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Overview
Alan is going through the stuff in his parents house and it leads to a great discussion on visiting the past. This could be through books and video, but new methods like using VR.
Recommendations
Encyclopedia Britannica | Britannica
Philadelphia Museum of Art (philamuseum.org)
Surviving 9/11 – 27 Hours Under The Rubble (oculus.com)
YouTube
Transcript
[00:00:00] Stephen: Brewer here. I think I almost chose that one too. I’ve got that one on my list.
[00:00:08] Alan: that’s I’m. I’m just back from a long time in California. I was there for the longest time. My I mentioned before, four listeners joining late. My father passed away in February. My mom is in a memory care facility.
I go out there once a month to visit with her and make sure she knows that she’s loved. We also have been working on the house. They had a beautiful house in an area called Heney Hills and Oceanside, and they had, they were, they are, or were 89. So they have a lifetimes accumulation of stuff.
And I take, after my parents, they have, they had lots of books. They had a house filled with interesting stuff. And unfortunately the exercise of getting ready to maybe sell the house is, are we gonna sell some things? We who’s gonna take what home. We actually had the brothers together for the first time in months.
And we did the divvy two days ago, we actually, I had taken pictures of all kinds of stuff in the house and posted them, sent them up to everybody. So everybody could go through and say, Of all the paintings. These are the ones that I want of all the paintings, sculpture China books music, all that kind of stuff.
The reason that I’m, presenting the library today is because my dad had tons of stuff and I guess a little bit like me eclectic taste. He wasn’t just a science fiction fan. He had science, he had war history. He has had he loved maps. And so has a whole bunch of Atlas and geography and geology books.
I know they’re very different, but his taste ran to both and the heartbreaking thing is I already have grown up. I got lots of books. I took. So good thing about, how my brothers worked it out is that we are different enough that there was hardly any contention, there wasn’t, oh, everybody wants the magic coffee pot or whatever else it might be.
So I have their insights, the pred Botanica and by have meaning. We had to actually rent containers. We had to do research into the U box and the pod and the Zippy shell and all that kind of stuff, and find out who moves to Bloomington where my brother is and who moves to where I am. My older brother didn’t want that much cuz he just moved to a smaller house in Florida and is not looking to outc crowd himself.
You know what I mean? But like I’m really to. Because I really want the encyclopedia. Botanica it’s a very cool thing. There’s a book called the, no, it all, that where a guy actually read it from start to finish and then to be the smartest man in the world, that kind of thing.
These are the encyclopedia. One of the first things my parents bought when we were young was the EB. So that we’d have it for a homework assignment, stuff like that. And my first taste of. The worldwide web by that meaning, hyperlinking that okay, I’m gonna go look up things about Einstein. And then of course, while you’re reading about Einstein, you find out about his contemporaries and who had a series preceding his and how his were in addition to, or in reputation of, and how many times I started off in seven articles later kinda came too.
You know what I mean? That I had tried the original Wikipedia, all these various different things, the original Wikipedia and. So I, and. Without going into it. They had a bunch of time life series of books. And maybe I’ve talked about this a little bit before. So I wanted the civilization, the ages of man, the above and beyond, back when it was 69, the moonshot was a big thing.
And so there’s all kinds of knowledge, but it leaves up to like there. And so sometimes it’s very interesting, just like when you read. Science fiction from the thirties, forties, 50 sixties. At the, at that time, it was state of the art very speculative. And then you get to Marvel at wow. They really figured it out.
This guy had such incredible insight that he talked about the way the world would become and whether it’s star Trek or asso mob or whatever else it might be. And other times it’s hilarious because boy, did they get it wrong? They have all this extrapolation in the future, but never caught out to the advent of cell phones or everybody has near instantaneous communication, things like that.
I found a cool art book series where I think it’s called something like seven centuries of art. And it has volumes on here’s all about Shal and Picasso and Matisse. And I have an appreciation for a hope to different painters. I love going to museums, but I don’t, I really don’t know. Like where did they come from?
What influenced them, who tell me all about, I might know a lot about van golf because there’s been several movies made about him, but as much as I might. What’s the difference between, I don’t know, pre impressionist, post impressionist, who are the main practitioners of that.
And so I’m looking forward to my own little education now, sitting down and seeing beautiful paintings and seeing kind like when we talked about EPIs, you really get to see the growth of a director by seeing their very early Hitchcock work and then their main thriller perfect things. And then, it I’m.
I’m really looking forward to reading more. You know what I mean? I know the world is bursting with videos, you and I laugh about how we can hardly keep up as it is , but there’s something to be said for, paintings are that kind of painted medium. Despite having just been to the painting shows where they take the work of van go or of and display it so that it’s interactive and you can immerse yourself in it and stuff.
I, I still think there. I’ve always been a fan of an artist should be able to present what he wanted to present to you in the medium and the size and the everything that he wanted. And when things get ized, that they decided, Hey, we gotta hang out fig leaf on this because the statue of David as beautiful as is somehow naughty.
You know what I mean? And various things like that. I’m of wanting to see the paintings. And I guess this is also inspired by, I mentioned when we were in Philadelphia, we went to the Philadelphia museum of art and there are sunflowers, it’s wow, I don’t know where some of these great works are.
There’s a, every museum seems to have one or two, but I don’t know where Whistler’s best work is and Picasso, all that, so I got a whole bunch of reading ahead of me and, and it and what are the. The commitments you have to make when you’re gonna move. Those kind of books is you pack like a Stater storage box and it weighs like 45, 50 pounds.
beautiful leaded paper so that the colors are really perfectly reproduced, but it isn’t pulp like comic books or likes or something like that. So as we’re putting it into the pod and it has a ton, a 2000 pound. I was I just put 20 bucks in that are like 45. That’s 900 pounds. I’m halfway in.
And right. Bruce still has to put his stuff in there. So I don’t mean to be going on, but it’s a very interesting wow, what a time capsule. And I guess that’s it, isn’t only about what the things are. It’s just, people are gonna have that thing with me when they, if I don’t do serious Swedish death cleaning or sell off my collections or give things away to libraries and my friends.
Someone’s gonna come into this house and just say, there’s a year’s worth of work here, and then it’s not just the house, it’ll be, oh, you have storage lockers as well. You utter bastard for having so much stuff. ,
[00:06:54] Stephen: i, know, we’re kinda in the same thing.
