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Overview
Alan and Stephen discuss their thoughts on various TV shows, movies, and comic books. They touch upon TV series like True Detective and American Horror Story, and movies like Drive Away Dolls and the Dune series. They also talk about experiences with comic books and the impact of ad saturation in comics. We discuss gaming with CCG like the new Lorcana and Star Wars Unlimited.
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Transcript
Alan: [00:00:00] So I’m looking a little bit crisper than you, or at least what I’m seeing from you.
Stephen: That’s the one thing with these it’ll record at one setting, but show us something different.
Alan: It does record at highest resolution depending on bandwidth and
whatever Okay.
Stephen: All right, we’ll give this a try. We’ll see. Just ’cause it, it fits right into the script so it gets done. It’s boom right there. Just a couple steps of editing,
Alan: interesting of course is that, I wanted to show up
Stephen: nice shirt
Alan: Ken Jennings, but because I’m, like I’m seeing it in mirror so I don’t have, if I have the ability to flip me or whether it’s gonna be recorded, same with the calendar behind me. When I sleep as
Hell as other people that everything’s gonna be just a little bit reversed for me today until I
Stephen: figure
I’m seeing it fine.
Alan: it really
Stephen: So it’s recording coming
Alan: Got Okay. Alright.
Stephen: Like we always talk about tech keeps changing, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s better or
Alan: It’s absolutely worth experimenting with just like this, and honestly, the fact that it took one or two clicks and tries and stuff like that, and that we [00:01:00] have a live high quality connection going over how far are we apart 50 miles apart, as if
distance really to the net.
But we have difference in the density of signal and how, depending on how we’re connected within our house and how our house is connected to the net,
I’m pretty sure that I’m close to a backbone where I am, or I should say my Fios is good. And then that’s close to a backbone here in Cleveland.
So I’m usually very pleased with whatever I send out or whatever I have come to my house and stuff like that. And I don’t want it to break down for video, that somehow there’s multiple
codex in the way. Do they still call ’em that? Maybe they do, yeah.
Stephen: yeah. Yeah I’ve got the exact opposite. I’m not close to anything. I don’t have good speeds. I don’t have great wiring out here. In fact, I just heard it thundering. We’re getting thunder in February and every now and then our internet will go out when it rains. So just in case.
Alan: honestly, maybe the real miracle is not, Hey, I got files to the [00:02:00] house. It’s despite all of the limitations. I remember when FaceTime first appeared and you actually could get live video, and then any number of other places followed it. But the fact that they figured out how to do everything about video, where it was the right amount of, you didn’t get immediate motion blur.
You didn’t get all the known limitations. I said, I think I mentioned way back in college in the late seventies, early eighties, I did all kinds of I did courses on display devices and what we were able to do back then. And back then you were still printing out. Pictures based on like the character sets, and then only by holding it far enough away, did it resolve into the image when you first started to have like just, man, what was it back then? 72 dots per inch on a dot matrix printer compared to 7 20, 10 times resolution, or 8 10 80 or whatever else it might be. Four D, 4K four D, yeah. UHD 4K. We’ve made incredible
leaps bounds in, like I said, if that’s eighties and in 40 years we’ve made it so everybody has TV in their house that they’re live [00:03:00] on,
Stephen: Right.
Track 1: so
Stephen: Yeah, I remember some early videos on the web. You had to go to use nets and stuff to share a video clip of some movie or whatever. And if you wanted to keep it, you had to use a program that would not only compress it and zip it up, but then break it into chunks so it fit on floppies.
It’s look, here’s this video on 12 flock, hold on for 45 minutes while I put assemble it all back together and I’ll show you this great 13 second clip.
Alan: Every, everybody knows this, but it’s worth talking about. ’cause I, so I would go to Mac Worlds and every year there were advances in what you could do and who was leading those advances. And I know, you know the answer, the naughty industry porn
was determined to make it so that before streaming, that you could just fit things onto floppies, then onto CDs, then onto DVDs. And as they got, I don’t know, people’s drive to. Enjoy that particular genre on that medium [00:04:00] is really strong. And every time that there was a breakthrough for the resolution or the, especially this is funny, motion blur often happens when you do a big sweeping thing or when you do repetitive things that it gets very choppy quickly and that might be sex.
There’s a certain amount of repetition involved in that. And so it was very cool the first time at Macworld, this was at, in San Francisco at Moscone Center. I guess they used to have like many other bookstores, the regular floor, and then they’d have kind of a corner of the place cordoned off.
And it wasn’t just a few booze because it’s big business. A lot of people were trying to get their archive of VHS taped stuff available on CD or DVD.
And you go through these curtains and you’d be like, this really is like Oz in terms of tech that looks great compared to the choppy. Barely above video game, blippy things, it’s
pretty to be able, and then again, you go back onto the show floor and say, who you might wanna talk to is X, Y, Z corporation, who [00:05:00] is working on the the devil in Ms.
Jones series or whatever else it might be because they’ve solved a lot of these
Track 1: problems,
Alan: my friends,
So.
Stephen: Love sometimes dropping little things like that on people, though. A lot of times people are like, oh, computers, I hate ’em. I’m like, really? Do you even understand what you’re saying there? Because y you all the advances that you are appreciating just by standing here to complain about it, how many of’em are computer related.
But sometimes you do get the people that are like, oh, such and such company did this. I’m like, oh, they must have borrowed that from the porn industry. And people like, look at you like what? I’m like, between military and porn. Our country has just made so many advances you don’t even understand.
Alan: I shouldn’t leave them out. Also, you’d go to the gaming
section the first time that I saw pathways Into Darkness, which was the company Bungee Software that did halo and other things, but they were some of the first ones to crack lots of people on the internet on a local network with next to no lag.
And then lots of great
like texturing on walls and the ability to run [00:06:00] through a thing without it immediately being blurring and low quality and obvious. They made breakthrough type stuff and in fact, I want to drop a name here and it’s not gonna come up. It used to be that, when you did pixel level processing of images, it really took a long time to do almost anything. And then there was one particular guy, a Frenchman, who like went off into the French Alps and worked out the math behind Vector Graphics that the first thing you do is figure out how do you model in. Math curves, various different functions, all the various different things in the natural world.
And then in real time change that math into a pixel map and be able to do it with all the appropriate compression and resolution and all that kind of stuff. So that you, I think was it Aldi page maker, Adobe Illustrator was probably the first one to really make use of, it really wasn’t operating on pixels.
