The Morning Stream - TMS 2497: Karen Abdul-Jabar

Episode Date: July 24, 2023

Eartha Kitt Cosplay. My Identity Was Nearly Lyfted. She trained the cats to USUALLY do tricks. Pandamanians. Google Doesn't do that Shit for Free. Is her cough finally in beta? Cilantro Murphy. If your under 7 foot, I ain't heard of ya. No Mob Activity Here! *WINK*. Rest in peace Ms Marvel... Long Live Ms Marvel... Crossing Frozen Rivers. Guys hold yourself, it will be on fire tonight. 50% Cats doing Tricks, 50% Cats NOT doing Tricks. Scammers, Go Eat A Butt. Marvel's Multiverse malaise with Major Spoilers and more on this episode of The Morning Stream. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

TMS is brought to you daily, by and large, by the support of our patrons at patreon.com slash TMS, like Dillon Sainsbury, Doug Weilder, and Keg Tapper. Coming up on TMS, Earth a Kit Cosplay. My identity was nearly lifted. She trained the cats to usually do tricks. Pandamanians. Google doesn't do that shit for free. Is her cough finally in beta? Ceylantro Murphy.

If you're under seven foot, I ain't heard of you. No mob activity here, wink. Rest in peace, Ms. Marr. Marvel. Long live, Ms. Marvel. Crossing Frozen Rivers. Guys, hold yourself. It'll be on fire tonight. 50% cats doing tricks. 50% cats not doing tricks. Scammers, can eat a butt. Marvel's Multiverse malaise, with major spoilers and more on this episode of The Morning Stream. Here is a shocking heads up for parents about teen drug use. One Florida Sheriff's Department warns there's a new way for your kids to get high. And as Fox City's Jack Miller reports, they're using raw sewage. We've got a good imagination.

The morning stream. I wonder what kind of world we're opening the door on. Hello everybody. Welcome to TMS. It's the morning stream. It's the morning stream. for what is today, Monday, July 24th, 2023. If you're here in Utah, happy Pioneer Day. Oh, fun. Yeah, another excuse to. Enjoy those fireworks. Yeah, part two, everybody.

Oh, it's so gnarly. In fact, they've been doing it for days, so I'm already annoyed. Half our neighbors are blowing stuff up last night at like, you know, midnight, one o'clock in the morning. And I'm just like, really, guys, it's bad enough. We have two firework days in July here in this state. Can you just hold yourselves until tonight? Can't you do that?

Because tonight it's going to all be on fire again. I don't know why we're doing this. So stupid. Anyway, I mean, whatever. I don't want to smirch the historical significance of the pioneers entering the valley and deciding this is where we'll go. That's all cool, right? 1800s bullshit.

It's good. Yeah, yeah. People died to get here. I get it. It was a different time. It's all kinds of crazy business, crossing frozen rivers and getting weird diseases and falling over dead next to a tree and then going, well, we've got to keep moving. like there's this is a significant thing i get it but we don't need to be setting everything on fire

with fireworks twice in the same month in the hottest summer we've had in years okay all right yes exactly uh Brian Ibit here and me Scott hi it's nice to see you hi hello bright a bit here yeah not there yeah let's be let's be clear if there our new listeners uh would want to confuse them saw a lot of you right here yeah here not there Scott Johnson there we played we had a play date, that was fun. We recorded two different film sacks sessions to a sandbag for this. Three, technically. Yeah, I guess three technically. Oh yeah, you're right. Oh my gosh, that's a lot. I went and Tina took me out to a mystery date where I saw the acro cats. Oh yeah, tell me more about this. So it's like cats that can do weird shit. Cats that do cat things, but they do them on platforms,

basically. It's, you know, I shouldn't downplay this because this actually is a really, really fun mystery date. But basically, it's a woman who has trained about 12 cats. She and her group have trained about 12 cats to usually do tricks. And because they're cats, they usually is in bold, probably capitalized and underlined as well. But it was this little theater called the Bug Theater here in Colorado, this little independent theater. It would be a perfect place for a same-sex-Marry show, not a concert, but like one of their production stage show, things like they did for their wedding that we never got to see. Oh, right. I'm looking at the stage. It's a very spacious sort of, you can do all kinds of crap on there, it looks like.

Yeah. Well, in this case, they had a lot of carpeted platforms, really tall carpeted poles. What else? A skull, because one cat just loves to sit on a skull on a rounded, glitter-covered skull. Well, there it is. They just showed it. How do they keep these cats? Some of this video looks like the cats don't want anything to do with any of this.