My father, he’s still here, but he’s all big hoarder and he has so much stuff. And our building, you saw it before. It’s way worse. Now it’s really fallen down. and we’re like, what do we keep? What do we not keep? I don’t wanna spend $10,000 to build another building just to put all the stuff back in.
And it takes a lot of time to go through it, but there’s some good stuff. Like you said for him though, it was all the wood projects he did. Right now, if you drove past our house, I have about 50 Halloween would things sitting out in the yard all over the place that he had made. And we’ve got twice that many for Christmas.
[00:07:29] Alan: You mentioned that was one of the main things he did.
[00:07:31] Stephen: And wow. And so going through that though takes so much time and you’re kinda like, I’m never gonna touch this and you’re like anybody want it come and get it at some point it becomes overwhelming a lot. It is
[00:07:44] Alan: becoming like that for us.
We actually, besides the kind of the commitment that we made was we did the divvy. Everybody’s gonna take away their various different. There’s still 90% of the stop from the house. So we thought about having an estate sale, but now there’s a certain urgency to getting the house cleared out so they can do the improvements to it.
So it’ll sell well on this market because Hey, interest rates are going up and various other things. And honestly, it’s good that I got out of there because I’m not the guy that can go through that stuff and say, this has no value throw. I’m always, this has sentimental value. It has historic it’s one of a set, and so there’s two basters, dumpsters made out of big canvas that were just, oh my God, there’s all the macaroni res that we made when we were young for Christmas. There’s so much. Beautiful glasses, beautiful mugs, beautiful things that like my parents had a wonderful kitchen. They had service 12, but if nobody wants those things and we’re not gonna take the time to sell it I’m feeling terrible about it, but it has to be done.
And I’m not the one that could do it. So my older brother and younger brother just have less. Border instinct or less, less
[00:08:49] Stephen: immediate. They just have less stuff. They have a lower stuff limit. I think that’s it.
[00:08:54] Alan: And I dunno, I even just going through as you, we went through the house several times now to make sure we found the financial papers, legal papers, important stuff.
And we weren’t looking for. You don’t look in the kitchen cabinets for that, but you open the kitchen cabinets. It’s oh, here’s some Yaro, here’s some Wedgewood crystal. And by cabinets, there’s, decor cabinets of breakfront and all that kinda stuff. And maybe this is Lenox and I don’t know the values of things, but I’ve heard of some of these names.
And then you’re like I like, I think it’s pretty, so I want it but should I take the Yaro because that might have collector’s value and. It just was emotional much more difficult than I expected it to be, especially when we finally got to okay. Claim your stuff, but anything that’s left it, it really is that we’re gonna either get something for it or give it away or put it out to the street.
We have big difficulties in terms of not only these, the little things, but there’s a beautiful pool table, carved wooden lions feet and, pockets instead of runners and all that kind of stuff, but someone’s gotta come get it. We are not gonna bring it to someone.
And if I remember right, it’s not, I think about pool tables, you can have a single slate bed, very old style. Possibly heavy and then otherwise they cut it into three and then they I think this is a single slate bed. So somebody’s gonna have to come in here with track 24 year old stevedores, and they’re gonna lift this thing out or they got a special pinball machine moving thing where, they Jack it up but it, in order to.
Replace the rug and the pad and the tile and other things we wanna do to modernize the place while still keeping it haci endo style. It really is that pool table has to go. And then you think who wouldn’t want this pool table? That’s wonderful. As the world is changing and nowadays kids wanna play virtual pool, maybe on their, we, they don’t necessarily want a pool table.
That was such a luxury item. When I was growing up, I always dealt, dreamt up having the dens, the conservatory playroom, whatever you wanna call it with the floor standing globe. Like where Zo gets his hand caught in the big Panther movie, and Florida ceiling beyond high bookcases with the rolling ladder.
And then here’s our pool table. And you have a Brandy sniffer. Oh, back in mod, of course. You know what I mean? And now that dream is fading into the past. There’s no rooms nowadays that accommodate that. Nobody seems to want it. So all those emotions of having to get it done, but also it’s such a real realization of their time has pass.
My parents and my, and whoever each generation is gonna be less and less atoms and more and more digital, more pixels more and I don’t know, there really is value to having a beautiful set of books on a shelf and going over and browsing. Absolutely.
[00:11:36] Stephen: And even the pool table, if I could I’d take the pool table, I love playing pool.
So honestly my son and in
[00:11:42] Alan: fact, cause we were so busy, I didn’t even get a chance to shoot Alaska game of pool on this table. I love shooting pool and just the press of activity. Yeah. I don’t know. It was I, got, did my usual red eye to come home and I really didn’t sleep well last night because.
I’m going through everything that we talked about touched, I didn’t get in the Farberware out of the kitchen. You know what I mean? I really like that stainless steel that my, we had growing up, it’s indestructible. It’s still, and yet there’s only so much packing. We rent out of boxes and then, oh man I had such, I still have such emotion about it and I it’ll take a while for me to process even.
Storage container gets to Bruce. He takes his half out, gets to here. I take my half out. I’m not gonna bring, I’m gonna bring like a tent of it into the house. Most of it’s gonna go into my storage locker. And what have I been working on for the last kind of COVID years cataloging and getting things outta there.
So is it good to just pile another bunch of stuff up that I’m gonna also catalog? And then when I say, wow, this looks like the Peter bot wonderful. Who wants it? And it’s crickets. It’s just gonna be another of those men. The world has shifted. I don’t know if in a good way.
[00:12:52] Stephen: you mentioned a couple things.
The, to bring in the tech aspects, the geek aspect encyclopedia Britanica is a big. Thing that has changed through the years when my kids were born they’re a couple years old or whatever. I’m like, okay, we had an encyclopedia, but I know it’s ancient now. My grandparents had one even more ancient than that.
I know I wanted to get an encyclopedia for my kids, looked around it. It’s a CD. You buy a CD and that’s what they had and they updated it and it’s online. Now you just subscribe. So yes. Hundred percent agree with you and feel that with you about not having the Encyc being, they won’t understand that, but on the flip side, they also have more updated, relevant, and better articles linked to more articles and more pictures and the videos and a more immersive, yeah. So there is pros and cons both ways. Yeah. You
[00:13:43] Alan: know, I’ll tell you I, we haven’t talked about. Sometimes it’s not just a matter of having current knowledge. It is a matter of knowing what came before. Yes. So when you look at a globe and I, we, my parents had a globe that they from rep logo. If I remember right, that you could get reaped, they’d make it match the current state of the world.
