The Incomparable 403

Transcript
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Number four hundred. Welcome back everybody to the incomparable podcast. I'm your host Jason Snell in this episode we're, it's BA first of two episodes because we so many people wanted to talk about the subject suggested by Lisa Schweitzer, who is not here by the way, putting heard definitely in the second definition of Glen which is to suggest a topic and then not be on the episode and this is what she suggested when we were looking for episode subject. She said, how about your childhood cannon? You Charles at nerd cannon panelists, talk about the four formative works. They can point to shaping their taste for life. So basically we're going to go back and it's not a draft, but we are going to take turns in talking about totally not a draft about formative things from our youth. Also not going to judge on based on what age you were and say, whether that is childhood or not. This is for that. There's probably episode of robot or not. You could listen to determine the judging if they were actually formative enough. Will you be pulling up our history. Cross Chang? Yeah, I'll be like, this doesn't know. Let me ask some questions. Backstory on your character. She they're not formative enough. How could it be if Greg, in your current career, how could you consider this? Which is an opposition to your current career, formative, haha, accuse you just just one more question exactly that is not going to happen instead. These wonderful people are going to pick in what is totally not a draft and talk about formative things from their childhood, which I think is a cool idea. And I've randomized the order even though there's no advantage to going first because this is not a draft. Gene McDonald will go first though. Hello patches, and thanks for having me going second. We'll be John McCoy. Hello? Hello, let's pick sophomore. Let notes. Let's not do that.
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You'll be surprised. Oh, nice or not or not. Okay. Also Liz miles. Hello, Joe steals also here. Hello. And Tony? Sindelar your internet friend, Helen hurts. All right. And then I will last because even though this is not a draft, I am trying to be a good host. So I wait until everybody else is done. Now, let's now let's get started and hear what Jean is going to blow us away with with her. First pick of this. Not a drafter I I, this is our first round of sharing and gene will share I, how about that? I gotta get out of this draft mindset. It's not. It's not healthy. This more like. Elementary school mindset. It's sharing and everybody can bring in whatever they want, and there's no shame to somebody else picking what you have right shame will come from other sources. I'm worried about that already. Now I'm gonna start with Star Trek. They regional series. I pretty sure I'm the only person here who watched it when it aired initially. And so I watched it when I was very young and it definitely. Fit in and also skewed my ideas about science and space and the future. So I think that I'm going to talk about two episodes in particular just to mention them because I still remember them really clearly from that time when I watch him as a kid, the doomsday machine because big scary thing could come through the galaxy and destroy planets with nobody knowing where it came from or what its mission was. Luckily spoiler alert they did manage to destroy.
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Because we wouldn't be here today if that had have been allowed to continue its murderous path. But the notion of space being the source of something just completely beyond our Ken gave me childhood, you know, like excitement yet morbid fascination and scare feeling of being scared. So. And I'm also gonna throw in one season three episode which is not considered very good anymore. But I like to think that you have to remember when people were watching it at the time, it it fit in with their mindset. And this would be the Mark of Gideon, which was about a planet that was overpopulated and so over populated that all the people could do stand up and walk around and bump into each other. And they kept showing scenes from that planet of this densely packed humans. It's really hard to imagine how that that planet and that culture really, really operate it. But for me as a kid growing up in that period where it was all the cultural rage to talk about zero population growth and the problems that are unchecked prop Yele, shin growth would cause. So I couldn't really understand that, especially, I think this. Episode came out in nineteen sixty eight or nine. I didn't really understand the mechanics of population growth perhaps, but I did know that it was bad, and I was really afraid that someday I would be standing in a white jumpsuit walking around in a room where I couldn't get away from other people. So.
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Starring started out. So that things that's kind of I think all of the things I have on my list are things that scared and fascinated simultaneously, and I'm really choosing as childhood pretty much before ten years old. All right. The unfortunate that this is not a draft because I'm gonna just amplify what you're saying right now instead of waiting until the end because that is also my number one childhood formative nerd media work is Star Trek, the original series. I was born in nineteen seventy. So in the seventies you could not escape Star Trek. The original series playing those original seventy two or whatever episodes five days a week. For me, it was on channel two at five PM Monday through Friday, and I watched Star Trek every single day for I don't know how many years. I don't know how many times through that lineup that I would just keep watching those episodes over and over and over again. And it was, I can't imagine life before stay rich. All Star Trek. It was the thing that got me enthusiastic about. I mean, I literally don't remember discovering Star Trek. It was just there and I was super into it. And so the idea of spaceships and alien planets and strange strange, new worlds, and an exploration and alien people like Mr. Spock. All of these things were just kind of always there, and I took them for granted it to the point where when Star Wars came out in nineteen seventy seven, I was like, well, wait a second. What do you mean? There's other other star things. That's what is that about? Because this is the, isn't it all? Just Star Trek turned out note there's going to be more of that. And so there was a huge thing, a lot of formative images. I remember that Mark of Gideon overpopulation thing, and I didn't understand any of the political context of the time in the fact that that was what stand on Zanzibar was an influential science fiction. Novel of which was all about overpopulation. But I do remember that, like, imagine if you couldn't ever get away. There were always people.
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Around you, and that was that was super memorable for me too. And I that also led me to take the plunge into related media. So like I discovered at some point a little bit later, like when I was, I don't know nine or ten, maybe or eleven that the that there were there were starting to be books, Star Trek books. There were some novelization made of old episodes or of animated series episodes, and there were some original novels. And eventually there was like there was Thalji of short stories that was basically like fan fiction that had been turned into a published in theology by official channels, and then they started doing the pocket time scape Star Trek books where basically like every month, there was another Star Trek novel about the original cast and crew, which was all Star Trek was back then, and that was that blew my mind too. So that was in the sort of late seventies very early eighties before I think around win the motion picture came out. But before Star Trek do came in. So. You know, from books and comics and the TV show and then into the movies, just the single biggest influence on my on my childhood is original series hard to get out of the seventies, especially in the United States as a child without being inundated by Star Trek. The you know, especially before Star Wars came. But even after Star Wars came because star, which was a movie, you could go see it in the theater a million times. But Star Trek was just filling the television every single day. All right. John, what what do you have for us? Well, I have a radio drama called the fourth tower of Inverness that was originally produced in nineteen seventy-two, but which I heard originally, I think in nineteen seventy eight or seventy nine. Now back the back in that time.
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NPR actually worked not just as a news media source, but as a source for all kinds of cultural stuff. And they had a production arm called NPR playhouse, and they would re present things that were done by the BBC or the CBC or by small production companies. And this is a production company called Z Bs media that was founded in nineteen sixty eight and believe it or not is still in existence today. So if you don't know about Z Bs media, I encourage all of you to go right now to 'Zibi S dot org and look at what they've accomplished over. I guess it's like forty fifty years now of. Doing these radio dramas. The fourth of inverse is the story of a crazy world traveling seeker, a named Jack Flanders who come to a mysterious mansion owned by his aunt in Inverness whenever quite told whether that means Inverness Scotland or it's another in Venice, and it has it's a mansion that has three towers, but there is a four tower that appears in the night when the steers music plays from jukebox, and it's a crazy bizarre story. It is full of all kinds of nutty stuff from nineteen seventy-two including audio from Bob Rahm. Daas quotes from Lama Venda some hin credibly, sketchy, racial humor, and it is absolutely nuts. And the thing about it was. I listened to it and I had no idea what I was hearing and I had, and I, I glanced onto this so hard and I would record these episodes of my local NPR station.
