Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | Android | iHeartRadio | Email | RSS | More
Overview
We talk about some sciency stuff with our universe and other universes and then we delve into made up universes in our favorite comic books and movies.
It all started with Alan reading Ready Player Two, the sequel to Ernest Klines ready Player One – and Stephen talks about using the Oculus.
And all this future tech is altering how we think of others and our world – which will change again when we go to other planets and meet other beings.
Recommendations
She Hulk Season 1 | Synopsis, Cast, Credits, Latest News | Marvel
Samaritan (2022 film) – Wikipedia
Watch The Gray Man | Netflix Official Site
YouTube
Transcript
So hi, Alan, how are you? It’s Hey, it’s
[00:00:34] Alan: through the miracle of modern, relentless, geeky technology. We are three time zones apart. And yet this year sounds like it’s in real time. So thank you, digitization and electrons, for making this miracle, it’s funny around the world. It seems that people do conferences with India, right?
Regularly people talk with folks in the middle east and the far east and Europe, and it just is like making a phone call. And I just think that’s really
[00:00:59] Stephen: cool. I really feel I’ve let the geek cred down. I’ve got an Oculus and I haven’t done one of these on the Oculus yet.
You can, hook into your desktop. You can hook into zoom now. So I really need to do one with the Oculus, that’s
[00:01:15] Alan: very cool. I’ll tell you, it’s funny. I know we have a list of things we wanna talk about, but never it’s I just started reading ready player two. There’s a, as there’s a very cool book ready player one by Ernest Klein.
If I remember, right? Yeah. That was made into a great movie. One of those great Roger rabbit type movies where Steven Spielberg is the guy that like nobody in Hollywood and video games and everywhere wants to say no to the guy, because they know that he’s so talented and that he will treat your creations with respect.
So if you saw that movie, it was every video game character ever, especially in the climactic battle where it was look at. I gotta pause the screen, like every second to just not miss everything that’s going on. This is it. I What a wonderful sequel. It’s one of those things where within the first five pages, you immediately go, I’m in, I’m backing this world and I wanna see what happens next.
And it’s just kinda like a video game just when you think you’ve, you’re like conquered and completed the quest, oh, here’s a hidden room off to the side. And then here’s another riddle and another prize to pursue. And so he’s so good at capturing, like what makes those video games so addictive and playable computer games, et cetera, is there’s always UN UNES incremental advances and new mysteries.
And, but that what you’ve learned and used, and you use your current armor and go forward, you hope that’s gonna be enough to go to a level N plus one. Just already, like he’s very culturally referencing everything. You know what I mean? Here’s phrases you use from TV and here’s some video games and here it’s just, is there a delight?
That’s part of the joy of reading. I is just not only, oh, what a good mystery or boy, that really is a a tough situation to be in it’s that you really are just like, this is my use. This is my, now this is it’s really cool. How he weaves all this together. One day, we’ll get him as a guest and fawn all over him because that’d be awesome.
[00:03:09] Stephen: I was gonna say anyone that hasn’t read that book and listened to this podcast is really doing themselves a disservice. It is. So it’s an easy read. It flows nicely. There’s no real boring parts. It’s a future that we can see, we talk about, but it’s like a video game and he pulls in everything from the eighties without making it feel like it’s just, trying to screw it all in to get as many references as possible.
It fits perfectly.
[00:03:38] Alan: Exactly and, to come back around. The reason that I wanted to reference that book is because of what you just said. When you talk about, wearing your Oculus rig in order to do this kind of video conferencing so much, the book is based on, getting into a, an advanced haptic rig where you really do get feelings and sensations in your avatar much matches your movements.
One, no spoilers, the very first thing that happens in this book is. The holiday, the main scientist slash wizard of the previous book that had created Oasis and all this kind of stuff it’s revealed to him that he was working on an even more advanced interface where it really is brain interface without having to drill holes in your head.
And so that simulated artificial reality immediately, he starts talking about look how cool this is. It’s not that I’m like when you go to, for a power up, you just get, a little charge of, but this, you can really taste the food, drink the wine, et cetera, et cetera. And of course, how addictive that be, you can record those things, then you, can you go?
And this has been, he even, it’s funny while he’s doing it. He’s also referencing what did holiday get some of these ideas from? Because of these movies that had predicted, right when Sterling talked about it. Gibson talked about it, the growth of cyberspace and what kinds of simulations and right.
, I think Dennis Miller is the guy that made a quote that I often use where he goes, and we really get artificial reality to be where, like any pipe fitter guy can dream of having Claudia Schiffer as a romantic partner, that’s gonna make crack look like Sanka. You know what I mean? That if you, that, if you really wanna be like, I can go surfing, I can go skydiving.
I can, all of course the love slash lust components of that, just all the experiences and what will that do when you’re addicted to that? You’re gonna not, you’re gonna do that instead of all your mundane life. And you’re gonna be like wow. If I can have that experience without the personal risk of standing on the edge of a volcano or jumping out of a plane, you really might get like the matrix where everybody’s just.
Sitting with a headset on and you’re like a human battery, you’re muscles of atrophy and I’m not far enough into the book to see that, but already some of the references are, it’s not only this great technology that allows for doctors to do their work everywhere to share experiences, but also the addictive nature of being able to have all that available to you and for so little cost and cetera,
[00:06:01] Stephen: et cetera, everyone will look like the the people on the cruise ship from Wally won’t be able to move.
And exactly,
[00:06:09] Alan: You’ve given up your physical life because Hey, the virtual life is so much better appealing
[00:06:15] Stephen: and it goes back to, you’ve heard. Your brain can’t distinguish the difference between fantasy and reality. So if you really had it fooled to the point where you had all the sensations, then isn’t that reality, which goes back to some of the supernatural stuff.
People are going around that we aren’t in a real world, that this is a matrix reality. This is a simulation,
[00:06:36] Alan: and this is our layer. You know what I mean?
[00:06:38] Stephen: Exactly. I was just reading like a hundred accounts people wrote in about, of glitches in the matrix that they’ve lived through and can’t explain. And some of ’em are like, okay, yeah, whatever that one you could explain.
But there were a few it’s wow, that’s a little bit freaky, and after reading so many of them, you kinda maybe we really are living in a matrix world. , I am somebody’s simulation.
[00:07:01] Alan: It, it’s funny, we know that our brains aren’t perfect. They don’t remember perfectly.
They do so much of. When you hear about amazing brain experiences like an an after death, but came back experience. I don’t have much belief cuz that’s what it takes in the supernatural, but I know that your brain is an amazing thing, but if it goes on tilt and your brain had odd electrical activity, what would it do to interpret that somehow so that you didn’t just go on tilt forever, shut down, right?
You’d say, oh, there was a white light and so much what I envisioned of heaven. Maybe that’s what I’m going to see because that’s what I had prepped my brain to do cetera, et cetera. So it that I’m waiting to see. One of the interesting things is that, of course there’s a limitation. You can’t wear this ring for more than 12 hours because it does overload your brain.
It overstimulates you. We’ll see, I. Not far enough into the book to see when they start to have those statistics of whole cyber cafes, full of husks of people who couldn’t come out of, this beautiful thing didn’t want to, you know what I
[00:08:03] Stephen: mean? Also, I I got two thoughts. So one, we’re still learning and exploring how time fits into.