It was operating on the math behind it and then displaying it. And you, that’s the first time that you really needed to have great [00:07:00] graphics, processors, math, all of that. And, but the things that you could do to start really processing photographs, the fact that Photoshop first came out and you could just not only look at photos in almost, it took a long time to catch up the photo resolution ’cause that’s 2160 or something that, right? But you could do transformations of photos where you could do this C Pia effect or compositing between and
stuff like that. And it was. Miraculous at the time. But then once somebody, once this guy figured it out, everybody said it can be done. Before the math was just so intense that we didn’t think we’d be able to get there. And then it was a big game of catch up and then all of a sudden you had not only it was a very cool time for not only all the companies that were putting things out, but the ones that are putting out specific, like special effects packages where they were the first ones to say, if I wanna be able to do t twining, as in, for animation and stuff like that, you can add that to an existing package. And that must have been some contributor. It used to be avid terminals and all the things that they had in the [00:08:00] backgrounds of movies where like a hundred thousand dollars things and all of a sudden on a $2,000 Mac and a $2,000 package, I can do some very similar things. It was the breakthrough that had all kinds of new special effects people get into the field. And just the mind blowing, the, what they used to do was storyboarding with sketching. Now that they could do like story. Animation that actually, if you just looked at it was like, that sure looks already like Star Wars. You know what I mean? There’s not, like I’m looking at stick figures running around and
then I’m somehow transfer that into Jurassic Park. It already looked pretty good. And then it was a matter of getting to be movie resolution where they had to have the big server farms. And I, it is funny. I hope people don’t mind, Hey all of our fellow geeks, it’s cool to live in a place where history is in a matter of 500 years between Copernicus and now, but that we actually, in my lifetime, we’ve seen these incredible advances in things. And
it kinda, like, when talked about Plato a little bit, I don’t know that I wasn’t ever one of the big guys. I learned how [00:09:00] to do a lot of cool stuff and contributed to various different projects, but there were brilliant people that were doing things. But just to be like, the Hamilton song says, I wanna be in the room to be there.
When they were developing those cool d and d games and the cool Star Wars games and to see them
grow into what they have grown, it’s. It’s delightful to be like, I know that guy. We used to have, as I always call him, the boys from Bungee. There was a time when they were like 15, 16, 17, and they were coming to our downtown Mac user group and showing off their latest thing. And their latest thing wasn’t like a card game. It was, oh my God, you guys are doing things I’ve never seen done before. Because you grow up in a generation where you have all that knowledge the start, you have no fear. You have all that time on your hands. You know what I mean? You don’t need to sleep.
You got your Mountain dew red and whatever else.
Stephen: You’re here teens still. So that the innovations reminding me, I’m listening to the audio book for Howard Scott Alki you probably know the name from Atari. He did [00:10:00] Ya’s Revenge if you remember that game. And he’s talking about creating it and he created like the very first full screen explosion on an Atari because people gotta remember they were super, super limited.
It’s kinda saying we want you to write a novel. Here’s a sheet of paper, that’s what the Atari was. And just talking about the innovations and everything they did, it’s like everything they did was some hack to get something. And he was out of room for graphics, but he had one more thing.
So he actually took the machine language code and just scattered it across the screen to do an interference looking pattern. And that was the shield, but it used the code so we didn’t have to do other graphics. The innovations that you’re talking about, of course, after Ya’s Revenge, which was huge, that was a big game for Atari.
He went and did the Raiders of the Lost A Game, which I thought was huge and such a great game at the time, and me and my, and then he went on and made et but there’s more to that, everybody that says, oh, he [00:11:00] blew up the industry. No. It is not his fault necessarily. And in fact, what he did in the time and resources he had is actually pretty amazing.
Let’s talk about the company that was screwing things up that bombed the industry, not
Alan: or whatever and like to make an 18 month project into six months. There’s only really so much
Stephen: Oh no. It was instead of a six month project, it was a five week
Qlqn: then, and
Stephen: that had to be done by himself.
Alan: about that. Or at least it’s a big chapter.
Stephen: That’s what I’m
Alan: There you go. Where they talk about some of the Herculean efforts that went into these things, and it’s funny, I just wrote a little meme about we really need to bring some more Greek mythology into our phraseology.
So it was really Ian effort where it’s like no matter what, you keep trying, you keep rolling back down. You know what I mean? And so the fact that I, it’s funny. I don’t know. I don’t know. I wouldn’t have remembered his name enough to tar him with the, all the ets that are in a landfill.
You know what I mean?
Stephen: So here’s why you don’t remember his name, because Atari this is, okay, so real quick. So Atari did [00:12:00] not want known who their developers were making all these great games ’cause they were afraid they’d lose their developers. So they kept them hidden, but they treated them like rock stars internally.
And then when Bushnell sold the company and WB took over and it was Ray, blah, blah, blah, whatever, I forget his name. He thought of the developers as essentially eh button makers. They, it was just the anybody could do that job. They’re not the rock stars. And they didn’t treat ’em like rock stars anymore, but they expected the same quality.
And that’s where the first four guys said, you know what? We can do better without you. And they left and became Activision and then some other guys. Yeah. And then other guys said, you know what? They’re doing pretty good and we’re sick and tired of working here. And they left and became a magic, two of the biggest game names in Atari and Activision, still huge today because they didn’t treat their developers at Atari like the rock stars any longer.
And boom, it crashed. They, [00:13:00] where’s Atari now? A little bit coming back 40 years later, but at the time, so no, et didn’t it?
Alan: That Yeah, go ahead. I’m sorry.
Stephen: No. I think we’re backed up a bit. You’re good.
Alan: Okay, so that has happened, of course, not only in the video game or computer game industry, but in comic books in, like you can talk about all the places that people just got tired of being treated like a hired hand when they really are the people that are creating these wonderful things. And of course there’s marketing involved and all the support system, but games don’t exist without Cliff Johnson having developed a fool’s errand or, sid Meyer having developed civilization and they first started to have games where the author’s name was on it because you wanted to follow the creator of Zork onto whatever he was working on next, so the places that learned that, they just said we got an extraordinary guy, let’s keep him happy instead of treating ’em like a drone. And then funny, the drones leave and they start not only other companies, but. They per they are having so much fun that then they become a magnet for other people to [00:14:00] leave and say, so wait, I can create characters and retain the rights instead of being work for hire. I get a much bigger share of the pie by taking on more risk when you’re like 22 years old and you have nothing but potential risk doesn’t matter at all compared to, wow, this game could make me a millionaire. Talk to the comic book
creators that became millionaires and people don’t really understand that if a comic book sells well and it really is one or two or three people doing the Todd McFarland thing.