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Which was running out of puree at the time. And I I, you know, in those days, there was no way to get these things. You just had to like record them onto cassette tapes, and I had all the stuff on cassette tapes. And I had a friend who recorded one cassette tape for me while I was out of town and he didn't start on time. And so for many, many years, I had only half an episode of that of that, but. But this led me to an obsession with spoken word and radio drama that went on through the eighties, led me to discover all the great works of the BBC CBC national radio theater. I eventually heard the wonderful chemical for liebowitz adaptation through the NPR playhouse production and led me backwards in time to people like Stanford and fire sign theater. But as I said, they zebras has continued to produce Jack Flanders mysteries or series up till sadly Justice last year, Robert, Laura, the guy who played Jack Flanders died after. I don't know. At this point, I think is something like thirty five series that they've done how so every one, I, I can't stress this enough. This was this was the central book from the central text for my childhood was was these radio series series? That's that's. You know, and you're, you're not from the thirties and forties, right. Well, this is the funny thing is that as I've gone on in life, I've met a lot of people who are interested in old time radio, and of course I'm very familiar with stuff from the thirties and forties and fifties. But my interest always kind of lay more in the stuff that was produced from Stanford Berg on and and what the continuing interest amongst. It's interesting to me that, for example, the fire sign theater picked up radio drama as part of the counterculture. It seemed like the all the hippies wanted to get back to things that were kind of premodern. And at that at that point, you know, television was taking over. It's it's fascinating to me today. There's there's a lot of people doing radio drama. Obviously, definitely the comparable amongst amongst them, but, but at that time, the support all.
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Came from the corporation for public broadcasting, which of course got gutted in the nineteen eighties with the advent of the Reagan administration. And sadly, there was this this window of time there were there was just an explosion of radio drama in this country in the late seventies early eighties and that's all gone. Now they and and we should mention that another thing that was under the NPR playhouse umbrella, and also then was also co produced by the BBC is the Star Wars, radio dramas, which came out Abbas from NPR in that is such an odd thought, the idea that the star that Star Wars was adapted as a radio drama, but it absolutely was, and Dan morons, not here all the for all I know when he talks about his formative child to thinks he may specifically mentioned that star was radio dramas because he never misses a chance to mention them and and Brian VR pretty good. The science fiction writer, Brian daily, the British science fiction writer adapted that script and John Madden the. Rector of many, many really good movies was the Toronto of these Star Wars. Radio drama. It's kind of kind of wild. So yeah, that was that was the modern modern for the Aira radio drama thing. It was a, it was a real thing until as you said, it's sort of like a kind of faded in the in the eighties, but I do remember some of that. We had a commercial station in San Francisco that would broadcast radio dramas, old ones on on Sunday nights. And that's how I got into the concept. And I went to camp one summer and they were playing The Empire Strikes back radio drama and it blew my mind. What do you mean? There's Star Wars on the radio, but there was so it's funny, the spinoff me I mentioned the Star Trek books like off media and things. They're not quite like off brand stuff sometimes is what influences he was a kid because you don't know. You're not like, oh, that's just insularity material. Let's not the real stuff when your kid you're like, yes, give me whatever I can get.
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Sure. And sometimes you may have more access to that, right. I mean, you know, you didn't control when you could watch Star Trek, but you could have sexist acts of, you know, questionable quality. Star Trek novels read whatever you want. It was no question some of them. Yeah. Because we had to wait for the air or whatnot. Right? So I feel like when we didn't have streaming and on demand stuff, there was an we were perhaps younger, less deserting of quality. Sure. I'll read seven Star Trek novels. While I'm waiting for the the next episode to air white-hot by time is about euless. Well, that's what that's all about. Well, that's cool somebody to set in the chat room. It's really cool to have somebody pick something that that I've never heard of. Let me take a short break to tell you about our sponsor this week. This episode of the incomparable is brought to you by our friends over at pinged him. If your website was down right now, if visitors couldn't access your content, couldn't click that by button. What would you do and how would you know probably you'd get some complaints on Twitter or in an email, or maybe a panicked phone call, saying your sites down for awhile basically wouldn't know until it was too late and that's why you need pinged him. They give you the peace of mind. You need ping them. We'll let you know the moment. Your site goes down in whatever way is best for you. They're dedicated to making the web faster and more reliable. If you're a Pingtam user monitoring the availability and performance of your server database or website will be a breeze. They use more than seventy different global test servers to emulate visits to your site, checking into.
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Availability as often as every minute. So start monitoring your site today. All Pingtam needs is the URL. They will take care of the rest. You can go to ping dot com slash Snell. That's P I N G DOM dot com. Slash Snell right now for a fourteen day free trial. No credit card required. When you sign up use code Snell at checkout for a massive thirty percent off your first invoice. Thanks to paying them for their support of the incomparable. Okay, Liz, what do you have? I was going to go for theme because otherwise be talking of Dr. haven, excessive amount of time. But I think that I talked about that eloped so I was trying to be more like an onion and have layers and stuff. So I have gone for the sort of a conglomerate probably their own work anyway, the Lucas arts pointing click adventure games from the late nineteenth. I think, is showing my age here because I suspect I'm a little tiny bit younger than some other people here, but yeah. My first experience of computer games was with Commodore sixty. Four blew up when I was like a total art blowing up was not my fault that was due to some really dodgy, sell taping the plug work by one or other of my parents. And then we go PC and stuff happened with the PC like veteran colors and graphics and stuff, and my parents into their heads, the F it's computer game the, it's it's educational, especially there's like puzzle solving in it. So.
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Yeah. So when I was excessively young, I played for spoke the secret MIchaela. Remains one of those magical delightful and special and brilliant computer games ever made. And I think, oh, I think one of the was the most wonderful things about it is that can't pulsa be replicate the experience day even if something was just as good as it. Because when I was that age, what he come at nineteen ninety. So when I was playing like four or five. At it was scary as well as you know, funny and exciting adventurous when the MONCAYO is about a guy named guy, good who arrives own Mili island and decides he wants to become a pirate unfold. His. Seoul puzzles to help them become a pirate, and he falls in love and defeats zombie zone with Chuck. And it's, you know, it's a very, very serious deep game. That's no, there's a lot of jokes. Full and funny and. Yeah, but when I was that age, it was also really scary like the resume bees in it, and that was I think my first experience of some base and there were cannibals who wanted to eat, okay, they had their heads, but still it was like, okay, that's actually pretty scary. And then there was the. There's so many muscles, one of the puzzles when you. When you actually manage to open up the giant monkey head and descend beneath. I land you end up in a beautiful series of endless grew, read caverns of stuff. I remember just walking for hours because I had no idea how you're supposed to find your way around and some have. I got into my head that it was one of those like pixel hunting puzzles if only I could figure out the the magical trick in the ever pixel it was indicates where you're supposed to go the, I'd get it. I'd find my way to the ghost pirate ship on. It'd be great fine. But actually you had to go find a shrunken head from the cannibals instead. So that didn't work out so well, Liz stuck on that puzzle for like five months when I was ten and I like there was a summer of my life that I could never because of that.