Yeah, that's kind of what, I mean, the cats went back and forth between, like, oh, I totally want to do this. Like, there were a couple of cats up there. You put one of those desk bells in front of them. Those ding, ding, ding, ding. Can I have some service, please? Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. And the cat just sits there, ding, ding, ding, ding, actively waiting for a treat. And this little pause just going, ding, ding, ding, ding, like for you to, like Tio Salamanca and Breaking Bad.

Watching, realizing that Walter White is the guy who shot Tico or something. Wow, wow. Is there a chicken involved? I see a chicken somehow? There is a chicken named Cluck Norris. Oh, my Lord. The chicken and the cats compete in a round of bowling. The entertainment value of this, for me, was really split 50-50.

50% enjoying watching these cats like jump through hoops and pull a little chord that pulls up an applause flag. And one cat is freaking playing the drums. Like it's basically two drumsticks on hinges above a set of drums. And he's batten down the tips of the drumsticks so that the lever, the seesaw action, goes, Bid, Bid, Bid, Bid, Bid, but, do it work? Was it functional at all, or was just like a bunch of nonsense? It was totally functional.

Oh, yeah. Like, another cat is putting his arms over of guitar and, like, plucking the strings, like playing with the strings and making it sound like it. That's 50% of the entertainment value. The other 50% is watching these cats say, nah, I really, I don't want to do a trick. I'm going to rub against your leg. I'm going to rub against this box over here.

Wow. I'm going to run into the audience as fast as I can. Wow. Wow. There's a guy in the background. I'm watching this lady. So she looks like the Eartha Kitt cosplay, first of all. I guess that's a thing, right? Oh, really? Okay. I did not see her. That's funny. But she's got, she's doing her thing out here trying to train him. And then behind him, there's a guy with a symbol and a chicken and that Cluck Norris is just pecking at the symbol.

Oh, I see the cosplay, because she's wearing like the cat woman. Yes. Yeah. Right. This is like this was filmed in Oregon, so different, different theater of it. Yeah. Interesting. That sounds like that. I mean, that sounds like a thing I would go to, just to laugh. It actually was entertaining as hell and really, really enjoyed it. Oh, good.

Good on, good on Tina for picking yet another winner of a mystery date that I would have no way of predicting, no way of guessing what was going to be. How's her, has her cough finally abated? She good there on that front? Yeah, her cough is very minimal. Still coughing. She's taking stuff for it, but coughing is minimal. is minimal. She's off the oxygen. I still have the tanks here. They still have not come and picked all this crap up. Oh, man. But, uh, those slackers. They are. They're total slackers. Uh, we both went

separately, but, uh, both went to see Barbie. We did. I saw Barbie on Saturday because a brother in law had extra tickets and called me and said, hey, um, the people who are going with us don't want to go. Do you want these tickets? I'm like, sure, we'll go with you guys. I always love seeing and Richard and Audra. So we went out there. And we dressed up because Kim had stuff ready for this and that annoyed me. I was annoyed. But she had it ready. And then we took pictures in the stupid Barbie box. And then we went and watched the movie. And I think that's about the only way you make a Barbie movie. I don't know any other way to make it. Honestly, like it's, you really are forced or faced with this reality of, I don't know, I got halfway through it and went, this literally is

the only way this works. You can't do this can't be, I mean, it could be animated, but then it would just be for kids. It's not for this audience, not for an audience that you want. If they had to Brady Bunch movie it, basically make it so that the Barbie world is this own little clueless micro

micro world inside the bigger real world and when, you know, like, just like the Brady's, when they stepped outside that their little Brady Bunch bubble, spoilers to that a 1992 movie or whatever. Whatever that was, yeah.

Yeah. When they step out of their bubble, it's a whole different world. And we won't spoil anything, obviously, but... No, there's nothing to spoil. Someone will still think we're spoiling, but we're not. It's good, though. It's fun and heartfelt and weird. My favorite part of it is how freaking weird it is.

There are times where they'll do something that I am weirded out by, and then I'll go, wow. the wrong hands, that's really stupid what they just did. But because it's handled in a certain way, it actually worked somehow. And I didn't expect, I don't know what I expect. I went in with no expectations, to be honest. I kind of just knew that I like the principal players. I like Greta Gerwig. I like the idea of trying to make something like this. That's all I had. And I came out delighted. I thought it was great. How'd you, how'd you fair? Agreed. Yeah, everything, everything you said and in full agreement. Helen Mirren's narration throughout the

whole movie is fantastic it's it's uh she's she's a star kate mckinnan playing i think a role that only kate mckinan could play yeah no that was perfect casting absolutely perfect casting yeah um uh freaking duelipa in a film for for for pete's sake yeah yeah that was cool um yeah and and uh really really enjoyed it the only you know i talk about these um movie theater experiences and for any other movie this would have irritated me and for this one was like okay if you have to but the uh the group of women three women sitting next to me not tina and barb but the other side of me um felt like this was uh there were moments of karaoke in this movie where uh when matchbox 20 decides to sing uh they're going to just sing along and uh fortunately that that ended fairly quickly but yeah yeah there's a it was a fun okay i'll tell you one moment where the audience lost lost its mind uh was when well i don't want to give this away actually but you and i talked about