The rest of the world, we still don’t quite understand time and how that works. And we do know that our brain can interpret time differently in different situations and circumstances, and we’ve all experienced it. Something that goes by in three seconds, but it, everything slows down.
We’ve all said that, right? Everything
[00:08:30] Alan: dilating speed up. Exactly. That’s right.
[00:08:32] Stephen: We know computers work much faster than we can, but if they were directly wired into our brain, how fast could they work? How many lives could you live before breakfast? Like the army, we do day, yeah.
[00:08:45] Alan: It’s I don’t know if I’ve made reference to this one of my favorite series from, wow. It must be 30 years ago now is the many colored land it’s by Julian may and it’s. The setting is we’re in the far future. And the world is perfect. It’s everybody gets fed. Everybody gets educated. It, everybody is peaceful, but even in this paradise, this utopia, there are some people that just don’t fit in.
They are too independent, too cantankerous, too criminal, whatever else it might be. And they’re I mean that, they’re what they’re given a choice to be lobotomized and be made to fit into this society. Or we can send you back through a warm hole to the place to see an epic of the earth, and you’ll be, you’ll have all the freedom that you want.
It just, isn’t gonna be anywhere near this world. It’s gonna be that proto earth, that early. So a number of them decide I need to be me, whatever. Odd doesn’t fit in me. And so that they go back to the earth. And of course this society that this thousands of misfits create, they’re all too smart and too criminal and too, how do they build something that’s gonna work when their instinct is to be either off on their own or to be abusive of others or whatever else it might be to be only an artist. I don’t care about the rest of the world. All I wanna do is paint. And so part of what they do in that series is we’re gonna send you back and we don’t, we’re still not wanting to condemn you to death.
If you’re just a, a. Modern person, nothing of how to plant a crop, how to churn butter, how to, fix a wound. So they have a technology where they can just give you lots of learning quickly. So that time dilation of you don’t need to go to college for four years and get all this likely they inject into you.
Okay. Now, all about wound care now, all about clean water and that kind of thing. So at if that kind of thing was available, I’d love that. Oh my gosh. I love to say I’m gonna go climb mountains. And I know that some part of it of course, is to be in shape and be able to do that, but to be able to learn quickly, here’s how to read a rock face and this looks secure and this does not, and how to wash weather patterns.
And I, I would love that fast learning and just load it
[00:10:50] Stephen: in, what mean you get those people that would learn. And still say, yeah, that’s not true. That’s false. They’re just trying to put their agenda on me or you’d get the hackers that would get in there and put their own little stuff in there to twist it and learn it.
So you just create the problems bigger. And, you mentioned something a minute ago and I’ve been thinking about this lately. I had an of course, another idea for a set of stories that I’m rethinking the words paranormal and supernatural because there’s too much baggage with them now. And I’ve been saying for a while that if you just take anything that’s paranormal as something, we just don’t understand sciencey yet.
It puts a different spin on it. And we’ve talked about that sometimes. Yeah. It goes along with the time issue too, but I’ve. Thinking after reading that Mitch glitch in the matrix stuff that maybe again, all these things we see that we, I think are paranormal are some science stuff that we’re getting close to learning and understanding totally puts a different spin on any of it.
Like shadow people. That’s one of the big things people I saw shadow person is just totally black look out at me. And it’s like, why are they always looking around corners? But maybe it’s it. You. We know there are other universes and dimensions. NASA has shown that maybe, these scientific sci-fi books are close to true.
We’re merging into one, there’s a weak spot. Maybe this is scientists
[00:12:20] Alan: in a, where they talk about that. This is a weak spot, a membrane between the universes can push through a little bit differently than if it was just very separate vibrational, planes, dimensions, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:12:30] Stephen: Yeah. Okay. So maybe in other places, scientists have discovered how to talk to the AR and we are like this close, so they’re monitoring us and that’s why we see more stuff going on because it’s really just how our universe and our brains interpret something elsewhere.
It’s that old. If a 2d world had a 3d hand, it would just look like five circles. It wouldn’t be, there you go. You know exactly. It’s how we’re interpreting it. So it, Colin rolls his eyes at me and I’m like, but. It’s science fiction. That’s how it works, people thought, oh, a communicator.
Yeah. Let’s see that work. Hello. We have cell phones,
[00:13:07] Alan: right, if anything, there’s great science fiction. That’s written just about that. That not only what do we extrapolate into the future, but if we here and the now we’re to think of going back to the 17 hundreds, what gods we would appear to be 1700, 1500 thousand, having a lighter, being able to make fire whoa.
And that, that’s almost the stereotype, the whole Indian nation would worship you down in, in ink land, if you could, if but there’s so much just, there’s a lot to be made of that kind of time displacement and how, if you take modern things and go backwards or forwards, they seem antiquated or they seem miraculous.
And we’re always doing that. We’re always moving forward or at. That’s our vision of time. What if it started to bend back on itself? There was many good books about that, that
[00:13:50] Stephen: And, again, if you can think about it, then how close to true it really is it, again, I always bring up star Trek about that.
How many things in star Trek are we now doing? Do we have and that it predicted or any other, I asked him off, of course you gotta bring up Asimov. He only wrote 4,000 stories. He had to get it right. Occasionally, but that’s the thing. It, we learn more, if you go back, like you said, 300 years, what science has changed, what do we know about the world that’s new and different from 300 years ago?
So what will it be in 300 years? So you, again, you can’t dismiss. If we say there are other universes we can detect you can’t dismiss that in 300 years, we’ll have figured out a way to travel to those and
[00:14:35] Alan: explain how to at least communicate with if not go forward. Yeah, exactly. Go into those things.
Exactly. That’s you know that again the star Trek thing, there’s so many how do you, what’s the, let’s see another great, let’s see. K one of the main designers of the first Macintosh has a great quote along the lines of the best way to predict the future is to create it. you know what I mean?
That you, and. Star Trek has many examples of that, that whatever they thought they were just writing. So that they’d have the easy way of doing quick medical diagnosis or quick transport with a teleport and stuff like that. Then someone sees that and goes, we really should strive for that.
That’s not only a great plot device. That’s what are the ideal world that would be to like eliminate distance or to, not and so we, we have, your the watch that I wear, how much of the function of a Tricor does that have it can watch my, my, watch out for atrial year old fibrillation, check my blood glucose, whatever kinds of things they’re trying to build into these things now.
And all those technological advances. I don’t think they’re only in a vacuum. I think there’s often people that were like, I wanna make a light Saer I saw star wars early, and it made such an impression on me that I wanna find a way to. Coherent light that, can cut through anything and all that kind of thing.
So it I love that idea that by just postulating what it could be like, we actually do create the future. Yeah. We just have to catch up to it. We have to develop the technology and make it real. And so every time I, I just read about, you can put a thing in your ear and it immediately translates between 20 different languages.
Isn’t that the baby
[00:16:08] Stephen: fiction fish , that was a comedy. Exactly.
[00:16:12] Alan: And honestly, I wonder how many things Douglas Adams, like in, in throwaway, in just making a parody of those McGuffin that are used in science fiction, but somebody said, it’d be great to have a able fish. It’d be great to have a food pill that could taste like anything you wanted and had all the nutrition that you needed.