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Like it consumed me. Yes, I yes, that was. Yeah, it was pre- Prego start talking hard. I think the most the most memorable thing about this game for me was the how actually I was with Elaine Marley who is a pirate governor of one of ins and guy. Bush's love interest, but also she's, she was brilliant. I love the fact that she was like the legal authority in the silent post. Also being a pirate boast. Also actually winning the adventure as it were all by herself of screens restaurant during pretty much everything that guy bursted fairly meaningless. And yeah, I basically wanted to be and I still want to be hard when when I grow up because that was super cool. And I also like the Power insults and the fact he can say to grunted people, we like a dairy farmer and if they knew the correct answer, then you're like, okay, you're all right contrast, you'll bet. It's like it's like a secret code thing. Yeah, and there was this. There is a series of games and obviously on Kaelin to beat by the same people Ronco intimidate for. It's just as good ethnic better. Better act to among Kayla, twos, when was beautiful things of ever been done video games because you on a series find format pieces on it's a series of interlinked fairly complicated puzzles, or at least for me because I was seven or eight by that point or was it just the next year?
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I was very young. It took me like forever. Stu, I've probably like Tamila time finished. But yeah, just I played again as an adult note the new version, the pro perversion, and it was just gorgeous how everything together. And it was a bit weird to me that I actually could work puzzles, but also seeing how it's had all been designed. It was kind of just magical. Just appreciating the. The brains behind that humanist to to figure all at sea. Yeah. Pretty cool. Let's no ever talk escape from kale because it didn't happen the other ones. The other ones they're okay. They're fide. Oh, oh, also there's a guy called STAN and you hammer him into a coffin. Remember working out that you had stricken sit in second hand coffin and Neil him in, and that was the most. That was impre- much moment from my childhood, like Nelia guy in fan for like good for the purposes of gates and stuff. That was fun. I like that. I felt very clever, like hammer nails, wooden coffin. What can I was like? Yes, some rights. I still remember that moment of set spec. Shen is pretty good. I'll client next. Otherwise I'm just going to go through all the puzzles. I remember I was subscribe to that podcast. Another thing I thought was really extra was you arrive at one of the islands among kale two, and there's a wanted poster view. And if you look at its list, your crimes and all the crimes lists, you actually have committed like a grieve robing and trespassing and attacking people with doodles in witchcraft. And I thought it was amazing that if you read this, read the poster and they came back bleach off, you've done more crimes than read again, updates.
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Same thing like, oh my God, it's like, check. How do the do that. But yeah, no, it was. It's informs my idea of what makes a good computer game of what's funny and what's not funny. And adventuring means and what pirate should be like. And the relative scariness of zome base and has given me probably my earliest role model was Elaine Marley. So, yeah, it was very good. Tony. Take your pick. It's not a draft, but that was like my top pick. And I mean, it turns out is we have a lot in common. I a a little bit older, so I'm of shame that I think I was several years older, but very stuck on the same puzzles for very long. Forever. Don't dress me ho freaky globe team to do even what puzzle. You know, there was a similar thing where my parents were very against video games and television, but computers were okay because they were -education. Computer games were were totally okay. They were not okay with the more violent ones. I don't think I ever played doom at home. That was something that was a. That was a dangerous thing that I imbibed at a friend's house. Like, you know, like Mario brothers, I was like, did didn't come out. I was so young and they were like, oh, new is on the PC. It's absolutely fine. Yeah, indeed on Mars. -cational it's fine. Educational. There were so against PlayStation my sister, arguably for years and years and years and years and years. And yet like, yeah, it was fine.
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Totally makes sense. But just I mean, I think it was. It was one of the early kind of graphical games that I played versus, I guess there were other graphical, but look, it looks like a cartoon to my mind. At least there were later ones that would come out that we're even more cartoony. But you know, it didn't look like Atari game where you had to pretend like, yeah, that's only dragged and not a duck. So and the the puzzle solving was. I mean, that's something that I've always enjoyed is a puzzle, and I love that. And the sense of humor just really was perhaps way to formative for me. So perhaps my access to Lucas arts games should have been more heavily regulated, but it wasn't in here. I am today. But just everything about the secret of monkey island. So delightful. I mean, it's it's said in this very pirates of the Caribbean except before pirates of the Caribbean style world, and but it's not violent because it's a game that's supposed to be okay for kids. And even Liz mentioned, there's a lot of sort fighting in it, but it's insult sword fighting. So like there's the animation of you fighting swords with people, and then one of the people has the chance to hurl an insult, and then the other person if will win or lose depending on if they have the right comeback. So there's a part of the first game where you just wonder the countryside of the little island fighting people to learn their insult and comebacks. And of course, it's from the era of games where things are not actually learned in games. You totally have to have a piece of paper ready to write down, like all the stuff next to it to keep your little journal alpha together. So yes, I live my head.
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Literacy is a great invention that we came up with the state's check it, check it out. So this, this also explained a look, the punchy make as well. Far far too much about me. All right, formative, I'll check off the box for formative. Then I wanted to add that all the Lucas art games for that period are wonderful. But I, I would like to put a plug in for Indiana Jones and the fate of Atlantis as being the lost fourth. Indiana Jones movie. I think that that I will make an argument that that game has as good a plot as any of the Indiana Jones movies, and I kept waiting for them to make that into a movie. Yes. Also one of the better one, one of the critiques of the Lucas arts games as they don't have a lot of replay ability because once you saw the puzzle, you even had the experience where I went and played one of the secret of monkey island games when they released it for XBox, and it was like, I have not played this game in eighteen years. And I know the survey. Looking into my childhood, the Indiana Jones game had three different paths through it. So there was more replay ability to it. Yeah. Lantis could literally be in a different place story. I remember my mum because my mom played a little point and click because hence why we had all the look set point Clinton's and she played Atlanta's remember that she didn't know there were three different choices and she ended up choosing one where you have to do a lot, the little fights. So I and I chose who had Safai with you for most of the time. So you could have someone to talk to, but I remember Ellen to keep learning to fight the Joe scape hammering away in frustration and Neue because she had all these battles that I was like, not not a single person. It's all sulked.
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Chilin. What are you. Would you prefer that identify t- thing with better? So you want to teach me. But that was funny because she doesn't do fight games chat to fight. All right. That's a good as an old person. I'll just point out that it didn't make my list, but the we had before were there were graphic point and click games. There was just text adventures and I did play the everybody remembers like the infocomm games. And if Monte were here, he would talk about the infocomm games. But for me, we really got into when I was in elementary school. The Scott Adams adventures a different Scott Adams and the guy who did Dilbert this is the Texas venture, Scott Adams and pirated venture in particular, my friends and my just huddled around was an apple two, or maybe I think it was an apple two, and just that was how we spent our recesses and our lunches for a long time was trying to figure out how you could get you know where you could take the Mongoose and drop it to scare off the snake so that you could get the bottle of rum so that you could give it to the pirate. All of those things. And and back in my day, we didn't have pictures. We had to imagine it. That's just an old person talking anyway. So I get it. I get it even though is tool for the Lucas arts games. I think he takes his ventures. You know, that's fine.
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For them. They're fine. Well, actually, that's not true. I didn't play them. I watched my dad. Okay. We sometimes there is a picture. My understanding is that the infocomm games that's the like everybody remembers those and those the classic ones. No one wants to talk about the the lesser more commercial or whatever, Scott games, but those are the ones we had and we played them and we left them. So Joe Steele, it's your turn. What what tales of childhood influence do you have for us? Well, I like gene and you. I was influenced by Star Trek, but I was influenced by Star Trek the next generation because that was what was on when I was a kid. And I remember plots and episodes and all kinds of stuff about it. But I also remember the one of the things that I thought was really interesting was seeing. Visual effects as primitive as they are. When you look at them today, you could see those occurring on a weekly basis, which is something that wasn't really happening on a lot of other television shows at the time. So even if you liked Star Wars or anything else you were just watching the same over and over. And in this one you could see, you know it should. It might be reconstituted from several other model kits and maybe the same spaceship from some species which just have some Finns glued on for the next week or something, but it was it was it was just sort of a new thing you could. You could look at each time and I have to say that that that definitely informed would I wanted to do as a career as well. So I, I liked that.
