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In this episode of Relentless Geekery, two geeks discuss a wide range of topics, including the joys and challenges of traveling for concerts, the convenience brought by modern technology like GPS and translation apps, and the advances in medical tech. They share stories about booking mishaps, the benefits of tech in travel, and nostalgic reflections on classic animation. They also delve into recent movie experiences, with reviews of ‘Alien Romulus’ and reflections on the evolution of the Alien franchise. Additionally, there’s a discussion on comic con experiences and meeting Weird Al Yankovic. The episode rounds off with musings on the positive impacts of technology and upcoming pop culture events, highlighting a mix of personal anecdotes and general geekery.
[00:00:00] Do you like conversation on a variety of topics? Feel like no one wants to talk about the things that interest you? Tired of only hearing the same political, sports, or catastrophe talk? We feel that way too. Join two high functioning geeks as they discuss just about anything under the sun. We can’t tell you what we’ll be talking about each week because we don’t know where our brains will take us.
It will be an interesting conversation though, so hang on and join us. Here comes the Relentless Geekery.
I didn’t know it was a teacher appreciation week. That’s cool. No, it’s not. But kids are starting to go back to school. So it’s Parent Appreciation Week. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. It was the only zoom background I had the school, like for the moment, it’s mid-August, so for us here, we’ve got the fair coming up for a week, [00:01:00] and right after that, school’s in the band’s been playing and practicing, it’s fall time.
It’s about time for the scary movies and, all that. Exactly. I just, boy, quick story. So I have a Prague stock, which is a Brookings of rock festival coming up in the like middle of October and it’s in Rutherford, New Jersey. So it’s a bit of a drive, but it’s got a great lineup. I had found through bookings.
com, booking. com, a cool BNB. And this is a cautionary tale, hotels don’t like suddenly close the doors and go out of business. But this place suddenly said, I’m no longer doing it. And so having had my reservation all set up at a reasonable driving distance and all that kind of stuff, this was taken out from under my feet.
In the past let’s say distant past, a couple decades ago, losing that would have been, oh man, got to go back to the AAA books. I got to go make a whole bunch of calls to try to find a place that still has a reservation. And instead, nowadays, it’s just so wonderfully easy [00:02:00] to pop in and say, here’s where I’m going to go into my concerts, make a little radius around there for where the hotels might be.
Either they show the dollar signs, depending on what site you go to. Which are never accurate. Exactly. Or you click on them and stuff like that, but you can get a real good feel for that one’s close, but it’s in the middle of residential areas. So it’ll still be like ground level traffic, or that was a little bit further, but right along the expressway.
But if it’s along the expressway, there’s traffic noise, but just you’re presented with a whole bunch of good information, ratings and stuff like that. I’m willing to spend 100 more in order to go from a six to a seven or whatever. And so it was not a crisis. It was like within 10 minutes, I had a super eight, which is relatively inexpensive But it’s out by the Meadowlands Stadium.
And so I’m like that could be a hassle if it’s game day, and I did look up, and indeed, the Giants are playing the Eagles that day. But I’m going to the concert from noon to midnight, and so it brackets right around when that game is going to be. Maybe people will [00:03:00] already be tailgating, and traffic will be a little bit heavier, but all the considerations I might have had of how far and how much and quality of the place and events going on, honestly, I was able to, like, said, okay, boom, pick this place for I don’t know, a hundred dollars a night.
Nothing is cheap on the East Coast or for the weekend or whatever else it might be. Instead of it being a crisis, it was able to gather all that so easily compared to what it used to be like, decades past, you might not have even been notified. You might have showed up to a deserted building at, 7 p.
m. at night or something. Honestly, long ago, I was going to go see Greg Lake in Chicago and I was still in school in Champaign Urbana. We drove all the way up and got to the theater and it had a sign on the door saying, Greg Lake has had to cancel. Sorry. And if I would have been in the neighborhood, it would have been just walk home.
But I had driven like three hours and it, and it just was, there was no way back then of via anything by paging, texting phones, [00:04:00] they didn’t have how to get a hold of, 2000 people attending the show. And so it really was a kick in the teeth to have a show canceled out from under you. I just, I, Every step of this journey of like when they first didn’t have GPS is necessarily, but at least they had mapping software.
That was one of the first things that the Internet really made available by a Google Maps, Apple Maps, Yahoo Quest, MapQuest, all that kind of stuff. And I just used to love I’m going. 500 miles away, like to a place I’ve never been to before, but I got a feel for it’s, they have step by step, turn directions and stuff like that.
So I just already from then didn’t feel like I’d ever get lost anymore. And as GPSs have come around, Colleen and I have been in the middle of nowhere wilderness, occasionally misled by the Moki Dugway, but most of the time, just saying. Of course, we can go to Dubuque, Iowa and know right where to go for.
We’re going to go to the dog track. We’re going to go to our hotel. We’re going to go to the best Iowa pizza. [00:05:00] It’s just so incredibly convenient. People, we’ve talked about this. Attack tech sometimes and oh, computers are down. Things were so much better. It’s yeah, you people are lying to yourself so much and you do so many things that you regret.
It’s the same old. Yeah. Computers sucking all that except for the things I like and use, all the time that I’m now dependent on. Look at all the medical advances because of tech, but so Colin and I went and saw alien Romulus last night, which we could talk about if you like. But there was a commercial before that it was Google pixel phone is what they were pushing.
But some of these commercials have gotten really smart in how they’re targeting the younger people and this one showed a kid in his room on his computer, of course, messing with Google AI. But his parents yell at him to get out there and go meet people. So he grabs his Google phone and he goes out there.
He has a skateboard and he sees some other skateboarders. But [00:06:00] they’re like from Brazil and they don’t speak the same language. So he talks into it and it translates and they talk and they have a great time. And then he’s finds people from like India. And then he finds people from Japan doing break dancing or something.
And then he gets home. And I looked at Colin, I said, man, I wish more people would watch that commercial when they say, Oh, technology is stupid. It’s ruining the world. These kids growing up with it. Yeah. It’s nothing to talk to people from anywhere because of the translation. I’ve used it. I went at our conference every year.
The staff at the hotel are mostly Spanish speaking, and some of them don’t speak English. And I had a question. There was only one guy setting up the table. And I just asked him of stupid white American. I blow in glaze. That’s all I know. I see. And he’s Oh no. And I’m like, Hold on. And I spoke into the thing and then it translated and he went and he smiled and he talked and it translated back and I’m like, cool, so that’s wonderful.
That’s a miracle. It’s not a Babel [00:07:00] fish, but right. That’s just where I was going to go back then, a science fiction. Element was if you’re going to go to all these different planets, a la Star Trek, you have to have a universal translator that you put in your brain or put in your ear or whatever else it might be.
And now that’s near reality. I’ve mentioned too many times, we’re going on our cool Baltic cruise and we’re going to 10 countries in 10 days. And of course they speak their own language, so I’m like, somebody just put together. This is very funny. A little spreadsheet of where you’re going, like what the currency is.