I’m trying, like the various different studios that opened up. So remember there was, let’s see, Mark McGuire, if I remember right, when he broke Babe Ruth’s record, somebody bought that ball.
It was a comic book guy who like had all this money, but he was still a comic book kid, if you will. And what do you wanna do with your money?
Buy an aircraft carrier. Nope. I want that baseball. So it’s cool to see, I don’t know as Colleen and I have gotten to retirement and we’re looking at, how are we gonna do, we’re gonna be able to make this, like I’m pretty sure, because I’ve never been the guy that wants to buy the [00:15:00] Lamborghini.
I kind, I want a couple more CDs, I want a couple more comic books. That kind of thing.
And you can I am so happy with things that don’t involve buying an island. You know what I mean? It’s just
Stephen: Funny.
That’s funny you say that because I forget, I was thinking actually about that over the weekend. I was like, yeah, you know what, if I had that lump money, whatever the lottery, some rich uncle from Spain that I forgot about, whatever, and I said, I would love to buy an island if for no other reason than when you tell all your friends and families like, Hey we’re going to do the 4th of July on our island and have a big beach party.
Are you interested? Everyone’s hell yeah. How better to get all your friends and family together to have a good time or something, that would be the reason to do it.
Alan: and this is an odd, so as the world has known over the course of us doing this for three years, both my parents have passed away in the last couple years and some money has started to cope from that. They were responsible citizens and they saved money and all the kinds of stuff.
So we’re getting a little bit of money [00:16:00] coming in. And so if you’re noticing on my Facebook posts, Hey, they just bought a new HVAC system. It’s things that we were so careful about making sure we get to retirement safely, that we put off big purchases, all kinds of different things for a long time. And we’re now getting to that point of. I’m not the indolent rich, but it really is, I have not only Ted RA’s things that I wanna sponsor on GoFundMe or the various different crowdfunding sources. I kind of wanna start, that’ll be entertainment for me, is go out and browse and say, that book deserves to exist. That comic book should be, that game, should be.
And I have done some of that, but nowhere near as much as if I have that Medici dream that I’ve talked about being the sponsor of
worthwhile people, that otherwise the system can grind them down. Otherwise they can they created this beautiful thing and they got 10%, not 90% like a creator should get.
So I’m getting to that, that as I see that I have, it’s it, this kind of happened in college. I worked all the time to get ready to go to college, and then I still got a little bit of a scholarship. That scholarship [00:17:00] money wasn’t gonna be necessary because I had saved and was ready to go.
I took some money that I had saved because I already had this, that, now that I had this scholarship and said, I really need a good stereo for college. And it just is, it frees you to have, not whim, not stupid money, but like things that you might have wanted for a long time that now you can safely buy and not say, what’s the sacrifice I’m going to have to make for that?
What do I have to give up? What do, et cetera. So there’s that I’m not a rich person, but I’m gonna be a good, safe person because I don’t wanna just sit on my pile of money like a big dragon. I want to be like, how, who else can I help? What else can I do with it? And I hope that the economy, I dunno, the economy stays.
’cause a lot of my, what I have is investments. I hope that we don’t go down the tubes in terms of, oh yeah. A dictator got in and I don’t mean to go political. Last episode was so ranty. I won’t do that. But there really are things that can happen that make this whole situation that I expend to la expect to last for the rest of my life. We could blow We could so easily blow it and [00:18:00] have so many things disrupted and lose out to competition or lose out to internal forces or whatever. And so a little bit of, why I want things to be nice and stable is not only ’cause hey, that’s democracy. It’s ’cause I’ve got a stake in things staying nice and calm.
The United States being this wonderful economic engine that we’ve created, why would we destroy that? And that’s a matter of, is it gonna be global warming? Is it gonna be a pandemic? Is it gonna be politics? Is it gonna be religion? What’s gonna really act to screw that up? And I don’t have any crusades that I need to be on that are looking to screw that up.
I’m looking to have this wonderful thing that we created, continue.
Stephen: Yeah, slight change, but you just made me think of it with what you said. And I wanna jump back to something else. Before I forget. You mentioned fan expo and you’re trying to get in there to do a talk. I’ve, I’m going down to Virginia for the scares that care that weekend down there, and some authors I’m gonna be, but I might beg and twist your arm a little [00:19:00] bit because Alan Tig is going to be at Fan Expo that weekend.
And I even thought about canceling my trip. I’m like, ah, I, it’s one of those things. So I might see if you have any free time to go see a tu and maybe I’ll write a little note like, here’s why I like you, Mr. Allen Tu and maybe give you some plastic dinosaurs to have em sign. So
Alan: think you know this about me. I hardly ever do autograph things because I find
such a use of my time to stand in line for two hours or whatever else it might be, and to pay a hundred bucks. And yet I. I, it’s funny, Colleen and I just started watching Resident Alien, which is a new series that he’s in and actually has the lead not
as
Stephen: a good.
Alan: sideman, which he has been in so many other good projects and it really is good.
He really has that ability to be like, what would it be like to act like a human if you didn’t know what being a human was like internally? And so I’m gonna be very happy. He really is one of my heroes, and I dunno, are we gonna have a stop in a drop by Nathan Fillion because he is there.
I,
Stephen: I swear to God
Alan: off the plate.
Stephen: if [00:20:00] Nathan Phil showed up, which probably would not happen, but if you did I would very seriously consider drinking heavily that
Alan: and Hey, Mr. Allen Turick, please don’t take that the wrong way. I really want to hear you and see you. It isn’t that you’re only Nathan Fillon pal. You are absolutely a great artist. And you’re right, you did the dance routine for peacemaker, right? Or is that the guy’s name?
know what I mean? Like I really wanna meet him.
It, just is they pal.
Stephen: it’s a combo.
Alan: that. It’d be really fun to just get an hour of them kind of goofing off back and forth and sharing their little internal stories and stuff like that. But I’m happy to hear.
Stephen: If I went to an expo, if I went to an expo and to see Nathan Fillon and Alan Tig showed up, I would be just as jazzed the other way if I went to see Tu and Philly showed up. So it’s not like I like one or so together. I still say that there is nobody else that could have done a rebooted Quantum leap except Nathan Philly and Alan Tu.
Nobody else. What they’re doing is good, if they would do [00:21:00] a reboot.
