Episode 72 - Scary Story Time - Relentless Geekery

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Episode Overview

It is October, and that means horror movies! And to make it geeky – a company just ran a big study to find out what the scariest movies are.

https://financebuzz.com/get-paid-to-watch-scary-movies

http://Based on the study, these were the scariest movies: https://besttoppers.com/sinister-scientifically-scariest-movie-ever/

Do you like horror movies? Tell us below. Have you watched the Twilight Zone Season 4 Episode 4 “He’s Alive”?

Interested in finding out about some horror movies you may not have heard about? Check out Stephen’s other podcast Horror Lasagna.

There is some tech talk, especially about Google Drive and whether Microsoft is slowing down processing power to push people to buy Windows 11. Google drive seems to spike the CPU even if it doesn’t seem to be uploading files.

We do share some of our secrets to being expert geeky IT.

Finally, we talk about Marvel’s “What If”. If you haven’t watched it, you should. There is some setup for upcoming MCU, but how much of it is really tied to the movies?

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Transcript

I know Zen caster has been updating a lot. They’ve added. The video earlier this year, and you can choose record video record only audio watch video, multiple options, but now they’ve added transcriptions, which I think is really cool. Okay.

[00:00:49] Alan: Automatic transmission, but yeah, regression tests when you push new features, you gotta make sure your old features don’t.

[00:00:57] Stephen: Oh that’s true. And I used Zencaster [00:01:00] yesterday and it was fine. And I didn’t use zoom. I’d have found if I use zoom, I have to reboot or Zencaster, doesn’t pick up my audio, but I haven’t used zoom for weeks. Okay. So I’m going to ramp from a, we talk a lot tech, I don’t want to talk tech all day. I want to talk horror movies, but a while back, I said, Hey, I wonder if Google drive would be a better choice for cloud than one drive from Microsoft.

So I looked and compared, and for a few dollars less a year, I get more storage on. Okay, that makes sense. It doesn’t, I don’t care what I’m using. I can use either. So I started switching everything over that was almost a month ago and not everything has sinked up and uploaded to the cloud. It is so freaking slow.

Literally. I won’t see it move and I have to stop, shut the service down and restart it to get anything done blowed. And a day later it’s like 0.1 gig has uploaded. That’s it? [00:02:00] Wow.

[00:02:00] Alan: So on a much smaller scale, I’ve noticed that because what I’ve been trying to do, I develop on my desktop because that’s where I have my multi-monitor setup and so forth.

It’s just for my presentations that I’m doing for the comic book course at Baldwin Wallace. When I do that, put something into the cloud and in this case it’s not Google or one drive. It’s also apple. I it automatically syncs various different things and I can’t find a way to force it to sync now.

Have it download a whole bunch of stuff to me, as well as upload my latest version. So then I watch it go through all the various different downloads, which I really don’t care about. And it doesn’t seem to give me an indication that an upload is occurring, but then eventually it’s up there because I go to my laptop where I really want to have it be.

And that’s when I see this list that has not moved for a long time, suddenly the file appears. So what I’ve started to do, we all develop work rounds. I have a thumb drive that I pop into the back as a USB port. And I make sure we’ve talked about this. Also, when you do programs, you always have redundancy.

You don’t count on the cloud being available and the wifi being good. And the so I have this on a [00:03:00] thumb drive and after a while, it’s going to be, I’m not going to wait on the cloud, whatever algorithm it, Scott that says do it in the background. So you’re not disrupting somebody’s work, but then it looks to make sure there’s no activity or such a minimal amount of activity that if you’re doing anything, it never engages.

And so like you’re saying you get 0.1% when you want it to like complete. Be safe until you’ve done this first upload. Oh

[00:03:26] Stephen: man. And worse with Google drive. I check my system resources and it’s 46% system resources, but I don’t see anything getting uploaded. Unlike you’re using half my CPU. What the heck are you doing?

You’re not alone.

[00:03:42] Alan: The directory compare is taking all the work. It’s not actually sending anything over the price. It’s weird. I have a friend Greg that we’ve been talking about that he’s really he wants to make sure that he has access to all of his email all the time. And that, especially if as there’s a difference between pop and Imam [00:04:00] servers and that you don’t map you get where it keeps on the server and you get the sinked shadow copy.

But then you can also see that from multiple places. So I have most of mine as I’m extra routes. Cause I want to be able to get to it from my desktop and my phone and my laptop and just ask. If ever there’s a time when I want to make sure that it has been downloaded to me and no matter what they do, that I can still get to it.

There were a couple things that was like, I really have made the switch, but for a while I was doing pop. Cause I said, I’ll take care of all my own stuff and I’ll make sure I have backups and never lose email. And now he’s finding out that even though he wants to change the pop, like on Google’s drive service, or, they’re either mail service, like poppy is now grayed out or to appear sometimes.

And then sometimes doesn’t. And so that my explanation to him was I know the Google, the way, the reason it gives you a free Gmail account is because in the contract, Brent, it says we’re not going to use anything from what you have out there personally, but we are going to continually read all your mail and do all of our statistics as to what’s being talked about, how long or [00:05:00] shorter emails, whatever interesting summary statistics they get.

And so that’s why they don’t want you to have the ability to delete from their servers because to them, all your emails have asked data store and they don’t want to lose.

[00:05:11] Stephen: We were talking a bit last week about choices people make, and that we shake our heads. We can’t believe some people believe certain things or, people get so paranoid about security, but in the wrong way. And then in other ways that, they download and use free apps that are spyware.

They use things like Gmail and say, oh, it’s fine. But then you say, Hey give me, oh, I can’t give you my password. That’d be insecure. You’re using the same password for 50 different sites, and I will put confession. I did a stupid person thing this past week and totally my fault.

I knew better. I shouldn’t have done it. And it was exactly what we were condemning last. So last night I ate some chicken soup with dumplings and it spiked my blood sugar to one 70 and I knew it would, but I told myself I’ve been exercising, eating good. It should be okay.

[00:05:59] Alan: [00:06:00] Nope. Those dumplings. It was

[00:06:04] Stephen: absolutely.

Okay. So here’s my other conspiracy theory rant. And I don’t normally jump on this bandwagon, not because I love Microsoft and one of the defend them, but I think sometimes they’re unfairly and unjustly condemned. And I really do believe that because windows 11 is coming out that whatever these last couple updates and windows 10 were, it was slowing everything down on purpose because there are things, we’ve talked about this, how I work 36 tabs, open seven different programs, all running at the same time.

Now I can barely run one program without it spiking my CPU and taking up all my resources. I haven’t changed anything. It’s not like I’ve installed Google drives the only thing, but I’ll turn Google drive off. I’ll turn my cloud backup off. I will turn multiple other internet things off. And it’s, one thing [00:07:00] running and I can’t use my computer.

My mouse is jumping all over the place. Whereas before I would be able to run, seven different things with browser windows open. Yeah.

[00:07:09] Alan: Yeah. I don’t know about windows in particular, but I know I’ve read unfortunately, any number of, verified stories that at least hardware-wise places start to do things to make your hardware less usable.

So you’ll want to upgrade and whether that’s slowing down life flight or. Like you said multiple operations. You’re used to a certain pallet of things that you always have available can click amongst and then the, they don’t make it stop working, but they add to the aggravation. And after awhile you’re like need is a faster CPU.

What I need is a new machine and they’ve been caught, but then this is, I’ve always hated this. You find out, wow, they paid a hundred million dollars. I’ll find a huge, fine, but they made $7 billion. That’s a routing error. That’s another thing. That’s the cost of doing business. That’s the Pinto defense way of thinking about

[00:07:56] Stephen: things.

They lose it at many processors through error in [00:08:00] packaging and stuff. Exactly

[00:08:02] Alan: that. And so I don’t think it’s paranoid when you see there really are people making those decisions. I will never buy a Volkswagen because in order to work with a pollution control, they worked actively on how to defeat it, how to fake test results so that they look better than they were and how to not have they said we don’t care about burning up the planet. We care about making sure that we can point to a chart and say, look, the Jetta is a fine performing machine. And it wasn’t that they snuck by, they actively worked out how to, how did they do testing and how do we make it so that we can stunt those statistics?

That’s incredible corporate malfeasance. You know what I mean? It was, and it was, it’s never the corporation to show that you have to worry about who’s the person that has that much power that can make that decision and force all their underlings to do it so they can actually do something so fraudulent, so damaging.

So evil man, this world, man, it [00:09:00] just, those psychopaths, those social paths that are willing to do that kind of stuff. They have. All of the skills to rising corporations, they don’t have any empathy. They have single-minded obsession over success. They’re willing to lie their pants off. That’s like corporate America.

I have

[00:09:16] Stephen: to do this. I am only worth $3.4 billion. I need to really, I wouldn’t be able to spend $3.4 billion, partly because I have no desire or need to own my own Boeing 7 47. There’s no need for that.

[00:09:34] Alan: I just, you might’ve seen this quote. I just read a quote of multiple businessmen and authors and so forth are mingling at a party.

And Kurt Vonnegut tells a story about how, someone talks about he, I have $3.4 million on you as an author. You’re how successful has your life been? And he goes I have one thing that you’ll never have really what’s that. And that whatever that solace in your spirit that comes from I’m good.