And I would’ve bought another globe. I would’ve wanted to see what it was like when that really was the USSR. And before the stands broke away. And before, the Balkans split into various different things in Germany. Rejoined Africa has transformed multiple ways. I want to have those snapshots in time.
And I think that’s some of the value of having an old Atlas is you really get to see what did we think the world looked like when there was still some Terra incognita. What were the treaties that, you know, all this was owned by the Dutch, not anymore,
[00:14:32] Stephen: You understand you, you wouldn’t have to get to, you’d have to get to every time it changed.
So you kept that linear progression going on.
[00:14:41] Alan: I, I acknowledge that. It’s a weird thing to, yes, it’s probably impractical and maybe not doable. And. Maybe every 10 years, whatever you think is the Cade the jump that you’re willing to make in time so that you could have some sense of.
And I’m not talking tectonic plates. , I’m talking, just man has carved up the earth in various constant
[00:15:05] Stephen: noble and stuff. Yeah. And I, just playing the devil’s advocate, arguing that I understand again, I agree with you. It’s our age, our generation, but just last night I was, I, by the way, I’m on my new computer in my office.
I finally made it congratulations. That’s why I have a background. That’s pretty good, but arguably I was on my Oculus last night, setting that up and playing with it. Is it cooler to try and get all these Globes that are gonna cost 25, 50 bucks a piece and keep up with it or to have a cool little Oculus app that you could zoom in and move the earth around and watch it progress as things change which you know is better.
Arguably they both are, but I, if kids are watching the videos and. My, my guys bring up my cousin’s grandkid all the time. He watches some of the most obscure, scientific and educational videos that would be for him, look at here’s what the world mappings were. And you could zoom in and you could touch and you could look and get immersive street views, and then jump around in time.
I’ve talked about that with the AR and stuff, too. I hear you
[00:16:13] Alan: exactly. I presenting it exactly like that. That is what I prefer. I think what I’m worried about is that. You still have to have like curation, someone has to save those things, make sure they’re available. Yeah. So there is an internet archive, but then you have to have the search tools and the ability to stutter shut back and forth in time and be able to zoom in on an exact.
And it’s of funny. I couldn’t have reading a more appropriate book. I’m reading. Ready player two. Which is the sequel to ready player one. And it talks about the Oasis and having a more and more immersive experience cuz now they actually have, the brain helmet, if you will, that wires you.
So you don’t just have fake haptic feedback. It really is immersive. And that in this Oasis because bits are unlimited, they have recreated. Shermer Illinois, where all the John Hughes movies took place, but they had to take liberties about distance, cuz so did the movies. So when you go from one place to the other it’s the combination of recreating the movies and remaining true to them, but not real because the movies weren’t and ho I, a thousand other examples, when they just talk about, if you’re gonna do this star wars thing, you have to have, you really, you can teleport from planet to planet.
And so someone. Lovingly created each of those simulations. So you have to have someone that’s knowledgeable and passionate and that, but then when they maintain it, they talk about, this world was done by Alan Balti and he’s dead now. And the world is not deteriorating, but.
We know more about what it I don’t know. Yes. If it was created eight bit and everything is now 32 bit, it looks like you would expect when you pop onto an old Atari machine instead of the new immersive. Anyway,
[00:17:46] Stephen: isn’t that one of the dystopian sci-fi writers go-tos is. The world progresses so much advancement that we don’t know how to take care of the technology.
And you always have those post dystopian worlds where they can’t take care of the ancient technologies.
[00:18:02] Alan: yeah. And I, it’s funny, of course my father had multiple generations of computers, so here’s an old HP monitor that really is only eight bit or 16 bit, but not like we have nowadays the retina level.
Of course what is every I would say male required to. The box of cables and connectors that you never wanna throw away because you might need it one day, it still got value. And as we were going through those things, it really was heartening that my dad, on, on the edge of technology versus me being quite immersed in it, he still had that of what do you save?
When do you get rid of it? Back to floppy discs and then little hard discs and CDs and DVDs and that kind of. And.
[00:18:39] Stephen: Wow. So my father wasn’t and isn’t the tech, but I’m cleaning out the building. I’m pulling out this string with a handle and I’m like, what’s this? I’m like, oh, that’s the pool cord for an old lawnmower.
He kept it in case you need an extra one, I’m pulling out these Springs and wires. And it’s this is the ignition cable for this particular item, and I’m like, you
[00:19:00] Alan: know, wow. My dad had every tool in the universe up on the peg board as is required by law for a certain generation.
And my younger brother and older brother both have a lot of tools cuz they’ve had a place for them. Now that I finally have a garage, I was like I want to have, and so Bruce was going through, my brother, Bruce was going through and saying, here’s a good starter set of things that I already have.
So you get to have the duplicate, if you will. And so soon I’ll. More screwdrivers, more of every kind of wrench and I’ll, and I’ll have both English and metric and I’ll be able to work on more lawnmower parts or whatever else it might be. So that’ll be handy. It, so much of the geekery of this is also.
Wow. I thought I knew a lot about this author and here’s a book I’d never read. It’s like before my time of being introduced and we laugh about that, that there’s a certain generational thing where they think the world started when they did. And so they don’t go watch black and white movies or they don’t.
And I was like, wow, I really have looked. For some of these and yet, might have some things from and relatively big names, maybe not Tom Clancy, but I’m trying to remember who I could give as an example. Astair McClain or something like that, where, oh, a number of his were made into movies and they got famous.
And I thought that I knew all of them and yet my dad had treasure because he had a book I didn’t have. And. I would’ve bet against that. I have been so much a collector in the course of my life and inspired by my dad were a lot of my science fiction taste or my, my, everything, my mystery taste came from him and my mom.
And it’s funny. I often talk about my dad because he seemed his taste was much in evidence, but of course my mom is all over the place as. All the wonderful Christmas things that we have that I remember being the tinsel in the house, the ornaments on the trees, there was a, she made ornaments, she took, we talked about this styrofoam ball where you pressed various different things in and became like this beautiful kind of scintillating mirror ball, jeweled, ornament.