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Now, did you when you were watching Star Trek the next generation? Was it like in syndication where it was on every day or were you watching it week by week when it was on like on on when they were doing the new episodes and releasing. Or both. Both are as we, we had a WTO G you're forty four in Tampa, Florida, and they would show on weekly basis the episodes of Star Trek action ration-. But they would also supplement that sometimes with some of the reruns of other episodes, they'd Eric actually. And I remember being really mad one time when we went to stay at the beach, and there was supposed to be an episode of Star Trek that was new and I missed most of it because we didn't get back to the Tel room time and you couldn't. You couldn't just watch it again at any other point you were. You were done, and I believe that was the inner light. Oh, my God, and it was, I just saw the end of the inner light. That was over rated. Yeah. The end, the end of an emotional journey without the rest of the emotional journey. Of course, what could be I had that having with Dr Who at one point where my station would run through doctor who stories, and we had a Power outage because it snowed. And there was like, I would read these books about doctor who and then be like, oh yes. And then in this this Tom Baker story and be like pets, the snow one. I didn't see that one, and it was just that was in. I'd to wait years for it to come back around before. I could see it again, and that was that was how it was back in the day kids, terrible. And then all the cable channels kept doing.
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Marathons basically 'cause they had nothing to show they would just do T N G filler things. So I caught up on a lot of the misstep asserts that way later on. But there were many that I missed in my childhood. I think watching things at first run versus in reruns really changes your relationship with something. Because what I was saying gene, like Star Trek, the original series that was a companion five days a week, and I would see the episode be like, oh, it's this one to the point where to this day, I think if you show me one second of of an episode of the original series, I can probably tell you what episode it is just they're burned on my brain, whereas I watched it every week, which means I loved it. And it was part of the fabric of my college like social life, like everybody in my college, watch Star Trek. It was it was it was it was a show for college kids in the in in the late eighties and early nineties, and and it was. But it was like I was living my life while those seven years went by and we watched it every week. And when I was revisiting the just bought the Blu Ray set of TNG and I was looking some of the episodes and going like, I have no idea which episode this is because I probably only saw it once and that's just a very different relationship than seeing. Maybe I reached a couple of times, but it's not the same relationship that I have with the show. I watched every day as a kid when I had nothing better to do, and it was on everyday or in a marathon. I think if you have unlimited access to watching something and you can watch it whenever and you can watch them multiple times, it can't compare that to how it was to watch it as Joe Pointon like you missed it and you totally missed it, you know? So you watch things like so intentionally like, no, you didn't watch anything ironically because didn't know what it was going to be about yet.
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Right? You couldn't hate watch a show. Well, I don't know. You probably depends on the show. We just were watching things like really like, you know, in in a state of like what's going to happen this week, and that's, that's different than like, I can identify this show from the first second because I know exactly what's going to happen now. Also, it was at a weird point in time where it was mostly episodic their work asional things that would carry over from episode but very infrequently. So you could theoretically have missed that week, you know, and miss most of the inter light. But then you the next episode and you would be fine and you, you weren't like kicked out of the loop. So that is, of course, one of the benefits to episodic television at the in the in that era. Alright, lots of Star Trek happening here. TOni do you? Do you have another choice or you just going to say yes, Lucas arts games is is what you wanted to talk about. Yeah. So secret of monkey island was the top of my list. We've talked. About that a bunch. So I don't think I need to say that anything more about that, and that was that was kind of the top one for me. The second one which we haven't mentioned yet. So I will mention for me, super formative was salmon max hit the road which I think there was a disc based version of it. I played the CD ROM version of it and that was so that was what you wanted from Lucas arts adventure game in terms of pointing and clicking and solving puzzles. But because it was a CD-rom game, it had full voice for all the characters. So there's even more immersion into this kind of cartoon world. The salmon max game is also kind of interesting to me in the like, it's kind of amazing that it executives because it is based on believe kind of an underground comic from the eighties that like, how would that get adapted into a graphic venture game except that the guy who wrote that underground comic in the eighties worked at Lucas arts and apparently had been like incorporating the.
00:38:03
Actors into like the company newsletter and things like that. So there was this huge cult following for this, this comic that no one had read within the Lucas arts company. So they made a game comic that probably no one had ever heard of. And the sense of humor in San max is very bizarre. Salmon, max are a cartoon dog who wears a suit and tie and looks kind of like a detective and a cartoon rabbit who does not wear anything, and they are freelance police, which is not a thing. Basically, they're detectives class, crime solving, people kind of act like cops totally aren't. And this mex- hit the road game is a mystery that takes them on like a road trip around America, and it's very based around like tourist traps, like the world's largest ball of twine. And they are looking for stolen Bigfoot and it's like it's really great and weird and like totally plays a lot of the strange like Americana stuff that I find fascinating in weird strange, and it's kind of subversive for something that was supposed to be borderline okay for kids to play. So yeah, so that's, that's the one other thing mentioned that we haven't already talked about a bunch. All right. Great. Well, let's let's do another. Let's do another round here and go back to Jean. Yes, as I reached into my memory banks on things that really. State with me and shaped what my ideas of science fiction. Like I'm not.
00:39:38
I am not a total science-fiction nerd, but I sure did watch a lot of the stuff that came out in the fifties and sixties because again, television would fill in gaps in there. Programs. Usually not the major networks. So there were three major networks. There was public television, and then sometimes there's like extra independent television station that would Miami where I grew up. W C I X they used to watch. They used to show it wasn't creature feature. Exactly, but it was definitely like old movies from. That. We're some were horror, some science fiction, science fiction, horror, and I. A bunch of those came to mind. We would end up seeing them more than once because they would just be in rotation every so often. And you could see more than once, but the time machine nineteen sixty. Film based on the wells novel that really shocked and scared me again. Probably why I'm that such a huge science fiction nerd because I got so traumatized as a child, seeing that notion that you could go so far ahead in time that human culture would have disintegrated and gone backwards into primitive. Culture of the morlocks. And that really, really scared me and that that was a twist. You know, that was definitely I hadn't read the book or anything like that. I'd just watching it on television on the weekends, but. The notion that you could go so far ahead in time that you would basically see that we had destroyed the earth. And I think that one of the things I mean, I have no scientific proof of this, but I do feel like if you grew up when I did in the in the sixties like ego, you didn't understand nuclear annihilation.
00:41:51
All the adults around you. You know, had it on their mind and especially like Sam Florida, where I grew up, we had the Cuban missile crisis, and I was only two or three years old, but I have this this this like sense that everybody around me would have been very worried and watching television to see what was going to happen. So seeing things that have that kind of. Apocalyptic ending or possibility. That definitely made an impression on me, but it's also that time machine movie is really beautiful movie to watch the the costumes. You know, the Victorian period and the students, and the sets and rod Taylor's. Very handsome. I really, really liked that a lot. So yeah, I could say again, it gave me sort of does those feelings of excitement, slash nightmares that I, it was science fiction. Nice. George Powell also did more the world's and when worlds collide. So yes, lots of which also apocalyptic in the sense. They are totally destroyed in that movie, but that's okay. There's another planet, it's fine. All right, John. What's what's another one from you? Okay. Well, because my first one was obscured enough. One thing that I've noticed that's common to all of these memories is we keep bringing up the way in which we got the media and how the media was disseminated because we now live in the era of the internet where everything is available at all times that has completely changed the way that you relate to media. So I'm going to discuss something that I saw once that left a Mark on me and I'm not exactly sure what it was and what I saw, and I spent the rest of my life trying to figure this out. This is a.