I got my wonderful house and wife [00:10:00] and books and health, and that it isn’t this continual treadmill of somebody else has 3.5 billion. I’d better get on it. I better do. Whatever’s necessary to catch

[00:10:09] Stephen: If I had enough socked away or whatever, that I would know that if me or Gina had a major heart surgery or a major hospital problem that we cover it and can continue living that would be enough that we could go on vacation and eat.

That we wouldn’t have to do things like, okay, we get paid tomorrow. So let’s just buy one gallon of milk tonight and tomorrow, not that we have to do that all the time, the car, oh God, the car is suddenly needs $3,000 repairs. Do that without having to think about it.

[00:10:44] Alan: I think I came up with this.

I might’ve read references to it in other ways, there’s different levels of rich and like early on in my life, I was candy bar rich. At any time I could buy a candy bar and it would not disrupt my lifestyle. And then you get to where I’m meal rich. I can be like, I don’t know how much can you spend on a [00:11:00] meal without going to crazy FUBU or gold thousand dollar meal route.

I can get a hundred dollar meal whenever I want. And it isn’t wow. Now I got to watch it for the rest of the month. And as you move up and you get no, I’m cartridge and I’m house rich. And one day I’ll be island rich. You know what I mean? Like you keep on getting these levels of, I can wear whatever clothes I want.

I can. And it is that thing don’t disrupt your lifestyle. Don’t be I, of course I’m continuing. Part of me is always doing the consumer reports thing. What am I trading off in order to get this? And when I buy, I don’t know, I have so much music. Do I really need the next one? Yeah, because it doesn’t bother me to have the next one.

I can actually I’ve worked hard to be able to afford those things. So whatever it is that people don’t ever get that they I’m not yet world rich. I’m not yet. Do you know what I mean? Wow.

[00:11:48] Stephen: If you’d said, you and I talk about this at times, you and Colleen, you got fall leaves behind you with your zoom background.

That’s a joy you can’t pay for that. You can’t buy that. I can have $3.4 billion [00:12:00] and be living in a high rise tower in New York city. And I won’t see the trees or walk through the forest and that didn’t cost anything for that. Perpetually

[00:12:09] Alan: that, I that’s what we do is there’s so many things to be found and it gets funny.

It’s not for free. We pay our taxes so these guys can maintain in the Roosevelt kind of stuff, but it absolutely. I don’t have to worry about what do I give up to go walking and beautiful leaves in the fall. And I’m glad we’re like that. I think that’s definitely something that I got from my parents. I watched them go through very lean times where it really was borrowing money from one of the kids’ piggy banks to be able to make rent, even when rent was 90 bucks a month and mortgage was 120 a month or whatever else it might be.

But having said that as they got more successful, they didn’t become, what would you call it? Overspenders and now that I have all this money, I think I’ll find a way to kill myself with it. I’m going to eat until I bloat. I’m going to do what I mean. We, they didn’t have, they were like I’ve always striven for this.

If that’s a word like addictions are, what will screw you? And so when someone has an [00:13:00] addiction to the classics, whether it’s alcohol or gambling or some kind of drug, but even just the act of consuming, my parents were like, what’s entertainment, shopping, very practical about just not always having to accumulate more.

And they were very good about raising the kids and teaching that lesson to us that you make plans and you execute your plan and you’re going to see for Christmas I have $25 to spend. Am I going to spend it on, in one lump of bike that I want, or am I going to get five, $5 games or whatever like that.

And that little exercise of seeing the trade-offs and stuff like that and making a little spreadsheet back when it wasn’t a spreadsheet was just a list. I remember like getting a whole bunch of puzzles, had it down to it came out at 25 dot oh one. It was like, I’ll contribute to petty as long as I can get the fishy puzzle.

And it, I think that they must’ve been, not only like seeing how happy I was with my puzzles, but also happy that I had internally. This is how you make your choices. Are you going to get gym shoes? Are you going to get puzzles? And of course, sometimes it’s driven not by just want birthdays were often [00:14:00] gifts.

It wasn’t things that you needed. It was things that you wanted outside. Of course, my mom and dad are gonna close us, but I don’t know. And we’ve seen the world shift if like I was going to get my regular kids and go to the, whatever Buster brown store or something like that. But when you step up from like a $10 pair of shoes to a 70, cause he got to have those air Jordans, maybe it’s time to have the kid learn.

You can’t have, you can have anything you want, you can’t have everything. Some things like you gotta be aware of the sacrifice that you’re making seven, $10 pair of shoes and you’re going to get one. They really need that particular thing or whatever it is, the status that goes with the specialist the love of your peers, because you are so

[00:14:41] Stephen: cool, which is actually an important lesson to do with the kids.

You want that $70 pair of shoes. Great. You can have it. Oh no, we can’t order pizza this Friday because we spent $70 on shoes. Oh, we can’t, go to the movies because you wanted to say, and that’s, you can do that with the kids. Some of them get it. [00:15:00] And some don’t my daughter got it when she was younger and lost it when she got older.

[00:15:07] Alan: yeah. Kelly and I still talk about that. We have all kinds of things that it’s always been important to us to be the master of our expenses. And we have had, of course, debt, you can’t have a house without having a mortgage, but when you actively work on getting that, having that be paid off and then that mortgage payment is like available to you for.

Other things. In some cases like let’s go wild and go spending. No. Now we could actually stack up the money. And what are we going to buy? This security that you were talking about? The safety of we’ve got so much resources that now indeed, if one of us had health problems that insurance didn’t cover it wouldn’t polarize us, which unfortunately, this classic standard tail in the United States, the most bankruptcies are associated with medical expenses.

I believe if I go down that road, let’s not be those fools and it’s not fools. It is happenstance often, but the grasshopper and the ant would say, if you have done nothing to prepare for bad times, like my sympathy does not [00:16:00] go out to you when you hit the bad times, you could have been preparing, you’re the person that lives on the river and the river washes away your house, but you didn’t get any insurance.

I’m going to help the people that did plan ahead build first. And you’ve got to be. You got to go into beggar mode because you didn’t do anything to save yourself. You can’t just demand. Now

[00:16:17] Stephen: I preach that’s a contention occasionally with me and my wife, because we’ve got multiple kids that are grown like five out of six.

So my thought is, Hey, we’ve tried to tell you, when you’re doing something, we’ll tell you, this is what you should do, whatever. But when you make a choice that then it negatively affects you. I’m not going out of my way and ruining my life to help. And I’m, and I live with the choice and not the call, any of them out, but we have one child right now that either quit his latest job or was fired.

We aren’t completely sure, but it’s the second time this year that basically he just [00:17:00] woke up and said I’m not working there anymore. And stopped working. And so as of now, this year, he’s had four weeks off of not working this whole year. And I’m like, okay, get up, get out of bed, go find a job. It’s been two weeks already.

You should be working somewhere. There’s plenty of jobs. And I don’t see it. I have applied where dollar general or dollar general is always hiring. You should have a job right now that,

[00:17:26] Alan: put all your eggs in one basket. How about applying to 12 different places?

[00:17:30] Stephen: That’s what I said.

If you really want a job, you would have applied to 10 places today. You would have called others. No. Is it going to be the best job ever? Do you have to keep it forever, but you don’t quit a job before you have another. And then he’s Hey, I need to borrow some money for the car payment. No, you don’t.

You call them and tell them you don’t have a job. Let them defer it. Add onto that. I am not paying that for the month and that’s caused some issues, but no, I’m not redoing my life because you [00:18:00] made a really bad choice, and then when you go and say, Hey, get up to take the dogs out. I stayed up late.

I was sleeping. I don’t care. I’m working. Why should I take the dogs out? You’re not working. Do something.

[00:18:12] Alan: Yeah. You know what? It’s funny. I always try to think of, we might fill up philosophize because we’ve had some life under our belt, but there really are. We’re not the only ones zipper to bring it to geekery man.

There are a thousand apps. Now this is not a you and me problem. This is a, since you met, he has existed problems. First Egyptian that had to decide between, am I going to buy an M four O Mead? Or am I going to buy new Sanders? Yeah. There’s never been a time when resources hadn’t been scarce and people had to decide where they’re going to invest their time, et cetera, et cetera.

Especially if you will, in a capitalist world, it might be that when you were on, you had no choice, but to work the land. But having said that nowadays there are apps that will be happy to tell you all about how to spend your money, how to manage your money, what to be thinking about while you’re doing [00:19:00] it, how you can take all those little extras and round them up to put them in his savings account and Kush in a year.

Look, you really have savings instead of having frigid it all away. And that in the, all the psychology, all of the practicality that goes into that, if you choose not to use one of those apps in an era, when everybody has a self. I again, have little sympathy. The lessons are there. There’s books to read there’s parents to listen to, if you just I’m going to do one in my own way.

But there is a best way. There is a best practices that if you want it to just cut to the chase and get to a good way to do it, it might be that it doesn’t need involve discipline. It involves being conscious of the trade-offs that you’re making and the short, medium, and long-term and all those things.

But you have to think that way because maybe mom and dad will have forever love for you and support and sympathy for you. The world couldn’t give two shits. They are going to be beating you down. If you don’t learn how to defend yourself against all the ways in [00:20:00] which there are, that isn’t deep as necessary in life.