And we got ’em all. So now everybody’s gonna have some for their trees. So we can say, here’s Steve mom and dad and lift, lift a no to them. That kind of thing. And a lot of things from our youth. Armon had Mattie Mattel when he was young and I had Casper, those were our dolls.
I’ve never been a big doll guys in Spanish. I don’t really collect action figures and stuff, but man seeing little Casper was like, I remember I don’t know, you watch the cartoons when you’re young and the little kids run away crying, cuz they’re scared of him. And I was always like, Chris has no friends and I just, it brought some of that back.
And I haven’t thought about that in 60 years. Fighting nostalgia, but also embracing it because those were your family memories are, yeah. I remember my dad bringing home puzzles because I was a ridiculously smart kid. And so my dad had to keep challenging me beyond schoolwork. They, mom and dad were really good about introducing me.
Like mom would get me.to dots or puzzle books and dad would get me physical puzzles, and just, it was all still. They had folders dossiers on each of us were like, here’s our third grade report card. You know what I mean? They really raised us well and they kept all that with the intent one day of handing it.
And now we are we’re claim it,
[00:22:02] Stephen: we’ve talked about this too, the tech we’re basically doing time capsule tech here. Yeah. Yeah. You could have, you still may maybe can going to each room and do a Panorama photo because you can put those into Oculus and you could.
Through, it’s not like a walkthrough which you’d have to recreate through software. And, lots of people do that for that time vault. They take pic, you said you took pictures, so you may not keep everything. There’s just no way. No, no reason to, when you’re look at it from the outsider’s viewpoint.
But you got the pictures, you can go in and see and bring back those same feelings. That’s the thing it’s. That’s what you don’t wanna get rid of, not so much the item
[00:22:41] Alan: you’re right. And I wish I would’ve had the presence of mind to do that. Instead when I took the pictures, it was to get an inventory so that the brother could say, who would like what I really should have done what you just said, take thing and be able to do room to room, transition, and have a view of my parents’ house, where they live for 35 years.
I didn’t do that. And soon it will be impossible. Yeah.
[00:23:00] Stephen: Yeah. What made me think of that is, we’re talking about things in the past and tech when I was setting up the Oculus, they have videos on there. They offer for free and there’s a new one called 27 minutes under the rubble. And it’s the story of the last survivor they pulled from the twin towers collapse.
Oh. And her story about that, but it’s in the Oculus. You’re immersive. I’m sitting there and they’re showing a view from one of the cameras that was in the city at the time. Yeah. And you can see the twin towers over there and I turn, and I’m looking at the city all around me, then they show from street level and you’re, and there’s people and it you’re in the middle of it and it, and she’s talking over it just like a documentary.
Yeah. And then they start showing the planes and stuff hitting, and you’re like looking up and you see the plane come in and crash and it’s. D. Wow. Cause it’s right there, you
[00:23:53] Alan: have to in there in the canyons of New York watching it hit model.
[00:23:57] Stephen: Yeah. And because it’s the Oculus, they, it’s not a hundred percent, so I don’t wanna hear people going, oh, it’s not a hundred percent lawyers.
I get that it’s anyways, better than right. Yeah. I still had to tilt my head and go like this to look around and look up. It, wasn’t just a 2d picture in front of me. It very intense that way. And we’ve talked about history and stuff and kids learning with the globe and all that.
But I remember, and I mentioned this, I learned more about the actual civil war when I read turtle Dove’s book guns of the south the whole feelings of the south from various aspects. And. That’s what the Oculus can do. Teaching kids, we can teach. ’em all we want about the politics and why this may have happened and how airplanes fly or whatever.
But I guarantee a one hour thing on the Oculus where they’re in the plane heading to the tower minute, or they’re seeing it or they’re on it. And they feel it shake. That would be much more informative to them than anything we could do with a chalkboard.
[00:24:55] Alan: Exactly. And I’ll tell you, Oculus there’s so much stuff that’s been done for a long time.
Strange days, about what it would be like to be able to not only experience it, but also to record your experience and then have somebody else relive that if you will. Another sci-fi thing, exactly black mirror has things about, that about being able to choose your reality and have you really get to like blank people out of it that you don’t want to have in your life anymore.
And like I said, reading ready player two, where it’s this immersive experience, but when you start to. You have to put in safeguards because if people really experience it and can die from it, if the feeling was too intense, if it really was the pain being struck by lightning or something like that.
How do you make it so that it’s an experience? Not a reliving of it. I don’t know. There. There’s all kinds of stuff that, that all those things are coming up because I’m going through 90 years of a person’s life. That’s nearly a century, so much happened. My parents were born in 33 and so it’s just after the depression, just before going into world war So much happened in Europe while we were there.
Then they came to the United States and then what did they have? They had McCarthyism. They had, the British invasion, free love, hippies you know it just, all that they lived through and dealt with. And we’re going through interesting times now, obviously it’s very interesting to be able to see.
What did they capture from those times so that they would remember it or so that this is what they were watching to not be involved in it. This was their distraction. They, my parents never had a movie camera. But they took tons and tons of pictures. And so I took on the pictures and the slides, so that we’ll be able to digitize that and then send out a couple DVDs for the
[00:26:33] Stephen: family.
Again, there’s another tech thing that we’ve got. Now we can digitize all of that and everybody gets everything. Exactly.
[00:26:40] Alan: Yeah. I am like, I took it on, I’ve not done this before. Is it gonna be like, wow. Slide by slide. And there’s 33 carousels with 140 each. So what have I just taken on and make sure the resolution is good?
Is there a little automated guy that I can buy that I load in 10 slides and it does the right and goes through it is there, and I know my time is valuable and limited. Is that what I wanna spend my next two years doing? I kind of wanna if I find a guy that’ll do it for you. I don’t even know a thousand, $3,005,000 to have me not spend all my time on that, but to send it to them and then like a month later, get it back.
Cuz they’ve got the tools that I don’t have, grade tools and stuff. And so I’m gonna. Do that little study of how long does it take me? What’s it worth to not do it? What, and then, talk to the brothers about, Hey, if we’re gonna do this, it’ll cost us 5,000 bucks. And it really might be that each of us would say for $1,700 to have the history of my family, maybe it’s worth it.