Cause it’s not all Euro. Some of them maintain their own currency like Corona and does Lottie and stuff like that. Here’s what the time zone is, whether it’s Greenwich Mean Time plus one plus two, and also how to say cheers, and even how to pronounce it in each language, because that’s where you want to know, excuse me, where’s the bathroom?
And you want to be able to raise the glass and say to you, that kind of stuff. Here’s I just love that if, even if I hadn’t had this little chart, I really could put it into my phone. You know what I mean? Cheers. This tastes really good. It’s so nice to [00:08:00] meet you in, in any language that I want and out will come reasonable, like understandable to every other country.
It really, I hope it emboldens everybody to do more travel, whatever that thing was. Oh, I might get lost. I might not be able to speak the language. I, what if I don’t translate my currency. It just is so cool that my credit card with a little international fee will change into whatever they need at the time.
I can go to a grocery store in England or in Poland or wherever else it might be and pick up my breakfast bagels. You know what I mean? It’s just so nice. I think some part of lately as I, Hey, I just hit 65. You know what I mean? So now I’m all about, what elders do. And there’s, Gratitude. I just, in my lifetime I have talked about this with my parents, they were born in 33.
And so to see the world change that you started to have penicillin and jet travel and ultraviolet light and whatever all these things that Doc Savage used to have [00:09:00] as a super scientific invention and then they all became real and not just real but common like a miracle drug like penicillin that you didn’t die of things anymore that you just happened to get scratched by tetanus or whatever else it might be.
I really am appreciative, while I’m still a futurist and wanting the world to get better, I want to live forever. Then, come on stem cells, and come on nanotech, and come on mRNA analysis and the silliness of, oh no, things were better in the old days. Man, for sure they weren’t. Our life expectancy has gone up like 30 or 40 years.
Since the time that we said, you know what will really help? Public health. Let’s chlorinate the water. Let’s cleanse the water. Let’s make sure that we know how to respond to a pandemic. Blue took out a lot of people because there wasn’t anything to do except, I hope I’m not the bad age group, and isolate yourself, quarantine yourself.
Now, We really can get the world back to working through vaccination. And yet some people reject it. You can hand them a [00:10:00] miracle. It’s not just like leading a horse to water and you can’t make them drink. It’s like aliens landed and say, we can bring world peace. Nah, don’t want it. Like it boggles my mind.
I guarantee some of these people that say, oh, it’s not real. And oh, we don’t need the vaccine. If you walked in with a Petri dish and said you know what? I’ve been vaccinated and well, here it is. And you go to open it. I guarantee. Oh, suddenly you believe in it. Don’t you? It just, you know what I’ve found and maybe it’s age.
I don’t know. I have found my tolerance for stupidity has gotten so low and I’m so much surrounded, it seems by stupidity. I just got an email right before this that I’m looking at it and I’m blinking I’m like. This email just broke me because. It’s so stupid. And it’s I I, we are all walking that tightrope between [00:11:00] look how good the world has gotten.
But look how some people don’t want any part of it. They really think that I guess the, there’s some things there’s wonderful traditions. There’s reasons to stay with things that have worked for a long time. But whatever that thing is, it makes Over or under apply a thing you want to mean if I, if you only have a hammer, then everything looks like a nail, all those little things we could say, I, the overall conservative thing, my gut deep rejection of that is the world does get better.
We’ve become more civilized. We, the miracles in medicine and communication and the things we’ve just talked about in entertainment. In personal hygiene, they’re all around us. And the fact that you might now take them for granted doesn’t change the fact that how we got here was people were committed to this is okay, but I don’t want to go backwards.
I want to go forwards. I want to make it better. And so the people that talk about the good old days, it’s like that. So the blinders they have to put on to say [00:12:00] the good old days were small town America. You mean like before there were roads or railroads or planes and so you really, you didn’t choose to, you had to grow up within 50 miles of where you were born because it was a huge thing to go into the wilderness, and die of dysentery, according to the Oregon Trail. These are the people that complain and say things used to be better. As they’re driving their big ass SUVs to a football game, as they’re going out in the woods and spending a whole weekend away from working to shoot a deer as they’re sitting on their ass, watching reruns of NCIS over and over or whatever it is.
Yeah, the world used to be better. Let me do all these things that weren’t in that world. It’s such hypocrisy. Yeah. Battery tech, the fact that you can now have like things that last all day. You don’t have to bring along a case of batteries to make sure that your game boy doesn’t run out or whatever it might be that your kids were entertained by in the back of the car, all of those [00:13:00] things, like I said, we take them for granted and maybe that’s why I’m.
Often in gratitude mode now is it’s really nice to be able to say, because I have enough perspective, it didn’t used to be like that. You know what I mean? Stu riding our bike around Elk Grove, you had to have a map from the JC’s book to be able to follow the bike route. And it wasn’t, Hey, we got off the path.
Now, what do we do? You might be able to look at the sun and say, okay, north, south, east, west. I’m pretty sure that I want to go south from here. You had course tools back then. And nowadays. See, and while you’re on the bike path, it’s not just finding your way home. It’s hey, I’m getting a little thirsty.
Oh, there’s a 7 Eleven. We can go ahead and get a Slurpee. It’s right here on my map. But you wouldn’t have seen it from where you were. There were two streets of houses in the way. I just love. Everywhere that you go that you don’t have to have 50 IDs anymore. You got all that stuff on your phone. Every time I go to a concert, just beep boop my way through the reader.
It’s I didn’t have to remember. Okay. Did I leave them at the box office for will call or did I print it off? And if I printed off the. I don’t know the receipt, but [00:14:00] not the barcode that they’re going to read. And even before it was barcodes, think of how long the lines took. Yeah, people physically check a ticket and stuff like that.
You’re talking about printed off. Even before that you had to go to a ticket location and purchase a ticket and don’t lose that paper ticket. Don’t put it in your wallet and wash your wallet. I know I have at least one concert that I honestly, this is so funny. I put the tickets, I had a little Captain Crunch treasure chest that if you save the next box tops, you could send them in and get this thing.
And because I just couldn’t miss this show, it was a yes show. I put him in there. And like people always laugh about, I put it in such a secret hiding place that now it’s secret even for me. And I couldn’t believe it. I was frantic in where would I put these things? It, that those kinds of things used to happen at those physical tickets, your physical passport, your anything that really like you wouldn’t be allowed to cross a border.
If you didn’t have exactly the documentation that you need or [00:15:00] whatever else it might be. Love all those incremental and sometimes drastic improvements that we’ve had to our lives. I don’t know I’m around because we sure got better about cancer. We sure got better about atrial fibrillation.
There were times when that was. That wasn’t a good odds bet. You might not make it through there. There was a time they didn’t even really know what that was or check for it or anything, that’s been recent years. Afib is, yeah, that’s right. And diabetes, which we both contend with, but the fact that I have choices and information and my doctor is really good at, your particular set of circumstances is not only that you have a touch of diabetes, it’s that you’re bigger than usual.
So this is the more appropriate drug, for a I’m a more of a moose than a greyhound. And it really does matter what drug you take on that basis. I just love the fact that. The knowledge that we’ve put together continues to make the world better if you want to make use of it. And I guess if you’re the person that thinks that who needs libraries, man, there’s no hope.