00:43:46
By way also of introducing this back before there were even VHS is there was a service called swank, which was which sounds point to graphic, but it was actually, it was actually a distribution company that would sell or would rent like sixteen millimeter prints of movies to colleges school. So you could show a movie at your, your your school, and that was the way that you got commercial movies once they had left the theatre for good and the. So I would go to my local college when I was about eight or nine or ten. And I would watch like that was the first waiver saw two thousand one A Space. Odyssey and stuff would go to see these movie nights and one movie night. They said that they were going to have a movie night of short films about the devil. And his one of it was at this thing that I saw this film called. I am the devil which as far as I can tell. Dates to about nineteen seventy six. It was weird. It was bizarre. It was upsetting. It was a psychedelic movie psychedelic animated film that has almost no plot, but it showed devils convoked cavorting. It showed Lucifer holding court with his group of of lesser demons. And there were it looked like Peter max. It looked like yellow submarine. It had music. It had strange, wrote a scoping. It was confusing to me deeply confusing to me. And for many years after I wondered if I had actually seen this because I could not find any record of this movie assisting anywhere. And then when the internet came along, I was like, oh, sure. I'll just plug it into two Google search, and I'm sure I will find it. And no, I did not find it. So for many years I started out my own.
00:45:44
My own sanity and till suddenly about ten years ago, I found a poster for it online for sale, and it said among other things that it was a, it was directed by Steve lisp burger, who it turns out was the animator for Tron the original trimbe and also the animator for a very strange animated film that was show that showed on HBO in the eighties all the time called animal lympics that probably a lot of people remember. So I try to figure out if I could with armed with this information if I could find anything more, but it's not listed on his, I am D page in and and so for a long time, I didn't know that I would ever have anything more than this poster to go on. And then a friend of mine saw that on the poster. It said by the producer of LLosa marine, and she found on a very sketchy Brazilian. FTP site somewhere PDF of heavy metal magazine from nineteen eighty. That mentioned that this movie had never found backing and had never gotten into circulation, which makes me even more curious to what the hell is the story of how it got to be there. And just last week I was able to find by plugging in the production company. I was I was able to find eight notice from a billboard in nineteen seventy-two saying that Arnold Maxon. Had signed on as a consultant for fully aware productions for a animated and live action film based on Dante's divine comedy, which I assume is this movie. So what I'm saying here is I don't know much about this film, but this film has obsessed me for at least forty years of my life. And I beg I beg listeners out there. If you know anything about the film, I am the devil that was directed by Steven this bigger burger for fully one productions came out sometime seventies, tell me about it for don't because I feel that if I find it I will. It will fail live up to any expectation. I half it for then you'll be free.
00:48:11
But this explains a lot about my my lifelong of session with margin alia and the more of scarce something is the hardest to understand or at least to to find any information at the more that's catnip for me. Yeah, I the the chase of trying to find something that you're not quite sure whether it existed or not, and then and then getting some sort of signal that maybe it did and that you weren't just imagining that I've had that having a couple of times never to this kind of extreme degree, but that that is. That's amazing. I, I remember like I went to the festival of animation in college and use the spike and Mike one, and some of those were super obscure, and you're right. The internet kind of a just eliminates most mystery from the world, but you still still have some of it. I've also revisited old stuff that I was like, oh yeah, I have good memories of this and, and you know, famously revisited in and it's there's nothing to it. I think everyone who lived to the eighties. Remembers night flight and and watching little animated segments on night flight, like Jack MAC and RAD boy go. And you had no idea where these things came from. They were. They were terrifying because they seem to bubble up out of out of the ether. You know today, you know, you can find anything with a couple of clicks. I still have some like some scenes and some collections of comics that were published in my college student newspaper and stuff that would all be web comics today or other things that would have been more backup backed up at archived and things like that than I treasure in part like some of it is nest Elgin some this, like some of the stuff is quite clever and some of it is like this basically doesn't exist anywhere else anymore.
00:49:51
Yeah. All right. Everybody out there listening within the sound of my voice. I am the devil film list burger. Please let us know what the deal is. The theme of the whole show could be milk carton moment incomparable find this thing. I'm pretty sure this thing existed, Liz. What else would you like to talk about? Keeping to my self imposed themes of computer games. I, there's a lot of things I like concise fi and admittedly a those are informed by Dr Who, and Star Trek both which you know, I started remembering the, I don't remember when I first like watch those. However, there's also in for there's a lot of stuff. Spacey stuff isn't ending ju- either. I'm really, I like I like my space feudalism. I have problems that. I think that's great when we like go back if you hundred years and start doing dividing planets amongst. Nobility, casino, what could possibly go wrong with that? And like my epic, galactic politics. And I like swords and space and like weird spaceships and and ridiculously overcomplicated world building and how the giant galactic empire thing together. And all of that comes from. The original June video game, which was released in nineteen ninety two, I think. And that was that was something that I think it was like is like two megabytes, absolutely tiny. And I also played again like last year still really good, I think is amazingly impressive in its sort of scope and game play and EPA knish when it's trying to adapt this incredibly complicated Noval and also taking quite low of influence from David Lynch's dictation of June and and converting it into computer games. And it was really neat because there is two different layers to one is sort of Sadur PG where you're full pollutant wondering, run different places on the planet, and you know, you're traveling all over this world. You can go anywhere on this world, which was coolest thing is thanks. It was like.
00:52:12
Like this is totally open world. Okay. Most of it is just watching your little flying, I Cohen or your little joint sand worm going across them that that sort of screensaver of you. Swishing forwards looks really cool, and you can watch the little map little pixels, just get slightly longer and longer as you continue your journey. And sometimes I, if you've got some with you, they'll sport something and you can go London see it, and it's like a siege of which are like three different versions of so the basically the same. But still that was amazing at the time and that was the that was cool, and I didn't actually know what the story of Jim was. So it was. It was very dramatic to me when when you're the character's father to treaties died and I'm assuming that everyone knows the pull of June here, your the air to the trades family, and you're fighting are Conan's who are different family that you're like ancient villain, enemy. Thing going on, and you have to mine spice on the planet June and send us the emperor who gets really demanding for spice, never say thank you throughout the whole game, which actually really annoys may not because when I was playing for didn't know is child. But now I'm like, you're kind of Mr. emperor and I'm always really hard work and we as as well as fulling venture through. There's also the the exciting that circu- is no, it still for custody. There's the running the mining operations and also converting enough of your helpful people in sue the military to fight your enemy, her corden who are also on the planet, and you know, you have to have some strategy. There isn't. It isn't terribly difficult. It wasn't terribly difficult when I was playing the first time and it was very small, but it was still fun. It's still exciting and sometimes the Conan's attacked you and that just if they'll kind of amazing at the time, especially when you like loest.