I think we might even get to that. My parents had some money and so we’re gonna be inheriting some of that, it’s in the trust and we’re moving things from the places that was locked into the trust. My wife and I were just talking about this. It’s not Hey, let’s go buy an island.
It’s not that level of rich, but just having that little bit of extra money where you really do have the opportunity to say my time is worth more than $5,000. There are times in my life where I would’ve put a lot of time into earning $5,000 and now things are shifting a little bit, all those little.
What would you call ’em additions and inconveniences? I’m gonna be I took spirit home and I’m willing to pay for a seat when it’s the four hour flight so that I can lean against the wall and try to get some sleep. Whereas I don’t know, for an hour, I don’t really care where I say it. And, but soon it’ll be for like five or 10 bucks.
I’ll always be willing to get the I don’t know the extra mayonnaise on with my meal. My, my little bit better seat, my little bit better hotel room, all that incremental thing where Colleen and I have been very frugal. And that’s one of the reasons I’ve collected so much. We’ve been so many wonderful places.
When you’re frugal all the money you save than when you wanna have a big splurgy dinner, you don’t feel any guilt at all because you kinda earned it. You kinda saved it. And yet though, it’s ratchet it up now as. What do we really have to watch are we let’s see, we’re at least candy bar rich.
At any time we can buy a candy bar. I bet you, my habit of like buying CDs for seven bucks or less, I might be able to bump that to 10 . You know what I 15,
[00:29:11] Stephen: so I love that you’re talking that way because I’ve talked to some people. It’s kinda like at this point, if I won the lottery, if I won that, maybe not, like you said, the amount that makes a difference that you can roll in it and live, just sleep on it, but enough that it makes you like, I don’t have to worry about it if I’m doing this there.
And honestly, and people say if you really won the money, it’d be different. But honestly, like you said, I don’t want. Sports car. I don’t want a mansion to live in because I don’t want a gold pool, maybe a pool, but not a gold pool, so I really think the things I would enjoy and do with the money are totally different than.
If I was 20 and whatever I agree with you. I like that. It’s like I can go to more comedy fests in more cities and that’s what I would enjoy. That type of thing. Exactly.
[00:30:04] Alan: That’s that, as we look towards retirement and as we look towards, we’ve saved up for retirement, we have money and now we’re getting money from the parents.
It isn’t gonna go into, I want a bigger house of mansion it’s gonna go into now. I have the ability to have virtually any experience that I. Of course, that’s not true. I take it back problems. The experiences that I want are not the $20,000 to bask on a beach for a week. You care less about exclusive body private
[00:30:28] Stephen: stuff.
You shouldn’t be in the sun anyway. and that’s
[00:30:31] Alan: see exactly. They already got some uh, determining factors that keep me from, but I don’t know. I wanna go see the tarantula migration, not Montecarlo Lamont’s racing. You know what I mean? My tastes are eclectic. I’m looking forward to being able to do those things and know that I didn’t have to do that instead of everything else, it’s more like I really have the next hundred trips that what we’re coming to go on, our driving vacation.
We’ll never run out of $5,000 trips. We’ll run out of time. We’ll run out of, can we pop in and out of the car? Are we it’s a nice feeling. It’s a nice feeling to have options. Not as many trade offs as we have always had to make in our life. That’s good. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. So it, and when we’re now looking at I’m gonna continue to visit my mom until my mom is gone, but soon the house will be gone.
So then it’s I’m gonna stay at, I hope a place like an extended state America or homeless reach, cuz I wanna have my own hotel. That’s true. Geez. Get me my liver and onions. No, I’m just tea. I still don’t wanna eat out every night. I of want to have. My, my breakfast sandwiches in the morning, and I want to have a subway for lunch and I wanna make my own pizza.
It, the things that’ll make me happy. Aren’t going to be having to now ratchet up the spending without having the house as a home base already. I’m of looking into, oh, it it’s very, a very practical form of geekery. You know what I mean? Now what I’m looking at is I’m gonna be out there solo most of the time.
I don’t wanna play minigolf on myself. That seems a little weird. Whereas maybe I will go to the zoo and wander around. Besides visiting mom. There’s all kinds of Southern California to go see with no matter how much money I have. Do I wanna go to Tijuana? Not really. Has no, some people think about it as going, Hey, you’d be able to get things at bargain prices and it’s a different lifestyle and the life.
Kind of desperate and poor. And I get, I’ve never had a nice time where people are pressing postcards into your hand and if you don’t buy it, they go hungry that day. It weirds me out in those islands or places that I’ve been to like that. I guess maybe that’s hiding from it a little bit on my part, but you know what?
I don’t have to be right in every save, saving every single starfish. get to keep my peace of mind. I get to keep my own sense of true. I can’t be that sad. I can’t
[00:32:44] Stephen: right. True. So you did one other geek thing you mentioned about with the encyclopedias and the books. Yeah. Was the van go thing that they had that immersive van go and I.
I agree with you. I’m a little torn, I wanna see it hanging somewhere, to be truthful, where did he have it in his studio, you know what I’m saying? We’re in a museum, so it’s still a different environment. And a lot of times we’re not actually seeing the original, we’re seeing a copy that they’ve made because they don’t trust any.
But this there’s
[00:33:15] Alan: a sinker. There’s not a single original think. Stuff like that,
[00:33:18] Stephen: I’ve seen the pictures in books. I’ve been to various museums and seen some of the real life ones. Yeah. So that we’re back. Okay. We’re back. Yeah. Sorry. That was me. It looks like we lost power for a second.
So everything’s zip time for ups. But I was talking about the the immersive Vango that they had at the museum. I love that they do things like that because it’s a new way of experience it to get people in that may have never seen it, man never cared or, so there’s benefits to those.
Yeah.
[00:33:49] Alan: And I really like the fact that there seemed to be more of them. They did a virtual Sistine chapel. They’re gonna be doing various different other artists’ work. I, knowing that we’ve just talked about. This museum has sunflowers, but there’s many be GOs all over the place. The fact that sometimes they put together the tour that collects as many of them as they can on loan for various different places.
Or the virtual tour says you get to see 50 of them. Where would you have gone to all 50 museums? Maybe not, and it’s a different experience to see them all chronologically and next to each other and stuff, instead of in the bits and pieces that you get. And yes, those two.
[00:34:26] Stephen: So this is going back.
