to sift through the ashes to try to find some advantage so that they come out on top.
00:25:45.11
Alan Baltis
How are we in this crazy world in that regard? We had so many things in place that really were good monitoring systems, good fast response, good vaccine creation, et cetera, et cetera.
00:25:47.79
Stephen Schneider
what
00:25:56.25
Alan Baltis
We’ve got incredible heads in the sand, if not, not just heads in the sand, they’re stopping others who could know about it from finding out about it and so forth.
00:26:03.52
Stephen Schneider
Right, right. right
00:26:04.89
Alan Baltis
So the country’s gone insane in all these situations We had good working systems and we just shot them all in the face.
00:26:12.66
Stephen Schneider
Well, it it fits that conspiracy theory, which really doesn’t seem like a theory any longer. But, well, if people don’t know there are these diseases out, then they can spread.
00:26:23.40
Stephen Schneider
And we’ve just invested in these ah companies that are making tons of money off of the vaccines, off of the medicine. So now they can get more money and I’ll be richer. Does that sound far-fetched?
00:26:35.12
Stephen Schneider
Used to. It sounds yes sounds like a video game or a movie.
00:26:37.99
Alan Baltis
I know.
00:26:38.64
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
00:26:39.98
Alan Baltis
i i didn’t mean so quickly to turn to, if you will, the world and politics and so forth, but the latest a funny term that I heard is taco.
00:26:51.73
Alan Baltis
about tariffs, about how we have a madman in chief trying to treat all this as if it’s um some crazy business deal that he always failed at making. He’s had so many failed businesses, even in places like casinos and owning real estate, where it’s almost a license to print money.
00:27:09.44
Alan Baltis
So the late taco, Trump always chickens out.
00:27:12.97
Stephen Schneider
I saw that.
00:27:14.40
Alan Baltis
i’m I’m in the market again because I got out of the stock market entirely when we started having tariffs because it was really going to be like going back to 1910. And there weren’t enough statistics. There wasn’t enough history to give you any guidance whatsoever as to what what should you be investing in, paying attention to, what’s the state of the world.
00:27:33.72
Alan Baltis
I’m edging my way back in because the market is… horribly smart about taking and even the most disastrous consequences and pricing them into the stocks. Who’s going to know survive and thrive in this new world?
00:27:47.06
Alan Baltis
And so instead of it being, um education, it’s going to be oil companies because we’re back to exploiting our resources instead of moving towards more sustainable ones.
00:27:57.83
Alan Baltis
And any number of terrible examples I could give, but what I’ve tried to do, and we’ve talked about this before, I don’t really invest just to make money. i invest to make the world a better place.
00:28:08.70
Alan Baltis
And so, for instance, ah with a lot of economic instability, you’ll often see people go to what they think are holders of value. And it’s always been gold. Nowadays, it’s often crypto. But I have invested in several gold companies that were recommended by my investment information services, not because of gold, but because they have also branched into, we need rare earth metals.
00:28:32.55
Alan Baltis
One of the ways in which we really are at a disadvantage to China and various other places is the the meteoric meteorites that hit the earth to deposit all those things that were formed in the hearts of stars. They didn’t hit the earth equally. There’s certain places that are very rich in them. And um in in a lot of cases, it’s China. They have 95% all the,
00:28:51.56
Alan Baltis
all the um you know let’s call them red earth metals. There’s too many to name, but they figure into every computer, every cell phone, every everything in the modern world.
00:29:02.99
Alan Baltis
um We need lithium for batteries, and there’s only certain places that have lithium deposits. And one of the things that’s happened is not only have companies become, well, when it wasn’t worth looking for, when they really had good trade deals and so forth, we let things languish.
00:29:19.94
Alan Baltis
Nowadays, they’re absolutely determined to get to American independence or to get trade deals with better, um more friendly trading partners. And so a lot of that is shifting. And that’s kind of what I’ve tried to really learn more about and keep track of in the market.
00:29:33.100
Alan Baltis
That is, we discovered that we might have what we might have our own deposits in Wyoming, Colorado, Nevada, California. you know that that there’s hope that we let it sit in our mountains or you know in our places where we have meteor strikes and now we’re discovering them and even if that’s um uh
00:29:54.27
Alan Baltis
comparatively expensive to mine it’s less so than it was when we had relatively good trade things like just like when we had um oil disparities and stuff like that where opec jacks up prices funny how we started looking for more oil and you you know just one of those places where you don’t want to have more exxon valdez is where you’re so desperate to find oil that then you get rid of safety considerations and get rid of science and stuff like that but i’m i’m A lot of my world is through the lens of what do I know about the world and and how can i kind of be smart about investing and pursue the renewables, pursue our energy independence, not have it be that this crash and burn thing we’ve had about imposing tariffs or going for trade deals that are
00:30:42.47
Alan Baltis
that are not based on what the real disparity is between nations, but it’s based on, um we have a balance of payments with all the various different countries and it has nothing to do, the the the tariffs that were attempted to be imposed had nothing to do with those real um trade deals that have been cut that weren’t fair.
00:31:04.45
Alan Baltis
It was just based on those numbers. And so if if we are llama fur importing country, because we don’t have any llamas, you can’t punish Peru and Ecuador and Colombia for having the llamas.
00:31:17.83
Alan Baltis
And yet they were.
00:31:17.98
Stephen Schneider
Right.
00:31:19.26
Alan Baltis
And i I choose kind of an absurd example, but there were ah hundreds, thousands of examples of there was just no sense behind it other than Blankets, bullying, hatred for America must win in every way, even if we’re not an independent country. The world is a huge interlocking place.
00:31:38.09
Alan Baltis
And all those decades, centuries of putting together trade agreements so that if we can’t grow coffee here, but everybody in America loves coffee, let’s be smart about making sure that our coffee doesn’t cut cut off
00:31:49.15
Stephen Schneider
Right.
00:31:49.75
Alan Baltis
yeah And not the plantation mentality where we’ll have a war, take over that country, and now we get all the coffee.
00:31:49.73
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
00:31:55.55
Alan Baltis
that we you don’t do that in a peaceful, civilized world. And yet that’s a lot of what we’re still seeing being reasserted is that we’re going to own Canada. We’re going take over, you know, like…
00:32:07.71
Alan Baltis
the The kind of crazy things that get said let you know you don’t need to pay attention to the next 10 things he says because he’s already made such a ridiculous Greenland or Canada assertion that you’re like, he’s a madman.
00:32:16.59
Stephen Schneider
Right.
00:32:19.79
Alan Baltis
He’s hit of this century.
00:32:20.74
Stephen Schneider
Well,
00:32:22.55
Alan Baltis
He’s not of this right frame of mind. Oh.