00:54:12
Stanley, got your little people killed because you could. You could check in whilst they're attacking somewhere and it's like, oh, we're taking terrible losses here. We've thought to those of us has died before kill ten, her quotas. I felt terrible. You know, I was murdering my little people there and there was nothing I could do to help them. I wasn't going to have them retreat like cowards, they would all have to die, and that was that was that's sensible, stress J anyway, play this game. It was. I thought this was amazingly cool in brilliant and the sequel June two, I think is like one of the big urge real time strategy games and that kind of I love that as well. Because you know it's the same world and there's the same sense of poltics, but this was a real trashy was exciting entirely different way and. When I got to high school which was some years later and a high school library, I spoke to these books on the shelf called gin on Jim. Jim knows like I knew that name. I know that name and I looked to and it was like, oh my God, it's a book and up into that point. I hadn't actually read any sort of science fiction novels, and I was like, oh, I must read this, and I thought it was brilliant. I love as still my favorite book and that's what got me just reading science fiction. Generally those when I started after you like Frank cupboard, reading as as often our soc- clarkin, bro.
00:55:35
All Roach. Do who thing that? Yeah, a whole big bunch of classical science fiction authors. Overwhelmingly men. Yeah, I only knew it was like nineteen or something. It was like, hang on. If I read anyone who is an Jude apart from LaGuardia and for the past ten years. Excuse a bit. All right. And then I changed my reading habits. Basically, genes is responsible for my love of literary science literally. Well, it's no alliterate, but I and down science fiction and also for my preferences and I want to see and my written down science-fiction and for I don't know. Some people do like swords and space and think people people should be thanking gills. Those people are role, but. That's why I went to see, and it was thanks to thanks to the game. Lovely gave Russia blue game. Again, the childhood thing where you you play video entire video game based on dune, which is based in large part on the on the movie, and it's only years later that you realize, oh, this is also a series of books. Again, that is, that's childhood have no context. You don't understand. It's fine. You figure it out later. It's all it's all. Joe. What do you have an tempted to not pick Star Wars and just leave that as an influence that hasn't affected any of us. But. I'm not. I'm not familiar with this. Tell me more. I will go ahead and say the THX VHS set of the original Star Wars movies when they did that refresh and big marketing push of releasing that when I was a kid was was pretty impactful in being able to see the entire series because before that, either to catch it on TV or had one really horrible VHS recording with commercial breaks from whenever it had aired on some channel in the past. And that was only for the very first stores movie. So being able to watch all of them whenever I wanted was a big deal because I could skip over all the boring jobs, jobs palace stuff, and just go right to the spatial battle at the end of return the Jeddah or skip around where I wanted to go in Empire Strikes Back or watch the entire thing because I know people are screaming you could watch it beginning to end because it's a movie whatever. But it was. It was just great being able to watch that whenever I wanted to and.
00:58:01
And you didn't get the chance to see anything about how it was put together and he designed behind the scenes stuff, but you also didn't have any CG do Bax or. You know, rocks that were put over our detour or any of this other stuff. So it was it was still kind of pure experience if you if you wanted to tap into that. So I really liked that these are these, are the the special edition VHS? Is this like the last version that was on this is not special original? Okay. This is the the last the last time. Oh, this is the last chance to see before we completely turn them around and make them into special editions version. This was basically the only way you could watch it in your home. Before you had in this. You had the the laserdisc version. Right? I don't think there is any other version that was available unless you had recorded it off of TV like, like I said previously, and you're enjoying commercial breaks and tracking problems. Sure. But they had also cleaned up some things and and also the sound so it was it was nice to be able to have that version or that's. That's a, yeah, the relationship. I, this goes back to something. I mean, this is all of us have experienced this transition from scarcity to complete lack of scarcity in media. And this is an example of like how I was trying to think winded. I buy a copy of Star Wars for the first time. And I, I think I think it may be like the DVD's when they came out. So I don't think I even had VHS copy of it. It was on TV, and yeah, I just, but back in the day, you had very limited access to this stuff. So.
00:59:46
All right, Tony, I'm gonna talk more about star. All right. Let's graph over anything goes. Yeah, they'll, but specifically all talk about a Star Wars, Jason thing. So I think Joe at probably somewhat similar in age. I don't have a memory of seeing Star Wars for the first time always was just a thing that was always around. My family, had the the three pack of the movies with THX versions. That was very exciting to be able to rewatch Star Wars as much as possible. And I specifically remember in junior high school, a guide to the Star Wars universe was released, which was basically a Star Wars encyclopedia. This was in the days before we had we Kapiti or pedia, and it was amazing. This was also I think before we had all the Star Wars Star Trek technical manuals that would come out. So it was basically this kind of, I don't know. It was probably like a three hundred page Star Wars encyclopedia that was probably not meant to be read cover to cover in your high school friends. And I did. I remember I have distinct childhood memories of like quizzing each other about random Star Wars facts in like in the cafeteria. At lunchtime. The early nineties was a kind of a different time for Star Wars. There was expanded universe stuff. But there was only like a little bit like there was, I think, just as on novels and some stuff in the comics and some stuff and some stuff, and they basically it was still like there's only a little bit. This is equal weight to the stuff in the movie.
01:01:20
Right, right guy making an encyclopedia Sarwar stuff. Sure. Whenever apparently the first bullet point according to Wikipedia of diplomacy summary of this, presumably what was on the back of the book was who, or what was salacious crumb, salacious chrome is a co waken monkey lizard and he is job the job of the huts. I don't know what his rank is, but yeah, he's that guy. We also have been no now who we all know that he was a quickie a monkey lizard, hopefully. And now you do if you didn't. So, yeah. Yeah. So that was, I mean, I think this was before we had a, you know, I think we had printouts of stuff from us net, but we did not have a lot of the deep reference material. I mean it like what I watch Star Trek episodes now I can go and immediately read the memory alpha article during or immediately following every episode I watch. We didn't have that, but this was a delightful thing to, you know, to get the exact pieces of information about every stupid spaceship and every background person in Jebel the huts palace who mainly exist so that there can be an action figure of him and and all that kind of kind of rubbish. That was delightful to children. Yeah. I don't know if anything else. All right media. That's good. I one of my beloved childhood objects was the Star Trek blueprints which were, I mean they were, they were blueprints is they were super long like fold out like multi like they were. They were like, I don't know, almost like a a yard maybe or a little bit.
01:02:58
Yes, less in width. And then kind of like eight and a half inches high, and they were all like blueprints of the US enterprise from the original show. And that's it. No text. There was like a grid listing, like all the constitution class starship with their code with their NC numbers. But otherwise it was just like, let's look at the. Let's look a deck five, and that's all it was and I loved it. I just would. This is like a reflection on the stuff that was being made then or just what I was stumbling across a kid. And like I mean, I I was I was a small nerd. I, you know the things that people would give. Me for Christmas and birthdays we're just it was all Star Trek and Star Wars stuff. Right? And I received a lot of Star Wars and Star Trek related books, and specifically, remember receiving a lot of Star Trek books that were like about the making of especially even things that I didn't super care about, like making of the original series stuff or making various movies that were not movies because they weren't G moves yet and like I didn't care it all about the making of Star Trek or the making of Star Wars. I cared more about like, yes. Tell me more fix. You'll facts about this fictional spaceship. This is what I care about. I don't care about the model that they used for the of the of the fighter for making these scenes, but tell me more about the specs of this ship that doesn't actually exist when I care about is important.