I dunno I, we can jump around all the different con book and science fiction references where they said. It’d be great. If you start to have cyborg type things that expand your senses and now you’re finding out they have that this guy has an eye that not only replaces his poor eye, but might be better than the one we have it sees into more.
You know what I mean? More of a, it
[00:16:48] Stephen: sees further. And you don’t need, have a hole in the back of your head for people to look through did you have one of those?
[00:16:54] Alan: I really, I’m thrilled by this. I love the fact that it’s not only about fixing various different handicaps or whatever the modern term is so that I don’t offend anybody.
You know what I mean, different people, but that it’s actually enhancing when you see someone running on those cheaper blades and he’s running faster than a normal human being. Wow. They really did figure out how your joints work and how tensile strength can be stored in just the right bow shape so that it’s like.
Whatever shoes they have that have little Springs in them that make you run just that second faster. This is the next generation. Should they make you run three seconds faster? And I wonder we already, we’re gonna see in our lifetime my guess not only are we gonna lift the band on drugs for the Olympics.
We’re gonna see just a ban on every ban on everything lifted that you’re gonna start to have differently abled people competing. And if you’re really gonna be like, who’s the best athlete in the world, if it happens to be somebody that has cyborg limbs instead of a human being, and like all of a sudden pole vault debate be broken because someone has tens strength in their arms and a sense of balance run by, little microcomputers that are continually able to make sure that they don’t do a misstep.
I guess it’s gonna be like, are we gonna be robots competing with each other? They’re perfectly programmed to do it, but what’s be the discussion is no longer gonna be, Hey, did you blood dope or something like that? It’s gonna be what software version are we allowing to go? and that, there’s gonna be people that are gonna be hacking
[00:18:22] Stephen: themselves tolerance
[00:18:22] Alan: limits.
Yeah. To be able. I never get tired. I don’t get, I’m running a marathon, but I’ve enhanced my system so that the buildup of lactic acid, I’m just at 10% less and I win, and see, there you go. I’m looking forward to that. I really am looking forward to, maybe they’re gonna be a little bit odd looking, but when you see that this guy can.
40 feet instead of 36 in the lung jump. Wow. Why we did it? We figured out how to make a better than
[00:18:49] Stephen: human . There you go. It’s the geeks solve and figure out the problems but end up making more because who’s going to care and watch the Olympics. Who’s going to care and watch football and baseball when, okay.
Every single guy just got up to bat and they threw the ball at 300 miles an hour and they hit a three mile long run home run, who cares anymore, that’s just
[00:19:09] Alan: exactly what he programs that as opposed to he has the skill and the training. And he puts the time in, the dedication
[00:19:15] Stephen: into doing that.
And like you said, why would I want cracker heroin when I can put on my headset and live any life and world, I want cares about the drugs anymore. And now I’ve got other health issues and problems,
[00:19:27] Alan: this kind, there’s so much that goes into this, we’ve learned. Like how do we figure out what might give us better lung capacity?
There’s conditions right here on the planet that depending on, if you grow up at elevation, you do have better oxygen processing. You have a different kind of is it Aviola the air SAC in your lungs. They’re just that little bit better percentage. So why do the folks from Ethiopia and Kenya regularly win marathons?
Because they’re out running every day at elevation barefoot, and somehow that’s creating this better running machine, human machine obviously, we adapt and say what do we know about how you do scuba diving? And is there anything about that we could say, let’s give it to a swimmer, can we make ’em a sleeker, can we give ’em better lung capacity?
Can we change the joint? So that it’s a, there’s less friction, better range of motion. And that they’re, it’s very cool to, to me to think of those things. There’s a great book by called man plus. Wow. This is, I don’t even know that this is still in prince by Frederick poll. That was about those kinds of enhancements.
Science fiction has been talking about this for a long time. When you go, if you start to colonize the solar system and what are the real children of someone who lives on the moon or Jupiter or something like that, right? They’ve got different gravity, they’ve got different atmosphere. Are they?
What’s their body type. What’s their lung capacity. What’s their, how do they respond to solar activity when the atmosphere is different? It’d be very interesting. And of course, some of the books go into is that gonna make wild miraculous? The family of humanity is expanding everywhere or is it gonna be, oh, those Jupiter are not like us, and then there’s gonna be prejudice.
And they try
[00:21:01] Stephen: to, , I’ve said that before, too. Just like star Trek. When you go to other planets, you’re no longer from Ohio in the United States, you’re from earth and everybody’s from earth. Again, we’re solving that red prejudice and racist problem on our planet because we have other planets now, but we’ve created that racist and prejudice against other planets.
And I made that joke when all this was coming out with same sex marriage and all that. Sure. And I’m like, all, all we gotta do is wait, because right now that’s the problem. Oh, we don’t. Our son’s marrying each other. We didn’t want our daughters marrying each other. Okay. That’s not gonna be a problem when it becomes, oh no, you can’t marry a Martian Uhuh.
No, you gotta be an earthly. We don’t care what that’s right. As they’re from earth, what they look like or they’re gender, whatever. Just be from earth, not Mars. And then it’s going to be no. Someone from soul, not from alpha Centara you cannot date, absolutely. And then it’s other dimensions.
So again, just wait, the problem will go away and we’ll have a new problem,
[00:21:58] Alan: Or that it’ll be like, it’s not a problem. One of the, one of the absolute biggest things that rod and Barry put into there was that in the future, it really will be one race compared to the Klingons and their ulence and the, all the others that humanity will realize, no, we’re much more alike than different, in that galactic way, at least, that kind of thing. And so all that will fall away. When you look at the crew, of course, it’s, it’s not a matter of black and white and yellow and red and whatever else it might be. It’s a matter of ho they happen to have a Vulcan, at least a half Vulcan there.
And that in the various different series progresses, and it’s funny, one. Our conceits and star treks things was I don’t know why every single species in the unknown universe is BI that they’re all human shaped instead of, oh, this is my jello Glu friend, and this is my tentacle friend.
And kinda thing. This is my non-carbon based. He’s made from Silicon it, cetera, cetera. So it I love the fact that they said what we just talked about, that prejudice will fall away on earth because those differences will seem smaller and pettier and sillier compared to wow.
Someone that really grew up under a red sun instead of a yellow sun. And what does that mean for their physical composition? And why would we keep caring about appearance as much? If what’s getting us to the stars is not, do I have a bicep, but do I have a brain that enables that you’d think that’s gonna be the beauty of a person is what’s their mind, like not.
But having said that, how can we get away from that? We still want to breed human beings. Still find certain things attractive, male and female and other and, there’s all kinds of differentiation there as opposed to, I don’t know that thing of. We are wonderful creatures that there’s a thin layer, a thin veneer of civilization on top of all of our animal nature.
And so what’s star Trek is about territoriality about a, about wandering. It’s not only about creating a nice universe. It’s we’re still combative. We’re you know what I mean? You don’t get away from your animal nature at all fully
[00:23:57] Stephen: we just need to embrace Riker’s attitude. He slept with anybody from any planet.
He didn’t care. Exactly.
[00:24:02] Alan: I wonder what this would be like exactly.
[00:24:04] Stephen: That he’s the James Bond Jilo of space. So speaking of all this tech good news, I got my computer up and running off and running. Okay. I had no idea why I tore it down and tried each piece and put things back and I could not get it working.