So back in the early days of the internet, Yahoo was huge. Yahoo was the thing. So big in fact that they came out with a print magazine. So wrap your head around one of the biggest tech companies of the time making a print. Unheard of today. But I got a couple issues to check it out and keep up, what’s the cool news stuff on the internet.
Cuz you wanna see everything on the internet. seems very Baral now. But one of the things they talked about was the Lou that they were making it virtual and you could walk through a virtual. And by today’s standards, it was crude and, very pixelated and, but in your web browser, you could like the old games click to move forward and turn left and click to move forward.
And you could view all the paintings and stuff from the loop. Yeah. Up on the wall. Exactly. That was one of the, I love it. Yeah.
[00:35:20] Alan: love that. Someone’s one of, one of their first ideas of what we can do with this wonderful new internet thing is not let’s. Let’s do another first person shooter.
Let’s take someone on tour of the loop where I don’t know, out of 6 billion people, 5.9 if not, have a chance to make it to the loop. And what a breakthrough, in that regard,
[00:35:36] Stephen: that’s very cool. Yeah. So I remember that, time capsule tech it’s probably in the way back machine, if you go looking at it, it’s probably there somewhere.
Exactly. So well so let’s
[00:35:47] Alan: see. Yeah, we had accumulated as usual almost topics that we then digress. What’s top of my mind. I really am enjoying the game of throne sequel the house of the, yeah, really. Okay. Matt Smith is great. Our gentleman from Dr. Who and various other things.
And it’s funny, last time I visited my mom, they were watching some movie and he was playing prince William. I’ve lost track, back at when the Suez canal things were happening 39 England he was playing that. So Matt Smith, he was also in the he was in Morbius as the villain.
He’s everywhere. Now. He’s really good in this because he’s got that. He. I’ve got like a Michael Keaton factor where he’s intense, but funny. And you don’t know whether he’s insane or not. You don’t know when he is gonna snap. He’s good at that. He’s got something in his eyes that he could go either way.
And the fact that he can keep a straight face while doing dastardly things or even laughing while doing it. You know what I mean? And, but he has real love affection for his, niece. And he’s a great warrior. I don’t mean to only highlight him as usual in any game of Thrones thing.
There’s a dozen people that are fleshing out this entire world of all the competing factions and, different, everything, different races, different. It’s really well done. It’s just what I like that. Inter nesting warfare, where the family itself is competing with each other as to if this guy dies, who’s going to ascend.
And as long as I have pure blood back, when that mattered more a lot made of, Hey, the country will not follow a woman and wow, aren’t we experiencing that right now with just finally queen Elizabeth, but she was pretty good leader for the. 58 years or whatever, 78, right? It was like 70, I think she 52, 70 years.
So it’s I just I’m really enjoying it. And it’s not only a costume thing. It really has intrigue. It’s got real heroism and real treachery and real everything. It’s such a great whatever people get out of other things like Downton Abbey, where, it’s the humanity that, that is.
Not the dragons that matter. let’s put it that
[00:37:52] Stephen: way. So I was looking earlier this year I joined red boxes program, so I get one free rental every month. Okay. And I’m looking at it. I’m like, okay, everything in here is already on streaming that I’ve seen, or I don’t care for. I’m like, I’m wasting my time at, so we think red box may be dying, unfortunately.
OK. But talking to the fragility. Fragility Colin and I like to go see on Mondays at Kent and Tuesdays at the $5 movies, because if we go see the same movie in the same spot, we
[00:38:25] Alan: have see it in the big screen with popcorn.
[00:38:27] Stephen: Okay. Five bucks instead of the 15. So there’s a couple movies out that we went last night and saw the barbarian.
It’s a newer horror flick. I don’t think it’s for everybody. It’s not a standard horror flick that most people it’s something my friend Reese, and I would probably watch and review for our podcast. Okay. It’s got some freaky moments. It felt like a movie that may have been made in like the early eighties, maybe seventies or something.
And so that was interesting that vibe. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Then there’s a movie out called the invitation and it’s a vampire movie. Okay. And
[00:39:02] Alan: basically this, they can’t come in unless you invite them. Okay. That’s
[00:39:05] Stephen: maybe there’s something you could relate to. She loses her family. And so she’s trying to find through the DNA search, more family, and she runs into family.
She didn’t know about in England and they invite her to a wedding. It turns out they’re vampires and she’s now the vampire bride. So that’s out. And then we wanna go see warrior woman or warrior queen or whatever that is with okay. Wall, the lady that played Waller in the MC in the DC universe.
Yes. Yes, exactly.
[00:39:32] Alan: Amanda Waller. Okay.
[00:39:33] Stephen: We wanna see that, that looks really good. And then there’s a couple other horror movies out. There’s. Darling something wrong with Chris pine. It looks, yeah. Something
[00:39:42] Alan: like darling quit.
[00:39:43] Stephen: Yeah. Okay. Okay. That looks interesting. It’s psychological type thriller horror.
And then there’s a smile which looks really freaky. I don’t know if you’ve seen that trailer. No I know you’re not huge horror. So it is probably, but this one’s weird. Just it’s like a disease, everyone just smiling. And then they see people. And then they die more and more
[00:40:05] Alan: FAL. Okay.
[00:40:06] Stephen: Yeah.
So what freaked the freaky part, I’ll give it away in the trailer. This lady pulls up and hunts her horn, picking up a kid who comes out the door and comes walking up to the car as a perspective, they get to the car that you can’t see past, like their belly they’re like that tall. And then her head just goes Tru down and looks in the window with this huge smile.
And that’s the, yeah.
[00:40:29] Alan: Okay. So yeah, the big startlement. Okay.
[00:40:32] Stephen: Yeah. And then there’s the new Halloween movie coming out the third of this latest trilogy,
[00:40:37] Alan: right. Where they went back to the first one to try to keep going from there instead of yes. Jason in space and Jason. Okay.
[00:40:43] Stephen: Yes. Okay. Lot of horror movies out, so we’ve got a lot of stuff to see.
$5 days for the next
[00:40:48] Alan: month. That makes sense. September leading into October prime time for all those kinds of things. Okay.
[00:40:53] Stephen: Yeah. Very good. But I, unfortunately I love red box, but I just can’t find enough good stuff to get my free rental every month coming out of there with all the streaming, and again, How many of these things were, are already on streaming that we saw a week ago or something, some things
[00:41:09] Alan: are exclusive, some things are everywhere, that kinda, so I, we I guess my equivalent to that, I still have Netflix, both disk and streaming.