There’s no hope for you that you don’t think that it’s worth learning a [00:16:00] little bit more in order to better your life. I don’t know, everybody that mows their lawn and maybe uses insecticides, don’t you want to know that maybe you should avoid Roundup? You know what I mean? It just, and sometimes.
That’s a little bit to bring because I’ve been saying people like it was a miracle when it was found. And then you find out that long term exposure does have a fact. So you can’t just say I learned about roundup and I use it forever because it turned out to be bad. But you also can’t say. That all things are bad because it’s only round up compared to others.
There are other better ones that have been improved upon. And so just lacking that mental flexibility to change your mind based on new information. I’m not sure what the brain thing is, what the inherited thing is that makes some people more close to that. We’re open to that, but it matters in spades nowadays.
So let’s unpack that. So round up something we didn’t used to have. So that is something that wouldn’t make America better. And it’s chemicals that will [00:17:00] kill people, but, we’re American. So we ignore that because we really just need our lawn to look great. Bright and shiny because it’s a reflection of us and it’s way too much work to go cut it, which we have.
We, electric weed whippers, which, we didn’t use to have, but that’s not making America better. Insecticides have always been 1 of those things where well, if you don’t use it, you lose a 3rd of your crops to. To vermin, to boll weevils, whatever else it might be. And so there really is improvement, like that stuff feeds people.
They will die without having the ability to fight off how amazing the animal kingdom is at locusting up your stuff. But then the trade off is we’re going to save 100, 000 people, but we might lose 10, 000, and the world makes that trade off pretty regularly. Especially first, second, and third world, you take what you can.
Hey, this one works better, but it’s 10 times as expensive. I can’t afford it. We’re gonna all have to take this risk of having Roundup in our environment until, for that’s food production. I’m talking about the neighbor’s yard next to [00:18:00] their driveway and Exactly. I heard you and that’s exactly right, that people are, they lose sight of the fact that the reason this came into, to business was not because only people wanted lawns and the rapidity of that I’m gonna risk my life so that my lawn is greener and fuller.
And yet I don’t know, Agent Orange, we couldn’t have fought a war in the jungle without that stuff. And then you find out that it doesn’t just kill plants. It affects our nervous systems and stuff. And so the whole Silent Spring, Rachel Carson about DDT and finding out that you put that in the environment and why are we losing all of our eagles?
Because it makes it so that the eggshells are too fragile. And the, Fight that she had to have like hearings in Congress and stuff like that. It wasn’t like we learned that and said, okay, now we have an EPA. We’re going to protect the environment. There were years of people poo pooing. No, that’s not good science.
Just like climate change. Just like anything else, a global warming, global cooling. There’s people that just are like, I don’t believe it. Yeah. [00:19:00] Believe it or not, it’s real or it’s not. It’s the amount of people I live by that will get mad and argue that the EPA is just trying to make their life miserable and trying to make it difficult and that they should be able to dump any chemicals they want on the farm and feed the animals and they should be able to take those stupid catalytic converters off their cars because it’s making them not run better.
And. On and on. I hear you. That’s a big part of acceptance of science is having people learn we’re all in this together and you can’t opt out. You can’t send your kid to school unless they’re vaccinated. That’s just the smart, safe way to have a society and then you hear the demand for their rights.
And it’s then comply, then do what everybody else does to be like mutual. You don’t get to come to the fire. If you’re a leper or even something more infectious, you have to know that. And maybe it’s bad luck. It doesn’t have to be by choice, but there’s still all those [00:20:00] things that are about the social contract and our what trade offs we make.
You know what I mean? That’s just that, you’re. Your ability to lash out with your hand stops at somebody else’s nose. You really can’t go swinging your arms out freely. And the fact that some people. reject that? It just weirds me out. Didn’t you have like siblings growing up? Didn’t you have neighbors?
Didn’t you have school people that like all people teach each other that all the time? You can’t do whatever you want foolishly, selfishly. You know what I mean? There really are things that society has to do to protect itself and have all of us be better. All of us thrive. And yet there’s whatever that 10 percent is that are, they have a rebel in them that they can’t turn off.
And that starts to look a little rebels. I wouldn’t know if I’d use that term because rebels got that shiny. We admire quality. These are just like evil people. Most of the time evil, stupid people. Most of the time. I think the reason that I use that is [00:21:00] Colleen and I both read a book and I’m trying to think of the author’s name.
That was A lot of people do this. We’ve talked about, Hey what about Myers Briggs? What about Enneagrams? What are all the various different systems to try to classify people? So you can get a little idea and insight into why do they act as they do? And why, how might they act? You can actually do a little predictive analysis with them.
And that was one of the things that, are you an information gatherer? Are you a rebel? Are you a, you want to find your place and then do your job well, but you’re not the one that’s going out exploring. You’re not the scout, if you will. And I could see aspects of those various different classifications in me, and very much having had to deal withrebel was the term they usedfor someone that, for whatever reason, whenever anybody says, here’s what we should all do, they say no.
They just don’t want to go with the crowd. Theyit matters to them in terms of their ego, their self View of themself that they don’t just go along with it. They might be able to be convinced, but if you try to convince them more, they rebel even more. You know what I mean? There’s [00:22:00] a little meme plex going on there and we both know those people I’m sure they can be convinced by leaving the information around and letting them discover it for themselves because then it’s Nobody tried to convince me.
I did it. I convinced myself, but sometimes even that doesn’t take. They just are determined to reject whatever society thinks is collective wisdom. It’s man, we need a couple of those to make breakthroughs, but we don’t need the criminals, the sociopaths that reject automatically and do it at other’s expense.
You know what I mean? People need to quit drinking Kool Aid. Let’s see. What else we got? Let’s see. Got Kalina and I are getting ready to go. To do what we have, now that we’re retired, yay, road trips. And, whatever that is, Circle of reasonableness, I’m really willing to drive like 8 hours to go to the Norman Rockwell Museum in Massachusetts, Stockbridge, because they have a Mad Magazine exhibit.
That sounds awesome. 70 year retrospective. Honestly, we’ve been to the, [00:23:00] we went to the Boston Annual Gathering for Mensa. We stopped at a whole bunch of cool places on the way there and back. That’s when we went to Walden Pond. We went to the Frank Frazetta Museum. We went to the Norman Rockwell Museum.
And I loved it. I’ve always loved his artwork. I really like photorealistic work, and his was so American, and there was such emotion in most of what he did. And so they seemed like a perfect one to do the Mad Magazine exhibit, because Mad has always been like a great mirror held up to society, and not in a savage way.
National Lampoon got quite biting, as many other satire magazines do, but Mad was always, Had that gentleness to it while they really pointed out that’s hypocrisy on the hoof. That’s BS over there. So I’m just I love it. I’ve been reading mad since like mid sixties, so I’m a long time reader.
I’m looking forward to being reminded of all the cool old things. And even when I started in the sixties, I would go back and try to find. Old issues of Mad Magazine. They did a whole bunch of paperback reprints that you could capture. This is what it was [00:24:00] like to live in the fifties. You get a reference to John Foster Dulles, it’s wow, why are they making so much fun of him?