00:32:25.63
Stephen Schneider
I think we talked a little bit about some of the Kickstarter games that I’ve got that are like sitting and they’re a little bit on hold. They were getting ready to come, but now, ah you know, if I spent a hundred dollars, well, now I still owe them another 50 just to get it after I’ve already paid for it, you know?
00:32:43.54
Alan Baltis
Right.
00:32:43.68
Stephen Schneider
And so there’s ah a lot of distress. And I was like talking about that. And a buddy of mine says, well, maybe you should just buy games. made I’m like, they’re not made in America.
00:32:51.64
Alan Baltis
There is no equivalent I can’t switch to.
00:32:51.93
Stephen Schneider
They’re none of them.
00:32:54.78
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. And these are games like from European companies and stuff. Well, maybe you should buy American games and stuff. I’m like, I can’t even argue that the the nonsense that is, you know, i get what you’re saying, but it’s not just like, well, snap my fingers. Now we’re doing it here.
00:33:11.33
Stephen Schneider
And, and I said, okay, hold on. You have a tracks. And we looked it up. i’m like, look, your parts for your car came from China and your car was assembled in Mexico. I’m like, so don’t tell me that I should do this, that, and the other thing when you’re, you know, well, it’s an American company.
00:33:25.63
Alan Baltis
Yeah. Right.
00:33:29.31
Stephen Schneider
No, it’s not. But again, how do you argue with these types of things that make no sense? And I think the problem is we’re Star Trek people. We see that Gene Roddenberry vision of the future. We’re not from America or China. We’re from Earth.
00:33:44.68
Alan Baltis
right
00:33:44.65
Stephen Schneider
It doesn’t matter the country when you’re talking to another planet.
00:33:47.85
Alan Baltis
Exactly. that we We moved to from that over the last 50 years to have that more global view, like diversity and infinite combinations.
00:33:53.40
Stephen Schneider
Right.
00:33:55.78
Alan Baltis
And instead, we’re seeing attacks on diversity and attacks on acceptance of other cultures, etc.
00:34:00.29
Stephen Schneider
and and
00:34:01.02
Alan Baltis
etc
00:34:01.63
Stephen Schneider
and And the numbers were showing that we were more about the information, more about ah that type of commodity. And our biggest export was our movie industry.
00:34:14.83
Stephen Schneider
Well, okay, so we’ll give them the the information. We’ll give them the the entertainment so we can get our llama gloves and our board games. That’s how things work. They don’t have llamas in China.
00:34:26.51
Stephen Schneider
They don’t have board games coming from El Salvador or whatever, you know? It, it, it, everybody does part of That’s how things work when this whole, well, America will do everything.
00:34:30.06
Alan Baltis
Exactly.
00:34:35.63
Stephen Schneider
We, okay, fine. And it’s been said so many times. Great. We’ll open this factory so we can make the board games and you’re going to work for $12 an hour, right? No, you’re not going to work for $12.
00:34:47.07
Stephen Schneider
And then you’ll say, well, maybe we don’t need the board games. Well, I’m paying how much for a car that only costs the company 2000 to build, but I’m paying 27,000 for it so they can be rich.
00:34:59.44
Stephen Schneider
Maybe we don’t need cars.
00:34:59.75
Alan Baltis
my
00:35:00.100
Stephen Schneider
Let’s go back to horses. That was a fully acceptable mode of transportation.
00:35:06.38
Alan Baltis
It’s funny that you say exactly that. ah the There are some things that are so big in their… This unawareness of how the world works that they strike at the heart of, you really don’t know anything about civilization.
00:35:20.93
Alan Baltis
By that meaning, before we had dollars we had an and money as a store of value, we had barter. And the people that had the fish from the river would trade with the people that had the wood from the forest because they each didn’t have a commodity at the other one.
00:35:36.38
Stephen Schneider
Catan, have you ever played Catan?
00:35:38.86
Alan Baltis
Exactly. And anybody who’s ever learned anything about how civilization sprang up, it was places started to make use of the natural resources, specialize. We have fantastic arable land. Let’s make a lot of wheat. Anybody who likes wheat and bread and those kinds of things, we can trade them. And, and,
00:35:56.40
Alan Baltis
the places that attempted to isolate themselves and say, we have everything, of course they don’t. and And so the fact that we’re trying to act like that that, that United States is a big, wonderful, varied place, but we’ve already been able to name without even thinking about it, the examples of the temperate bands of the world say, there’s no coffee here.
00:36:15.24
Alan Baltis
there’s no so There’s not enough citrus here. There’s, you know, like but where there happens to be things that are in the earth or in the ocean, we only have so much coastline.
00:36:18.20
Stephen Schneider
Right.
00:36:23.92
Alan Baltis
Name the things that we know that we have to bargain for and approaching every bargaining from being, I will dictate terms. And the other place, all they have to say is, I guess you’ll do without your whale oil because I’m the one that has all the whale oil. And no matter how much you think you’re going to bluster your way into giving me.
00:36:41.86
Alan Baltis
your products that I don’t really care about, but you want, you know mean? There’s, there’s such a blindness as to how does that, that civilization, the growth of civilization work is from co cooperation, not from always competition leading to the point of war.
00:36:57.52
Alan Baltis
And yet we have so many people, not only at the top, but all the people will just, we’ll just buy American. Yeah.
00:37:03.52
Stephen Schneider
Because that’s how they know how to make money.
00:37:06.17
Alan Baltis
Right. You know, they they really are about the monopoly instead of the and and the people talk about a trade deal as if it’s a defeat that somehow because you negotiated, you gave a little to get to to get a little that that’s somehow not. No, no, that is exactly the way that companies and not only companies, but countries.
00:37:26.34
Alan Baltis
There’s all kinds of stats, which, of course, people don’t believe in statistics. They only believe in anecdotal evidence. Like everybody that has a McDonald’s, those countries don’t go to war. People that have trade agreements, the re you the way you stop them from going to war is there’s so much value coming from the commerce they have between them that it stops the world from being at war, like 80% of the time.
00:37:48.99
Alan Baltis
You need a madman like a Putin or a Trump to say, get rid of all those things, all those ties that we’ve done so that we will want to stay at peace and just start blustering, cancel every trade agreement, every trade agreement.
00:38:02.66
Alan Baltis
but climate agreement all the information exchange we don’t have not only do we not have in the united states the um early warning systems the cdc and so forth we’re not exchanging things with any other country now and as if oh that’s right because nobody’s crossing borders no the borders are amazingly porous there’s always trade and people and and everything coming in and yet you’re acting as if we don’t have to worry about well what came in with that crop what if it has that particular blight that’s going to kill all of our wheat if we let it get into the country and yet they’re not checking and they’re not stopping if there’s an outbreak and all that kind of stuff so I hate seeing not only the small things of oh no I might have to pay more for something at Walmart it’s the big things like we’re setting the world on a path to war on a path to nothing but
00:38:43.22
Stephen Schneider
Right.