01:04:22
Yeah. So it seemed like there was a lot of making Star Trek stuff, or at least I was gifted a lot of making of Star Trek stuff that I super did not care about as opposed to fictional histories of things that don't exist. I was much more into. Yeah, I was. I was in a similar situation. Where I had. Mr. Scott guide to the enterprise, which is the movie era stuff, not as old as the original series blueprints, and also the Star Trek technical manuals connection, ration- technical manual, even have these cosc- conceits of them being in universe or something. It was. It was ridiculous, but the. Like think the Mr. Scott's guide to the enterprise head at a forward that was supposed to be written by Montgomery Scott or something. But it was interesting to read that stuff. And I always wanted the Star Trek Omnimedia which was just an an enormous book that I would always see in the bookstores, but never never possessed, did have the Klingon to English dictionary. Oh yeah. Yeah. Not good. Not a good read. I didn't read that cover to cover like Tony, this threat, the Star Wars guide. We had a lot of time. Yeah. Yeah, that's good. Good. Good stuff stuff. Okay. I'm going to really quickly. I'm gonna. I'm gonna mention a computer thing to which I wasn't really thinking of, but listen spiraled me, and I think that this is this is was formative to me. So when I was a kid, you know, I played baseball. I was a baseball player. I was terrible. We did when we Martine won two games in four years. It was terrible.
01:05:55
But I like baseball as a kid and we listened to it on the radio and all of that, but it was all just kind of and and you know, I was pulling for my team and not paying too much attention really. And then in seventh grade, I discovered SSI computer baseball, which is a stat based baseball game. It's a strategy game more instead of trying to like a lot of baseball games what sports games in general, you're the player and that's true to this day, but there is this sub-genre which is your the kind of like the strategist, whether you're building a team, a bunch sports games now have like two different modes where you can build a team where you can play the games and you can do both. They're also games championship managers. Good example, there's a soccer one where you're building up a franchise SSI computer baseball. You could. You would be the manager of the team. You could play against a computer manager or a friend, and we actually had a league in seventh and eighth grade where we would go at lunch and we would play and we had a schedule and we would play games against each other. And you would shoot. Pitcher and choose your lineup, and you input all of that. And then you'd say, I wanna pitch. I wanna I wanna try to get a double play here, all of these sorts of things and warm people up in the bullpen, all those things. And that completely changed. My made me interested in baseball really for the first time.
01:07:10
At this level of detail, it completely changed my relationship with sport where I started to think about it from that perspective instead of just being bad at it. And the really the unlucky moment was was when you discovered that the program had within the facility to create a team discs where you could basically form at a disk and get a copy of baseball encyclopedia and put in a player's name and statistics and play that players team or a symbol, an all star team or anything like that. And that that was a rabbit hole that we all went down and we created like fictional teams with our own names on them, and we were amazing. We could destroy all the greatest teams of all time, but we also, you know that that's why I ended up with a baseball reference book that I ended up kind of like falling into that. So it was one of these things where I ended up falling in love with the sport more because I came at it from this like history and statistics and angle, and then that letter later. Infested in discovering. Dice based baseball game that I played in high school and fantasy baseball history, baseball, and things like that. And so what I'm saying is when I say like baseball and I disappoint nerds, trust me nerds. The reasons I like baseball. Do not betray our shared trust is what I'm saying and computer baseball on the two is where that all started that was that was the that was the place where that all that will happen because there's nothing better than a pick a very rough crudely drawn apple to baseball diamond with a little tiny white dot that very slowly moves from one black dot to another dot indicating that a a pitch has been made. That's exciting.
01:09:00
Anyway, that's that's. That's my story and I'm sticking with it. Let's go around one last time and this going to have to be quick. This is the proverbial lightning round, but if there's stuff that you mentioned that or that you didn't get a chance to mention that you want to throw out there really quickly. Before we go, I think now would be the time to do that. So bring out your dead, forget your your, your unmentioned favorites. Gene. Do you have what? What did you have left that you wanted to throw out there. That man, the TV show. Oh, wait. Wait. Just. Bad man. I watched that almost every day when it was on. Yeah, right. I mean again, it was something that was unlike when I was a kid was kid appropriate. In fact, I only realized much later how much of it was, you know. I didn't realize it was a parody, of course, because not old enough to understand parody. I actually believe they were walking up walls when they had their ropes. You know, and they're superheroes. Of course, they were scaling the world that was like, these guys are really good at this. Not out of breath or anything. But mainly I loved it because back girl, she just had the coolest apartment and motorcycle and costume and she was a librarian and it was like, I could be that kind of superhero. If I could just have a motorcycle in a purple costume, the gold Cape. And so that was pretty exciting for me. So I think I don't need to bring out all the other dead, leave it on that. That girl note because she was one of my my heroes.
01:10:49
Great, fantastic. John, any last last items you want to get out there any any obscure things you need to find? Actually. Now I'm going to turn from obscurity to what I think everyone is expecting me to say. I grew up in a PBS household, and we watch an awful lot of masterpiece theater and I just wanted to point out a few series on masterpiece theatre. I Claudius from nine hundred ninety eight. The pride and prejudice that was done in by the BBC in nineteen eighty, but then shown in American eighty one. I know a lot of people are very partial to the Colin Firth pride and prejudice from the ninety S. But for me, Elizabeth Garvey will always be the true Elizabeth and Bright's had revisited. From nineteen eighty one. That was a major thing when it came out on TV and it was like eleven episodes. It was a very long exhausting. An emotional miniseries. But what I remember most about that is Jeremy Irons does a narrow the voice over throughout that entire series is it's the older Charles rider talking about back on the younger, Charles writer's life, and it's maudlin and it's sentimental, and it's sad, and I fell in love with that voice so much that for the next twenty years of my life whenever they would have some sort of a moment in my life that was recognized as a moment, I would imagine Jeremy is narrating it to me and saying things like, but I would never, again reached that level happiness already. I could see the salad days were fading into the distance, so masterpiece theater. So I only had I grew up my parents. I remember were were riveted by Claudius, and you know, I was.
01:12:56
Sent to bed, but I absolute remember that that was one of my earliest kind of concepts that they were. There were these shows from other places shows that we're not Star Trek essentially is what I'm saying, but also from from England and not just from not just from America and and it was only later that we the PBS was on enough in our house. Likewise, we, we ended up. I remember obsessively watching all creatures great and small on when it was on our local station and that all that. That's why when I discovered that the the young vet for all creatures great and small was going to be in the science fiction show that I was very interested in that and discovered doctor who, but I was I was there with a with all creatures, Gruden small, I so. Liz, what do you have left. I shall race through my remaining at one of them. If sid Meier's civilization, which is nice mayor is mere. I really don't know Meyer, but I don't know. Okay. Sid Meier's civilization after mispronouncing it for twenty five have. I have? I don't know. Maybe it's mayor, maybe it's. Air. It's nearly that kick started my love of history and that was that made various teachers think I was ever so clever for years and years just like, no, no. Just played an awful lot civilization and like they have a civil pedia that you can read the stuff on, obviously how to read every single scene, you heard everything worked. And so if the temperaments civilizations and it was accurate enough that you could like tricks people into thinking you actually new stuff and also to prevent people cheating. And that thing was the the questions about technology tree in victimized Catrine with the box, and we lost to take no distri. But luckily I had memorized technology. So I asked the answer to this and that was very helpful in that way. And there's also slightly age of empires, especially Japan parts to, again making me love history, but also that juice meat to the beauty of the medieval siege weapon. The.