So why, and I still make use of disc because there’s so much stuff in their library that isn’t available online. So we’ve been working our way through the Dexter and the killing Eves and the, and like I said, I there’s still. The various different studios or at least owners of these things play games with not all the Woody Allens are available all the time.
And so whenever they rerelease the Woody Allens that we haven’t seen, at least once, then we jump on them. And same with there’s a couple of alpha Hitchcocks that we’ve had to be looking for. I think we’ve seen all the cone brothers, cuz they haven’t played that game. I knew that Disney did that, that they kept things on and off the market based on being willing to re-release them.
Yeah. Now it seems. So many things are, you don’t get it forever. You get it like rights for two years, and then it goes away while they shop it to somebody else. I guess it is even the discs. They don’t, they wear out and they don’t, they’re not allowed to buy new ones to refill them. And so they really go away.
Yeah. I’ve got no lie, probably 60, 80 things in my some days. Yeah. Where I won’t have them in my queue. And then they dropped out and I. Here’s hoping I one, one day get a chance to see Kentucky fried movie again, or whatever, may actually tunnel. Vision is the one that went away and this hasn’t come back.
That’s. The sensibility is the same as the Zucker brothers movies like airplane, it’s like sketch comedy really quick off funny. And, but hilariously funny. And I remember seeing them fondly in the seventies, eighties when I was in college and after, but they just nobody’s kept ’em on the market.
Nobody’s kept ’em available.
[00:42:45] Stephen: There’s, I’ve mentioned this. I always go to the exchange and end up buying horror. It’s getting harder to buy horror movies because I’ve gotten all the good ones that I want. But over the last couple years, I’ve collected a lot of the universal horror.
Movies, I did my research. I went, found here’s a list in order of all the universal horror movies and check them off as you get ’em. Exactly. Yeah. And now I’m working on hammer, a house of horror films. I found, The exchange is great because they have so much there and they have a section for DVDs and blue rays and they have cheap ones, but I picked up several hammer movies last night for three bucks.
Yeah,
[00:43:26] Alan: exactly. Nothing.
[00:43:27] Stephen: That’s a rental cost. So I might as well buy it. And then I can watch it whenever, you, not that all of them are topnotch. I must watch again, movies
[00:43:35] Alan: but right. Sometimes when you buy it used people really watch the heck out of it. And it really doesn’t play perfectly three bucks.
You
[00:43:42] Stephen: know what I mean? I’m not so much worried in talking about that. I’m talking about, wow, that’s really cheesy. I’m I don’t know if I could zip throw it for another two hours
[00:43:49] Alan: again. There we go. I. I’m interested when some things have not been able to find, I think I’ll go to the libraries cuz not only is it now my liquid public library, but they have an inter library exchange, but I’ve had and we still have a VCR that I could hook up as well as a DVD player.
And yet so many things I’m just kidding. They’re not viewable. You know what I mean? People really did spill a whole malted milk into the cartridge or whatever like that. And it’s yeah.
[00:44:14] Stephen: Libraries have been getting rid of the VHS. They’re not keeping ’em around cuz the equipment’s old it’s wearing out and people don’t want em.
So they get rid of em for space for other stuff. Of course. So if you got it, take advantage while you can. Yeah,
[00:44:28] Alan: it is cool to be on that treasure hunt just out of maybe we’re the only people watching that kind of stuff. You know what I mean? It’s nobody else wants it. We talked about this over the.
My younger brother he was really into war history and especially painting little figurines from seven years war, revolutionary war, et cetera, et cetera. There was a professor named Diffy. If I remember correctly from Northern Illinois university. And at one point he was in a library and he saw a book by this guy that was not available in print anywhere else, but they had it in the library and he looked at it and that’s when they had cards that got stamped.
Nobody had taken it out since 70. Wow. And so he checked it out and he’s not sure when he’s going to return it. I don’t mean to nark on it because I did that. I have a copy of seduction of the innocent, a very famous comic book about, comic books are gonna turn your children to juvenile delinquents and stuff like that.
and I got it. Same thing. Nobody had checked this out forever. And so I’m not waiting for amnesty. I really have never returned it. And so I’m a Seef and I’m sorry I shouldn’t put this, oh my God. Now everybody knows, but I look a bit more like I saved it. I, to be one of those that the library is doing the same, what?
You just talked about, things that haven’t been checked out for 20 years, they’re going in the landfill, they’re going away. And some things are really niche history that, that shouldn’t go away. Someone should have that. It’s me. need this one. I’ve not done that a lot. I’ve done that once.
[00:45:55] Stephen: Need a group monks transcribing it for you.
So you get copies. There we go.
There’s. I think a lot of our rules in that are gray. That’s there may be a good reason. And I was just gonna say that you saved that book. They were, they would’ve got rid of it. If you would’ve missed the book sale and not seen the book, it would’ve been in the landfill. Nobody would’ve ever missed.
It’s right. And you got it. And it’s funny cuz when we were at the movies last night, now we watch movies in our living room. And people can get up, can sit down, we can pause it. You can turn the light on. You can get some deep, we talk, we, doorbell rings, whatever. Yeah last night there was a guy up in front of us that like the movie had just barely started.
He was pulling up his phone and stuff and he kept messing with it. Now, see if I, there was only like four of us in the theater total, maybe five. And he added on dark mode. So it wasn’t distracting me. It wasn’t, he wasn’t talking there wasn’t noise, so I let it go. I’m like, you know what? Go ahead, buddy.
You paid for the movie. If you wanna sit there as long as it’s not bothering me. My son though, it was because with his tracking issues, with his eyes, that it was enough light to be distracting to him. And he goes, Hey buddy, could you put away your phone? And the guy like shot him a dirty look and stuff.
It is Hey, the rules are in the public theater. Put your phone away, there’s
[00:47:11] Alan: rule. All he had to do was move behind you. That’s what
[00:47:14] Stephen: Colin said. He’s dude, don’t sit in front, just go behind. And I don’t care. That’s right. So sometimes there’s okay. Reasons to break rules and some, it knows partly I, I guess when I said to Colin said, I guess if it depends on how much it affects other people, if you’re talking on the phone, it’s bothering everybody, shut up, put it. If you’re in the back of the theater and you’re just scrolling through emails, who cares, that’s your time? So same with the book nobody’s gonna miss it obviously for 50 years. Exactly.