00:38:55.96
Alan Baltis
cooperation is is unfashionable, then instead it’s only going to be that path of I’m the most unreasonable, the most ridiculously unreasonable person in the party.
00:39:07.91
Alan Baltis
And sometimes that wins in the short term, but in the long term, it never does.
00:39:12.42
Stephen Schneider
right
00:39:13.19
Alan Baltis
prisoner’s dilemma is that thought experiment about if you’re in a situation where you get a certain amount of cooperation, a certain amount for defection, like after you defect, they will never trust you again.
00:39:25.24
Alan Baltis
And the loss of that trust is not, well, next time it’ll be better. No, it takes like 10 times for someone to say, i really am starting to trust them again, because they have been honorable after not screwing with me nine times.
00:39:38.13
Alan Baltis
so The loss of, and we’ve seen that, every relationship that he’s been in has been bring the lawyers in, not make right. You know what I mean? like the
00:39:48.20
Stephen Schneider
Right. yeah
00:39:49.18
Alan Baltis
The Jewish apology of, I’m sorry, I won’t do it again. What recompense can I make so that this is made? He doesn’t have any of that in him whatsoever. And that’s…
00:40:00.08
Stephen Schneider
Right. What?
00:40:01.51
Alan Baltis
4,000 years of civilization, oh no, but but it’s the Jewish apology and so we can’t have that. Please don’t um don’t take that out of of context, anybody.
00:40:10.50
Stephen Schneider
What?
00:40:10.56
Alan Baltis
are i mean the The philosophy of how to do trade, of how to have a a peaceful world, we’ve got civilizations that achieved it.
00:40:10.85
Stephen Schneider
thats
00:40:17.34
Alan Baltis
We’re going to throw those away?
00:40:19.17
Stephen Schneider
so
00:40:19.29
Alan Baltis
oh well.
00:40:19.56
Stephen Schneider
but what what we need to do is send all the phone sanitizers away and they can use leaves for commerce.
00:40:28.57
Alan Baltis
Shades of, you know, every time that we read the Hitchhiker’s Guide or other things that we thought were like so ridiculous in mockery, what we’ll never get to that. And now we’re like, we laugh about all the time.
00:40:38.62
Stephen Schneider
Yes. You know,
00:40:40.11
Alan Baltis
1984 was not meant to be an instruction manual. It was meant to be a cautionary tale.
00:40:44.21
Stephen Schneider
this This is putting the word out there. This is the time we need the aliens to make themselves known. Now is it the time. This is it.
00:40:52.22
Alan Baltis
Exactly.
00:40:52.84
Stephen Schneider
If you’re waiting for us to completely destroy ourselves, we’re not going leave much unless you feed off radiation. I mean, if you’re an alien and you feed off radiation, that it would explain a whole lot of stuff.
00:41:00.58
Alan Baltis
right oh wow i’m ready
00:41:06.09
Stephen Schneider
So I have a trivia question for you. So I went and saw the new, um, mission impossible, the last one, the second part and all that.
00:41:13.07
Alan Baltis
okay i’m not yet right exactly the final reckoning i think it’s called maybe okay
00:41:15.75
Stephen Schneider
Yes. Yes. Um, but reading the little billboard in the lobby beforehand, do you know who wrote the screenplay for you only live twice?
00:41:31.34
Alan Baltis
So like James Bond adjacent. How about Lawrence Kasdan? How about Ian Fleming because he’s, the of course, the originator.
00:41:35.65
Stephen Schneider
That’s a great guess is about that timeframe, but no.
00:41:41.25
Stephen Schneider
Right.
00:41:41.44
Alan Baltis
so it’s going to be somebody surprising like, um
00:41:47.33
Alan Baltis
let’s see. i really
00:41:52.13
Alan Baltis
I want to make at least a good guess. How about,
00:41:57.37
Alan Baltis
let’s see. um Who wrote Being There? You know what I mean?
00:42:02.55
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
00:42:02.68
Alan Baltis
Like yeah Jerry Kosinski or something like that? I do not know. Tell me.
00:42:07.91
Stephen Schneider
No, it’s very well known.
00:42:09.66
Alan Baltis
Okay.
00:42:09.64
Stephen Schneider
Totally not what you would expect.
00:42:09.78
Alan Baltis
Okay.
00:42:11.70
Stephen Schneider
Roald Dahl, the of James and the Giant Peach and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
00:42:14.75
Alan Baltis
yeah and Yeah, ex exactly. Willy Wonka. Oh, my that’s you know There really are some people that have had their hand in those kinds of things. And when you learn it, it’s like, well, his books had like a sinister element to them.
00:42:27.15
Alan Baltis
And I could see how they could say, if we want to make a break from only being spying, but having a little humor and a little macabre, Broalda was a great show.
00:42:27.11
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
00:42:35.13
Stephen Schneider
That’s… Yeah.
00:42:36.66
Alan Baltis
That’s cool.
00:42:36.65
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. and
00:42:37.39
Alan Baltis
Okay.
00:42:37.67
Stephen Schneider
And that, you know, that’s a side conversation. The newest versions of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Willy Wonka and all that.
00:42:45.48
Alan Baltis
Oh, yeah.
00:42:45.84
Stephen Schneider
That’s why why they just don’t click because they’re, they’re Disney eyes. They’re friendly. They’re stuff. The original, if you watch it, there’s a little bit of ah some undercurrents of sinister going on.
00:42:59.13
Stephen Schneider
You’re kind of like, I don’t know if I trust this guy at all.
00:42:59.80
Alan Baltis
yeah
00:43:01.45
Stephen Schneider
And that’s what made it so good.
00:43:03.71
Alan Baltis
Exactly.
00:43:03.73
Stephen Schneider
That’s what he did.
00:43:04.86
Alan Baltis
that That for him being supposedly a benevolent figure, then you had where he suddenly shows a flare of anger or like they’re on the boat that’s going through all the spitting and it’s like, there’s no earthly way of knowing.
00:43:16.90
Alan Baltis
You know what i mean?
00:43:17.40
Stephen Schneider
yeah
00:43:17.82
Alan Baltis
He’s like, that I hear what you’re saying.
00:43:18.13
Stephen Schneider
but and the The scene where he’s going, oh no, please don’t do that.
00:43:21.40
Alan Baltis
Oh, yeah, wait, stop.
00:43:23.23
Stephen Schneider
I ah let beg you. you
00:43:25.20
Alan Baltis
Yeah.