And then you read about him and go, oh man, he really was a manipulative bastard. So I’m looking forward to just, I don’t know that hours that we’re going to take to look at every single print and read the little captions. And I think that they might have a couple of presentations or at least a docent that talks about.
Those kinds of things. And so just that we’re gonna go, it’s worth it to drive a little bit, get a little hotel room, go see the school thing, because we happen to be in the area and being in the area is two and a half hours away. On the way home, we’re gonna stop I and see a rumble ponies game.
Binghamton has the rumble ponies. If I’ve talked about this before, I’ll try to do it quick. Colleen was listening to the radio on one of her business trips one time, and she caught a place that was broadcasting like a triple A or even double A game. But the announcer was being so professional and serious about, The most productive Rumble Pony of tonight is Johnson, who’s three for four.
And, but of [00:25:00] course she caught Rumble Ponies! That’s a great team name! That started this last, I don’t know, 10, 15 years ago, I have found, Colleen, fun t shirts for the Bull Weevils, and the Rumble Ponies, and the Trash Pandas, and all these cool team names, and the Rumble Ponies continues to be, maybe because it’s the first, but also because it’s hilarious, a great team name.
And then when I saw where we were going to be, it’s oh, we’re not going home without stopping at this. Yeah. I got, again, the miracle of the internet. I got us some tickets. We have your and you can pick your seat so you can say we really like being behind home plate so you can see the pitches coming in and see the balls spraying out.
And, but don’t be right behind because then the ump is in the way. And so we have tickets to go see a Rumble Ponies game on the way home and stay in Binghamton overnight. And it’s funny, hey, where are we going to eat? It doesn’t really matter to us where we eat, but if any meal matters, we like breakfast much more than dinner.
And I found these wonderful oh, it’s Sally’s Cafe, where it just sounds like a nice homey thing at a breakfast. [00:26:00] But that’s our little trip is. A whim of iron. Hey, I read about this mad magazine thing. We can’t not go to this, right? We like trips. And so going through upstate New York and then downstate New York is going to be a beautiful drive, in August at the end here, not quite leaves changing yet, but green and lush life.
Even when you’re on the interstates, it’s still, you’re surrounded by green. I love that. I love that. As compared to going in the southwest where it’s wow, keep going because if we break down here, it’s the desert and there are cattle skulls over here telling me what my fate will be.
So the mad magazine thing, those type of little trips I always tried to do with the kids still love to do that stuff. I much more enjoy those. Oh that sounds interesting rather than, oh, look, a big tourist attraction. Honestly, we’ve had such great discoveries of just noticing a sign and saying, What the heck’s that?
And we just, like we found good 10 minutes, an hour. Exactly. Just right off the road. And it’s it’s the discovery [00:27:00] is fun. And all those places don’t seem to take themselves too seriously. They know that having a Shirley temple museum is goofy and yet they do it up beautifully.
You know what I mean? I love where they’re dedicated to, we’re going to have every mustard in the world and stuff like that. So What’s your, do you remember a favorite discovery that you’ve done doing that? It’s we had the spam museum at one of the ones we just stumbled onto and it turned out to be really cool.
Off top of my head, I’m drawn more of a blank though, me and the kids on our trip down to Florida, our trip down to Louisiana we tried to look up a few things, like Louisiana, it’s not a small thing, but we got to go to Bubba Gump, I know shrimp company for lunch, and then as we’re walking there, we’re like, Oh, what are these warps with these boats?
And we go, Oh, these are historical. I didn’t know a thing about that. It’s always little things like that. We went to these. Campgrounds, and they had which I thought was cool, like a Boy [00:28:00] Scout, a small Boy Scout museum because this guy had been in scouts his whole life. So he had like his whole collection from 50 years of Boy Scouts.
And it was like, badges, all the jamboree flags. Yeah, that’s yeah, it was cool and fun just to walk through because we were at the camp. I got one for you that got to go to and it’s a segue time. The biggest ball of twine in Minnesota. Got to go to that way. You know where that’s Recognizable from the Weird Al Yankovic song.
Yes. So I got to meet Weird Al. That’s, I’m more than pleased. More than pleased. Very cool. I’m glad you had an experience. See how cool is that? So this was at the Pittsburgh? Where were you? Yes, Pittsburgh Steel City Con, which if you enjoy cons, it’s a pretty impressive one. As I was standing in line for Weird Al, Jared Padalecki from Supernatural was there.
Another hero [00:29:00] of ours. Yeah, and I was like, holy crap, because Jared’s huge. They do whole conventions with just Supernatural. So to get him at a convention is a pretty big deal, I was in line for Weird Al, Jared showed up, people lined up, he signed, they were gone, and he left, and we were still in the line for Weird Al.
That’s how big Weird Al is. Colin said that he talked to some vendors from there, and they said, there has not been a celebrity as big as Weird Al for years. That’s fantastic. Yeah. I love that. They keep talking about, hey, if you’re looking for a great Super Bowl act, give Weird Al a call.
You know what I mean? We’ve seen all kinds of great old rockers, great current, stuff like that. But just imagine that the whole world being exposed, especially like his Super Bowl polka team song at the Super Bowl. Oh my God, that would be so perfect. Our team’s better than yours because you suck.
Exactly.
So it was pretty cool [00:30:00] meeting him. I got the very first weird out LP signed. And I have the authorized biography from like 1985 that I got signed. And there’s a guy a kid in line that looked at it goes, Oh my god, that’s in like perfect shape. Where the hell did you find that? And I said Barnes and Noble in 1985.
My personal collection. See, I love that. He must so much appreciate seeing things like, he has, he had a previous to the accordion collection. He had one that was called like permanent record, if I remember right, a four CD set. But that’s also 30 years old now. So to see someone bought it has held onto it.
They lovingly brought it for him to sign. He must love being, like his first album, with a very cartoony cover and stuff like that. It. He must be impressed with, wow, I really have had some long time fans and they were waiting for this moment. That’s cool. It’s really great. I, there was one person that had a real accordion that they had signed that they really know how to play.
So I’m like, that’s, pretty darn cool. [00:31:00] And I was thinking about that. I used to actually have an accordion, a nice accordion, but my first wife, get rid of it. And I regret that. But I was thinking about, I’m like, why have it, I’ve been struggling to learn guitar. I’m having trouble with it.
I’m like, why haven’t I learned to play accordion? It’s keyboards. I know keyboards. It’s just got a bellows on it. You finger chords, you do the, or your finger chords here and you do the keys here. I know all of that stuff. Why don’t I learn to play accordion and forget the stupid guitar?
Because back then it wasn’t cool, and it was like, oh, I’m going to Shakey’s Pizza and play the banjo and I’m going to go over here and play the accordion. Yeah. Yeah. I’ve never really gone with what’s cool. And that’s the thing to say, Colleen likes to call accordions, the stomach Steinway, by the way.