So I took it to Microcenter. I said, you guys see if you can figure it out. I don’t know. And the tech called me and was talking, look, man, I told him what was happening. He’s okay. I’m going to take it a piece at a time. I’ll probably call you to keep you updated. Okay. And he called me back and said, okay, without touching anything, I checked all the connections and you’re right.
Everything’s plugged in correctly, but it’s not lighting up. And he’s I have no idea why. Okay. He, couple hours later, he calls back and says, okay, I tore it all down, put it all back. It’s running beautifully. He’s like everything passes. It’s good. He’s but I couldn’t tell you why. And I. Damn it
How weird is that?
[00:24:56] Alan: Yeah, so it’s good validation that you had done everything just as he would have done it, but it was just the act of taking it apart and reseeding
[00:25:03] Stephen: everything even more carefully,
[00:25:05] Alan: somehow that magic it, what, oh boy, I’m happy for you, but it’s frustrating to be like, now I know in case it goes on the fridge, what to do to
[00:25:14] Stephen: fix it.
yeah, exactly. That, but I’m like, eh, okay. At least I got a working system. Okay. And it’s fast. Oh my gosh. Is it fast? It boots in three seconds and that’s from a cold start and I have Thunderball abilities on the motherboard, so very good. Okay. Yeah.
[00:25:31] Alan: Cause that’s also 300, that. Number raw numbers never mean anything, but they’re proportionally, like this is three times faster, 10 times faster than what we used to getting with USB ABC or previous standard
[00:25:43] Stephen: and stuff like that. Yeah, it’s got USBC connectors too. Fantastic. 3.3 and then also USBC. So I, of course now I’m getting it all set up and , oh, great.
Windows set up. So now I have to download the updates. Now I have to do this. And I’m like, okay. I put something on I’m checking. Okay, great. I went back and come back. It’s it’s done. And I’m like, holy crap. How is that done already? It was just,
[00:26:05] Alan: yeah. It’s kind funny. We. Talking about this is kinda hot rod magazine type stuff, and yet I had that same impression when I first got my M one Mac mini and same thing was like, okay, let’s not only plug it in, but let’s make sure we do the system updates and things that used to be, go get a cup of coffee, 35 minutes later or something like that.
It was like, oh how, the connect connectivity is that much faster. It actually can make use of fast connectivity that I’ve always had in terms of my fiber to the home. But now that I’ve got the port and the cable and that all that happens the I run parallels to give me windows emulation on this guy.
And I keep my windows updated even more, not even more, but very consistently, like I do with the Mac because the windows is even more often attacked. You know what I mean? So whenever I run my updates and same thing, it was like, okay, I’m gonna set this to go here and then I’ll go do something else and then we’ll start it.
It distracted me by telling me it’s already done. I was okay over here for a while. so it’s cool. When technology advances quickly enough that it’s noticeable. So many things are, evolutionary, incremental advances, but once in a while, there’s the combination of all those things. It’s wow, I’m impressed.
And I’ve been doing this for 40 years. You know what I mean? How did it make it so that. love that. I’m very happy for you that it was such a, me too, a fast thing. There’s like a new experience. It revives your hope in, in, in technology that like, wow, they could really do something that impressed me.
Cause I thought I was getting jaded,
[00:27:30] Stephen: and I upgraded, I got a 32 inch like curved wraparound screen. Very cool. So if I really want, I could take these two monitors, put ’em up on the side and then I got my racing set up. I just gotta get my steering wheel and stuff from
[00:27:45] Alan: micro next, where it actually goes to the limits of your peripheral vision.
So really 3d surround, that
[00:27:50] Stephen: kinda, they have a nice, I have, sorry they have a nice racing rig to do that at Microcenter right now, set up that you can.
[00:27:58] Alan: okay. I, at home, I have my two big monitor set up. I’ve never gone three because it just, there’s a little overhead of splitting the signals so you can do it.
And then it’s one screen, but extended instead of separates anyway. But when I have been up here in California, a week out of each month for the last eight months now, I was working off my laptop. And after the first two months, I was just so much missing the screen real estate and the ability to have multiple things that I can glance at.
So I’m keeping track of my net presence, my email, my, my goofing off, whatever else it might be. So I went and got a nice HP screen. I kinda like type in, Hey, best cheap, large monitor and stuff like that. And this HP four, I think mine’s 24 inches, not 32, but it’s so nice to have that extra thing for, I can keep my calendar up.
I can keep all my stuff that I really want to have at my fingertips. Cause a lot of what I’m doing out here is not it’s nowhere near single purpose. I really am continually. Making phone calls or emails or texts that I’m looking to get answers back from. And I want to re keep all that going and doing that where you’re flipping amongst windows on a little screen, instead of being able to glance amongst things.
I just work better as if I’m looking at an entire newspaper and picking which article I wanna read instead of paging through single pages. And then when I wanna go back to the one that was three pages ago, it just seems. Cluttery instead of EAs easy instead of efficient. So I very much understand the joy of the large screen.
[00:29:24] Stephen: Yes. And I remember back in the day, my commander, 64, a 12 inch tube TV that I used, not right, but
[00:29:34] Alan: that was like, miraculously, where am I gonna do with all this space?
[00:29:38] Stephen: yeah. And one of the cool things, there’s always updates things going on, especially the browsers they’re always competing, but edge just added the ability to take all your tabs and put ’em down on the left and then it collapses
[00:29:49] Alan: instead of a bar.
See, that’s cool too.
[00:29:51] Stephen: Exactly. Yeah. And I’m finding that’s working pretty good. I like how that does that. Cause I always have tabs open, yeah. Yeah.
[00:29:57] Alan: If it’s also I don’t get how people really run their life off of their phone. It just is not enough for me. You know what I mean? if that’s what you grew up with, I, and this is, I.
Just read an interesting article and you and I have laughed about it. That what technology is good, appropriate. It’s pretty much, was it around when I was born or soon thereafter? Or is it like, what you grow up with is familiar and things newer than that, like a lot newer, oh, that’s witchcraft, that’s bad and things.
A lot older. Oh, that’s antiquated. That’s crap. And I try not to be like that. I watch black and white movies. I use both my phone and my laptop and my desktop rig, I think interchangeably, but I know I have my preferences and I don’t think it’s only based on speed. It really is based on what did I’ve always liked more room because my mind works better when I can glance at various different things and choose where to turn my focus instead.
You’ve seen I see people that really quickly flip through things and they have that wonderful little flip, flip, flip that they’re looking at things and deciding, what do I wanna look at next? And this thing of flipping instead of glancing is much more natural instinctive. It’s how they first learn.
So they, it doesn’t even get in their way. They don’t consider it to be a downside like I do. And yet, I don’t know when I, Hey, someone made a huge movie that they’re gonna show in a movie theater and somehow scaling that down to this big. Yeah. And that seemed like unfair. Like the movie doesn’t want you to see it that way.
He wants you to have the big rumbling speaker experience of it instead of no matter how good the speakers are getting in a phone, they can’t rumble your chest. You know what I mean? That’s physics.
[00:31:36] Stephen: Until you put the haptic feedback into your brain on, and then you exper you’re living the movie, speaking of black and white. Did you see the stuff that Disney and Marvel and star wars dropped all the trailers and announcements
[00:31:49] Alan: and stuff behind because I’ve not been paying attention to that. I’m out here taking care of getting moving pods and getting realtors.