And I know on the NEF. I understand this, that us talking about how it was when we were young and what it might apply nowadays, it doesn’t necessarily translate when college costs have gone up, medical costs have gone up rent. All the major expenses are really difficult, but then I remember it might only be proportional when I couldn’t afford rent on my own.

I got roommates. I lived in a house in college with a dozen people. What do I give no privacy, always having to like, is everybody doing the house jobs? There’s a mindset that you put yourself into. If I want privacy and independence, I’m going to have to earn it because the world is not lining up to give it to me.

And in every other way, if I’m worried about health, when you’re young, you feel indestructable. And if a bad thing happens, you got a bad toothache and you don’t have medical insurance. And so you have to. That did for me was I can’t ever let this happen again. I can’t have it that I get a Tuesday and my next quarter is ruined all the concerts.

I wanted to go [00:21:00] to the dates. I wanted to take my sweetheart onto, you know what I’m trying to say. It’s if you don’t want to learn, then I don’t know what to tell you. The situations have changed, but, and it might be that it’s, I dunno more unfair, but that doesn’t change the fact that while you’re working, you can also be working on changing an unfair system.

You can’t just pull back and say, the system is unfair and I’m going on strike because I don’t know how that’s going to fix anything. Either talk to your parents and say, Hey, maybe you made it. Maybe you are in an unfair system, but you’ve managed to get ahead of it. Like how about if not only you stay ahead, but you also help your successors to, to have a less unfair system.

Yup.

[00:21:43] Stephen: Wow.

One of the things I’m trying to work with now that the kids and parents, because I know there was a lot of people, oh, I worked since I was 16 and I made my own way and on, and that’s great. [00:22:00] I think that’s fantastic. A lot of those people have it together. You talk to them, it’s I don’t have my house paid off, but I’ve never missed a mortgage payment.

My car, I have low interest and I’m making the payments on it. And we always have food on the table. They’ve done well, they’ve done that, but they’ve put the glass ceiling for themselves in their mind. They’re always I’ve worked hard for somebody else. What they tell me to do when they tell me to do it and how much I’m going to get paid for it.

And

[00:22:28] Alan: that lesson of becoming an entrepreneur and not answering to any master, but actually getting everything you do, it comes back to you. Instead of

[00:22:38] Stephen: that’s one of the mindsets I’m trying to work. Parents or kids now, because there’s a lot of, like you said, with the apps, there’s a lot of opportunities that kids can start now doing some of these things, learning some of these skills.

I mentioned the, I interviewed that Evan Skolnik, who was a comic book writer and a video game writer. And those one of the [00:23:00] biggest things he said was people just need to get experienced and do it because I don’t care if you graduated from high school. I don’t care if you have a degree in an MFA in writing.

I don’t care if. Gone through computer science, right? The guy that

[00:23:14] Alan: shows the projects you’ve worked

[00:23:16] Stephen: on, he said, the guy that shows up that didn’t go to college, but has worked on five different video games. He’s going to get hired before the guy with college. He’s and I’m like, and that is something kids can start.

Now, there are kids that are, in second, third, fourth grade, working with tablets, there are apps and programs they can use to make little video games. They can learn the structure of a story and writing. So you get a conflict and how to resolve it and develop the characters and turn that into the video game.

And by the time they get through high school and they’ve kept advancing their skills well, now they’re creating multiplayer games with other people, different disciplines, all working together and they [00:24:00] go out into the world and they can say I did this and heck you’re hired who needs college?

Who needs $150,000? Debt when I’m getting game people to hire me now. Exactly. It’s a whole different mindset that our world has been in another.

[00:24:17] Alan: It’s funny, I have learned so much by reading, not having to go through it myself, you get to live a thousand lives on other people’s experiences.

And so I remember when I was first starting to be an entrepreneur, I didn’t think Paul just figured this out on my own. I read entrepreneurial books, the E-Myth and how spend your time doing the thing that you can do that not everybody else in the world can do. And the farm out a lot of your other stuff.

But having said that there was also really wise things like, if you’re going to work for someone, nothing matters more in somebody’s ways than the 20 minutes of the job interview where you’re, what are you going to pay me? You, if you’ll go higher, go low. If you have. Idea of risk versus reward and some idea of confidence and some idea of your real market value.

You don’t have to let the Rascals set you [00:25:00] $10,000 less than what you should be making, and then forever after pay the price rather than been pegged lower than your real worth. Because other jobs are going to say I’ll pay you 5% more. Yeah. But I started off 10% less. That’s not my problem.

Is it? And so being a hard ass in that 10, 20 minutes of salary negotiation can set you up. Good or bad forever, if you will. And I, and some of the only ways of breaking out of that were to become an entrepreneur and say, I set my rates. I don’t have any way my negotiation is, this is my price. And you paid, or you don’t, but I’m not worried about what are the grades, the IE through one through 37 to work my way up to

You know what I mean? You’re not in this big restrictive system. And all you’re doing is maneuvering and chocking instead of saying, no, this is my real worth. I’m aware of my scarcity. I’m aware of what I can do. I’m aware that I’m the premium. I’m really good at what I do. So I’m not your standard cobalt programmer.

I’m really fricking good. And I can prove it because here’s the list of

[00:25:58] Stephen: projects. [00:26:00] And the thing is I have gotten, and this is a little secret. I have gotten multiple jobs just by being very brazen by saying, I know I can do that. I don’t really know how right now, and I don’t have all the information right now.

I know I can do that. I got my job on the cruise ship by sending out a letter to agents saying, Hey, I am at the university of Akron. I’m a music major. I play in the jazz orchestra, upright bass. I play electric bass in this orchestra. And I’m first chair on the jazz ensemble, which I was so I may try, but you just pull it up there.

I didn’t tell him that I haven’t played out 200 gigs. I didn’t say that. I said I was first. So I told the truth. I just used where I was. I got the young composer award my first year at school. I can put that down so [00:27:00] that I, some of the things I tell I’m telling parents, the kids need confidence.

They need to know what their skills are. I knew I could do it. So I sent agents and basically said in first. I could be a good basis on a cruise ship. Literally two weeks later, I had a call a week after that I was working on a cruise ship.

[00:27:21] Alan: Every time it works, your confidence grows a hundred percent myself.

I know that I took a risk, but I won. And so the next risk is I had to back it up cause I stepped up. I had

the,

[00:27:32] Stephen: and I did, and then the better one was I got a job young out of school. I was doing data entry for an insurance company in Columbus. And my, this was like 97, 98. Computers were new to a lot of people.

The manager spent four hours futzing around with these computers. He had a laser printer into computers, basically. He was trying to get with an AB switch hooked up so you could switch and he couldn’t figure it out in four hours. So I watched [00:28:00] him and at five o’clock I clocked out, I said, Hey mark, do you need some help?

He goes, wow. I don’t think this is working. I says I know a little bit, I’ll take a look. Five minutes later it was working. He says, wow, that’s pretty good. I said yeah, and I talked to him and we were getting new computers for everybody. And I said I’d love to work in the it department.

Keep me in mind. I’ll do the

[00:28:20] Alan: configuration.

[00:28:23] Stephen: And so he said we’re not going to have our own department. There was like 120 people in our office. We’re going to use Tennessee. I’m like, oh, I don’t know if that’ll work, but keep me in mind. Then the boss from Tennessee came up and he said, okay, we’ve got to get all these computers set up this week.

And he gave me a list of here’s the configuration for the first five work on these today. Okay. At lunch, I’ll take you to lunch. We’ll talk. Okay. So we went to lunch and talked and stuff and he goes how much more you have on that? I said, what do you mean that one? He says you’re the first one on the list you haven’t.

I said, I got all five of those done. I’m ready for it. He’s really? I didn’t think you’d get five of them done today. And he’s so [00:29:00] they flew me to Tennessee. For an interview. And before that I bought networking for dummies. So I could learn all the terms, the

[00:29:08] Alan: terminology, and be able to ask good questions.

[00:29:12] Stephen: I knew I could figure it out and handle it. And obviously I knew more than most of did already, but I had never worked networking, especially like with windows three, one and all that jazz, but I knew enough I could back it up. So there, what I’m saying is if we worked with more kids to give them those abilities, rather than hovering over them and protecting them from everything in the world, we would get more people with satisfied lives.

There we go.

[00:29:41] Alan: Totally agree. You know what I mean? I don’t know. One of the joys of being a smarty is, your adaptive smarts is like a universal tool that isn’t I know how exactly how to weld, but I know I can learn to I pay attention and I look at what works and what does it, whatever all the other factors are.

So that gate giving them confidence, giving them experience. That the price of [00:30:00] failure is low and then they get confidence. So that when, just that I know I’ve talked about this maybe too much, I’m an investor nowadays. That’s probably where I spent most of my income earning time. And the world of investment is so different that, and I competent am I dependable?

It’s all about risk versus reward. Many of the things that may be a great consultant about my ability to explain things, my ability, all that kind of stuff here. You just have to put everything in terms of risk versus reward. And it’s very unnerving for a lot of people. So when I have those conversations, I perpetually have to say, I know you’re going to have to put on a different cap here.

You’re going to have to only think about it isn’t whether you picked it or not, or pick a single stock or not. Daddy got to learn how to manage risk and get appropriate reward for the risk you’re taking on. And when you don’t, you’re going broke slowly. And when you take on too much, you’re wildcatting and funny, it really might be that you go bust instead of, so I don’t know.