00:43:25.34
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, yeah.
00:43:26.53
Alan Baltis
but I did see a meme along the lines of, um ah for all of his cabinet choices, they could be compared to, oh that one’s Billy TV. And that one is, you know, they’re…
00:43:41.41
Alan Baltis
It’s kind of funny. I guess I’m still blanking on things. Let’s see. Veruca Salt, right?
00:43:45.92
Stephen Schneider
Veruca Salt.
00:43:46.05
Alan Baltis
You know what I mean? they’ They’re very different. That this is the greedy one and this is the spoiled one and this is the, um you know, that that there really are some archetypes that, why we didn’t learn anything from Willy Wonka, don’t bring that spoiled brat and give him everything he wants.
00:44:00.22
Stephen Schneider
Right.
00:44:00.34
Alan Baltis
Yep.
00:44:01.55
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Yeah.
00:44:03.08
Alan Baltis
Augustus Glaube, right, was the chocolate chip.
00:44:04.52
Stephen Schneider
and Yeah. The chocolate river.
00:44:06.55
Alan Baltis
Yes, exactly, the glutton. And maybe that’s it. Seven Deadly Sins have correspondences in all different kinds of works of art.
00:44:10.46
Stephen Schneider
Yes.
00:44:13.67
Alan Baltis
So…
00:44:14.38
Stephen Schneider
oh Yeah. I mean, it’s it’s such a great book and the movie does it justice. You know, it’s it’s the original movie.
00:44:19.14
Alan Baltis
Yeah.
00:44:20.67
Stephen Schneider
At least I haven’t even watched the newest ones, too many other things.
00:44:22.88
Alan Baltis
Yeah. I actually have read not only Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, which is the sequel by Roald Dahl. It’s like, you know, there’s some things that they’re just not well enough enough unknown by the world.
00:44:30.16
Stephen Schneider
yes Yeah.
00:44:34.09
Alan Baltis
And i actually, I kind of thought, well, why haven’t they made that? Disney must have been negotiating for like, here’s the obvious sequel and, and you know, bring Johnny Depp back. We’ll make scabillions of dollars and stuff like that.
00:44:44.69
Alan Baltis
So, Timothy Chalamet, I’m sorry.
00:44:45.37
Stephen Schneider
And, and you know it’s in the, I mean, you can,
00:44:48.100
Alan Baltis
No, no, he’s the flavor of the, but he’s really good, actually. I’ve liked him in lots of different things.
00:44:52.19
Stephen Schneider
Oh, did you see, uh, the, the, um, uh, Bob Dylan movie with him?
00:44:58.33
Alan Baltis
have not seen that one yet. And that’s been on my list for six months now. I can’t believe I haven’t seen it.
00:45:02.27
Stephen Schneider
It’s on streaming is finally, I think prime, I believe prime.
00:45:02.89
Alan Baltis
Wow. A complete unknown, right? I think that read that’s up in my queue.
00:45:06.74
Stephen Schneider
yes Complete unknown.
00:45:09.08
Alan Baltis
Exactly.
00:45:09.28
Stephen Schneider
I am. I like some Bob Dylan stuff. I’ve seen Bob Dylan, uh, in live.
00:45:13.51
Alan Baltis
Okay.
00:45:15.20
Stephen Schneider
Um, I, I’m not the biggest Dylan fan. it’s just, you know, whatever, but the movie really made me appreciate him way more than I ever really knew about.
00:45:20.28
Alan Baltis
Okay.
00:45:26.42
Stephen Schneider
You know, it’s one of those movies where it’s fictionalized history, you know?
00:45:29.73
Alan Baltis
yeah
00:45:30.06
Stephen Schneider
So mostly the, the events and stuff is true. The actual words being said, maybe a little, whatever,
00:45:36.84
Alan Baltis
Okay.
00:45:37.27
Stephen Schneider
But I’m just like, the the attitude he had was like, totally changed my viewpoint of him. So it’s a great movie.
00:45:45.55
Alan Baltis
Exactly. Book the trends and you know what i mean? He’s in his time of great change and he doesn’t mind being one of the though flash points for all of that happening.
00:45:52.81
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
00:45:53.39
Alan Baltis
So very cool.
00:45:54.13
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. I mean, the movie that did not put them in the best light all the time, ah which a lot of those movies do, you know, you got to have that conflict, you got to, you know, make people.
00:45:58.93
Alan Baltis
Okay.
00:46:02.88
Alan Baltis
you
00:46:04.02
Stephen Schneider
So how much of it’s true? How much of it’s not, you know, whatever, still a good movie. ah So you’ll enjoy it.
00:46:09.68
Alan Baltis
Very good. It’s kind of funny. Just being gone, like, two and a half weeks on the cruise, enough accumulates that I’m like, well, we got baking shows to watch. We got, you know what I mean? We got to finish our Columbo thing.
00:46:20.45
Alan Baltis
ah What else? We really had a couple episodes of The Rookie. It’s funny how, out of all things you can watch, you’re like, well, what I’m really missing is, let’s watch The Rookie. we
00:46:30.01
Stephen Schneider
The rookie. It’s been good. I’ve enjoyed it.
00:46:31.69
Alan Baltis
Oh,
00:46:32.60
Stephen Schneider
Also, the other new one I’ve gotten into is tracker with Justin Hartley.
00:46:37.39
Alan Baltis
I haven’t seen that one. Okay.
00:46:38.42
Stephen Schneider
If you ever watched Smallville, he was green arrow on Smallville.
00:46:43.10
Alan Baltis
Interesting. Okay.
00:46:43.67
Stephen Schneider
Um, and, and so the the coolest thing with the tracker is Jensen Ackles is on it a little bit as his brother and Ackles was also in Smallville as the gym teacher for a bit.
00:46:56.14
Stephen Schneider
So they knew each other.
00:46:56.32
Alan Baltis
I remember that. Yeah, it and there really is a whole underground of the Flashverse and the yeah the Arrowverse and Smallville that there was a certain amount of trading people back and forth or bringing back like older actors in a new role.
00:46:57.66
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
00:47:07.80
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
00:47:10.30
Alan Baltis
You know what I mean? like Whoever i had once been Luther is now going to be. Anyway, that kind of stuff.
00:47:14.74
Stephen Schneider
Oh, I love Michael Rosenbaum. He’s awesome.
00:47:16.75
Alan Baltis
Exactly.
00:47:17.35
Stephen Schneider
and So when Ackles is in the show, he drives up in a black Impala and, and he even, even like pats it before he gets in a Coulter’s truck and they drive away.
00:47:20.02
Alan Baltis
Yeah. Of course. Yeah.
00:47:28.87
Stephen Schneider
So that’s a good little call out.