So that’s funny. I’m so glad you got to meet. I think I mentioned, I went to Alcon a couple of times in Chicago and we’re a super fan put this thing [00:32:00] together, seemingly just by the sheer force of her will and persistence. And. The one time that I went, they actually had a video monitor and he’s I really wanted to be there, but I just, I’m so busy in the studio on this next album.
And I just can’t take the time. Maybe I can. And then he comes out through the curtains and the whole crowd, not knowing he was going to be there. They really thought it was an Alice, Alcon went wild. And he, I think he, Bermuda Schwartz, I didn’t think he had the entire band there, but a couple of his bandmates were there.
And it just, he was so gracious, the entire con. Talking to everyone, signing everything, being the emcee for the silly, how well do you know Weird Al game show and all that kind of stuff. Not quite Wheel of Fish, but something close to that, so I do wish the band would have been there.
I would have loved to have met them and told them how much I admire their musical artistry and just how much they can mimic so many styles and they’ve been together. for the whole time. It’s his band this whole time. They’re [00:33:00] not, leaving in other people and stuff. They really, and they’re really good.
People, they don’t get enough recognition sometimes. Exactly. So I’m not sure if he’s in the rock and roll hall of fame, but if there’s anybody that I would say out of artistry, out of longevity, out of, like you said, the entire band being together, no rancorous breakups or anything like that.
They really, they’re a huge, not only success story, but like a model for how to do this right. You know what I mean? Really cool. Very. And if you’ve ever tried to play multiple styles of music, it’s not always easy. To get that feel there’s a field of music, and they from reggae to rock and roll to bossa nova or whatever else and they do it song by song, And then a polka they’re doing it.
They’re doing rock and roll polka. Come on Exactly. Hey, every time I’ve seen him in concert, I have loved the music and the costumery and just any really fantastic, really [00:34:00] well, it’s like a real ebb and flow to it and stuff like that. And it builds to a great crescendo. And although he was very early on with the visuals, because he had videos and also just things that he did coming out in the fat suit for fat and stuff like that.
And yeah. I don’t know. He’s such a showman. So everybody, if there’s any recommendation that you can come away with from Relentless Geekery, it’s to go see Weird Al, if at all you get a chance. There’s nobody else like him. He’s amazingly talented, him and his band. You’ll just, you’ll have the greatest time.
You’re going to walk out there beaming. Your face will hurt from how much You laughed and that you’re still smiling about it. You know what I mean? Yeah, absolutely. We haven’t talked about movies for a while. And, I went and saw Alien Romulus. Any good movies lately you’ve gotten to?
We went to see Despicable Me 4. And it’s funny. I love animation, but I sometimes don’t get to see it in the big theater because it just isn’t high on my radar. And every time I go see when I [00:35:00] rededicate myself to this is such a better experience. There really are some things that you’re supposed to put the world aside and pay attention because on the big screen, you’ll catch so many more Easter eggs and little side comments And laugh your ass off, because the whole crowd gets into what hijinks the minions get up to, or whatever else it might be.
Pixar does great stuff. There’s a couple of great studios now that is not only Pixar slash Disney. And so we just, it’s a nice two hours of, wow, the craft they put into it, all the cultural references, the little lampoonery, that the characters really are well wrought and stuff like that. And so we went to see that.
You need to look something up. If you haven’t seen it on your feed on Facebook. There’s a little video going around of the minions and it’s split. So you got the minions on one side the movie, but then on the other side, it shows the voice actors doing the Italian overdub and they’re doing. Minions in Italian, and it’s, oh my god, watching them do [00:36:00] it.
It’s pretty darn hilarious. So we’ll look for that. Yeah, you should look for it. It’s probably on YouTube or TikTok and stuff. So I’ll tell you, I’m not sure. Oftentimes at comic cons or other what the pop culture cons, they’ll have a whole bunch of the voiceover artists because people are really becoming aware of, man, if you can do that kind of animation and all that kind of stuff, it really is an talent.
And I, a couple times what has blown me away is where they’ve got three people up at the panel and they’re doing a scene that involves 15 voices and they just shift like we were saying about Weird Al’s band ability to go from genre to genre. The fact that they can have those voices running around in their head and even like sometimes it’s not between the three of them.
One guy will have a duo, a dialogue between. Two people and just seeing how they change their body stance and how the like where did that voice come from that was that they cut each other off. How do you do that with it’s just an amazing. Oh, [00:37:00] we grew up with no blank. That’s right. And there have been people like that all along and I think I mentioned one of my birthday gifts that I got for myself because I said yes Colleen please get me this was the complete Rocky and Bullwinkle, because it includes all those things as well as.
not silly symphonies fractured fairy tales and stuff like that. Now for something we think you’ll really enjoy. Exactly. They were really great about, again, commenting on the events of the day, but also there’s continuity in them. How they create the characters of Boris Batanoff and Natasha and the interaction and fearless leader.
And just that they really It isn’t only one offs, that they really reference back previous episodes, or that they’re smart. They really are, and many people talk about this, how many adult references there are in there, not naughty, but a little bit suggestive, that will go right over the kids heads.
But that’s why adults can watch them and crack they really got away. They’re going to do an atomic bomb test. Oh, on the no bikini at all. [00:38:00] You know what I mean? And they, I think they were wonderfully, from what I understand, I’ve read a couple books that I love reading about the studios and the background of this, and that they The money men were smart enough to just leave them alone.
So they did things that would make them. Wow. Let’s say, let’s take some note of that. Nowadays, folks, exactly. But they work all night. They did crazy hours and stuff like that. And so a lot of this stuff was like, Punchy humor, it wasn’t only good writing, it was like, I have a great idea, but then you still have to draw the 10, 000 cells to make it real.
But then when it works it’s just so fantastic. And such a, they’re almost like timeless. You know what I mean? There’s various different films that you can see. That’s really from the forties, but these things, They make fun of human nature. They make fun of anyway, they really are, they hold up well.
You know what I mean? Maybe some of the language has changed. Maybe some of the stereotypes are too broad. But the fact that they’re lampooning, not making always fun of the stereotype, [00:39:00] but that the, how they tease each other is gentler. And I don’t know, I don’t immediately go into cancel culture mode.
I’m like that’s really clever that They make fun of why idiots say awful things about that kind of stuff. And then to put that into somebody else’s mouth in a way that they can, they feel they know how stupid they sound. That’s a really good way is to lampoon the bigots. You know what I mean?
So very funny. So what any other. movies that you’ve seen. What did you think? I really like that the alien movies have filled in a whole mythology about the planet that they’re from and how they colonize and maybe they’re not really like intelligent colonizers. They’re like a an infestation spreading across planet, so the 2 movies before this Romulus and Covenant.
I hadn’t watched, but me and Colin sat down and watch those. The newest 1 is not a continuation of those at all. Those didn’t do super great. [00:40:00] And we watched them and we looked at each other and said, people are really good at this. Stupid because the first one Prometheus was fantastic.
And the second one covenant wasn’t. As fantastic, but it also didn’t change a whole lot. It built upon prompt Prometheus, but it didn’t do anything new and different. Prometheus changed a lot of things. So that’s what Michael Hossbender in that is so fantastic as the Android. Yes. Okay. Yeah, so those were good.