There’s lessons to be learned there. And I was lucky to I didn’t know those lessons early in my life. I, when [00:31:00] I first started to have a 401k it was put it into an S and P 500, let the index work for me all by the market, et cetera, et cetera. And that works to a certain extent, but then you find out if I ever take anything out of that, which I did because I got married and I had to pay for the marriage because her parents,

[00:31:15] Stephen: Gentle look for a better dowery,

[00:31:17] Alan: honestly, I didn’t get enough goats, chickens thrown in there correctly, but then you find. As everyone will tell you, what matters more contributing twice as much for years, 20 to 40, we’re contributing the right amount from years 10 to 20 out of that 40 year period. And I did indeed shoot myself in the foot by having accumulated certain money, giving it back.

And then you’ve lost all those years of compound interest, all those years of gain. So I don’t know, another one of those things that, how do you tell someone who like, what do they want a new car and to take their lady out and to take their guy out and whatever else it might be. And yet that little bit of developing a saving habit that a little bit of just make it automatic.

So you don’t make the choice all the time. [00:32:00] Those are such important lessons. And I wish that there was like in school, we’ve talked about this. There should be some civics lessons and some practical life lessons. Here’s how to have a checking account and here’s how to have a savings account. Here’s how I have an investing account and that these are, if you do this right, you’re set up for life and you don’t, you’re set up for misery.

You know what I mean? Or at least you’re not going to get ahead in the easy way you’re going to have to be the one that writes the great song or the great book, or has some kind of breakthrough. And that isn’t most people’s lot in life. That is the try and hit the lottery of various different ways.

Instead of saying, I don’t know the millionaire next door, they just did it gradually. And it still works out because you let time work for you instead of against you. And like I said, geekery wise, there’s things that do that for you nowadays. You know what I mean? If you have one of those apps that says whatever, I spend something, it rounds up to the next dollar and takes that 79 cents and puts it into a little savings account or that it tells you about what stocks to buy, but it says, don’t forget the versification, [00:33:00] don’t only listen to Robin hood and say, I’m putting all my money into.

And then wow, when that blows up and you’re back to fucking square one, it’s just important to have those things have that intelligence built into it. And if you’re not using it to stay healthy, lose weight, save money, et cetera, et cetera. You’re really shooting yourself in the foot.

[00:33:21] Stephen: Yeah. Oh all right.

Let’s jump, ping segway. There you go. That wasn’t it we’ve it’s October it’s mid-October and we talk,

[00:33:30] Alan: we keep threatening to do so

[00:33:33] Stephen: about. I know it’s done over with, but what was this a survey study they were doing?

[00:33:39] Alan: As you might imagine, science, they say, how will we know what the scariest movie in the world is working to hook people up with electrodes?

And we’re going to monitor their heart rate and fear is that acceleration of heart, the pumping up adrenaline, the fight or flight response. Here’s the state of resting heart rate. Here’s how it gets elevated pretty much [00:34:00] throughout the movie. And here’s the biggest spike. And so of course, I immediately have some issues because scariness is not only jump scares.

It’s not only the startlement sometimes it’s perfect dread. Sometimes

[00:34:11] Stephen: but you know that right there sounds like the premise of a horror movie, hooking kids

[00:34:17] Alan: up. Can we make their heart explode? You know what I mean? Let’s go to the stats that this study says the most scary movie of all time is sinister.

That the way in which it makes you continually be on the edge of your seat, continually be hard elevated. And especially the junk scare is really welded. Another one of those places, they’ve only made a million horror movies and the million, and first can learn from all the past and say, what’s the way to set up the atmosphere and the characters and the unseen menace and the what are things that people automatically afraid of?

How about snakes are ghosts, insects being buried, whatever it might be. And some people are really skilled at [00:35:00] doing that great horror movie directors know just how to have that camera angle looking over the shoulder as you’re exploring the house. And then something moves just out of the corner of your eye and that’s unnerving.

So then you’re already getting all hyped up. Finisterre is the top one, insidious is number two. And so I think I’ve seen many of these. And when I saw this list, I was like, all right, I really want to watch these, but I can’t like watch them all in a row. Cause I don’t want to have a heart attack. I got to like push them out.

Let’s see the conjuring and the conjuring two, which might be the only movie and SQL that made the list while I’m hereditary. Paranormal activity. And I do remember that one being really unnerving because the first one is good too, while you’re asleep and helpless that’s a nightmare for a lot of people.

It follows. And another thing that they talked about was a lot of these things. Aren’t like the science of movies, big budget studio movers, if you will. It’s that an independent director and entrepreneur said, I got a great idea and all I need is a certain amount of money and you can find, you don’t have to blow up worlds in order to get a [00:36:00] good haunted house movie.

Good. I’m being chased through the forest movie or whatever else it might be. So it follows, and it’s not one of those success stories were made for 300,000 and made 30 million. So whenever you get a big multiplier like that, people say, excuse me, Mr. And Mrs. Director, would you mind doing your next one for me?

You know what I mean? So you buy your freedom. The conjuring two, like I mentioned Oh, it really was great and was such a great portrayal of if you don’t have a reliable narrator, how weird can the movie get? You know what I mean? Wow. Maybe the person that I’ve been getting my facts from is themselves.

Not all they’re not rational. The dissent, and I remember that one that’s the key thing will be anybody who’s got any touch or claustrophobia, this will set it off. And then finally the visit,

[00:36:49] Stephen: some of these are like very, I don’t think the visit was that scary, but okay. So

[00:36:53] Alan: I guess that’s, if you will, the science, there’s many other movies where they talk about best as opposed to scariest, and that’s [00:37:00] where it’s really well crafted and it tells a great story and there’s some great actors and actresses in it and stuff like that.

Any number of those lists would be a joy just to work your way through for Halloween, all of October and the 31 best movies. You know what I mean? We’re already behind the eight, 12, I think it is, right?

[00:37:19] Stephen: Yeah. I told you, me and my friend Reese are doing a horror podcast, a horror movie podcast.

It’s called horror lasagna. It just, we were just talking and we were talking about the layers and how it all puts together. He goes, yeah, it’s like horror, lasagna. We’re like there’s the name? It came out. But Reese is unique in that he has watched over 1200 horror movies from around the world.

That’s crazy. And we had a good discussion on this and you’re probably same way as any study like that. Difficult to say broadly, these are the scariest because different people react differently, obviously, and different movies are set up for different [00:38:00] types of scares, which, you know, the ones that give you nightmares and keep you up at night may not scare you as much like a jump scare, but stay

[00:38:08] Alan: with you.

Yes,

[00:38:10] Stephen: exactly. And you’re saying sometimes you get that, those ones that are like a rich story that is just engaging and you can’t tear away from it. And personally, I’m not like the slasher, I don’t even consider most slash removers movies, horror so much as a thriller or something. And that’s something we discuss is the genres, the sub-genres for horror are so vast, we make up our own sometimes because they just don’t fit well.

[00:38:38] Alan: Yeah, it’s so I think I mentioned before my best friends do, and I growing up, we had sleepovers all the time, Fridays or Saturday nights sometimes. And we would watch the screaming yellow theater in Chicago and creature features Friday and Saturday night. And so we got a wonderful exposure to old, like fifties, Roger Corman movies, hammer movies from the thirties, as well as more modern stuff.

And if you [00:39:00] will, some of what, like whatever stayed with you for when you were that young we saw dozens if not hundreds of those movies, but there are certain ones that I can still tell you today, man, that was scary as hell. We saw one called the haunting of hill house. It made multiple remakes on the original is like classic thing.

People are brought to a house. They all got to stay there in order to get the inheritance or something like that. But they’re all in a house. And there’s a scene where two women are rooming together and they hear something coming up, they’re in the room and they showed the door, they hear something coming down the hallway trying door knob.

And and the camera’s really good at showing their faces, showing the thing and they see, okay, Can you in the door and it’s locked, so we’re safe. And so they have a thing where, you can see this shadow of feet at the door. Something is shoveled in front of them and it gets noisy.

There’s trying to holding their breath to be really quiet and not wanting to be heard. And they see the feet move away. And so they built this huge pounding on the door. [00:40:00] Man, I jumped when our selves screamed, his father had to come out and say, I work tomorrow morning. Can’t be this loud, but it was that perfect cinematic setup of that.

You get the relief, if you think it’s over. And then the jump, I remember seeing the Wicker man, when we were yelling please do jumping with your faves. This is the one where there is no jump scare. It’s that ever building. Nope. And there’s the original with Woodward, not the current one where people are in a small town in England, and they’re finding out that, it CA they keep the old ways.

And by that meaning there’s a big Wicker man being built. And in order to make sure they have a good crop that year, someone’s going to have to go in the Wicker man and be sacrificed human sacrifice. And the guy comes to realize that it’s, he’s the outsider. They’re not going to sacrifice one of the village.

He has been caught in this web and him coming to that realization and seeing how everybody is being nice to him, but they’re not letting him leave. And it [00:41:00] just was like this you’re caught in this mad house and you can’t get out and it’s going to happen. And you resigned themselves to his fate.

And it’s man, they’re going to my joys of let’s go traveling deliverance plus Wicker, man. It means I don’t want to go in any small town anywhere. Stays with me forever. That ever building hopeless. Oh man.