Alan: That’s funny
Stephen: Right there.
Alan: Dream casting a regular actually. So I haven’t got the confirmation that I’m speaking, but I’m hoping to, and one of the things that’s cool is there’s all kinds of cool stuff going in. There’s lots of people to see and lots of comic book stuff going on. So I’m looking forward to just being there for it.
And I already have done that in the past. I kinda wander the artist alley and the unknown
author’s floor. And I buy books all the time just to say I’m curious about what you have. You know what I mean? Yes. I’ll buy your first book. Of course I will. You know what I mean? Who doesn’t wanna give you a shot and see if I like it? I, every year that I go somehow just before going, I wonder, I haven’t been buying comic books actively for a while. Am I going to feel out of it? But because these things have transformed into fan expo, that it’s not only about comic books, it’s about science fiction and movies and television and gaming and all that kind of stuff. I almost always have fun stuff. And I almost always find I got a little winter hat with the Viking horns in it, and that’s like my favorite ComicCon [00:22:00] purchase ever. I still call ’em ComicCon, even though I think that’s a reserved mark for San Diego. Stuff
Stephen: Yeah.
Alan: Again, folks, please don’t sue me because I just have old habits that lets you know how long I’ve been doing it.
You’d defeated that every one of these New York and San Francisco and Chicago, they were all comic cons. ’cause it’s a fun term. You know what I mean? So anyway,
it, I’m looking forward to it. I love the fact that Cleveland seems to be one of those that it’s just in the right time of year where not everybody is committed to movie projects and they’re not only doing the circuit, you really get a very interesting combination of people that they’re in between other things.
And so we’ve had all kind Batman television people and we’ve had voiceover people for a voiceover, voice talent for animation. I’m always pleased with the eclecticism of all the different cool things that we get. So yes, if
you a little message for Alan, I will indeed be your John Alden.
I will bear it
forward
and,
Stephen: we’ll, yeah. We’ll see what goes on with that. I was, man I thought long and hard about that okay, here’s something we didn’t get to last week and [00:23:00] I’m going to talk a little bit about, ’cause it’s really been jazzed about it. And so everybody knows about magic, right?
The most successful, not only the most successful CCG, but the inventor of the whole gaming genre of CCG, essentially by the genius Richard Garfield. And he’s done multiple things since then. Nothing as big, obviously, but oh, a Richard Garfield game. We were
Alan: card game. just for, again, I’m
think of the non geeks, even though who would watch this, that isn’t, but anyway, okay. So
Stephen: It’s one of those things like we just talked about, rich. Oh, it’s a Richard Garfield game. Let me check it out. His name is, the brand. But magic has been huge for years. I’ve played it since the early nineties, off and on, and the last couple years I’ve gotten out of it a bit because Covid hit.
So the gaming group wasn’t getting together to play magic like we used to. And then Colin and his friends got like tournament level good. And my decks and my playing was not up to their par, so I didn’t play with them as [00:24:00] much. There was
Alan: You’re run, they’re checking out decks
on you,
Okay.
Stephen: Yes. Yeah. Oh, hold on. Let see.
If I got a deck that’s bad enough, that father might have a chance, yeah, so last year I heard about the Disney Lorana and the Star Wars Unlimited, both of which interested me, but I’m like do I really wanna get into a CCG? I know the commitment it takes both with the time, but with money. And just trying to build a deck takes time and then testing it, playing it, but the playing part’s the fun thing, so I was like, eh, and then, I saw the Star Wars one and some friends said, yeah, it’s a year away. Is it gonna come out? Is it gonna be good? Are they gonna release one set and then it dies and nobody does it, and then any money you put into it is a waste and you don’t even get the value out of that, the fun value out of it.
I’m like, Ugh. So Disney Onic came out and I was like, okay, I’m resisting because I know it’ll take time, effort, and money. I wanna do the Star Wars. But then I heard after the second set came out [00:25:00] that Disney. Being done by Ravensburger who have a lot of great games, that they actually have something like five years worth of expansions.
Not only planned but done. Like they have them on the computer, all the cards ready to go.
Alan: Fan base and to that, that think this is a good idea and obviously how could it not be a good idea? Disney stuff and the addictive nature of CCDs and the
Stephen: It could be bad if they go, if they did what the Star Wars movies oh, all we gotta do is throw some garbage out and we’ll make tons of money. And they, but the thing is, they did not. It’s a fun game. It’s cute. Easy to learn. It’s very accessible for people that don’t play CCGs. That’s the big thing, cardboard crack. That’s magic. Hey, I gotta get more. Lemme
Alan: If you
Disney,
Stephen: Yeah, it’s.
Alan: Okay.
Stephen: Hey, I gotta get more and spending money and getting more, the cardboard crack. So with Lorana, I’ve been playing a lot of people that aren’t normal CCG [00:26:00] players, along with people that used to play magic, but magic’s gotten to the point where you can’t enjoy playing unless you’re playing a tournament level deck.
You have to be like a top player to even enjoy it anymore. In my mind it’s very difficult to go find a casual player. Everybody has tournament level decks, so that took a lot of fun out. It lna you’re getting all ages and you’re getting people that don’t normally play magic, which is a pretty diverse group.
But so it’s been. I’ve been having fun. The third set just came out with Lorana, and I got some of the cards. I got two boxes, two booster boxes, and out two boxes. I only there were only three rares that I did not get in two booster boxes. So for the latest set that is we die, eh, we may end up going back to zoom.
This isn’t just working too great. So that, that’s really good for magic. There were times I used to buy four five [00:27:00] booster boxes and not get every card in the newest set, so I think, no.
Alan: It’s,
Funny when You
Stephen: Oh, there you go.
Alan: Terminator level decks, it’s did they put everything out so easily collectible? Shouldn’t there be a level of rarity one in 10, one in a hundred, one in a thousand, and that shouldn’t be able to buy yourself into a perfection because you bought a case of stuff, but also shouldn’t be very frustrating.
Where I’m like 10,000 cards in and I still don’t have everything. That’s a lot of hurt. You know what I mean? How much more am I
Stephen: Right now.
Alan: seeking one or two things that I’m missing?
So
Stephen: Right now, most people don’t try and get every card from every set. They have a certain play style, they have a certain color and they need certain cards to make their newest deck. And they will go on the secondary market. They’ll buy the cards they need and not even buy packs
Alan: Exactly. Okay.
Stephen: So this lorana set outta two boosters.