00:47:29.67
Alan Baltis
them. like Exactly.
00:47:31.21
Stephen Schneider
Good show.
00:47:31.53
Alan Baltis
Okay.
00:47:32.21
Stephen Schneider
It’s based on Jeffrey Deaver’s books.
00:47:35.19
Alan Baltis
Yeah, I like him.
00:47:35.18
Stephen Schneider
ah The first,
00:47:36.20
Alan Baltis
Okay.
00:47:36.72
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. First one was called the never game, which I hadn’t read, but I’m like, well, I like this show.
00:47:41.72
Alan Baltis
Yeah.
00:47:41.70
Stephen Schneider
So that’s, you know, I recommend that it’s only in its second season. It’s on prime. Uh, yeah, a good one.
00:47:45.97
Alan Baltis
Very good.
00:47:48.91
Alan Baltis
Somebody help
00:47:49.05
Stephen Schneider
I, my mother’s been watching it, so I’ll go watch a show with her every now and then.
00:47:53.05
Alan Baltis
me. Yeah, that’s sweet.
00:47:53.21
Stephen Schneider
So it’s been between the rookie and tracker, uh, once a week or so.
00:47:56.08
Alan Baltis
Okay. are good i really liked um bear with me not um
00:48:04.78
Alan Baltis
man i i’m not used to like talking with uh a knowledgeable person i gotta summon all these things and that please don’t you colleen and i have different tastes in various different things current show that was a remake of
00:48:11.56
Stephen Schneider
but
00:48:20.30
Alan Baltis
Tom Cruise had been in and was very ill suited for the role.
00:48:22.74
Stephen Schneider
Reacher.
00:48:23.82
Alan Baltis
Reacher, exactly that, where he’s an ex-army military police, if you will, investigator stuff like that.
00:48:29.12
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
00:48:30.30
Alan Baltis
and And he’s kind of a paladin. He goes around doing good things while having like no, he doesn’t have a place to live. He doesn’t own anything and stuff like that. That has been really good. And especially it’s good in how it follows the books.
00:48:41.99
Alan Baltis
I really have enjoyed the books.
00:48:42.60
Stephen Schneider
Oh, yeah.
00:48:43.60
Alan Baltis
And they i like when people have an idea of what made those books so good. And they don’t say, well, I’ll just fix that a little bit.
00:48:48.20
Stephen Schneider
Yes.
00:48:49.89
Alan Baltis
Instead, they’re like, no, make sure that all of those story arcs and all those story beats are really in there.
00:48:51.85
Stephen Schneider
Mailed it.
00:48:55.39
Alan Baltis
Because that’s what were good climactic points of the books. Exactly.
00:48:58.32
Stephen Schneider
Yep.
00:48:58.64
Alan Baltis
So.
00:48:58.63
Stephen Schneider
So I never grabbed the Lee Childs Reacher book, just like, eh, I’m not big on those type of books, whatever. But then I watched the first season of the show because I like action shows. And I’m like, this is amazing. I read a book. I’m like, these books are great.
00:49:12.61
Alan Baltis
Yeah.
00:49:12.69
Stephen Schneider
The writing, it goes against a lot of conventions. ah Like I always say, the writing is simple. You don’t get complex sentences. You don’t get more than a 10 cent or 12 cent word most of the time.
00:49:25.30
Alan Baltis
Right.
00:49:25.46
Stephen Schneider
Um, and it’s very direct, but it keeps you engaged. Like a lot of books don’t.
00:49:30.80
Alan Baltis
Exactly.
00:49:31.14
Stephen Schneider
and And Alan Rich.
00:49:31.64
Alan Baltis
Good dialogue, good realistic, the way that people talk and think and stuff like that is
00:49:34.08
Stephen Schneider
Yes. Yeah. And it’s not like Stephen King with lengthy descriptions and stuff. It’s very bare bones down to earth, but it fits very well. And Alan Richardson, I think nailed the character so well.
00:49:46.39
Alan Baltis
Absolutely.
00:49:46.41
Stephen Schneider
And we discuss, it’s like the way he portrays him, he could be autistic. There could be some autism going on. I don’t know if he intended that.
00:49:54.38
Alan Baltis
Interesting.
00:49:55.24
Stephen Schneider
I don’t know if Lee Childs really meant that in the book.
00:49:57.41
Alan Baltis
His ability to focus, his ability to, yeah, you know this is what’s important and do what’s important first.
00:49:58.87
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
00:50:03.03
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
00:50:03.64
Alan Baltis
Yeah, yeah.
00:50:03.61
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. So I love that show.
00:50:04.08
Alan Baltis
yeah
00:50:06.15
Stephen Schneider
And Colin met Alan Richland because he was actually the voice of one of the turtles in one of the past um Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
00:50:12.96
Alan Baltis
I never knew that.
00:50:13.19
Stephen Schneider
Colin said he’s the nicest guy. He’s like he was so ecstatic that Colin mentioned the turtles and like, oh, I love that. And had him he was like just so friendly and, you know, happy to be there talking with fans and stuff.
00:50:23.17
Alan Baltis
That’s wonderful. Yeah, yeah. It’s fun when people really, they already got a career, but then they get a big role. And sometimes people only want to ask them about that thing. And then when you say, was you the janitor on that one high school show? It’s like, that was my start.
00:50:38.05
Alan Baltis
You know what I mean?
00:50:38.20
Stephen Schneider
Right, right.
00:50:38.69
Alan Baltis
Yeah. Okay.
00:50:40.57
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, like like when I talked to Shimmerman and I knew he was Quark, I forgot he was Snyder on Buffy.
00:50:44.99
Alan Baltis
yeah
00:50:47.94
Stephen Schneider
you know And I was like, oh, okay. And and there’s another thing. Did you hear about the Buffy reboot?
00:50:53.23
Alan Baltis
I have read about that. I haven’t even like watched the clip. I haven’t watched it. If they have trailers, I haven’t seen them or anything.
00:50:58.48
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, i don’t think they have clips yet, but the the girl that was the the young girl that was the captain of Skeleton Crew is the new Buffy.
00:50:59.99
Alan Baltis
good
00:51:05.02
Alan Baltis
Okay.
00:51:06.09
Stephen Schneider
And Sarah Michelle Gellar is in it.
00:51:07.08
Alan Baltis
This layer. Exactly.
00:51:08.01
Stephen Schneider
So I’m hoping it’s not like ah reboot reboot starting over.
00:51:08.42
Alan Baltis
Okay.
00:51:12.82
Stephen Schneider
i hope they they acknowledge what happened before and stuff.
00:51:13.36
Alan Baltis
Okay.
00:51:16.14
Alan Baltis
Right. And this is the next generation of that history, if you will.