[00:31:56] Stephen: okay. Can I drop one on you?
And and ruin the surprise. Yeah. Next month for Halloween they are releasing on Disney plus a black and white wear Wolf by night movie. Wow. Yeah. Boom. That’ll
[00:32:11] Alan: be, that’ll be very interesting to, to recreate that hammer horror experience. How scary can you get in black and white?
And honestly, if you’re gonna have like, where wolfs ripping people apart, one of the things you do is don’t show red. You know what I mean? It’s black and white. It’ll just be that much less. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. That was like very well kept secret. I’ve not heard a whi a whisper about that being a possibility,
[00:32:35] Stephen: but you know what that really means.
It is really time to sell that comic. A Colin said it, it shot up. So I,
[00:32:46] Alan: I, I think I mentioned, it quick shout out. I use collectors with the Z software that I’ve mentioned before and the source that they were using for their comic values stopped letting them use their API. Yeah. So they shopped around maybe a little bit in desperation because there’s no way that software would be able to survive without providing current values.
And now they have them coming and I don’t why it’s blanking on the name, but that’s happening this. And I, after having probably five months now doing with, I had values in there, but they were still frozen from what I had been at when that API became unavailable. Right now, we’re gonna start to get values again.
And it used to be nice to see various different things jockey for position as to, is it my amazing fantasy number 15? Is it my doctor? Stranges because the multi madness came out and you’re right. WOL by night is one of those perfect combinations of it isn’t even world by night is not in world finite.
Number one, it first appeared in like Marvel spotlight, number five or something like that. So anytime you have an unheralded origin, everybody buys the number ones, but if you got a tryout book, you don’t know whether it’s gonna be hammers slammers, which didn’t make it, or whether it’s gonna be war by night, which did, and same with moon night appeared in where was by night number 24, 28, something like that, and then got his own title and then was an incredible help magazine as a backup feature, which is like what, where, how, why but said that it’s very cool then to be like because I was a completist I wasn’t trying to buy only the number ones I bought everything.
And then by coincidence to find out yep. That guardians of the galaxy that was really in Marvel superheroes, number 20 it’s scarce. And now it’s valuable because everybody wants the first appearance. And I might that, it’s nice to see those things just skyrocket in value because all the market forces.
Are working in my favor. The movies coming out, everybody loves it. It, I dunno, the moon night series was really good. So sometimes I don’t know, she Hulk attorney by law, I dunno that it’s getting any new converts. It’s entertaining and amusing, but it’s not breakthrough entertainment.
Yeah. It’s not bringing that character to the public in a way that I wanna be, I wanna have every sheet hook, so sometimes it works and sometimes it actually Morbius is not flying off the shelves because of the Morbius movies. You know what I
[00:35:01] Stephen: mean, movie people, right? The people that enjoy, she HOK wouldn’t necessarily enjoy moon night.
Oh, I agree. Very different audience. They figured out that they have different audiences and they’re trying to get different audiences. And the people that would watch she hog probably may not even realize there’s a comic or care, but the people that watch moon night did that’s, my yeah.
Yes. As to why, but they’re trying to do what’s right for their shows.
[00:35:26] Alan: I agree. The fact that Marvel is candy enough to say we can’t have that. Every single comic book is about saving the universe. , the Avenger always built up to who’s the big, bad it’s gonna BEOS or Kang or Tron. And some things are like the scope of the comic book for dare was fighting crime and hell kitchen.
It isn’t galactic level type stuff. And the, she Huk there was a really, I thought it was a great breakthrough in comic books, Dan slot, if I remember right, took over, she Huk and it really did have a much lighter tone, a humorous tone. It broke the fourth wall. It did all many of the things. I’m pretty, I’m certain that’s what the TV version is based on Stan slots version compared to the tragic, oh no, she got an infusion from the Hulk and now she’s trapped being a Hulk as well.
Who wants to be a Hulk if you’ve seen the rampages that he’s going on, but she’s level headed enough. She retains her smarts when she turns into the Hulk there’s you know and I don’t know. It, I think that Marvel said, Hey, we want to have some gritty urban stuff and lactic stuff. And how about a romcom?
How about a, yeah. How about a kid version? You know what I mean? They’re inhabiting the market, every facet of that, because they sure have enough comic books that have done that. Spiderman was not always dead serious. It was often goofy as well as serious. And in fact, its ability to switch between those is one of the things that made the overall book and multiple series, so appealing.
You had all that, okay.
[00:36:52] Stephen: So there’s a lot coming out the secret invasion with fury cuz that’s where Bruce banner went.
[00:36:57] Alan: And that’s really gonna be like a spice for, it’s not gonna be a lot of leotards and colorful costumes. It’s gonna be, you’re dealing with the Menae that is shapeshift or sneaky.
Yeah. And you’re finding out that they’ve penetrated further than you
[00:37:08] Stephen: ever imagined that they could. Yes. What
[00:37:10] Alan: do you do as the guy who’s supposed to be in charge of not letting this happen? Yep. How do you hold
[00:37:15] Stephen: the line? And speaking of Daredevil, they released the the logo and, announcement for that coming with Charlie Cox and okay.
So yeah, there’s a whole lot, you did just read
[00:37:24] Alan: some reference so that it’ll be very much, his battle was the king pin. If I remember right. And it’s season four. It, I’m looking forward to that because why am I missing his name there? Guy who plays the king pin does it so well.
Oh,
[00:37:37] Stephen: Vincent theof Frio.
[00:37:39] Alan: DEO. Exactly. Theof Frio. So I’m so much a good hero is only because he’s got great villains and I just I just read someone who’s gonna play Luthor next on the Titans. And it’s someone that I didn’t immediately, I don’t know that I’ve ever been convinced by a Luther, maybe the Luther in Smallville, young
[00:37:58] Stephen: Luther.
Oh, he was fantastic. Lo
[00:38:01] Alan: and villainist not even villain, but like amoral, so some of that, but like gene Hackman a little bit over the top Jesse Eisenberg didn’t scary like Luther, should you know what I mean? So I’m I don’t why I’m blanking out, but it was someone that was like, okay, could that work?
We’ll see. It’s a name actor. We’ll see, just I don’t know the villain in moon night, Easton, Hawk, Easton, Hawk has gotten. Better and better at not being a team star, but being a real actor. You know what I mean? There’s all kinds of in, in the bra pack. You, yeah, there’s all kinds of brat pack people that, that have grown up just saw some photo where it was like, here’s the guys from fast times at Ridgemont high and you would never have thought that Sean Penn, this OV would turn into an actor instead of just a burnout , cause they were acting back then too.
You know what I mean?
[00:38:44] Stephen: Anyway, yeah. So a lot of good stuff for you when you get done. And we were talking a couple weeks ago about our clued up and for the second year in a row, we have to pass on it, but that’s so good that they allow you to defer it. That’s so great. That’s a that’s, you were talking about the sun or hotel and the bad customer service, these clued up games, that’s customer service for you.
[00:39:05] Alan: Yeah. Yeah. And it’s funny online. I had actually done this, but let me. Give Saunder some grace, the place was really nice when we were there in Philadelphia. It was really a great you’re gonna be in a city for a week. It’s really nice to have space, a working kitchen, not just a hotel room it’s much an upgrade from that.