I also pulled and enchanted. And enchanted are like one card in five boxes. Some about average [00:28:00] is what I’m seeing. So I got the lowest and enchanted. It’s only worth 90 bucks, but there’s some out there worth four or five, $600.
Alan: you beat odds, but not stellar odds you beat. Okay, got it. Alright.
Stephen: And so here’s what I really like about that though.
The enchanted card I got, it’s the rarest rarity. It’s an all foil alternative art full card picture and great. But it’s the exact same card as the common or uncommon that I already have in my set that I pulled that’s only worth 30 cents. It’s the same abilities in the game. It’s just foil with different art.
So the collectible cards aren’t like, oh, I’m going to spend $300 and I’ll have an unbeatable card that nobody can win in my
Alan: hammer, okay.
Stephen: Yeah. Yeah. So I like that they’re doing that because it’s seems to be hitting both markets. If you’re a collector and you want to get these, you can.
If you’re a player and you want some of these super cool looking [00:29:00] cards just to show off, you can. But if you are just playing, you can just buy a couple packs and be assured to get a good mix of cards and make a deck. So I’m very excited. LNA has been a lot of fun. Hopefully I’ll find some more people that wanna play.
But then last weekend after you and I had breakfast, I went.
Alan: you went to recess games? Yes.
Stephen: Yes, which I’d never been there. So shout out to recess games, a really nice store, good play area for games, but they demoed the Star Wars unlimited game. And this weekend there’s going to be some pre-release events going on, which I am all outgoing for.
And next weekend the actual release comes out and I already have some cards reserved. It’s Star Wars. My, one of my all time favorite games is the old Star Wars, CCG from Decipher Hard to find people to play in real life nowadays they do play online. There’s a committee that has kept that game alive.
They’ve released like [00:30:00] 15 expansions beyond the official ones from the company before it got killed. It is still alive, so I was very excited to have a new Star Wars collectible card game that I could go to a store and play with people and enjoy. And I demoed it last week, going to the pre-release this week, getting cards next week.
So I’m gonna be sorting cards, making a deck and play. There’s a lot of excitement for
over next
Alan: couple Exactly. Okay.
Stephen: Yes. Yeah, that’s, then that’s where the danger comes in. It’s okay, quick we gotta get these cards and make a deck and go play it because in two and a half, three months there’s another set coming out.
So let’s go change everything. And we got, and then wait. I just got this set. Why is there another set coming out? What are these cards? I dunno what they do. Oh my gosh. They this deck. So there’s little bit excitement to go
Alan: that there’s a good quote from a rock song that doesn’t applies here. God damn the pusher man. You know what I mean?
Because you know that they’ve got to the an’s [00:31:00] eyelash exactly what things to put out and exactly when to put them out and exactly how to price them
so that it is just that joy or pain point for all different kinds of people.
And in the overall, they know that they’re gonna have the sales and they’re gonna have the, the talk that a lot of this stuff is not only, hey, it’s out there that exists, it’s that all these different gaming forms like our podcast they wanna talk about, Hey, this is so cool, have you tried this yet?
And they are get, they’ve gotten so incredibly good at the releases and the virality of it and stuff like that. So some part of, I think we’ve talked about this before, the biggest reason that I didn’t get into any CCGI was early in magic and I didn’t continue because. I knew, wow, how many addictions do I need? I already have so many comic books and so
many CDs and so many puzzles,
et cetera,
et cetera. And it was like, and this one really, it did seem I dunno, comic books were becoming that kind of thing where it isn’t just a matter of buying the things you wanna read. Oh, [00:32:00] now they got the prismatic cover and the foil cover and the, multiple artists that are doing the same thing and this and the gatefold edition and whatever else it might be. And I really, I never did the thing where I bought one of each of those five different versions of it. I, because I would always look at whatever the preview book is for comics, and I’d pick out the pretty one that I could see by site, or I’d pick out just from the description. I, like Brian Hit’s artwork better than I like Frank Robbins.
And so a lot of times I might’ve even shot myself in the foot because if I was going for a collectible, I should’ve bought the one that nobody else was buying. The worst expected artwork or whatever. But what I care about is I wanna read it. Does it look nice? Is it the better?
So that’s a big reason that I actually, when I was pretty lucky in my early magic stuff and gave them all the way to a friend Randy Chu, and he must have said half a dozen times, man, you’re sure you want to do this?
’cause you’ve got some stuff that you’re giving away some treasure. It’s I we’ve played, I know you love this. Please. I know they’re going to a good home. You know what I mean? So it was
I had played early on with [00:33:00] Scout and early on back with Randy, and I just, I had a lot of fun with it, but I could see how well, how much they were into it and that they would enjoy it even more if I gave ’em some treasure.
Anyway. Anyway, it’s,
Stephen: yeah. I’ve enjoyed magic and I’ll still play magic, but I’ve just gotten away from it and I don’t feel like getting back into that scene. There’s too much overwhelm. There’s too many intense players, that’s if you, lay down a card, they’ll you need to tap your lands.
You need to do this like in your face. It’s dude, quit drinking so much coffee. Give me a second to like breathe. And then they’ll sit there. The cards are going, flip flip, flip, like at you come on. This is like speed chest. It has been 6.2 seconds. Why are you still taking a turn?
You should be done. Why are it’s just like. I have played tournament games with people like so intense that even though if I’m holding a hand, I could give ’em a run. Maybe I’d win, maybe I wouldn’t. But they’re just no fun to play with. I’m like, oh yeah, you got me. How did I get you?
It’s only the third turn. I don’t have it. I’m just like, I’m not, [00:34:00] I don’t want the stress. I want to relax and enjoy myself. And it’s not like I’m giving up all the other games. I still love all the other games I’ve got too. But it is difficult to go to a store or even a gaming group even once a month and say, Hey, let’s play this same game that I have, that we’ve played for the last 10 months.
Everyone’s but magic, you can
Alan: get immersed in can’t get addicted to it, et cetera. It’s, but another thing you just said, it’s very cool once in a while to say, okay, I’ve been into this for a while. I want to change. I wanna start over. I want the joy of learning, of not only
continuing to many things are like that, right?
You get to that 90% and then 95, and then, the confidence levels that you get, the joy that you get from each additional percent as you go down that curve. It just isn’t the same as the first thing where you’re like, wow, this is getting better and better. And you kinda wanna ride the curve up.
So I, I love
when, and we just, I thank Colin very much for the ultimates, it was like, that’s a restart, if you will, compared to the couple first couple ultimate series. It was [00:35:00] a, if not a reboot, it’s still set in the ultimate universe, but it was let’s. Tell a different story.