[00:41:17] Stephen: That movie, what you just described sounds an awful lot. Like a twist on Shirley.

Jackson’s the lottery. Do you want to talk about something that stays with you? That story is one of my all time favorites. I’ve read it multiple times and I know how it’s going to end, but the way she builds it up and you suddenly understand what’s going on and is oh, and there’s my argument, because if you’re going to talk favorite horror movies, the ones I liked when I was 12 are completely different than the ones I like when I’m 50.

They there’s a, so again, what scared me at 12 doesn’t scare me at 50 and the ones, are different that I might not have understood. Yeah. I, one of the favorites that I is. You see [00:42:00] it once and that’s, it is the sixth sense with Haley Joel Osment, Bruce Willis. It’s not a jump scare.

It’s not going to make your heart explode, but it’s engaging. You can’t tear yourself away. And then when you find out the twist, it’s oh, and it stays with you forever.

[00:42:18] Alan: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Some cases, it isn’t even the entire movie. I remember specific scenes that will stay with you forever. There. We saw one called the horrors of the black museum where some guy is a museum curator and he’s gone mad.

And at one point someone takes a pair of like historic binoculars and holds them up and the guy has rigged them so that to bring out and go in his eyes. And I don’t know that I could pick up a pair of binoculars forever after, without first holding in a way and like touching things to make sure it wasn’t going to spring out at me.

And I guess that’s similar to We, I remember seeing because William Shatner is about to go to space. I’ve now seen wonderful beams that capture this. He has a famous [00:43:00] Twilight zone episode. So this is from out years ago, right? Where he’s flying on the plane and he looks out and sees like a little grumbling out on the wing, tearing the Plano, and he’s telling everybody, Hey, what’s going on?

And of course, when they all come to look, his cause jumped away and it’s gone. And so they think he’s the crazy one. And I, because of that, there’s a scene where he’s calmed down, but he has to check one more time and he opens up that little thing as a Calvin fixes right in the window. And it really is.

And I, I could not, when you’re inside and it’s dark outside. And so you have the light from inside reflecting on the glass and I couldn’t easily open drapes without expecting to see something staring in at me for years and maybe still today. So what a fantastic thing that the guy came up with that image.

It was a sudden, it’s not just out on the wing now. Let’s look again at you and I, oh man. How well does. And I’m not the only one people talk about the psycho shower scene. The people to this day cannot take a shower without knowing the door is secure. They can’t get on a [00:44:00] plane worrying about the grumbling.

It’s how effective, how,

[00:44:03] Stephen: Twilight zone is such a masterpiece. It’s a national treasure. Not every episode is great. There’s some clunkers of course, but the ones that are so good are still so good. I’ve been watching some of them this month. And I watched one last night that this guy was trying to he was against immigrants.

He was against minorities and he was wearing almost a Hitler youth outfit. And he’s, getting the people riled up and the ghost of Hitler was telling him what to say and what to do. And I’m watching this going, oh my God, this could have been filmed two years ago in the past, and everything there, how to rile people up, what to say.

So it riles them up without being false, but not quite the truth. Then I’m like, oh my, this is crazy. And this was 60 years ago that this was made.

Exactly,

[00:44:52] Alan: So it just shows just how effective, demagogues, iconic class can be in riling up people playing. You’re the other playing to their, [00:45:00] whatever, they’re coming for your children or whatever else it might be. You’re right. That’s that is if there’s anything, I know that there’s a certain almost prejudice against watching anything in black and white, amongst people that are used to color. And yet, if there’s any reason that you should overcome that it’s to see zones outer limits,

[00:45:17] Stephen: The monsters on maple street or the monsters are coming to maple street. That one is still so good. So you talking about scenes, what about the evil dead? When they stop on the head and the eyeball goes flying right down somebody’s mouth, right? I mean that one.

[00:45:35] Alan: So the fact that Sam Raimi and others are still doing things and that had that, the first guy who did the work housekeep brothers, right? Nope, no sisters that did bullet time in the matrix where he leans way back and you can see, and like with rifling and everything going on, that it, everybody that saw that movie.

That changes movies. I need to be able to do that if I’m going to be current and competitive, how to do cool, special effects [00:46:00] and stuff like that. So I I think that there, a lot of some part of scary movies is also your regular people crap in extraordinary circumstances. And so that’s very Hitchcockian, there’s all kinds of people that just suddenly they were accused in the wrong Stephen King.

Exactly. And so that Colleen has occasionally asked me, why am I watching a scary movie or a guns and explosions movie? And she likes to talk about it. And some part of it isn’t I like death it’s I think what would I be like, would I be able to bear up under pressure? Would I keep a cool head? Would I don’t know.

I want to fight for the right, but what you don’t know, because what you thought was right, is falling apart around you’ve been lied to et cetera, et cetera. I think there’s, I don’t know, a little bit, like we talked earlier about, you got to help people. Prepare for tough life circumstances in a place where failure is not a, the possibility of failure is not lethal.

Movies give you that you can really say, wow, what would I do if I was in a, in an asylum full of crazy people and, could I, it doesn’t matter. The specifics, [00:47:00] it just is. I think somebody who’s catharsis of getting that out of you is some people are, we talked a little bit about this last time, right?

That some people are actually hosting people. Were they like the pleasure drugs? Some people are adrenaline people where they like the high of excitement and fight or flight and all that kind of stuff. Hey, pretty much, horror movies speak to them. That’s why have people that like, they seem pretty normal, but then when you find out that they like the slashy as their slasher movies, it’s maybe cause their body chemistry is just such that this doesn’t interest them, but this time it gets a memorable activity

[00:47:34] Stephen: for them.

So our podcast that we’re not. Movie reviews of common, very popular movies were, are our guidelines were movies that are great, but that most people don’t even know about and movies

[00:47:51] Alan: that you told me about it. I wouldn’t know about it, but man, it’s the high

[00:47:55] Stephen: quality of like you’re saying yeah. And movies that don’t have lots of known [00:48:00] actors.

We’ve had a few with some people we recognize, but nothing with Tom cruise in it, because that’s going to be a $200 million Hollywood, big budget movie that we didn’t want that because everybody does those. We wanted to do different. And then each season Reese’s picking a theme. So season one was friendship, which is not what you think about.

And each movie

[00:48:23] Alan: boy that has a little girlfriend who also happens to be a vampire, which

[00:48:27] Stephen: We watched the, a Swedish movie, not the American version of this, which is

[00:48:31] Alan: the original, if you

[00:48:33] Stephen: will. And then we discuss the films, what we liked it and and, we go through and it was a lot of spoilers FYI, but there, most of the movies on his list, I’ve not seen.

So it’s him watching them for the second time. And me watching it the first time, then we discuss it, what we notice and see. And I have found that some of these movies are so good that I watch other [00:49:00] movies. And I’m like this kind of sucks compared to this other stuff I’ve seen, and it makes it difficult.

And we did. A bonus episode of American remakes of some of the movies we watched in season one. And how do they bear up? They were horrible across the board. Now

[00:49:17] Alan: they have that as a template. They don’t get the essence that the,

[00:49:21] Stephen: yes, you fumble around with it. And we talk about why that is and what American audiences expect that most of these foreign films that we watched are different than, and what they changed to try and make it more palatable for American audiences.

And for us, it’s just not as scary. It misses the point of the movie. The very first one, martyrs is not something I would recommend for 99% of the people. I know it is probably be absolute, most disturbing movie I have ever seen in my life. And it’s only partly because of the depictions in the scenes.

It’s the [00:50:00] reason this group is doing what they’re doing. And they do it so well in the movie, bring it out that receive insight. He’s okay, am I a bad person for understanding what they’re doing? And almost agreeing with them. And I’m like, oh, I’m glad you said that. Because watching the movie, I felt the same way.

Yeah. And it’s just not something most people should watch and I’ll probably never see it again because it’s really bad and disturbing. But when you see a movie that makes you think that much and draws you into. It gets difficult to then go see the next Tallinn movie or frat Friday, the 13th movie. So less

[00:50:39] Alan: it’s so dark.

Having, I dunno, I’ve seen a lot. And so one of the things I even relatively young, I think I was aware of is different cultures have different things that they find scary. And so at different time periods do so when Stu and I are watching this movie, like invasion of the body stats, right? And it’s they’re corny, but it wasn’t corny.

When you were worried about communist infiltration throughout the [00:51:00] United States and that people that you thought were, your friends are not, and they’re not as obvious as a spy, they’re actually an alien species, pod people and stuff. And then when you’re talking about like big insect monster movies, it’s not about big insects.

It’s about we’re using radiation everywhere in ways that we don’t fully understand and what could be bad consequences from that. Getting out of control. I, Japanese Godzilla movies where wow, this little ghost girl comes out. It’s a little girl. Oh, what do you mean? That’s scary. If you see how they do it and how that, I don’t know, Japanese have a very different, I started to speak to the stereotype.

There’s a lot of people on a small island and so they have much less privacy and much less sense of individuality. They’re much more about the collective and what’s good for the collective. And when you see horror movies that speak to that and how that can be occasionally a form of madness, or that people learn how to abuse that and use it against others, that there’s all kinds of monger that I’ve read.