00:51:18.94
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, I don’t see why they couldn’t.
00:51:19.05
Alan Baltis
Okay.
00:51:21.41
Stephen Schneider
I hate when they reboot like nothing ever existed before.
00:51:24.64
Alan Baltis
Right. they They have the character names and that’s it. you know Is Josh Whedon involved?
00:51:27.40
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. No, no
00:51:31.20
Alan Baltis
and Because i thought that there was really like bad rumors about him on set.
00:51:31.32
Stephen Schneider
and
00:51:35.85
Alan Baltis
and
00:51:35.86
Stephen Schneider
yes
00:51:36.80
Alan Baltis
I’m so much not the gossipy guy, but when the rumors are really shitty, it’s like, would they give him another chance?
00:51:42.20
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, no, from my understanding, actually, said i from from what I’ve seen, and you know this is just whatever I picked up reading, Sarah Michelle Gellar really was pushing it.
00:51:52.93
Stephen Schneider
And the reason she was is she was in the prequel reboot of Dexter, Original Sin, which I did watch, and it was pretty good when they were younger, all new actors and stuff.
00:51:59.98
Alan Baltis
Oh, okay. Okay.
00:52:04.07
Stephen Schneider
But she was in that, and she was like, you know what? Maybe you can do… a continuation of an old series in a way that doesn’t destroy it. She’s like, let me look into this.
00:52:12.96
Alan Baltis
Right. Facebook too. Okay.
00:52:14.81
Stephen Schneider
Yes.
00:52:14.90
Alan Baltis
Very good. Very good.
00:52:15.87
Stephen Schneider
So yeah. Which, which as the other thing I, I watched that cause I used to love Dexter and it was a pretty good show. Original sin. I think that’s on prime also.
00:52:24.46
Alan Baltis
Okay. yes
00:52:25.34
Stephen Schneider
And criminal minds has and another series. Yeah.
00:52:29.23
Alan Baltis
How many is that? Like 24 seasons or something?
00:52:31.38
Stephen Schneider
Well, yeah they did 15.
00:52:32.02
Alan Baltis
They’re on forever. Okay.
00:52:33.70
Stephen Schneider
They did 15.
00:52:33.91
Alan Baltis
Okay.
00:52:34.38
Stephen Schneider
They did ah an offshoot called Beyond Borders, which was a different group.
00:52:38.23
Alan Baltis
okay
00:52:38.28
Stephen Schneider
Then a couple of years ago, they did one season that was like a continuation. But this is like supposed to be the final.
00:52:42.73
Alan Baltis
Okay.
00:52:44.73
Stephen Schneider
Like they’re they’re closing things down type thing. And things happen to the characters to answer whatever.
00:52:47.76
Alan Baltis
Interesting.
00:52:49.77
Stephen Schneider
I haven’t watched it yet. I’m like, oh, okay, well…
00:52:54.72
Alan Baltis
ah You know, I think I mentioned I’m trying to be ah judicious in how many things I am subscribed to, television stations and stuff like that. So I’ll get in and I’ll watch all the Paramount that I want, and then I’m really done with them for a while, so I put it away for a year or something like that.
00:53:09.09
Stephen Schneider
Cool.
00:53:09.36
Alan Baltis
There was a season, um one season, and I don’t know if it’s continued or not, but… it was hey there’s a big super max prison in the middle of kansas or oklahoma for all the serial killers and then there’s a earthquake or maybe an engineered disaster that lets a whole bunch of them out and then here’s the profiler team that’s going to track these down and i don’t know what the darkness is in me that says oh good a serial killer a week let’s watch that
00:53:31.59
Stephen Schneider
cool
00:53:37.98
Alan Baltis
But it was really well made. And especially, i love things where it’s, okay, there’s a crime team tracking down guys. And then you find out that maybe somebody on the crime team has ulterior motives, that maybe they’re in on something. And then, know what I mean? Like, it it and that’s one of those things that I, as soon as that next season, and why can’t I remember the name of it? I’m just a big blankie. Yeah, I haven’t had.
00:54:00.39
Alan Baltis
today. um I will, just like Ted Lasso, when it comes back out on Apple, I think they’re not even starting to film until July, so it’ll be a year, but I’ve got um ticklers, you know, the little files I have, or as soon as this is available, I’m getting back on Apple, I’m getting back on Paravalt or whatever else it might be.
00:54:17.13
Alan Baltis
You know, we’re only two years, of no, one year away from another Olympics, and so whoever’s carrying the Olympics, I tune into them for a while, that kind of thing.
00:54:22.11
Stephen Schneider
Oh, yeah.
00:54:24.86
Alan Baltis
So it’s,
00:54:25.73
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
00:54:26.70
Alan Baltis
and
00:54:26.66
Stephen Schneider
A lot coming out. You know, ah it’s…
00:54:29.02
Alan Baltis
right,
00:54:29.52
Stephen Schneider
So… um
00:54:30.70
Alan Baltis
I’m put Mission Impossible in the theater on like a Tuesday where I’m the only guy in the theater and just wallow in. At least from what I understand, all the money is up on the screen. You know what i mean? They’ve had times where like Marlon Brando commanded half the salaries of everybody. Mike?
00:54:46.79
Stephen Schneider
i so so the first part like three years ago now was very action intense, very stressed.
00:54:51.93
Alan Baltis
right
00:54:56.48
Stephen Schneider
You know, it, I felt it had a little different flavor than the the ones right before it. um And maybe it’s cause they were ending things, winding things down.
00:55:06.91
Stephen Schneider
um The trailers for this new part, I call them the, Oh look, it’s the Tom Cruise running movie. Cause watch that trailer, two minutes of trailer and one minute, one minute and 45 seconds. He’s running.
00:55:18.58
Alan Baltis
exactly
00:55:18.78
Stephen Schneider
You know, yeah, right.
00:55:19.35
Alan Baltis
He’s got a good stride on him. He’s still fly. Okay.
00:55:22.66
Stephen Schneider
This, this movie, I mean, without giving stuff away, it didn’t feel um low key or anything. It definitely had the moments, the action, the stress, but it, it wasn’t over the top. Like a lot of it, even though there’s a few scenes, it it just, the the feeling of it didn’t feel that way.
00:55:40.09
Alan Baltis
Okay.
00:55:40.27
Stephen Schneider
there’s a lot of callbacks to the past shows, past movies, and they tie things together in a way that I don’t think was originally intended, but done very well. And I was very impressed with, you know, both parts here and enjoyed the second part.
00:55:53.27
Alan Baltis
And you’re aware of what’s gone before and that if you’re a faithful viewer, you’re going to catch not even an Easter egg.