And whatever that thing was of my having pre bought it, and then not being able to change it. As I’ve said before, I, I don’t mean to be unfair to them at all the contract, if you will. This thing really says, this really is the reason that you’re getting this little bit of discount is cuz it’s set in stone and they don’t care about your.
Personal circumstance or business circumstance, none of that matters. You made the
[00:39:43] Stephen: deal. And to be fair to them, a lot of places do that and they say it up front. The flights are like that, and other hotels do it too. Do you wanna pay now? Or later if you pay now you get a discount, but if you cancel, you get less back.
Oh. And you can get protection. They do offer that protection. That’s right. They extra for, so it’s how the world works. Yeah, you’re right. Be fair to them. And I’m glad you enjoyed the hotel.
[00:40:07] Alan: I did. In fact we, I think I mentioned we had already made another reservation. We’re going to the dress for laughs festival at the end of this month, up in Toronto and got another Saunder there because they just look so great.
There are a beautiful, older building that outfitted, but to have better wifi and better security and all that kind of stuff. And the location can’t be beat, we really are. Two minutes from one of the club that’s gonna be having shows we’re 10 minutes from 10 different restaurants around us.
So instead of being out of the city and taking the train in each day and then having to like, count on don’t miss the last train out, cause that’s gonna be an expensive live last
[00:40:40] Stephen: train to Clarksville, exactly.
[00:40:43] Alan: Leaving at. So I’m hoping that this will be much the same experience as we had in Philadelphia.
And it wasn’t cheap, you know what I mean? You pay for all that convenience, but I’m hoping that just that by not having to pay for the other hotel, the parking the train trips in and stuff like that, and the experience, it’s also like our 20th anniversary, it’s coming up on the person this month.
And so sometimes you just get a little goofy and say, let’s make this just right. Let’s you know, usually Kelly and I are very good about finding the sweet spot of economy without being cheap and nice without being extravagant. And this time we might have tipped towards the nicer, because we really want to have.
I know it’s been a stressful year, taking care of mom and dad’s stuff and yeah. And fragmenting my life to be out here a week, then that means I’m not with Colleen for a week, each month. We never would’ve imagined our life would be like that. I’m not a traveling salesman. I’m not a military guy that I go stationed somewhere else for a while.
And yet the circumstances have necessitated this. Yeah. So this will be a nice getaway week for the two of us seeing all this comedy and what we love to do, Hey, we’re going to Toronto, let’s get some maple syrup and some P meal bacon. You know what I mean? We’re gonna, we’re gonna Canadian it up.
Tim Hortons. Here we go.
[00:41:56] Stephen: Tim Horton. Yeah, Ohio. So I was looking last night. You mentioned a movie a while back. I wanna hear about it, a gray man, which I haven’t watched yet. But before you do, I was flipping through last night. And there’s a show out with Stallone called Samaritan where he’s an, a superhero from long ago, but he wants to bring his party.
Basically, he looks like steel. When Superman split, he looks like steel and it looks a lot like steel, me and Colin agreed, but I liked it because it’s one of many movies I’ve seen lately where they’re focusing on the characters and heroes and stuff, being older crowd, it’s not always the young twenties, Salo 75 or something like that.
And he in a superhero. So I think there’s a definite trend in our stories, books and movies, especially to an older crowd, which of course appeals to me nowadays. Stallone’s a superhero, but you mentioned gray man a while back. And that’s been on my short list to go watch cuz when I get the time tomorrow, it’s like Joe’s crab Jack free crab tomorrow.
I’m gonna have time tomorrow. I’ll watch it. so what’s great, man.
[00:43:06] Alan: Like I really did like it, Ryan Goling and Chris Evans are the two combating at. Former assassin and current like replacing him in that position, but there it’s, it was fast moving and lots of surprises, but none where it was like, oh, that makes no sense.
It really was very good. Spycraft and locals and all that kind of stuff inspired me enough to go seek out the gray man books by mark Guerney and I’m now I’ve just ed, the second one while I was here in California. And one of those things where I like ’em enough, that’s let’s buy all 10.
You know what I mean?
[00:43:35] Stephen: I committed, they got good deals on Kindle for that nowadays in a serious it’s.
[00:43:40] Alan: I, I probably should be carrying a Kindle and then not having books with me. And yet we’d let Colleen my laugh about this all the time. That experience of just like relaxing for the last half hour of a day in bed with a book on your chest.
I just can’t, it can’t be improved.
[00:43:55] Stephen: It can
[00:43:55] Alan: be, it’s not that much worse on akin to or anything like that. Is it, cause I like the smell of paper, is it because I like the form factor of a paperback,
[00:44:04] Stephen: what you were saying about the technology, that’s the technology when you were born and grew up, so it’s hard to get away from it, exactly.
[00:44:11] Alan: And this is, I know we’ve talked about this, but and Colleen kinda like she’s looking forward to seeing this come true. Like I am it’s I not only have lots of stuff. I have been like a real bug about condition all of my life. And so when you look at my doc savages, my James bonds, my gray mans, they look like, I just took ’em off the bookshelf at the bookstore, but they’re 50 years.
And so when I find my audience, not the eBay crowd, but. Collector crowd. They’re gonna be like, man, how do you have the many colored land in perfect condition? Because I read ’em without pushing it all the way back and cracking the spine. And I don’t read ’em while I’m eating Cheetos and getting orange fingerprints on each page.
I have always been careful because I love seeing things lined up on the shelf, looking beautiful instead of looking kind of rag tag. You know what I mean? So I got so much stuff like that now is getting made into movies finally, but I got the original version of the star wars, the when star Trek, the series was continued by James Bush and then they actually started star Trek, the animated series into books.
I got all those and doesn’t have to be everybody in the world cares about that. But the people that really love those things and would love to have a perfect copy. I’m the guy that might be able to command a for not only my comic books, but for my paperbacks and nobody ever thinks that paperbacks pocket books have any kind of value, except for that particular niche.
They want all the doc savages, they want all the shadows and the Avengers and G eight and his battle ages, ACEs. And I just I hope that story is real. I hope that it really is that I find either through the mail or of course on the net and at a conference. Wow. I want to get people going, wow.
I have not seen a copy as pretty as this in my entire life. It’s , I just be such a grinner I’ll be so happy that all that love paid off and not paid off even in money, but just to find someone else to appreciate it to. So it goes to a good home.
[00:46:11] Stephen: Yeah, absolutely. You know what I mean?
[00:46:12] Alan: That’s part of being a collector is you want it to be that this piece of history is maintained and instead of selling it to a museum, you’re gonna give it to another collector who hopefully will love it.
Like I did. Yep, absolutely. I dunno what that is in your DNA that makes you like that, that some people are maintainers in that way, but I definitely am one. I think it’s a beautiful thing to see something past the test of time. And not get, get and get like still this beautiful still is preserved.
There’s something really cool about that. Yeah.
[00:46:41] Stephen: Right. yeah. I just picked up some mad magazines at Harville flea market the other day that were in super good condition, and guy two for five bucks, I’m like, yeah, of course they were the super specials, also, not just a regular issue. You
[00:46:55] Alan: know, that’s very cool.
Especially they still have the stickers or the, they
did.