That was like, wow, that is [00:52:00] so not American. And if I try to put yourself in that frame of mind to get this, it really is, wow. I don’t know that I would’ve wanted to grow up like that, that you think this is close enough to normal, that it might happen. You know what I mean? And then whether it’s, I don’t know, Swedish or German, whether it’s south American, there’s various different by stereotype things that cultures.

Spooky. And during the sixties, like we talked about, here’s the zombie movie, here’s the vision of the body snatchers sixties, you see the village of the dam and what’s that kind of a metaphor for? Youth culture was popping up. People were finally going, wow, we really don’t understand these kids, the British invasion, whatever mop tops and Beatles and that kind of stuff.

But the bad side of that is we don’t know why they’re becoming juvenile delinquents. We don’t know how to stop it. And what if they weren’t just doing a delinquent, but actually had power like children of the damned village of the dam. It’s like fear of youth played out much bigger than you would expect.

I’m sure there are books that explain much more than I do and much better understanding and detail, but those are some of the things that I picked [00:53:00] up of, I don’t know, in some of these, there was blaxploitation movies and like what would be a terrifying thing for a white person? Oh no, I’m trapped on the bad side of town.

And there was no way out, that they just, they spoke to the fears of the times. That’s cool Corey like comic books, like any number of other movies, genres are very reflective of the times. And if you want to learn about history, you don’t have to read a dusty history book. You can pull out these 10 movies over the course of the years and get so who, where are we as a nation from the 1945 to 1985?

How did we change over the course of time? What are they, like what bear with me. What are the home invasion movies? The strangers or the purge where it’s like, Hey, now we’re thinking that government is too big and looming and our lives are too controlled. But what if there was a specific day that we all could take all the shackles off and that people that were wronged that have been helpless to do anything about it.

Now, all the bastards that wronged them, they [00:54:00] try to totally fortress themselves because today all the protections of society are not in there. And so that’s not so much a horror movie as it is. That’s like a societal indictment. That’s a

[00:54:12] Stephen: political

[00:54:12] Alan: statement. Why do we let those people be in a fortress based on society and get away with the crimes that they do?

[00:54:20] Stephen: You just mentioned how a lot of stories come about. You said, what if, so let’s talk. What if, but let, before, let me ask. Have you seen the others with Nicole?

[00:54:31] Alan: I have not. And I’ve read that. That’s a really good one. Good one.

[00:54:35] Stephen: Okay.

[00:54:36] Alan: So I see that. And again, spoilers, from what I understand, it might be one of those things where she’s being haunted or something like that, but then you find out that it’s the other way

[00:54:46] Stephen: around.

It’s very well done.

[00:54:49] Alan: Okay. Cause I, that way back to Henry James, right? The screw where it’s wow, this is like you said, same with the lot. The craft of [00:55:00] how they’ve written, it, of how they presented it is so good that you really think, what’s going on and then boom, the change. And then you go they played fair though.

They gave all kinds of clues that it really is this and that.

[00:55:10] Stephen: W we talked about that. We talked about the turn of the screw because we watched the innocent from 62, I think it’s very Hitchcockian type movie, very well done for the time, but there’s something like 47 different versions of movies based on Turnitin.

And when it started, Henry James said it was really just a ghost story, but in modern times it’s turned into a psychological story and it’s changed as we interpret it differently. So we talked about all the differences and the others is inspired by the turn of the screw, but not really. So

[00:55:47] Alan: I’ll tell you, what would be a big horror movie for me is I really strive for rationality.

I think that there really is a real world and that you can come to understand understanding new stuff. And if I had all those things where it’s okay, something just happened and I [00:56:00] can’t account for, and it’s unnerving, but all I go, and then you keep getting examples of maybe the world isn’t as you think it is, it would not only be well now the world is scary.

It’s more like I’m unraveling. I’m all, what I thought was real in the world might be that I’ve been living in a simulation or whatever the explanation might be. And to see that, to see things come apart that are so much a core of my being. If you think the world’s a benevolent place and you find out it’s not, if you think your role should make sense and know, it doesn’t have to, that would be like movies that stay

[00:56:31] Stephen: with you forever center does not hold.

Exactly.

[00:56:38] Alan: So I’ve liked them because I think that they’ve been pretty smart about maybe a little bit of wish fulfillment. When people see movies nowadays I’ll often say that could have been better, different, whatever it might be. And that’s what they’re playing with is the Marvel universe has a way that it has evolved over the course of these last, let’s say 60 to now, 60 years.

And when they have there’s a body of work, they often [00:57:00] use the term cannon for here’s the original Sherlock Holmes stories. And if you want to be authentic to them, then you have to be like this is who Sherlock Holmes and Watson and Moriarty were. And if you do twist to that, you have to make it so that it’s internally consistent, even despite the twist, but you don’t just throw it all out.

You don’t have people that don’t have it all like Sherlock Holmes and still call them Sherlock Holmes. It’s unfair in authentic some part of what I don’t like about what if is there’s been all kinds of. That’s been gone into Marvel and DC universe is to make them so that they make sense.

They hang together that even long ago to today, there’s explanations for there’s through lines in terms of plots characters have developed and been through some real trials and sometimes came up triumphant and sometimes broke. And but there’s still been some sense to it. And the latest trend with Marvel, especially the, what if universe is, it said that there’s a multi-verse and that, an interesting philosophical concept has always been well, there’s an infinity of universes.

And [00:58:00] every time that you make a decision, you fork off another version. Here I am talking to you and there’s another version. We’re not, we’re now we’ve, I’ve gone off and I’ve gone to work, but otherwise we’re still talking. And so small things, they don’t matter, but in the classic, you step on a butterfly back in prehistoric times and it changes everything.

I want those changes to make. And I want to be able to come back to the real world, knowing that I just went off on a fancy, but I came back and I’m finding that what F is pretty much saying no, they’re all equally legitimate that they really are a million different universes where indeed, the fantastic four were or weren’t, or that they were lizards instead of people or that.

And I, the creativity that goes into it, is cool. But as someone who like getting it all, remembering it all, seeing how it all hung together. And when I would do my comic book talks and somebody would ask tell me about the human torics and books. There’s actually a whole bunch of stuff about the older human torch versus the more modern one and how the vision actually was based on the Android.

That was the original. [00:59:00] And it was fun to be able to say that as if it was real, because they were so consistent and nowadays people can say, Nope, so far as I’m aware Their first reading of Thor is as a woman. And there’s nothing wrong with that change, but saying that it could be any of these things that they’re all equally authentic.

Instead of that, there really was already 60 years worth of hangs together is the Canon. I am unnerved. I’ve never minded, big changes. I have hated when the writer artists were so lazy that they just did what I alluded to earlier. We’re going to make up a new Daredevil, nothing like the old Daredevil.

It’s just going to use the name and maybe that’s going to be its own startling thing that if the reputation of the old Daredevil is what you want to trade on, but then you keep blowing it that you should pay the price for that. But there’s not even, it seems there’s not even that level of respect about what would it be like if it was different?

It just seems to be, we’re tired of playing by the rules. We’re starting over, we’re throwing it all out. And [01:00:00] there were some indications of that when they were doing. The final crisis in DC and the multi versatile collapse in Marvel that they were well, no, all the worlds had become one. So you do have this weird admixture of earth, 1, 2, 3, and captain carrot and his amazing zoo crew are now part of the official DC universe.

And so it made for some cool stories about the mashing together of unlike things, but they still tried to play with the torture of someone that comes from another universe. And now they’re here and nothing is like what they remember it. And so they are totally a lost soul, a man or woman out of time.

My loved ones are all gone. The person that’s here, that’s not my husband. You know what I mean? Oh man. So I don’t know. I really valued the continuity cops and the people that read con things in wonderful, convincing ways that still work with past continuity. When Bucky came back as the winter soldier.

It [01:01:00] was man, you are so smart to work all this out and have it have such drama and such impact and so forth. It wasn’t just saying, yeah, we’re going to make another guy named Bucky you what? And there was discipline, there was brilliance to it. And I think that now we’re getting lazy or something

[01:01:18] Stephen: like that.

I can see this off, but

that’s part of the problem too, is the movies. And now these TV shows. Aren’t connected necessarily to the comics. They’re not a crossover thing. So I

[01:01:35] Alan: love the MCU. The cinematic universe is playing fast and loose with comic book Canada.

[01:01:41] Stephen: Yeah. Yeah. And I think I got broke when they split star wars into two different candidates and the new candidate sucks, so I think that kind of broke me, but really, I love Spider-Man or Superman is a much better example. It go through the run of action comics or Superman [01:02:00] comics. And every time, every couple of years you get a new creative team and they do change him a little bit. His power is altered. Just I guess it does the Canon part doesn’t bother me as much anymore because arguably none of these characters have been completely right on Canon for 60 years.

[01:02:21] Alan: Evolution of them sometimes big changes. And if it’s good enough, then they keep it once in a while. They really will go we’re going to make that whole year a dream sequence like Dallas, that’s just where we are. They’re about to do that with the matrix, from what the matrix for is going to pretty much say we’re equal to matrix one, two and three went so poof and I don’t know, I have to see how it is that he’s going to earn my saying really?