00:55:58.28
Stephen Schneider
Oh, that, you know,
00:55:59.03
Alan Baltis
Whatever happens character? Well, here he is. Very.
00:56:01.19
Stephen Schneider
Oh, you don’t have to do that.
00:56:01.53
Alan Baltis
Yeah.
00:56:02.63
Stephen Schneider
they They remind you and they spell it out for people that and you know don’t remember 10 years ago or something.
00:56:08.94
Alan Baltis
yeah
00:56:09.13
Stephen Schneider
It’s very much explained and you know all of that. So, yeah.
00:56:12.60
Alan Baltis
cool and i’m looking forward to i like not only that um what’s i thought thunderbolts just before we left i really did and and and you know i have this i don’t know not everything is going to be avengers endgame there’s all kinds of wonderful movies in the in the marvel cinematic universe that they’re just a good exploration of moon knight or of you know what i mean uh um
00:56:18.34
Stephen Schneider
Did you like that? So did I.
00:56:38.17
Alan Baltis
Morbius or something like that. and And as the as it ratcheted up, as everyone thinks it has to be the latest cosmic, you know, cataclysmic movie, like that’s not what comic books have always been.
00:56:49.41
Alan Baltis
They really had ebb and flow and there really were characters that were, you’re not cosmic, you’re in Hell’s Kitchen. You know, Daredevil should be about battling thugs, not about battling Thanos, you know, that kind thing.
00:56:58.76
Stephen Schneider
Right. Right. right
00:57:01.29
Alan Baltis
And so I like the fact that there’s enough there’s enough meat in all different kinds of things the craven movie was really well done even though you know what i mean like so i’m looking forward to there being a whole bunch of build up to whatever the next big climax is i haven’t seen anything with robert downey jr as dr doom and i must admit i made such an indelible mark as iron man that i kind of wish they had found somebody else when they had i’ve lost his name now the guy playing kang um
00:57:29.45
Stephen Schneider
Oh, the Jonathan Majors.
00:57:30.27
Alan Baltis
because he was supposed to be the next big bad and they’ve had to kind of switch to dr doom and quick diversion i mentioned that i had started buying comic books again and i’ve stopped exactly that i had put hundreds of dollars a month a lot and as i read them i’ve changed comic books have changed uh we talked a little bit about it with colin you know that there’s just only a certain amount of um
00:57:33.44
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
00:57:42.63
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, that’s what you said you were probably going to do.
00:57:58.65
Alan Baltis
advertising or cash in or that they’re obviously designed to be made into movies or whatever it is but they there’s something different about comic books not everything like the fact that this was the summer of dr doom takes over the world i really am intrigued by all the ways in which that’s going to work with because he’s now sorcerer supreme he’s not only science conflicts with reed richards that he’s now you know in conflict with dr strange and stuff and so having said all that I hate the fact that I’m not going to be a completist, but I really might have to go buy some things because I just i started off so well.
00:58:30.94
Stephen Schneider
Right. right
00:58:33.96
Alan Baltis
And especially some independent books. You know what mean? ah lot of people have abandoned the Marvel DC, maybe the top five. And they’re overdoing things where with Ghost Machine, if I remember right. And like, if you got the best creators in comics, kind of like when Image first started, there were some really good writers.
00:58:49.68
Alan Baltis
Artists were a little bit fan-y, but… um I really am looking forward to finding the people that I’ve liked and following them to wherever they’ve gone because there’s only a ah few, maybe Tom King, certain new authors that have really captured me in that same way, like Jeff Lemire mostly. um um When I was sampling and saying, well, what new names am I really, wow, that’s really well written. Wow, that’s really a great plot idea.
00:59:12.16
Alan Baltis
There weren’t a lot of standouts. And so a lot of it is, I don’t care. and And I’m going to put that much on a wall that I’ve already accumulated that I want to read and watch and do. I’m really going to put comic books in now as a 300 book month habit.
00:59:27.15
Alan Baltis
10 I’m going to read a day. probably wasn’t 300. It was probably 200. So no, eight a day.
00:59:30.67
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. yeah
00:59:32.10
Alan Baltis
yeah know like ah i can’t, I don’t know that I have the capacity, even if I want to, to be a comic book completist anymore.
00:59:38.77
Stephen Schneider
Right.
00:59:39.06
Alan Baltis
Okay.
00:59:39.05
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
00:59:39.67
Alan Baltis
it so
00:59:39.87
Stephen Schneider
I, I, I’ve never really been completist, but I’ve been, i mean, I read Conan’s. I pretty much stayed with that.
00:59:45.02
Alan Baltis
okay
00:59:45.98
Stephen Schneider
I read star Wars. You know, I’ve always kept up with that.
00:59:48.53
Alan Baltis
Of course, ye yeah.
00:59:48.98
Stephen Schneider
And then Spider-Man, he’s always been my guy. ah You know, there’s been up and downs with Spider-Man, but I started getting the DC absolute series and I’ve been getting the new ultimate stuff and really enjoying both of them because they’re so vastly different than the other stuff.
00:59:54.35
Alan Baltis
Yeah.
01:00:07.80
Stephen Schneider
It’s,
01:00:08.27
Alan Baltis
thank you for reminding me of that because I really would want to see what are they doing to reimagine and and have a whole different universe and when the Ultimates first came out and they really did have a whole bunch of re-thinkings of like you know Hank Pym really might have been mad you know what I mean
01:00:08.53
Stephen Schneider
all new.
01:00:21.06
Stephen Schneider
it This, this, This takes it to the next three levels. It’s so completely different. The original ultimate stuff was close enough. It was adjacent to what our timeline on 616 has been.
01:00:35.28
Stephen Schneider
You know, it was, it was close enough, but whatever, but the new stuff, so very different. the The characters are almost wonder woman has like a big anime sword.
01:00:46.64
Stephen Schneider
She rides Pegasus, which is a skeleton horse because he’s been killed.
01:00:51.77
Alan Baltis
I think I read three issues and I remember that.
01:00:52.01
Stephen Schneider
on
01:00:53.99
Alan Baltis
It really is that huge sword.
01:00:54.19
Stephen Schneider
yeah she Yeah.
01:00:55.73
Alan Baltis
You couldn’t
01:00:56.53
Stephen Schneider
She lost her arm. She has a magical arm as a replacement. I mean, so different than Superman. ah They do a lot with what Krypton was and show like this total negative seedy side of Krypton before he came near.
01:01:10.54
Alan Baltis
Oh, my.
01:01:11.82
Stephen Schneider
Luther Corp controls everything and they’re hunting Superman. He’s a rebel on the run. You know, I mean, they and Batman, Batman like walks on his wings and he has these
01:01:16.86
Alan Baltis
Okay.