So this new one. Is not a continuation of those because they didn’t do as well as they should have or could have or whatever It is actually a side step in a whole new it’s separate from the rest of the line it takes place after the nostromo incident in the first movie you know right after it within 30 years or something like that.
But it’s also sidestepped that you don’t have to see it to watch the rest of the line. It’s not [00:41:00] injecting itself in the middle. It’s parallel. There’s a few things that they I guess expand upon in the whole mythology Bishop. The Android is in there, but he’s called Rook cause they had different androids named differently, but it was the same model.
Exactly. But he’s in it. He’s only half of them is in it because he was torn apart as I recall. But that was in that was Bishop in this drama. This is work for a whole different reason. He got split in half. So it was fun and good. The storyline. If you get a really good synopsis of the story, it’s a paragraph and that’s the story, Kids on a planet want to get off.
They find a space station. They get on the station. Aliens. There’s the synopsis right there. Now they’re trapped in their supposed escape ship, et cetera, et cetera. And running away and fighting the aliens. And like many of the alien movies, the hero protagonist is [00:42:00] female, young female.
That was, kept in it. They didn’t change that. So anyone going, Oh, it’s too woke. Have you seen the one from the seventies? Exactly. That, it’s funny. I think I’ve heard since you just gave the capsule description of the movie, the one I heard of aliens was Nobody listens to the woman and they all die.
Except the cat. Exactly. So yeah it was fun. It’s a good thing in the big theater. You know what I mean? I really like things again that I can be immersed in and okay. Oh, it was pretty. The covenant and Prometheus were very pretty. This one had some very good, oh the coolest part was, so it’s a space station that looks a little bit like DS nine.
And the ship from Weyland Corp had found the alien from the first movie, Floating in Space Frozen, and they opened the frozen ball of alien and it comes back to life. That’s the premise. And that’s not given too much away [00:43:00] because that happens in the first two minutes of the movie. But it’s that alien, one of those loose ends.
That’s if this thing can survive in rigorous conditions, it might be able to, okay. Heart of grades that do that. You can freeze. Oh yeah. They mentioned some of that. They’re on this space station when it gets loose and of course, kills everybody, but the space station is drifting. So it comes within range of this planet that has these huge rings around it, like Saturn.
And so it’s drifting closer to the rings to impact with the rings. The rings aren’t just a few random bits of dust. It’s like solid stone ring almost all the way around it. So this thing’s getting closer. And they show it as it, from farther back as it’s getting closer with the ring spinning around the planet, slicing impact is coming up or something like that.
It’s the coolest looking thing. That’s well worth it right there to see the effect and how they did that. It looked really cool. That’s [00:44:00] One of the things the alien movies have often had like epic scale, like you come out of a tunnel and there’s this huge domed the mammoth caves has the great rotunda or something like that.
And if you’re watching on your home screen, it just doesn’t have the same thing as you’re like leaning back in your chair. And as far as you can see is this huge stone room. That’s a cool way to get that immersion into a movie. That’s wonderful. Yeah. Okay. So if you like the alien movie, and it’s a little different, it’s.
Like I said, simple plot, not as complex as the last couple movies. It’s a haunted house movie again, because you’re trapped on it with the monsters. And there’s jump scares and there’s a couple jump scares, but we’re so used to them. It’s almost unnoticeable. The end got a little long and felt a little tacked on in a few spots, but overall it was, just nonstop action and running away from aliens.
Okay. One of the things that I like in a horror movie is not where it is where people act. If not [00:45:00] intelligent, at least a little bit self preserving. Like every time that someone goes into the dark basement, it’s like, why would you go in there? Why would you put yourself at the most risky non escapable place?
Instead, shine a flashlight down there and then say, I’m going out of here. I’m getting out of that. And maybe then they get attacked in their car or something, that the way that this works is you can’t really leave the spaceship you really are trapped in it and then you’re like where could I hole up that it is impregnable well not if it has acid blood you know it’s really strong it can open anyway i’m that i hope that’s the way that it is that people actually we in fact i totally blew past this we did go to see
Sorry, Playhouse Square has a thing called Cinema on the Square, where they do old revival movies on their big screen. And it’s so we went to see Some Like It Hot, a classic, Marilyn Monroe, Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis, and Die Hard. And Die Hard is one of those movies that in almost every movie. situation, you can [00:46:00] see the worrying of the guy’s minds and both of them, both the main hero and the main villain.
And they’re making smart choices and good guesses. And you can see they screwed up there, but at the time they didn’t know that. So that’s why it turned out like it did. And it’s such a, not a blundering around. I have more bullets. And so I’m going to rush in. It’s very a chess game between these two brilliant protagonists.
And that’s what I like is where the. Haunted house thing is despite they’re trying to outwit the monster’s smart, at least cunning too, and they get in trouble because the monster’s got a lot of fangs and teeth on its side instead of, only if I stumble onto it do I die. I really like where they respect the intelligence of the various different characters in it.
Okay. So it’s fun. It’s good. If you like the alien movies, it’s worth going to Afternoon Matinee and checking it out. Okay. I did recently watch the John Wick Continental series. It’s only three episodes. It’s funny, as we work our way through various different channels, we don’t always get them and then get them to [00:47:00] stay because then your payable bill goes back up to what it once was.
But I’ll get we just watched the Olympics, the hell out of the Olympics on Peacock TV. And wonderful. But now I’m saying before our subscription expires, what else would I want to go watch? And I think it was there. And just, it’s really cool to have the people, and you heard me talk about this, I love retconning.
I love people that read all the comic books that have gone before and then put a story into that timeline that doesn’t negate anything. It just very cleverly fills in details. And the Herbert, Brian Herbert is doing things that his father from Frank Herbert did with all those Dune books, the continuation.
And that continental series is worth oh, that’s how the building has been around for a long time as has the organization, but that’s how some of the rivalries were created and stuff like that. It just it was and of course, all the. Various different kinds of assassins. They’re really good at, we’re not going to have just one assess and we’re going to have a dozen different teams that are all pitted to get this guy.
Cause you get a million dollar bounty and to see the silly stuff. You know what I [00:48:00] mean? They have people that look like Hansel and Gretel, but just also happened to be really good at killing people. I love that kind of, it’s not silly. It’s actually very. Rarified? I’m trying to think stylized maybe is the best word for it.
That they do things that they take seriously to make them believable and overcome your, oh that’s Okay. Okay. That’s working. That is okay. Yeah. I like that. I really like that they have that graph. So there’s a couple shows like that. There was Pennyworth, which was Alfred Pennyworth from Batman.
That wasn’t a bad show. Okay. I haven’t seen all that. It’s good. There was the one we just watched on Apple TV. For the kaiju with Godzilla in that with Kurt Russell that was good. And then there’s like the Lord of the Rings series on Amazon just got announced. Yeah, Ring of Power, right?
A second season of that is coming. So really wondering about that because you can tell that those are expensive. I just watched the continuation of Game of Thrones, House of the Dragons [00:49:00] and just, and I watched the series where they talk about, here’s how we did all this stuff.