You’re just going make that

[01:02:48] Stephen: well, you want to talk about that? We mentioned Halloween movies the, the Halloween movies with Michael Myers, that’s been, yeah, the new one, Halloween chills and two years ago they had [01:03:00] Halloween. That’s a direct sequel to the first one. That’s like the third direct sequel to the first one.

So they have three timelines in, okay. It’s a slasher movie with this much stuff. Who cares about Canon. That’s not, we don’t go to watch it for the cannon, not those, but, so my thing with what if is I loved most of the stories, but they never made it completely clear whether they were actually including all of this as part of the Canon for the MCU, or if it was an alternative, just for fun thing, because star wars, they took a lot of the old stuff and they’re putting it online, but they’re calling it legends and anything under legends does not fit into the timeline now, but it’s fun stuff, so they never made clear what if it was?

[01:03:47] Alan: Yeah. If I had to give them an out, I think it is it’s the watcher because he has the multi-vessel view, the omniverse and that he’s telling stories that are like, what happened in these various different cases? What if, black [01:04:00] Panther, what if Kang?

What if for et cetera, et cetera. And so it could be that it really hasn’t affected. Our, earth 6 1 6 view of the Marvel universe that as long as the watcher, who is unable to intercede, as long as he doesn’t bring elements of that over, even though he had to actually be, he kind of combat, he got savaged by someone.

So it, it could be that it just is that, that, that part of the torture of being someone who sees all and knows all that, there must have been times when he was tempted to be like this isn’t going well. I should kinda clip this timeline and make sure that the good one happens. And I don’t know, maybe it really will not be the high impact stuff that I did when there was a, what if series of comic books for a long time, I never had the sense that they were going to try to find a way to work that back into continuity that they really were saying, we want a flight of fancy and said, what, if the

[01:04:49] Stephen: woman did come in later, they did take some of that and put into the actual cannon and stuff while it was going

[01:04:57] Alan: on.

I didn’t think so [01:05:00] easily. There were like, and I don’t know, I’ve also. I don’t. I have different universes in my mind of the pulp world who talks average of the shadow operator, number five, et cetera, that’s its own thing. And when they occasionally had episodes where doc Savage or the shadow interacted with the DC universe, where the Marvel universe, I was like it’s a little shoe horny because it doesn’t go together.

And I, I love doc Savage so much that I don’t mind him making a reappearance, but you have to thrift it. Wasn’t doc Savage in this world all the time. How come nobody in the Marvel universe ever bumped into him before it, all of these lost civilizations and all of this he’s out there trying to stop crime the same, where you are really what he was.

You had to face this globe threatening menace by yourself. Doc didn’t show up, even though he would have, if he wasn’t around. So there was a certain amount of praying of reality, the reality of coming by those mixtures. And sometimes they’re interesting. And sometimes they’re like, oh, They didn’t do it well enough, my full buy-in or

[01:05:58] Stephen: something.

Yeah. But my [01:06:00] thing with what if that, I think they were mostly trying to do is start to get people thinking about the quantum multi-verse and showing Dr. Strange as a very powerful being in that regard. And I think that was their main purpose, which would mean they could say it’s part of the Canon, because all you got to do is say that’s another universe.

That’s another university in a dodgy.

[01:06:24] Alan: That’s maybe what you just said is what, like nowadays any bad story writing, you can just excuse as well. That’s another universe. Like I said, I, it is cool that they’re moving forward and they really are like, if they’re going to make Dr. Strange, truly as powerful as he is, he has the ability to hop amongst dimensions and timelines and stuff like that. And then you got to hope he’s benevolent because for instance, there was a Marvel series where. After the multi-verse collapse, Dr. Doom is the one that manages to save fragments of all different kinds of worlds and societies and the [01:07:00] roll-on doom world.

Sheriff is Dr. Strange, because Dr. Strange realizes that the only way to preserve this Candler of a world to then it could maybe one day become the multi-verse again, is to ride herd on it. So that the most war-like or the most pestilent societies don’t take over everything and destroy everything.

Someone’s got to be in charge of the roaches of the locust. And but Dr. Strange was just like, I’m feeling really bad about him saying, I’m your man, Dr. Duke, because I would’ve thought that he would have worked in all ways. And of course, in the series he does turn out to be, is he not only working with Dr.

Doom, but try and eventually to save everything. And he just. Deal with the lesser of multiple evils while it was going on. But you know what I’m saying for Dr. St. Having been benevolent sometimes troubled, they actually, haven’t been the heavy, the bad guy. That was a difficult thing for me to face.

And I’m sure that’s why they do.

[01:07:53] Stephen: Yeah. Something different. But the bigger problem is how [01:08:00] well is eternal is going to do it comes out in two, two and a half weeks or something. Nobody knows who the Eternals are. Nobody’s prepared for them. They haven’t shoved the turtles in the last movies and TV shows.

We’ve heard nothing about them, except a very esoteric, hard to understand movie trailer. And I know there are some diehard Marvel fans out there, movie Marvel fans going, who are these guys? I’m not going to go see that. That’s what DC has done. Come on, Marvel. Isn’t

[01:08:31] Alan: that weird and interesting. Some part of what I thought about the turtles was there Marvel’s version of the new gods, the forever people, the whole universe that was created for DC and then being rough equivalents of Greek gods.

And that the reason that we as a human race might have some racial memory of them is because you do have your powerful one and your fast one and your sorceress one and that kind of stuff. And yet I’m I’m such a comic book fan and sucker that I really want to go see what they do, but [01:09:00] I haven’t seen from the trailer.

Oh, that’s cool. I can’t wait more then instead it really seems to be why did they do this? This is a huge leap, but I have the same misgivings about this as I did. We was your first coming out Superman and wow, we’re finally going to have Kakuma, which they can do special effects and Marvel with all of its incredible mythology.

Their first movie was going to be Howard. The duck

[01:09:23] Stephen: hell

[01:09:27] Alan: Spiderman in your stable with having fantastic four iron man Thor, the ones that have all now become all to ultra popular. Our first, oops, was that thank God blade came out. It’s part of when I’m talking about it in my comic book movie history is thank God. Blake came out and legitimize that maybe the Marvel body of work, that they have this incredible mythology that is very cinematic and that you could make it into movies, but not if they’re not making any money, not if they die at the box office, like how were the ducted

[01:09:57] Stephen: here for the eternal?

And if they’re putting it as a [01:10:00] linchpin for this next phase and the next group, and it’s supposed to be super important. I don’t feel they’ve set that up. I fear somebody is like, Hey, they love all our stuff. So just put it out. I don’t know, because the other problem is black widow was so Chang. She was really good, but not necessarily as memorable as some of the earlier movies, arguably and the TV shows were really good and I love the TV shows, but the eternal, they, I know they went to the high with end game.

So you have to start low again and build back up. And we have all new people. I get all that, but I don’t think they’ve been coming out of the stable after two years and just power, and everybody’s talking about it and loving it and stuff. It’s been so solid. And I fear that the Eternals is going to kill things and they’re going to a struggle to get back up, even though Spider-Man is right after.

That’s

[01:10:56] Alan: What I’m hoping is. And if you think back, all the Marvel movies that went into [01:11:00] Avengers end game, they weren’t all great. The first couple of Hawks were pretty stinky. They kept killing theme story and without the magic actor that was going to make it work like mark Buffalo has done iron man.

First one. Great. Second one, not so good. Third one, maybe second one.

[01:11:13] Stephen: Good. Third one that kind of went downhill whiplash.

[01:11:16] Alan: You know what I mean? That’s just not a good enough feeling even played by usually a real scenery chewer in terms of why had I lost his name? Darn it,

[01:11:24] Stephen: Danny Trello or something like that.

It’s

[01:11:27] Alan: maybe it was Gary Oldman was that the guy who played brushing. So by the way, I just watched the professional and it’s one of the best movies of ever professional Gary Oldman sorry, Leon. Why am I showing Reno and Natalie Portman as like the wave that is far too old for her?

So back to this, I hope that we’ll have that same thing. To me, we’ll have a couple misfires and that like besides guardians of the galaxy and introducing Adam warlock and introducing that whole thing, if it’s not only about Santos, there’s the megas, there’s various other kind of cosmic [01:12:00] beings that figure into how does the universe work?

They’re bringing Kang into everything. I think that’s the next big bag and that ability to control time. And that’s not dimensionally really, but if you start seeing that different timelines are. So I’m hoping that guardians of the galaxy, they really have had high quality. The characters are great.

The writing has been great. They just announced, we add them. We’re lucky. And I really don’t know in miles culture

[01:12:22] Stephen: or something like that. Yeah. Do you ever see the movie, the Miller’s with Jennifer Anniston he’s in that he plays a goofy, a nerd kid and call adult me who wasn’t I’m like that guy is

[01:12:36] Alan: the messianic Adam warlock.

That’s interesting. But maybe just saying like Michael Keaton became Batman, nobody suspected for Mr. Mom that he would be a good Batman and a good vulture and a bit, he’s been various other good things since then. So I’m counting on guardians of the galaxy being like in the same way that it, when it first came out, I was like, who are these guys?

Maybe the girls will be like that. Maybe guardians of galaxy will be one of those [01:13:00] quality. I hope so. Spider-Man movies.

[01:13:04] Stephen: And speaking of we wouldn’t solve venom too over the weekend

[01:13:09] Alan: because I heard my rant before about the CBO. It’s never moved me. It breaks too many rules. What was this movie good?