01:15:06
Trevy. So I get very excited from trophies, turn off film or turn open computer game for what it was called. But there was like an Egmore relatively recently where you and the PCP battles you could try Shays like, oh my word trippy Shay until craft to where that was an important each weapon. On years now, enjoy Trump, she'd watching action. And the final one Jesus squeezing into my childhood more or less and formative years sort of would beat nights of the old Republic Star Wars, Star Wars. 'cause like almost over don't one. And that was my introduction to. To RPG's the has stuck ever since and I'm a huge by wear obsessive scary girl parson who loves and adores and his repeated like dragon H too many times an intent to do different things in it. But I end up having exact same storyline because I want to be the Queen. So that works out really well for everyone. But yeah, nice little like, oh my God, I get to be Jide I, I can talk to these people interaction that can travels different worlds, and I have a spaceship. I'm like, oh, this is amazing. How good is this? And that was the thing where I was like university just and I basically spent a weekend an a bit shut in my room just playing this and I, by the time that Monday camera does look at my phone and it was like, oh, I had quite a lot messages from various people asking if I was dead. 'cause I had not communicated with anyone for four days. So healthy healthy loves occasional again.
01:16:47
Yeah. Yeah. All of them very educational also made me do RPG sorry, maybe do online gaming where head to interact with other humans on the internet because the mortga night, the old Republic Star Wars, which I was scary obsessed by for several years, but also that was good contact with other people. And I wanted to do like online gaming, you know, I didn't have any real life people to do it with because the old it, I'm Soling boxes. What are they called? Again, consoles knows like. Yeah, I, I had to find people that didn't even know to play with people and they were locally, and it was like, wow, this is great. There's like other people who are nice and play games and yell hit. Cool. All right, Joe, what do you have left? I got Monty python and the holy grail of which I feel informed some of my unfortunate of humor and and I also would for for humor purposes. I would say when I was a when I was very little kid, I watched a tiny toons adventures and freakazoids and enemy. Maniacs and that whole WBZ Steven Spielberg presents thing that was all the stuff in their pinkie in the brain, etcetera. That that that was also sadly informative. Monte, but I thought comes out and bring out your dead round. Yeah. Of course. Tefron signals, Tony and go ahead. What do you have? Well, I feel like I should have to mention my Batman, the animates series.
01:18:26
I will mention, I guess I did this work right magic. The gathering the collectible card game. Sure. Which basically I spent all of my allowance and snow shoveling money and just any any dollar that I got for like three or four years of my life went into that because what is geeky you're spending all your money on something of value. Sorry, sorry, consumerism will mention the tripod series was a young adult science fiction. That was my entry point into science fiction, which was also a very weird, at least as as like a like a ten year old. It was like, oh, just opium aliens, controlling everything kinda thing. And but only why. So guess what? Teenagers are going to save the day. Yeah. Yeah, you know, that's how it works. But I feel like I should mention at a little bit more length just early tabletop role playing games. I got to play dungeons and dragons and junior high because there was I did not have any friends yet, but there was a DVD club after school where if you showed up, people would play D with you if they weren't your friends. Oh, yeah. I was great, and but before then the way I got into that into role playing game, I was given as a slightly younger child. I very much enjoyed the teenage mutant ninja turtles. And I was given the teenage mutant ninja turtles and other strangeness roleplaying game in the late eighties, a very small child, which was a little bit one of those like people should be careful about who they're giving gifts to in terms of health things lineup, because the teenage mutant ninja turtle and other strangeness was based on the comics. So very gritty and grim ninja turtles versus the like, you know, the Saturday morning kids cartoon show. There's a series of these in my life. See also the Christmas where my sister gave me the, they might be giants movie, which is the movie that they might be giants took the name of their banned from that has no relation.
01:20:29
Yup. Having watched that yet, sorry. Sorry, sister. But the teenage mutant ninja and other strangeness is a really grim gritty city RPG. It's full of stat blocks of various mutant animals, which is ridiculous to me. So they'll just be stat blocks and it's like, here's here's what your stats would be for, like every conceivable breed of dog that you might want to be immune of. And it's got great art of like, you know, like a ferret holding up aero and like sparrows holding out rifles and just, you know, it's, it's just great art from that era of comics of let's drown animal and give them a weapon and make them look scary. And in the grand tradition of roleplaying games when you were a small child, of course, I've never actually played this game. I still have the book which is over twenty years old. I just pulled it out before today's recording session and maybe we'll play this someday for total party kill. But yeah, I've never played it. I flip through it and spend a lot of time thinking about what it would be like to play it, what have never played it? Yeah, I d- I never played D. And I had the dungeon masters. Guide and the monster manual because it was so cool and I read it all and I can tell you about spells and stuff, but never played in because I didn't have a club in where I could go. And people would just play with me whether they were my friends, you never played D but you knew all about mantle course.
01:21:49
Right? I, I knew yes, everything there was you knew enough in the monster manual about Manticore 's. Okay. My my last items that I'll just mention in passing, Lisa Lisa's entire premise here was to let me mention the micro, not so there. It is the toys. I love them, and then they made a marvel comic that I also loved, and it was a science fiction comic, and I understood about like superhero comics. And and even though it was in the marvel universe who was much more of a space comic than it was a superhero comic, and it was great. The one book, the oldest book I have the book I've owned the longest and still continue to own is James of the giant peach by role doll. We did an episode about it and I, I don't know what it is about that that book, but I love it. And the last one I wanted to mention and this is perhaps the weirdest selection of all in that it is not quite a work, but a conduit to works, which is the science fiction book club, which I joined as a fairly young teenager where they would send you got for a penny, you got five books, but then they sent you to books every month and you had to send them back if you didn't want them, which you relate and you would just buy them. But I will tell you my at some point I was buying so many books and my mother said, I've got an idea how that the service where they will send you a couple of Dan books every month, and I was like, oh, great, great, great. And I loved it. I sent back a few of those books mostly.
01:23:20
Just tore through them and read all those books and my science fiction book reading. I mean, I have read every book in the library in the children's section. And then in the adult section that was plausibly science being put in my school library, like read all of it. And so these were relatively new. They were kinda like after they were out in hardcover for a while. But before they went into paperback and some of them were on the bus additions like the piers Anthony. Split Infinity series was an addition of like all of the ball, three books put together, but I just it was a huge supplier of all sorts of different kinds of science fiction books. Most of which I just read and discovered amazing things, and there was there were best of the year short fiction anthologies that would pop out once a year that I would read all these great shirt stories. It was. It was a huge thing for four or five years. I guess when I was in elementary school in high school. So the science fiction book club, believe it or not on my list, and that's it. We reached the end. That was a lot of fun stuff. Everybody in fact, so fun. Maybe we should do another episode about this with other people talking about their formative childhood media works, but that's for next time I for this time I just want to thank my guest on this episode. Gene McDonald, thank you for being here.
01:24:42
Thank you. It was great. Yeah, this was a lot of fun, John McCoy. Thank you too. Hope people find or at least give you clues that could be further in your quest for I am the devil, please help me out. That could be read a couple of different ways. John needs your help, whoever you are. Thank you. Thank you, the computer. Of course. Absolutely. Joe steel. Thank you. Thank you, Tony, similar. Thank you very much. I was really worried you weren't going to get Batman in there, but you did it. I did. I'm really looking forward to people tweeting at us that we forgot about this X, Y, and Z until that our our childhoods are therefore incomplete. I can't believe this thing from your own childhood. Yes, Jason, Jason, Jason, Jason. Your formative moments are raw. Yeah. That's right. Send those in. Those were less excited about hearing from those what you could send pulses into the clue to. John out. Listen to what we got wrong. Anyway, thanks to lease adviser, just. Jason and we will.