Let’s not tell a continuation of what has gone before. And a lot of times I really like that the, we talked about this a little bit last time, the new universe or where they’ve done various different things to just in the spirit of what had gone before, but do something new and different. And I like waking my mind up. I like knowing all of what has gone before so I can admire the elegant, hey they retro con that just but it’s also very cool to, to know that they’re breaking the rules and say, let’s see what happens. It’s so nice once in a while to
just, I dunno, Colleen and I have occasionally gone to a play where we’re like, we know nothing about this, but somebody thought it was good enough to take it on tour and bring it into this theater. Let’s not try to learn anything about it. Let’s just go have a novel experience.
Exactly. And just let it swap waltz all over us.
Stephen: Speaking of that, I have not gone to see it, but I have heard a few people say, Hey, Madame Webb was enjoyable. It’s not the, but I’ve heard a lot of, not that it’s so good, but some people have [00:36:00] been enjoying that movie,
Alan: I
I didn’t hear what you said because you got choppy
Stephen: a
Alan: little bit. What
Stephen: Ah, sorry I was saying I’ve gotten a lot of bad reports. I’ve heard about Mme. Webb, but I have heard a few people say, yeah, it was enjoyable. Not necessarily the best movie ever, but not as bad as a lot of people are saying. I don’t know. I haven’t seen it
Alan: Got it. Very uncommon for me. I didn’t see it like Thursday night. I either, it’s been so un hyped or I was busy right when it came out, or now what I’m in, because it has not been doing well. I wanna see it in the big theater. So today, through Thursday, I’m worried that it’s already gonna be gone by Friday or something like that.
I will indeed play hooky and go see it and I’ll combine it with the beekeeper or something like that, and,
Stephen: the beekeeper was good.
Alan: So I like
doing that once in a while, just like going from one to five and doing that, get the refill of popcorn and just wallow in a couple movies. I’m curious about it.
I’m I’m glad you said it isn’t that bad. I think some of our movies were so good and it changed the industry so much that now people’s [00:37:00] expectations are really heightened. They want everything to be Avengers end game. They want everything to be stick around in the theater and see the
thing.
it’s really a cool clue. And there’s lots of, I have always enjoyed comic books that weren’t only the main titles and the big summer annuals, spectacular events. I’ve always liked second tier comics that just continue to tell a great story with interesting characters and I guess Mme.
Webb is gonna be that it fills in things in the Spider-Man, the spider
Stephen: it’s not MCU, it’s the Sony Star Wars or Sony
Alan: Multiverse ish and eventually they’ll bring it all together. ’cause someone’s gonna be crafty about how they do that, but Okay.
Stephen: But yeah, there, there’s a lot of problems with the movie. Just from the marketing standpoint. They threw this new character out. They threw a whole bunch of spider girls out with no introduction. So people are, and then they didn’t push the trailer. It’s not a great trailer. And people are like, what the heck is this movie?
And they don’t know. So they’re confused. And that doesn’t help going into it. [00:38:00] Plus I heard that they the spider girls don’t even get their powers through the movie. So it’s okay, I’m going to see a superhero movie. You need to have some superpowers.
Alan: the swinging through the canyons of New York. Little things like that. Exactly.
Stephen: Yeah. So we’ll.
Alan: They’re already kinda low because it really didn’t get hyped and it really, I haven’t heard much about it. I haven’t sought out much about it. So I was kinda like, just that and it’s, it even I will drag Colleen to movies that I really expect to be good.
So for instance, on Friday we’re seeing Dune two and we’ve already, I, we’ve made a point of watching, might be watching and her scene for the first time because it’s on Netflix or something like that. The first
Stephen: HBOI
Alan: you Max. That I, it really is somebody just said maybe Brian Herbert, now that he’s seen the sneak preview of it, it really is the closest to his father’s books that all the various different attempts have been.
There was a TV series, there was an initial movie that’s known for being laughingly absurd, a little bit of sting in a bikini bottom kind of a thing. And it’s such a great story that I always [00:39:00] wanted it to be. They really need to capture what made that story Great.
The clash of cultures. The, I don’t know. I already, there’s been really good things about the Gaja bar and the family warfare. The tribal warfare. And of course back when it was written, you could tell the easy analogs between the Russian world and the Arab world and whatever else it might be.
And so it might be that history has given us enough understanding of how their real reality has played out and how does that correspond to what dune, is spice oil. But what are the limitations of it? You know what I mean? Is it I’m, I really have enjoyed it so far and they cast it very well.
And that’s such a key thing is you had to have somebody that embodied you if you’re gonna have a mentat, you have to have a good ment ta and a weapons master and
a, and honestly, I let’s see, what’s his name? Dave? Not the young. Let’s see. The
Also played the destroyer in the Guardian’s movies.
Stephen: Oh, [00:40:00] Batista.
Alan: very much. That for him being the Beast Rabon, and actually they called it Robin and Dude, dude might be the single most series compared to movies that’s it’s not Reman, it’s Freeman. It should obviously be Freeman like. And then I found out that Brian, not Brian Frank Herbert had actually consulted on it. It’s he got it wrong, even though it created, it should be Freeman. And same with Rabon. Sounds more beastly. And and he hasn’t chewed up enough scenery to be the sadistic. Bastard that he is in the books. So I’m expecting a little bit more amplification for certain things. You know what I mean? That it’s not only intrigue, it’s the cruelty and that, like the SAR car, the storm troopers. And maybe I, there’s a great book thing in the book that I remembered where they talk about, that the criminal are uncommonly good fighters.
’cause they have the weirding way and all that kind of stuff. And they actually talk about after this last battle, we interrogated a couple of the sarkar and the guy like you captured sarkar. [00:41:00] They fight to the death, they kill other people. That’s just not possible. It’s unheard of.
And they’re like, of course we did. We just defeated them. And like that wonderful clash of, military people really think that if you got the biggest gun, you automatically win. And then they find out that they’re gonna meet an opponent then in their environment and. And their level of fanaticism, it might not be enough.
And so this
emperor who’s been rolling across planets, he finally might feel just that little twinge of fear. And you can, I love the books really build that well about, about so many things about not cloning, but regeneration and how, when someone dies and then you bring them back.