[01:13:17] Stephen: It was okay. I it’s just not that last bit of Polish or something to get it superv. It’s as good as the first one. I thought though, everybody I went with said they liked it better, but and this gets back to story, we talk about the buildup and hero’s journey and, there are certain things you put in the stories to draw the people in the problem I saw with this movie was it was really short.

It was like 87 minutes, which yeah. And the thing is once carnage came out, the first time he and Ben met was the final battle. And then it was over. So I’m like, wait a second. No, there’s some multiple. They need to [01:14:00] meet. They need to fight and bet them gets his butt kicked and then there’s a problem, but he pulls it together and goes back and, defeat some.

But no, it was like a 10, 15 minute long, final battle. And that’s all they did. And so I was disappointed in that.

[01:14:17] Alan: I have not seen that one yet. And in fact, the new James Bond movie came out and I used to be like Thursday at seven. And we just, this week when it was too full of stuff and coming, and I didn’t go do it.

So probably we’re going to go play hooky out a matinee or something like that because I want to see it, but I don’t want to see it with a huge crowd. I want to be leading popcorn without my mask on. And but that I really have liked Daniel Craig’s role and they really have, I’m looking forward to it.

I’m hoping to farewell because I think this is the last one. So they’re very much on my

[01:14:45] Stephen: list. So who do you want is the next James Bond?

[01:14:49] Alan: I’ve read

[01:14:50] Stephen: Idris Elba. Oh, I would love him his

[01:14:53] Alan: presence. He’s got he’s got the calmness, but the ability to like, get the job done, even if it’s [01:15:00] double kill,

[01:15:02] Stephen: very commanding presence.

[01:15:07] Alan: I’m not sure who else, anybody else that steps up. It’s a, is it a young dude? Like the guy who played in the Kingsman?

[01:15:14] Stephen: Oh yeah. Maybe I would not be opposed. And people have said, oh, this would ruin it. Having a female James Bond. I think that would be spectacular. There’s some ladies out there that would kick ass at that role.

And speaking of they’ve got the Indiana Jones five coming out. I am, I love my Indiana Jones. I am not opposed to having another person play Indiana Jones to get a younger. Doing another story set in the thirties or forties? I think, I would like to see the character, like to James Bond, just keep it going.

I’ll tell

[01:15:52] Alan: you the Indiana Jones thing. Think it intrigues me is mods. Nicholson plays like maybe he’s the main villain. I’m not sure I haven’t read exactly his [01:16:00] role, but I picture him as being very formidable opponent, Indiana Jones. And so I hope that’s what happens there. I think we’ve already seen female James Bond movies.

We saw salt, we saw platinum blonde. We’ve seen women can indeed kick ass. They are perfectly capable of black widow is absolutely. So if that’s the place that they take it, I have no problems with that. There’s this amount of little tradition of, I don’t know, are we going to, are we going to play with, how would a woman have risen through the ranks?

A killer instead of a seducer because that’s so much the stereotype,

[01:16:35] Stephen: the

[01:16:35] Alan: archetype, exactly that, but again, I’m not trapped in the world. Shouldn’t be trapped in those stereotypes. I would be really curious, I agree who writes it and how well it’s done. What I care about.

Was it a good movie? Not an old boy. There is so much crap going on in fandom about a little bit of what I’ve been staying with. My little rant of it wasn’t Canon it wasn’t right. There are people that are like really crazy fanatic about that. And to me, I [01:17:00] think it’s just a matter of my taste, but I always give the movie a try because if it’s a quality, what a great change good for

[01:17:05] Stephen: them.

Whitaker was Dr.

[01:17:07] Alan: Her exactly. From what I understand, they never got as good ratings with her. So it’s going to be well. Is that the reason it wasn’t that she was a bad doctor? Was that you can’t have a female doctor. Maybe the world is. Five new doctors, however many seasons that they’re ready to take a rest or something like that.

Maybe the platform is good. I know that various different writers had writers that had very successful runs like Steven Moffitt. And by me not thinking Russell Davies and stuff like that, and that whoever was the show runner for this just didn’t have as good a run on Dr. Who as these other guys have.

And from what I understand, they’re bringing one of their main writers back to revive, maybe even rescue the franchise. And if that’s the guy that really does understand what doctor who was about what the dialects are about, what the cyber men are about and brings back the essence of it.

So that it’s more successful. I’m okay with that. I sure don’t attribute it to being [01:18:00] that she wasn’t a great doctor who that it wasn’t, you know what I mean? I have my favorite amongst the doctors who, and, but that doesn’t stop me from wanting to see every one of them because the whole cool mythology is there.

You know what I mean? So anyway, that’s died. These bodies comic booky enough. We’ll see how that turns

[01:18:18] Stephen: out. Absolutely. It’s on my list. There’s a lot of good movies finally coming out again. You get a lot on streaming now, so that’s good. Let’s become couch potatoes,

[01:18:28] Alan: actually.

You know what I, I know I’ve said this before. There are certain movies that I really want to see on the big screen and the big sound. And I want to be lost in the move for two hours, not distracted by the phone or the toilet gurgling, or the fact that I’m in my room, even with a big TV. I want the spectacle of it.

And so any star wars movie, any James Bond movie, I just want to go I’m in your hands. Give me two hours of

[01:18:48] Stephen: overwhelming and make it worth while. Absolutely

[01:18:54] Alan: almost done. No, go ahead. Last thing I’ll say is Hey, what a cool. Colleen, and I love [01:19:00] leaf peeping and peak leaf season. And one of the cool ways in which geekery enters into this is there are wonderful models of how climate works across the United States.

And that week by week, you can see based on all these readings for temperature, humidity, soil, or whatever else, it might be that here are the probable early leaf, mid leaf peak leaf path, post peak. And we’ve been using that to plan trips. This weekend, we’re going to go to Kinzua bridge, which is Pennsylvania at the old railroad trestle that looks out over the valley.

And there’s whole valley is filled with a great mix of deciduous and coniferous trees. So that it’s an explosion of color. It’s not all orange like this. It’s a bowl of tricks where there’s all these pockets of different colors. And I just remember it being spectacular. And we’re going to go down to Hocking Hills later in the month, because as it proceeds south as we get cooler and stuff like that.

And there are certain trails that people are already posting pictures, where they look really nice. But man, when that’s in full leaf spectacular, and I love [01:20:00] that we hiked in the Cuyahoga valley national park this weekend, and it was a wonderful hike, but it was still 90% green

[01:20:06] Stephen: because the weather has been

[01:20:09] Alan: unseasonably warm.

And that’s what you need is warm days and cool nights. And it hasn’t been a little bit of rain, whatever the peak conditions are, but I love the fact. Those models. Give me if I go to this county in Pennsylvania right now, it’s perfect for leaf season. Not all the rest of Pennsylvania, you have to go to near Hormel and Allegheny state forest.

And I just think it’s very cool. There were times when you’d have to look up a newspaper from last year from the Kancamagus highway and say usually it’s around October 15th and you go there on a vacation. So nowadays it really is that ability to pinpoint and those kinds of moms will let you do that are so useful for Aurora Borealis, for leaf changing season, for one of the monarchs, one of the cicadas, all that is cool models for climate change.

So he’s [01:21:00] learned that these things really work anyway.

[01:21:01] Stephen: That’s what you were saying earlier about some of the apps, cause there’s apps that will help you in track all of this. And they’re very social. So people add to it and inputs like when I’m driving down using Google maps, is that there’s a speed trap ahead.

Is it still there? Yes or no? Everybody going by?

[01:21:18] Alan: Exactly. We just been based on that, that it wasn’t just maps. It was current traffic conditions and that kind of stuff. And that man’s co collective consciousness was what made the app work and work because you get all the gas prices, you get all the open and closed roads and cool stuff like that.

[01:21:33] Stephen: Yeah, absolutely.

[01:21:37] Alan: Where it’s like that it has trail maps that you can actually not only have to connect to the web, but download to your phone. And we love going hiking. And this gives you the ability to know you’re never going to get lost. It’s aware of where you are. He’ll tell you whatever misadventure we once had in South Dakota, where he went off the trail and walk far further than we showed up.

And this will be something that’ll just further happening. [01:22:00] So

[01:22:00] Stephen: does that app allow, this is one of the things I do like about some of these apps and the socialness of them is you’re on a trail. GPS has got your point, but then you reach a certain point. It’s like ping and you look and there’s pictures that other people have taken from that same spot you’re at.

[01:22:16] Alan: It does have some of that where it’s almost step-by-step. Pause at this point and look down this valley and you’ll see that this is where three trees came together and made a a pickup sticks type. If it’s still there, then it’s how cool I wouldn’t might not have noticed that if he hadn’t told me if it’s falling over, then you’re the one that says, oh, sorry, that went down.

You know what I mean? It was enough that he collapsed or whatever.

[01:22:38] Stephen: So cool, man.

[01:22:40] Alan: Okay. As always a pleasure. Some of the things we said we might

[01:22:44] Stephen: have heard about it was really bad segues, but okay. We’ll deal with that. So we’re okay.

[01:22:52] Alan: Correctly. All right.

[01:22:53] Stephen: Yeah. All right.

Episode 72 – Scary Story Time

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Episode 72 – Scary Story Time

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