And much like the Lord of the Rings, it’s we can’t just have a battle. You’ve got 160 extras, all of whom have worn armor and weaponry and they have to look authentic. You know what I mean? So they have I’ve watched the first episode and enjoyed it. There’s 500 things on the list.
But there is a new Lord of the Rings movie coming out in November. The writers are Rohirrim. Excellent. Okay. I did hear the acolyte. Is not going to get a second season. Yeah, you know that apparently that it didn’t get the numbers or it didn’t the people that really care about Star Wars continuity said, Oh, don’t even say that the people that really care.
No, because there’s. I know several people, and Colin said it the most succinctly. He’s the only people I don’t talk to about Star Wars is Star Wars people. Oh, star Wars. ’cause it’s such a toxic culture anymore. You can’t talk about Star Wars without everybody like jumping down your throat. They [00:50:00] hate this, they hate that.
This, that and the other thing, the acolyte. The acolyte had. Like a thousand zero and one star reviews on a rotten tomato months before it even came out before it came out. Yeah. So don’t that whole. And so you get people going, Oh, it must suck. Cause nobody likes it. No, there are just like groups of people that want to do everything possible to bombard the show, bombard the universe because Disney bought it.
Okay. You know what folks, Star Wars wasn’t going to last forever with Lucas. The man was getting older. He, at some point, he’s gonna say, Yeah, we’re done with everything. And you wouldn’t have had anything. But oh, he sold it to Disney. So now everything sucks. I liked the Acolyte. I thought it was a good show.
Everyone got mad. Oh, it’s a black girl. We don’t have that in Star Wars. Stop that. It was a really good show. The actress was good. She had two parts. She did [00:51:00] so good with it. And the twist in it was good. The lightsaber battles were so good and people were upset. They had, I know you had talked about this that you really liked it in the face of so many other people.
Yeah, reviews and stuff like that. And so I, I didn’t want to, I didn’t say it at all in a gloating way. I just was there. Oh no, I’m not attacking you at all. I really wish that it continued because it’s also weird. I’m going to watch it, but like to watch it knowing that there’s only one season.
Yeah. Oh, boy. Oh, yeah, I come to love it. I’m gonna be why did they stop this and people were attacking them because Carrie Ann Moss was in it and she her character did not last long. And they said, Oh that, they killing off the best actors. First of all, she probably cost more than the others, second of all, It’s about the story, not the actress.
I don’t care who the actor actress is. Star Wars has always been lesser known actresses except for Alec Guinness and Peter Cushing. Bigger than anybody you [00:52:00] put into it. Even then, people didn’t go to see Star Wars because of Alec Guinness. Yes. He was good in it, but it’s never been a star vehicle, even with Han Solo becoming big and appearing in more than one.
It was still all about Star Wars, not about the further adventures of him until they did a dedicated series. 20 years later, 30 years later, I think along the gap was in between. So yeah. And then it wasn’t Harrison Ford. It was young Han Solo or whatever. And that got bombarded. People said, this movie sucks.
And then it gets on Disney and it becomes one of their biggest streaming shows. And people are going, Hey, this isn’t a bad movie. Actually. I so want to punch people in the face when they say that I liked the movie from the start. I laughed so hard at so many because there were so many little Easter eggs in it.
And there were so many Han Solo isms in it. I think Aaron or whatever did such a good job of here’s what a young, cocky Han Solo would be like. Exactly. The [00:53:00] writers really captured what made this character appealing in the first place. The fact that instead of saying, I love you back, he would say, I know, that kind of thing.
Yeah, the whole thing just gets me all up in arms. I’ve been reading the books, reading the comics, watching the shows. I haven’t been disappointed. Is there some of it I like better than others? Yeah, probably if I really look at it, but there’s so many good things happening in every show I watched, so that’s I guess that weird, like some people, Star Wars really has become a religion.
And some part sometimes of what comes with religion is fanaticism. And that’s what you get. Like now they own it. They really know how exactly how it should be. And they don’t want somebody else to stray from what they think is the one true path. And I’m just so much more appreciative of that’s an interesting new variation.
That’s, and some things are higher quality than others, but I don’t rank them as a way of I’m really going to attack the bad ones. It’s more hey, if you talk to a friend and they only have a certain amount of time to watch then out of these five series, watch this one, because it’s the best [00:54:00] one.
And maybe, just that I try to do it the way of supporting instead of destroying. Yeah, I saw a good meme somebody made up. It’s for years, everybody asked about the Clone Wars. We got that. You hated it for years. Everybody asked about more lightsaber battles. We got that. You hated it for years.
They asked about, young versions and more stories with the original characters. We got that. You hated it. It’s what do you want Disney to do? Everything that you’ve wanted? They’ve given you and you turn around and say, no, this sucks. We hate it. It’s it’s a series of couples where they’re like, Hey, let’s go out to dinner.
Where do you want to go? And then it’s just a series of shooting each other down. Where do you want to go? What’s that about? You know what I mean? How I dunno, Colleen and I get along really well because most of the time, 99 percent of the time we’re game. It’s if you want to go to this concert, sometimes it’s so much not to her taste or my taste that we might not, but any number of restaurants, let’s go for a walk.
Let’s pull over at the sign. We just saw and go find out what the big musky bucket is. If there’s just [00:55:00] whatever that curiosity, that playfulness, it really has worked for us. You know what I mean? That instead of like a relationship book, once That I read said so much of being a good person is offer and acceptance that if you really want to be a friend bond with someone it’s improv.
You always say yes, and you continue the scene you make it better you add your own stuff, but you never say no or deny what they’re trying to create themselves and Since relationship coach Al says, man, your life is so much better if you’re not in judgment all the time, you’re just like, let’s see what happens.
Let’s sure. Why not? Minutes out of our way. Of course we will. That kind of thing. So I agreed. All right. So before we go, I got a slight trivia. It’s not really a trivia. Okay. So what. Old favorite show is coming back with a new season, new episodes this fall. What only one right now, [00:56:00] but we’ve had a lot of those in the genres that we’ve been talking about, like science fiction or fantasy or no, okay.
No, it’s a comedy. Old school. Let’s see. It can’t be Newhart because we just lost. Also, we need to do a good obituary show and say, what a loss. There’s been all kinds of people that have left us lately that were giants in their days. I don’t know. I haven’t. Cheers. With everybody but Shelly Long, as far as I can tell.
How interesting is that? Yeah, Norm and Ratzenberger and Woody Harrelson and Sam and everybody. They sure have a lot of goodwill built up that they could come back to this and people might not say, Oh, no, they’re older. Oh no, it’s more of the same. It really might be that they just slide right into the brilliant writing, the banter.
That’s, that’s one of the series that I have not seen all of them. And Colleen and I, when we started talking about, do we want to watch all those? They’re too much the same. They’re [00:57:00] good to throw in every now and then. And that’s it. We would watch though, instead of binge watching a 30 rock or something like that, you sprinkle those in as a palate cleanser between other things.
Yeah. We have been liking Brooklyn Nine, but we noticed the same thing. We watch a few and then take a break, because you don’t want to get that particular humor button pushed again and again, because then it stops being as funny. Cratchit books have always been like that for me.