But it might not be the same exact person. And they might, it’s, there’s so much good stuff about and also I really love things and I’ll segue to this, to the Expanse science fiction series that I’ve been really liking so much. The series is great science fiction. It’s about extrapolations of current technologies and what it would be like to have a world where they [00:42:00] really have this kind of transportation and this weaponry and this and that kinda stuff. But what they very much show well there and in Dune is. It still comes down to people that you have to have someone is, that Na plus Ultra of they really are a different kind of human being than others. They have the will, the luck, the, they have whatever that level of perception and everything else that makes it, that there’s huge events happening, but it’s still somebody that’s saying yes or no, right or wrong.
That there’s somebody flipping the switch or not. And they really captured that, that great man theory of history that people always matter. It’s not and in fact against, I don’t know, programmable, foes and stuff like that, that losing the human element is very often in those books. One of those things they say that’s why they lost, they didn’t have human ingenuity or human
stubbornness or, human we don’t know why
it, but my intuition guided me. It’s does not compute. It’s cool to see. Things that get very philosophical about what it is to be human. So [00:43:00] anyway I’m digging those
of things, that they very much humanize it instead of just being the crush of events moving forward and that everybody is a silhouette, a cardboard cutout instead of an agent in their own history.
In their own future. Very cool. Very
cool.
Stephen: So me and Colin last night, so he went and saw Lisa
Alan: Okay.
Stephen: which I still wanna see, which looks interesting. But we went and saw Drive Away Dolls
Alan: I know nothing about,
Stephen: It’s, it’s a new Ethan Cohen movie. It’s not the Cohen Brothers, but Ethan Cohen.
Alan: Okay.
Stephen: Yeah. And it’s a little bit of a misdirection.
The trailer, it looked wonderful and was great. And, but what the movie really is about, they hid within the trailer. And it, it was it got some, oh, they, okay. They just did that. That’s okay then type of stuff going on. And if you go see it, it’s worth seeing. It’s fun.
Good movie. Again, not [00:44:00] what you expected. The one character and you’ll know which one I’m talking about is just you gotta hold your breath to make sure you don’t miss anything that she says or does throughout the movie, because she just fires off stuff that’s oh my god, what did you just say?
that. That
Alan: funny or that rude or,
okay.
Stephen: Funny because sometimes it is rude, but it’s hit between your eyes, common sense, wisdom and just, yeah. Worth seeing. It was a good movie. Again, not what we expected, but they did that on purpose and you know that by the end. But still fun and good. It’s definite. I said, I leaned over to Colin after the first 10 or 15 minutes.
I said, who’s this by? Because I’m getting a vibe here. And he says, it’s Ethan Cohen, the one Cohen brother says, ah, that makes a lot of sense. It seems like a Cohen brothers wacky weirdness type stuff going on movie. So
Alan: That’s,
Stephen: definitely worth
Alan: think I mentioned before, Colleen and I have watched everything in [00:45:00] their series. We watched all the Alfred Hitchcock’s, all the Woody Allens, and we watched all the Cohen brothers. We’ve watched all the Andersons, both we and Paul Thomas now that I think of it. And now there’s the one guy that just did poor things and previously did the lobster and we’re seeking out all of his stuff.
And because he’s really kept himself out of Hollywood and off the beaten track some of his stuff, you can’t even find it. You have to pay 1999 to watch it. So I’m like.
I got an Infinity for one price. I don’t wanna pay the same amount again for one movie. So now I’ve got ’em on my watch list.
Very different places we just watched called let’s see, the Something Killing of a White Deer, if I remember right. And it really did have
Stephen: Oh.
Alan: It it had the twist, not only like the kind of that you think what the movie might be about, and then it really goes off the rails and then it follows to its terrible conclusion and stuff like that.
But I like and maybe M Knight shale man had that reputation. Yeah. Sha Malama. Dingdong. Exactly. must know that. People make fun like that all the time. No disrespect to you, sir. You’ve done lots of great movies, but you also [00:46:00] got trapped in. There’s gotta be a twist. Not everybody’s anticipating a twist.
Instead of it being the thunderbolt that was the sixth sense and stuff like that, it’s,
it kinda defeats it, once in a while you see a movie from a conventional person, it’s oh, they totally rope me in. I just finished watching the latest True Detective Night Country and in
Stephen: I’m on season one and it’s been really interesting
Alan: season is, there’s so much, like it’s, what’s going on is not what it appears on the surface and not even on the second and third layer. It really sometimes has all kinds of stuff that they’re very good at revealing it, but once in a while it’s a little bit unfair with they would’ve found that out if they just, what would’ve showed up two minutes earlier.
This has all been just bad luck. You know what I mean? It’s I’ve liked them, but and the latest one was much like that. They set up a lot of things, a lot of red hers that were red herrings that were, is this supernatural forces? Is this people going insane? And it turns out that there’s a lot of, [00:47:00] all those things are in play and you don’t know until the last episode what the reality of it is.
So that was cool. There’s I really, I enjoyed the performances and I liked, I like things that keep me guessing. I, that’s why I say that all the time. There’s one of my themes is if you watch 80% of movies in the first 10 minutes, you’re like he killed them and this is how they’re gonna find out.
And that, you just kinda know the movie. ’cause it’s one of the standard 36 plots. And so someone that’s able to play with those things, those expectations, and give you enough of something to get you, it’s like a good joke, right? You give ’em the line that’s got ’em leaning in a certain direction, and then the garden path, the parapro ian, then you give ’em just. The turn to the right that is, other than what they expected and that act of surprise is a delight to my mind. You know what I mean? It really Oh, he got me.
That’s
Stephen: good.
Yeah. I started watching the True Detective, the first one with Harrelson and McConaughey, and of course, powerhouse performances from those guys. But if you go in [00:48:00] expecting your NCIS police procedural, you’re not going to enjoy these shows. It is not that at
Alan: They, every single series, I think does a lot of jumping around in time where it’s, it’s not linear. They go back as to sometimes they really are like aging 50 years in the course of it, and they go back to what they were thinking when they were young or what’s the de new mole now that they have find out like. You know how it is. Sometimes people really have a deathbed confession and it really is a shocking secret revealed, and there’s a little bit of that in multiple of the series where somebody finally finds out, oh, that I didn’t know that person was secretly related. And that explains so much of
why they acted as they did, why they sold themself out, maybe as they did.
I’m trying not to play the spoilers game at all. You know what I mean? There, there’s all kinds of good things that are like that, that if you, if I know that there’s this, if you’re, the cops will often say this, okay, if there’s a murder, it’s either passion or greed or [00:49:00] revenge. There’s pretty standard motivations that people have
when it isn’t obvious which of those ones it is or that it isn’t obvious who would want revenge or who was in love with someone.