01:01:22.10
Stephen Schneider
ah flails that go out and strike people. And ah Pennyworth is a soldier of fortune that’s kind of working with them.
01:01:30.92
Alan Baltis
Interesting.
01:01:31.11
Stephen Schneider
so
01:01:31.68
Alan Baltis
So not but Alfred, not the the faithful retainer.
01:01:31.88
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
01:01:35.15
Alan Baltis
Oh my, that’s very interesting.
01:01:35.42
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Oh, yeah. They totally…
01:01:38.37
Alan Baltis
got many of the tastes of all those kinds of things and that as you mentioned i go back to the absolutes and the ultimates and just keep up with because it really seemed that they got people that had big ideas and very very interestingly executed the new aquaman was good the new green lantern has like six books now right and so i would like trying to open the polychromic world of the green lanterns and stuff like that so anyway yeah
01:01:38.43
Stephen Schneider
yeah
01:01:56.22
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Yeah. It’s very big.
01:02:02.25
Stephen Schneider
The alt now the Marvel ultimate is totally different. So this guy named the maker changed history by stopping all the heroes from becoming heroes. He stopped all their origins.
01:02:14.49
Stephen Schneider
20 years later, Tony like visits the past and ah and, and informs people. So Peter does not get his powers. Doesn’t get bit by the spider until Tony sends it to him, says it needs to bite you. You have to be Spider-Man.
01:02:29.95
Stephen Schneider
And he’s got kids. ah Richard and may are his kids. And Richard’s like 14 Jonah and Ben ah Ben’s alive. Aunt May is dead. Ben and Jonah run a newspaper together.
01:02:41.99
Alan Baltis
Oh my, okay, lots of good interesting stuff there, okay.
01:02:42.27
Stephen Schneider
And yeah, it’s,
01:02:46.10
Stephen Schneider
Right, so now the the Thor is in there and they’ve got the Ultimates and they’re trying, they’ve got a timeline, like six, where I’m at right now, six months until the Maker changes the Earth and they’re trying to stop this.
01:02:58.53
Alan Baltis
Okay, if I remember right, the maker is Reed Richards.
01:03:03.28
Stephen Schneider
Well…
01:03:03.34
Alan Baltis
ah and of One of the Council of Reeds, he remember, they were the ones that were kind of deciding which universes live and die. There’s a fucking concept. There’s a huge thing.
01:03:10.85
Stephen Schneider
Right.
01:03:11.74
Alan Baltis
And I got a feeling that, you know, in trying to do the right thing with saving the universe or whatever like that, he might have made some enormous decision.
01:03:20.11
Stephen Schneider
they haven’t They haven’t done anything with Fantastic Four or Reed, so that could come up.
01:03:20.44
Alan Baltis
Okay.
01:03:25.22
Alan Baltis
Okay.
01:03:25.37
Stephen Schneider
ah Harry and Peter are like partners and work together as Green Goblin and Spider-Man.
01:03:30.77
Alan Baltis
Okay.
01:03:30.95
Stephen Schneider
Gwen is alive and married to Harry, and she’s Mysterio now.
01:03:35.17
Alan Baltis
Oh, man. Very interesting. Okay. i i what are you doing? You’re talking me into I got to go back
01:03:41.13
Stephen Schneider
but i don’t I don’t read most of the mainline stuff. I don’t read a whole lot of that.
01:03:45.07
Alan Baltis
back. Okay.
01:03:47.06
Stephen Schneider
This is like the only DC I’ve been getting, the only um Marvel I’ve been getting other than Spider-Man.
01:03:50.13
Alan Baltis
Okay. Yeah. okay
01:03:52.44
Stephen Schneider
Just these two. And they’ve been really good, ah you know, so I’ve kept going.
01:03:57.23
Alan Baltis
It’s funny, after coming back from vacation, there was a big box from M&M Distributors, my favorite mail order place, high quality, et cetera. Shout out to them. Anybody who’s looking to do it at mail order wise and get a good price, M&M Distributors out Texas.
01:04:10.86
Alan Baltis
um There was a big box waiting for me and I haven’t cracked it open because when I got home, I was like, mow the lawn, get your finances in order, you know what i mean, all that kind of stuff. And then a reward, I was going to like, you know, open it up, put them in alphabetical order, pull out the ones that I have to read right now, and dive back in So I, it could be that I’ve
01:04:21.23
Stephen Schneider
Quit drooling.
01:04:27.94
Stephen Schneider
Right.
01:04:33.92
Alan Baltis
I think I’ve already missed two months worth of buying. And maybe I’m going to go back to Eminem and say, you know, with my tail tucked, I might need to use your fine services because I can’t not have certain
01:04:44.26
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Yeah. You know, cherry pick, get some of them and stuff. So I got to get rolling, uh, next week sometime when we do this, uh, I’ll have to give you updates on Baltimore with Colin.
01:04:56.65
Stephen Schneider
Uh, there’s some cool things going on with him out there.
01:04:57.13
Alan Baltis
for
01:04:58.100
Stephen Schneider
So yeah,
01:04:59.35
Alan Baltis
Okay, very good. Thank you for restarting this with me. I really missed it. I missed you. um let’s Let’s keep this going.
01:05:05.87
Stephen Schneider
I’m, I’m glad things are going better for you. And, uh, I’m, I’m,
01:05:09.49
Alan Baltis
Hopefully every week, we’ll be able to do a little time-lapse photography of here’s Al’s progress towards his whole face working.
01:05:15.48
Stephen Schneider
Right.
01:05:15.55
Alan Baltis
and
01:05:17.07
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. I mean, you don’t sound bad and it doesn’t look too bad. Not like your original pictures. It’s definitely improved since that.
01:05:23.52
Alan Baltis
Oh, man, i I really was worried about the elephant man thing. Don’t look upon me. Actually, what was the ah the Princess Bride quote? It’s like, dear God, what is that thing?
01:05:33.20
Alan Baltis
Exactly.
01:05:33.45
Stephen Schneider
Right, right. But you know, he goes back to it again. Who are you really worried about? People you don’t even know. Who cares?
01:05:39.99
Alan Baltis
exactly
01:05:40.07
Stephen Schneider
Because there’s too many of them that think poorly of people for stupid reasons anyway. None of your friends care. some
01:05:46.39
Alan Baltis
That’s right. Hopefully, whatever I look like at Costco, as soon as I speak kindly, they’ll go, well, he’s okay. You know what I mean? so
01:05:52.93
Stephen Schneider
Right.
01:05:53.05
Alan Baltis
All right. Take care, Stephen. Thanks.
01:05:54.36
Stephen Schneider
Later, man.
01:05:54.51
Alan Baltis
for Have a great day. Okay.
01:05:55.84
Stephen Schneider
You too.