[00:46:59] Stephen: That’s why I, the
[00:47:01] Alan: postcard. Do you find that? That’s cool. I remember one time ago at a Chicago ComicCon. Going through. And what back when I had wishlist on paper and would go through various different things. And I found like a box under the table that was full of mad that were, I think I started collecting with maybe number 1 32 or something like that, mid sixties.
And he went back lots of stuff between 100 and them. And so then I’m, one of those weird things, when, as a kid, you think you’re playing it cool of so how much do you want for these and inside you’re going like oh God, I need these books. It was very funny. And it actually was one of my first like bizarre experiences where we bargained, we haggled, we got to a price cuz I was buying so many and he was happy.
I don’t know how long they had sat in his box, but not that people have not always been as avid about mad magazines. They are about comic books in general. So I got treasure and he got the money that he wanted and I just. Floating around because I had found so many mat in one place that I needed. And then, it’s wow, I just expanded my list.
So that I’m like from 100 on, instead of one 30, it was just the coolest experience. Again, collectors get that the rest of the world is like, what are you talking about? It’s a kids
[00:48:11] Stephen: magazine. Yeah, exactly. And is,
[00:48:13] Alan: Oh I’m sure there’s been any number of times when you’re trying to not let on that.
You really want this thing, but you don’t wanna pay through the nose for it. Colin you’re reading each other.
[00:48:23] Stephen: What I mean? Colin is so good at finding stuff at the flea Mart, he found a limited edition whatever, but it was the 1960s, Batman utility belt, and it was a replica. And they, I guess they sold.
Brand new. They were 50 bucks, but they’re going for like a hundred, hundred 50 and he got it for 60. So he was just, and it was in the box still. So not
[00:48:50] Alan: like had been worn and played with some dirt ground into it and stuff like that. That’s interesting. Wow. Wow.
[00:48:56] Stephen: no, he is good at rooting that stuff out.
Let me tell you so gray, man’s gonna be on my list to watch and read. I guess the game
[00:49:03] Alan: of Thrones prequel is really good. Think I . Cause George Martin is more involved. Matt Smith is fantastic in it.
[00:49:13] Stephen: Yeah. Okay. So I tried watching game of Thrones and I could not get into it. I tried several times. I’m like, okay, it’s just not clicking with me.
I’m not gonna force myself. I said, but let me try the books cuz Martin’s huge. And fantasy, I couldn’t really get into the books. I was like, and it’s kinda like the born books. I couldn’t get into those Ludlow. Okay. I was like, eh, these just aren’t clicking with me. Okay. But I was like, okay.
Game of Thrones dragons. It’s I didn’t watch the other. And then I’m like Matt Smith. Oh. Damn it, Matt Smith is in it. Now I’m about to watch it. You got a doctor who
[00:49:48] Alan: pedigree. I have follow him.
[00:49:50] Stephen: he’s my doctor. He’s my favorite. Okay. So I watch a lot of, and he’s been a bad guy, a lot lately
[00:49:57] Alan: movie, he in the Mor movie, he was a bad guy.
And in this, I’ll tell you he’s written perfectly. He’s not a bad guy. He’s actually he’s merciless and he’s aggressive, but he has love for his family. And in some cases he’s been hard done by his family. He’s being passed over to become the next king. He’s being asked to do all the dirty work.
So everybody else can keep their hands clean. You know what I mean? It’s like his there’s you keep expecting him to turn and say, that’s too much. I won’t do it, but he loves his sister. He loves his father, his brother. It, it is brother. That is the current team. And so it’s very interesting take on that kind of like family loyalty that I don’t know he, but he’s wonderfully menacing and especially he’s I can see him in the role of Elrick.
I don’t know how much, if Michael MoCo works, but Elrick is, he’s a an ALB very slender, just the opposite of Conan a brawler, a big,
[00:50:49] Stephen: just a mountain muscular, which Elrick was in a Conan comic.
[00:50:52] Alan: Exactly. That’s Smith has that. He’s not dangerous because he’s gonna, punch you into a wall.
He’s dangerous because he’s gonna like knife you 10 times before you can move he’s so like razor dangerous. And they capture that, that the way he fights is very efficient and quick. And, before you can even think of how you put up with their fans, he’s got that thing.
I’ll put your, you know what I mean? So
[00:51:14] Stephen: I dunno, I may check it out. I added to my list. Martin
[00:51:19] Alan: is more involved in these than he was the last couple seasons of the game of Thrones thing. It was more the show runners that were doing it because they. Digressed Martin was, they got to the end of Martin’s books.
And then they continued this series without him having completed this series in print. And I don’t think he’s divorced himself from it, but you could tell he just was not as involved. He said, here’s my baby do with it, what you will, as opposed to he produced certain episodes. And I think he was executive producer and show consultant, but this it’s much more based on fire and ice, the pre wheel book.
And I think he’s seemingly more heavily involved because all that stuff about how many of our favorite characters or we’re gonna see die early, how many, like his really good about, there’s not a big, bad and a big, good there’s 10 different factions competing for territory and magic and influence.
And is it gonna be by power or by sex or by, by information by it. There’s, he’s really good at just having. What it must have been like during the first of game of Thrones is much based on the war of the roses and all of that court intrigue. And I, what did we go back before that it’s very much based on, there’s always been too many European houses vying for advantage.
Who’s got the Armada, who’s got the army, who’s got the spine network. Who’s got the ninjas, if you will. And he’s just really good at who’s gonna win. You don’t know. , it’s very good. Nice. I’m entertained each episode. I hope that you like them as far,
[00:52:46] Stephen: Okay. It’s almost fall. It is fall and winter coming up, that’s more screen, time, more game plan and stuff.
And because I bought an Xbox X a while back, I have to have a game pass with it. It’s just part of the deal, which is a good deal. If you look at it, the cost is actually cheaper this way, but one of the games they put on there is back for blood. I don’t know if you’ve heard of this newer one. I have not.
I kinda like I can play it on the Xbox, but I can now play it on my new computer with the three screen back for blood is made by the same people that did left for dead. So it’s a cooperative against the HS and okay. My cousin has game pass, so I’m like, okay, we’re we’re down for, back for blood this winter.
We’re gonna be going out and shooting a whole world to
[00:53:35] Alan: explore all kinds of people to kill. Okay.
[00:53:38] Stephen: Yeah. I don’t have you played left for? I have not. I
[00:53:43] Alan: I’m not the Xbox guy and I don’t know if it’s available for all platform. It’s on steam. If it’s not that I. Okay then I will look into
[00:53:50] Stephen: it, it’s it just so you know, it’s not so much a single player game.
They do have, you can play through it single player. It really is a four person co-op and that’s the best way to experience it. Okay. And it’s simple. It, you start here, you’re trying to get here and kill everything in between and trying to help each other stay alive. There’s no competition there’s no.
Any of that, like some of the DC deck boat or where yeah. We’re all working together, but I’m trying to get more points than you are. It’s all right. Let’s all get to the safe house. When
[00:54:19] Alan: we finally going to betray each other, as opposed to no, stay a team all the way through.
[00:54:23] Stephen: That’s the thing.
If somebody dies, they’re not just out of the game, they just put ’em a little ways ahead in a safe room and you have to go let ’em out to save ’em and they just keep going. So it really does want you to cooperate. I’ve had some really good fun experience, game experiences with that because you’re talking to your friends, you’re trying to get through and it’s horror.