It makes for a very interesting tale of how man. People that have been doing things in secret for years and years, they’ve gotten really good at keeping a secret, especially in a small town in the south, especially in a, an arctic base. You know what I mean? There’s only so many places to go. You know what I mean?
So very, I love that people who are aware of all that has gone before have gotten even craftier at how to tell a story that makes use of the fact that we’ve all seen the same movies and TV shows, and read the same books, and that they use that kind of against you. They get you leading in a way of a classic storyline, and then they pull the rug out from under you very
well. So I love that they’re
doing that.
Stephen: Yeah. Yeah, it’s been enjoyable. It’s been I watched the first episode and I was kinda like, okay, I’m not quite sure what this is. I’m not sure, but it was like, but yeah, I think I’ll watch the next one. And it’s not the, [00:50:00] that oh my God, I gotta watch the next episode. But it’s kinda yeah, it’s kinda eaten at me.
I can’t let it rest. I need to go back to see the next one. And it’s it’s a slow burn throughout the whole storyline so far. And it’s definitely not a cop show. It is not they don’t focus on finding the clues. It is really the interaction and performance between Harrelson and McConaughey and them as people and what they’re, that’s the focus.
So it’s like the other stuff is almost fluff.
Alan: That’s another thing I’ve come to is, you can’t be in a job that can make you. Depressed or crazy without developing some defenses against that. And is it gonna be alcohol? Is it gonna be sex, is it gonna be shooting range? Whatever else it might be. And then, so then when you see people that we depend on them to keep the peace, to make the world a safer place, but they themselves are flawed or have developed difficulties, makes for very different dy dynamic than the hero’s a hero.
And he just does what he does because he grew up to be a hero. He’s a boy scout. So I really like [00:51:00] those kinds of things where sometimes justice has to be administered even by people that are just two steps away from their, but for the grace of God could have gone him if he had the wrong break when young, if his father had gone to prison, if whatever else is going on in these series.
Very cool. I’m glad you
discovered ’em. I really do. The fact that they’ve had four different series that they’re not. Interlinked. They really are four different, whole different plot lines. Second one is Billy Bob Thornton. And they really
got powerhouse actors each time to, to do the main roles and stuff like that.
And I’ve really enjoyed them. That’s
Stephen: definitely see why McConaughey wanted to be in this show for that first series, that character, because that first character is so unlike most of everything else he has ever played. And he’s one, like him or not. He’s definitely an a-list actor out there, when he’s is in a movie, it’s a big name and he gets paid big bucks.
And this role is man, he’s really, he’s probably oh my God, this is the best thing I’ve ever done. ’cause it’s such an interesting
[00:52:00] be,
Alan: he believes in this concept, if you will, because I think I’ve seen him as executive producer in each one of the series, even though he has not featured in it. That him lending his name to the, this, it’ll get the actors who wanna participate the money that has to follow to make this happen.
I think that it’s really good thing that he’s been the sponsor of this, even
if it’s now behind the scenes.
Stephen: And they haven’t been really pushing it. It’s only been like every two years or something. They come out with a new series. So they’re putting some ti time between it that’s oh, that was a hit. Let’s get the nice one out. It’s we’re gonna do this. It’s going to be good. People are going to find it and love it and it’s going to last have some legs on it.
It’s not gonna burn and die. ’cause everyone watched it in a weekend.
Alan: By having a whole new thing, there’s no jump to sharp moment where it’s oh, I now they, in fact, this is interesting com to compare and contrast between it and American Horror Story, which, they’ve had seven different seasons now, and it’s been a lot of the same actors, but doing the haunted house story, the carnival story, the vampire or witch or whatever
else might [00:53:00] be.
And so I kinda like that because it’s very cool to see people transform into another character, oh they’re not the person they were now they’re the runner of the asylum or whatever else it might be. And, but I also think that. I guess I may, I don’t think they’re running out of ideas. It has not held my interest. I think I’ve watched like five outta seven, but I’m not current with it. And maybe it’s also because I don’t watch horror all the time. I really need I do a dose of that and then I need something sunnier to open me up and make the world a better place again or something like that.
But I really do love that people are doing these kind of anthologized things and that there is another kind of storytelling craft that goes with, okay if someone really made a big character and you now associate them with that, Jessica Lang played a certain kind of woman in this. Can she be a believably other character if what you want to be is more of what she was and that they really are good at playing with. Some of that expectation and giving the actors a chance to stretch out and [00:54:00] say she was really assertive and now she’s really meek. Or she was, really innocent and now she’s really quite guilty, or whatever else it might be.
So there’s cool things going on there too, that the actors, I think love having a new sandbox to play in instead of, oh God, this is my thousands performance as auntie mam, please, I know that
this is, career making money and stuff, but I might be ready for something else. That kind of thing.
Oh
Stephen: alright, cool. Lot of good stuff going on this week.
Alan: absolutely, we, it HVAC is working. Have my final meeting with Stack that right after this podcast to make sure all that’s handling. Thank you again for the cool shirt. Thank you again by one final thing. Thank Colin again for the Ultimates, but I read ’em all in an hour. And wow. It
used to not take that quick. So that’s why I made the smarmy comment in the, Hey, what are we gonna talk about today? Artists that specialize in two page spreads and big splashy things and stuff like that. It’s ’cause there’s not a lot of plot moving forward when they’re like another big baffle punched by the juggernaut.
I, I, it’s really nice artistry, but I [00:55:00] feel cheated by
how much happened in five issues. Like how little happened in five issues.
Stephen: Yeah they really should have done that as a three or four issue series, but they made it, they thinned each comic out. Each one was only like 16 pages or
Alan: true. So I just, if that’s, that was from 2007. It’s not state of the art, but it was already happening back then that they started to have so many ads and so much like whatever used to be a 30 and then a 22 page story. I is it down to 18 now? It really just seems to
Stephen: maybe.
Qlqn: And prices have gone up and so I, I don’t hate to criticize my favorite medium and yet. This was such a great, I returned to it and it’s that was only okay. I expected it to be better oh but still thank him very much for the gift.
Thank you very much for the Cool shirt and for the Buckaroo Bonsai
War I, I guess the Crime World Crime League. I’m looking forward to digging into that one.
So
Alan: very fun. Alright.
Stephen: Oh, cool. Lemme know
Alan: take care Steven. Okay,
Stephen: later, man.