Some people like it and they like have read the whole thing, like that’s all they read for a couple months. And I always fit them in between other things, because it was the break from more serious science fiction or fantasy or whatever, And that the way you get the quality of the Lampoon is because you’ve read a whole bunch of other stuff and then you say, oh, he really talked, this is a great take down on trolls or whatever else.
Very good. Okay alright, cheers. Speaking of the Alien movie, if you do go see it, just keep in mind. It’s a movie about aliens with poison acid blood that are symbiotic with us and take eat us. It is not hard [00:58:00] science fiction. So everybody that wants to go watch it and rank on all the problems with the science.
It’s good for the show. It’s good for the movie. Exactly. I will give them artistic license for the two hours. Okay. Yes. Yeah. There’s a couple of them and then some stuff that a lot of people probably wouldn’t even care about or notice which is the point. Really? Is it worth, hating the whole show?
No, I as a closing comment. We had our make our own sodie pop meetings over the last couple of months. We’ve exhausted that we’ve made our ginger beer and all other sort of things. So now we’re moving on to making our own sausage. Yeah. You talked about political sausage right after this podcast, I’m going to go swing by the butcher that was able to get us like five pounds of pork shoulder and Yeah, cubed like fat.
You know what I mean? That you, because sausage is not a lean thing. And so I’m, I bear the meat tonight to go make our first, and he’s got the sausage grinder attachment and we’ve [00:59:00] got casings and stuff like that. And I’m just so curious. I’m hoping that it’s we made sausage and didn’t die of botulism or whatever else it might be.
It’s a meat. Honestly it, I don’t want to call it the sausage party because that has its own connotation. But, it’s such an in brief. It’s not only doing the sausage. It’s all the fun banter. You know what I mean? Book clubs and ladies have any number of reasons to get together to do their quilt and be or whatever like that.
And guys, it always seems to be that they’re like watching a sporting event and they’re not goofing with each other. They’re all like focused on something else. Maybe they do when they play golf. I’ve had things where when you shoot pool, you have wonderful conversations because there’s you’re not having to give it your full attention while you’re doing it.
This is a cool thing like that. But the guys that i’m doing it with are all cool. Good friends, wonderful conversationalists, the same kind of thing that we, each week, bring into our podcast. Often it’ll be the little life updates, and one of the ironic things is, so we’re making sausage, and one of the guys, Artner, Just [01:00:00] had to have a multiple bypass operation.
So he won’t be trying any of our sausage for the foreseeable future, because that ain’t the right thing to have after you had to have your heart tinkered. Actually, it’s not the right thing to have before you have to have that. If only I could go back 10 years and say, Take it off the list. I had a buddy have a full hip and a triple bypass.
I said I could check that off the bingo card. It happened to be the same buddy. So which I’m like, dude, that’s not good. But they’re building it to be like 6 million man. You know what I mean? He’s cyborging out and soon he’ll be able to run faster, jump higher. Yeah. Decades ago he would have been, he wouldn’t have been able to walk well and he probably would have had a heart attack and died by now, so the fact that they can do, and from what I understand, it was like, not only laparoscopic, they actually had to open him up, but there’s so many things nowadays where they really like, they make a little incision by year, two inches going in. I know when I had my [01:01:00] ablation to zap little parts of my heart to get me out of it, her fibrillation and back to normal, they like came in through the big vein in your thigh and thread their way up.
It’s a little camera and a little zapper and that thing healing was next to nothing compared to crack you open look around it in there. Why are you back shut? Yeah, you’ve got Angry score on you. My father had the wires, we saw it on the x ray. It was just wired up but Scott they, he said they basically super glued them back together.
I was like, and they put like this board on to hold it together while it healed. So I was like, that’s really cool. My father had cataract surgery when he was very young and they butchered his eyes. That’s a whole story. But for three days, he had to lay with sandbags and he wasn’t allowed to move because it would have ripped his eyes.
I went in for cataract surgery. They suctioned this thing to my eye and I saw lights and then I went home. It was nothing. [01:02:00] Those kind of advancements really are amazing, miraculous, and yet we’re getting to where not only do we do it, this guy’s done 10, 000 of them. You know what I mean?
He really has a track record. And the instrumentation is so precise and perfect. And it’s amazing that we have given ourselves those new leases on life and site and all the, I can walk because I got a new hip. Nick and Kelly, friends of ours that have the farm, they’ve each gotten a hip in the last couple months.
And especially if you’re going to run a farm you got to be on your feet, and they’re like, totally back up to normal. It, whatever the rehabilitation period was so short in comparison to what I used to think was like, take it easy for a year type stuff. Nope. They really know what they’re doing nowadays.
Yeah. Those are great. It’s not your body will not reject it because it’s titanium, which is inert and not your body doesn’t think intruder or anything like that. And it’ll last forever. It’s not give me one of those. And then 10 years later, we’re gonna have to do this again, right? It’s not going to deteriorate in any way.
If your spouse kills you, they can identify the body. [01:03:00] That’s true. But yeah, here’s the characteristic titanium hip. No, they all have ID numbers. So that’s true too. That’s right. Yeah. Like my eyes for the cataracts I’ve got little IDs every now and then just the right way with the sun.
I can see a little line, but that’s. Super small numbers. Each of my eyes has a different number and I have a card that tells it. So if you kill me, take my eyes. Oh, man, there was a scandal a couple decades ago, maybe where a doctor had signed his work. Like he had worked on someone’s heart and then had put his initials.
And at first I thought that’s really intrusive, but it hadn’t hurt the guy. It was like, discovered from a succeeding operation. But it’s I don’t know. I just don’t have a big objection to if you’re proud. And if you’re confident enough that you would say, I’ve been here, I’m the guy that fixed this guy.
I don’t know. Speaking to Norman Rockwell. Yeah, you can carve me, you can carve your initials into me if you did good enough work that you’re proud of it [01:04:00] weird. Yeah, that’s a little weird. A little. There’s a whole bunch of jokes about doctors having the God complex. You know what I mean?
That they really that I have. Oh, my, one of my older brother’s friends said he wanted to become a brain surgeon because. He didn’t want anybody to be able to second guess him. When you’re the brain surgeon, you are the guy in the room. You’re a guy. It’s just funny because you spend so much time on learning all of this.
You, you lose touch with some of the other things. So it doesn’t make you omniscient about everything in the world, and that’s the problem with all those professions that you always have to be the guy that’s on top of every situation. But, when you’re a Good policeman. It doesn’t mean that you’re the best cook or that you’re the best.
You know what I mean? Spills over into thinking that you’re always right. And always the guy in charge and that’s the case for things outside of your realm of experience. That’s more a personality rather than the subject of your, that’s true. They didn’t get it from that. They went into that field.
Yeah. Yeah. [01:05:00] Okay. As always a pleasure. Thank you very much for taking time today. Very good. Okay. Talk to you later, man. Tell Colleen I said, Hey, I will do that.
You have been listening to the Relentless Geekery Podcast. Come back next week and join Alan and Stephen’s conversation on Geek Topics of the Week.