[00:47:43] Alan: I I hope that’s the case, and in fact I’m pretty sure that no. I have books that no library has anymore. So I really have played omega, man. When the world’s going to hell, I’m gonna hold up in a library, make that my armor to compound and save civilization. Cuz I’ll be the one that has the books on how to replant crops, hot fire, purify water.
You know what I mean? That kinda stuff. So anyway,
[00:48:04] Stephen: My grandparents, speaking of, my grandparents had some of those Fox fire books. Okay. Which are about the mountain men and skinning and tanning and yeah, I learned a. Useful skills, looking through reading those books, oh, let’s read a new book, exactly.
They still have those books out. You can still buy them. They’ve you know, re published them, but it’s the same stuff. They haven’t updated and edited. It’s the same. Crudely written skill set of stuff,
[00:48:31] Alan: but they work they’re pioneer level. You need two sticks of wood to start a fire.
You know what I mean? Here’s I love that kind of stuff is available. If people want to find it, instead of Lord’s been just lost in the midst of time,
[00:48:42] Stephen: So it’s I always tell people, I know from those books how to get water when it’s not gonna rain, it’s not gonna. What you need and what to do that you can have water so that, you don’t realize if there really was a zombie apocalypse, you’re gonna need water.
I don’t care about everything
[00:49:00] Alan: else. Exactly. and just saying, you need be able to capture it by condensation or, and keep it clean and whatever else I hear what you’re saying.
[00:49:07] Stephen: Yeah. Yeah. All right Hey, it’s close to an
[00:49:10] Alan: hour. Exactly usual. I’m trying to think there’s anything else I needed to mention, but not really, when I’m out in California, I’m really nowhere near my usual level of consumption.
Working stuff out there. So we’re gonna be col Couple quick things. We’re gonna be in Toronto for the, just for laughs comedy festival and the geek factor of this is there’s tons and tons of acts and they’re all different times and dates and places. But I made the master spreadsheet that led us, we have one of these things where you have 12 credits and as you see a show, you get the credit returned into your bucket.
So if you’re canny, you can say I just saw a show on Thursday night and now I got the next one for Sunday. And I have the master list of every time that we use up a show, get this one next, and then we’re gonna fill honestly like 10 days of seeing hopefully 30 shows three a night, all these great it’s Maria Bamford.
It’s mark Marinn. It’s Craig Ferguson like good Todd Barry, big names to, if you don’t stand up, those, some of those are really good and I’m looking forward to all kinds of people that I’ve never heard of before, because we’re gonna find the next Michelle Wolf, the next flu Labour, the next ones that.
Killed us. They cracked us up and she’s like, where did they come from? Who is this guy or gal? So we’re gonna have a nice time. And Toronto was a wonderful place to be able to besides seeing the comedy. It’s let’s wow. Now I can not only get P meal bacon. I can get maple syrup with every meal if I want to.
So we’re gonna have a nice time there. We have not had a time away like this for more than a day or two in a long time. And this will be a really nice chance to put the world outside and. We’ll go to our things, I dunno during the day we’re gonna go hiking and shopping and goofing off and then we’ll see three a night.
So that’s my great geekery
[00:50:51] Stephen: well, and we’ve talked about it, but we’re confirmed. We’re both going to be at Weem in October. And we’re both given our own talks, but then we’re doing a live product. Podcast
[00:51:01] Alan: and Lacey gave us prime time, two 30 in the afternoon on Saturday, so that we, I hope we get a wonderful crowd.
And I mentioned, the theme is reunited and it feels so good. So we’ll, we should put together a whole bunch of stuff that is, what was a good reunion, hey when the Brady bunch regathered was that yes.
[00:51:15] Stephen: Reunion bands and music, and like that exactly movies.
And I thought that’d
[00:51:20] Alan: be easy. Ripe the topic for an hour, but bam,
[00:51:24] Stephen: bam. I’ll tell you, what I got right now is when the next generation crew reunited on the third season of Picard.
[00:51:31] Alan: Okay. Like that. If anything, as when you talk to Mensa crowd, no matter how smart you are, you’re not smart as the entire crowd and people timing in with.
Oh yeah. And this one and we’re just gonna. Let the crowd run. It’s gonna be great to see all, I hope everybody’s taking notes as to look at this, go watch this, go read this. It’s gonna be fun.
[00:51:48] Stephen: We need to come up with some good reunited comics, not just the characters, but like artists and writers that were together.
And then they’re back for something. That’s right. We could do a whole man, take a little bit of research, but
[00:52:01] Alan: we’ll have some good stuff I’m gonna, every time I think of it or see it, I’m gonna make notes and I’m sure we’ll. 50, if we just spend one minute on various different things.
And like I said, was the crowd chiming. It’ll be fun. It’ll be absolutely. So interest drinking and all that kind of good stuff. So yes, drinking in three years, I’m really looking forward to trying some new unicorn tears
[00:52:21] Stephen: or something, the costumes for the night all that. Exactly. We I’m.
So looking forward to it because I had off the beginning of Juju for two days and then a long weekend. So this is the, I haven’t had a week. This will be the next long weekend. I’ve really had long time.
[00:52:39] Alan: And I dunno again, for those listeners, just tuning in Halloween is the big Mensa regional gathering that takes place in Chicago, usually over Halloween weekend.
And it’s the best. It’s huge. It’s 500 to 600 people. There’s huge costume parade. There’s the unending hospitality. There’s multiple tracks of programming, a huge games room. It just is such a wonderful immersion into like fun with smarty. So if you’re an all immense end, you haven’t ever gone to an RG and you wanted to hit the ground running.
You can’t go wrong with Chicago. Absolutely. You’ll be overwhelmed. How cool it is. Absolutely. It’s really fun. All right. All
[00:53:12] Stephen: then. Cool.
[00:53:13] Alan: Good to see you. See you. I’ll be reporting in from Toronto next week. Okay.
[00:53:17] Stephen: And I love your shirt today, by the way. There we go. We got
[00:53:20] Alan: the SPMI for hi, exactly there.
Okay. All later here, Steven. All right. Bye-bye.