So you get scared or something you get lost. You’re like, oh, and everyone’s screaming and stuff. , the only other time I’ve had that good of an co-op experience was with doom and me and my brother-in-law would play doom and just, there’s a lot of bonding, a lot of fun times, so yeah, I’m really hopeful back for blood captures left for that.
They did evolve a couple years ago. It was the same company. Most of the same people, it was co-op you were hunters against, Kaiju essentially. Okay. But they did some things missteps and it never caught on and just failed really quick, whereas left for dead. There’s still communities that play it so
[00:55:20] Alan: interesting.
Okay. You know what it’s honestly, kinda embarrassed confession. I have never done things team wise in all the various different online, the big orgs, et cetera. I just. Most of the time when I play, it’s kinda like at 11 o’clock at night when I’m done with all the things I’m responsible for the day, and this is my way of blowing off steam or I’m colleagues gone for the weekend.
I’m like, what am I gonna do fall into civilization for 12 hours with a little trucker friend next to me. So I don’t have to I love that some people have that experience of, Hey, Tuesday night is game night in world of Warcraft. Don’t disturb me from seven to 10 because me and my party are going in and they got, and they’re not even, same town.
They’re like, they’ve met friends and
[00:56:03] Stephen: joined. We played in college, the
[00:56:05] Alan: world, so just that one when it’s seven, o’clock her time, it’s three in the morning. Somebody else’s time. And yet, I don’t know, I’m not a, an antisocial guy, but my habits for doing that have always not lent myself to Tuesday night’s world and Warcraft night.
Yeah. It really might be that I need to do that. I just need to go in and if I. I don’t know I’m gregarious enough and I’m pretty sure that if I don’t know anybody after a while, I’d be like, Hey, can I join your party? I’m not a jerk. I know enough. I got some cool, armor and stuff like that.
I would hope that I’d be acceptable, not just a pu that they’re gonna carry along because I’m,
[00:56:39] Stephen: I’m pretty sure it’s cross platform. So if I convince my cousin to play it, I’ll let you know. And if you wanna join in sometime if you wanna get the game and check it out and we could all party, I would love to at least,
[00:56:51] Alan: least try.
And then we’ll see, just that have patience with me because I really, oh, I’m not experienced at having the headset on, so much boy, when we used to play Playto games at university of Illinois and they really weren’t necessarily, some were interactive not Orhan. It doesn’t matter. Some were solo and maybe that’s where I got my solo habits, but some were very interactive and you, they, you would have to physically get together because the transport rolled, the chatter back and forth was not as good as being in the same room. And the guy saying, okay, arm, we’re going in, this is the frost giant.
So we’re gonna use flame weapons. And usually there was a good leader that knew all that, and they had all kinds of macros, key set, things loaded so that instead of having to do shift three, four, it was ready to go with the firewalls or whatever else it might be. So I never found a good posse like that.
The one time I was in, I was like two years behind them and they all graduated and what do I do now? , it was I would love to have that experience cuz I’ve never, since the days of D and D in high school, and of course you were all sitting around the table right.
And enjoying it together. I’ve been a Herman about it. And I. Maybe cuz I do so many other things in a social way that was bear with me. Cause I hope you don’t mind. Just why do you do that Al you know what, because I really have a thing where I’m most of the time faster thinking ahead of what the world is doing and not only in gaming, but in almost everything.
And once in a while, what I really need is to not. So there’s joy in being with your friends. What I need is to be able to just take this big kind of crazy stallion of the brain out for a run where it doesn’t have any encumbrance and sometimes encumbrances people as well as the games. Yeah. So sorry if that sounds arrogant, but there must be other people that have that, that just, you don’t want to be cooperating with dependent on working with anybody else.
You just want to do it. And then unfortunately, that can become its own habit. Maybe even an addiction of the need for speed. You know what I mean? I need to get my brain into an SST, not a fucker.
[00:58:54] Stephen: and me and my cousin we definitely have a good time. Talk a lot of smack against each other. of course we like racing games too, but there’s a big argument between us.
So his wife, Pam, I just call her cousin, Pam. I’ve known her more of my life than not, but we play need for speed. And now need for speed is an arcade racer. So the idea is not the physics, aren’t all accurate there. You wanna win, you wanna race, no weapon, race, just racing.
There are versions with some weapons, but anyway, So in the game, they have shortcuts and you can take shortcuts if you find them. They’re not always obvious and I’m not as good a racer as them. They have spent way more time racing on the Xbox than I had. game mechanics
[00:59:40] Alan: down, perfectly finding out where
[00:59:41] Stephen: everything is.
Absolutely. So a lot of times when I’m racing, I’ll take a shortcut and it’s still keeps me behind, but at least I’m closer. And Pam is always on me. No, you don’t take shortcuts. That’s not racing. That’s cheating, man. I’m like, why do they cheat game? Then I’m like, if you want a SIM racer, we’ll go play Fortza, that’s a SIM racer.
And believe me, you’re not going to enjoy Fortza cuz the physics are very. Tight and accurate to the cars, so right. And
[01:00:07] Alan: you’ll spin out half the time until you get used to here’s how you really accelerate.
[01:00:12] Stephen: You put on all the cheat things that help you steer and all that. But that’s cheating as much as doing the shortcut.
[01:00:18] Alan: I’m curious, just that if you guys start to do the, not love for dead the back for blood and are looking to just let me get in. Absolutely. I hope I don’t spoil the experience for you guys. You know what I mean?
[01:00:29] Stephen: Trust we totally get the, this is more about hanging out and having fun than being super good.
And a lot of these. Compensate. So when you have really good players, that really I don’t wanna say bad players, but not as good a players, that it doesn’t harm the overall team. We like to play Titan fall a lot, and we do a base defend thing and stuff, and we’re chatty. It’s okay, you go over here and I see some coming and, oh, I’m dead.
And, but these games bring you back and you jump back in. So I could die 10 times and I’m still shooting, I don’t kill as many zombies or robots or whatever. But we’re having a good time. And again, at the end, eh, we don’t remember how many times people die. They may not remember precisely.
It’s okay, we’ll play Titan fall. So how many times do you think Steve will die this time? but that’s part of the game. That’s our kid and fodder out there. Exactly. Yeah. So again no worries about that. Trust me. Your skills will be definitely good enough for us. Okay. And the game sounds way fun.
So I might play it a little bit this week. If I get some time just to see how you know, okay. This is good. Let’s do it. Okay. So we’ll let know on that. All hey, it is getting late. I do have to busy day here. I got,
[01:01:42] Alan: I got things to do before we okay. Yeah. A pleasure. We’ll see you in I, so I’m, let’s.
Next Tuesday might be actually I’m flying out on late Tuesday night. So we’ll be able to do the podcast during the day and I’ll see you in a week then. Yep. See you Wednesday
[01:01:59] Stephen: then. Very cool. All right. Later or Tuesday, whatever we’ll text we’ll figure. So out
[01:02:04] Alan: all, we are always need to get ahold of.
All right. Yeah, take care.
[01:02:07] Stephen: Bye bye. This has been the relentless geekary podcast. If you enjoy our conversation, please subscribe on your favorite podcast app and go give us a review, give us some likes. It would help a lot. Check out our website, relentless geekary.com, where we have links to our Facebook page.
Join the conversation and go check out our YouTube page, where we have the video of this and other episodes.