it and our audience our audience lost it thought it was the funniest it's a fantastic fourth wall break by the narration yeah and you and you will not see it coming and it's you kind of here's why it's brilliant the whole time that scene's playing out i'm thinking what she's about to say I just didn't realize she was going to say it. And it was like one of the most participatory, like, I'm participating in this movie moments I've had in quite some time. But congratulations, because between it and Oppenheimer, it was the biggest weekend in film, blockbuster film, money making, whatever, since end game. Yeah. And this year, Barbie's the highest weekend of any movie.

And them together. And I think, what was it, 300-something million for them, 178 million for Oppenheimer, which is really high for like a historical drama. It's obviously more than that because Christopher Nolan and everybody, everybody knows him. But it's a big deal. It's a big deal for the business, although, I don't know, writers and actors and people might be like, well, we're not going to see much. Maybe they can use it to their advantage, right, for the strikes and say, well, yeah, you think that's great. Wait until you hear how little of the money trickles down to, you know, do a leap as 30 seconds in the movie era. Exactly.

I don't know. It's good, though. Okay, I'm going to wave. I'm going to wave the word done with spoilers, but then I'm going to do something when I think they're about back in. Nice. And so, so at the end of the movie, Oppenheimer actually builds the bomb. Yeah. It's amazing.

It's great. I was not expecting that to happen. Yeah, and he didn't blow it up, but he made it. He built, he built it. But he made it. Needed other people is a really hell of a thing. I figure we can spoil Oppenheimer all we want, right? You know, that's a Wikipedia page.

Yeah, unless they go sideways on the writing and decide to do it at different. Exactly. Unless they go once upon a time in Hollywood and make it so that Sharon Tate doesn't get killed. I do kind of want to watch Blade Runner 2049 just to remind myself what Brian Gosling is because he so stole every scene he was in that I kind of need a. I need a chaser of Ryan Gosling in a series. I need to watch Driver or something. I don't know what.

There's nothing at all wrong with watching 2049 again. And fucking Michael Sarah was great. By the way, at Alamo Draft House, this is, again, one of the reasons I love Alamo Draft House is the 30 minutes before the movie, they show music videos, clips of video games, commercials for, you know, Barbie, in this case. commercials for Barbie. They showed a little clip of the Indigo

Girls Closer to Fine were like, well, that seemed accidental. Then they showed like a commercial for this Barbie pooping dog toy, apparently you could buy in the 80s. That was a real thing. It was a real thing. And another Barbie where you lifted

her arms and her boobs got bigger that got very quickly discontinued. And Midge, everyone remembers Midge, yeah. It was just loved. the Elmo Draft House for these things. And that's all I'm going to say about any of that stuff. Well, it's worth seeing.

So check it out. It was a good time. Don't let the culture war stop you. It's great. It's great, great little, fun, little funny thing that shouldn't have worked at all. Shouldn't work at all. Again, wrong hands. This is a piece of shit, this movie.

Totally. But I don't know. These guys who made it, they knew what they were doing. All right. What else? Oh, we haven't done this in a couple of weeks because I just sort of took a break from it. but we got this stand back and check your personal belongings it's time for the morning form time for the morning form that's right a chance for you to win some prizes and uh it's themed a little

bit around these movies i thought that'd be fun so very fun we got a who would you rather have lunch with killian murphy or cillian murphy however you want to say it i don't know which one it is well he says it killian so i think what else should say it killing if he says killian then let's get those tom guns to um and margot margot margot robie those are your two choices you're going to go with Killian Murphy, or you're going to eat lunch with Margo Robbie, which do you choose? It doesn't really matter. There's no correct answer. The point is to get you over there and sign up for it.

So go to frogpants.com slash the morning form, all right, and fill it out. And you could win some prizes next week. In either case, I'm going to be just swimming in, unable to speak because I'm stuck looking at a pair of beautiful blue eyes. It doesn't matter which choice I make in this. in this uhcum's razor it's it's going to be yeah i'm going to be a dumbstruck and not not speaking the entire time they're both beautiful people did you did you did you hear did you hear that uh killian murphy's work they're working on a 28 years later movie oh get out really yeah that my dream

may come true after all and also uh what's his name's back in um uh danny boyle wants to make it oh really fantastic then it's a done deal make that happen where do i send my money i'm so kickstart of this. Yeah, how do we do, how do we get involved? I guess we just go to go. Come on. Very excited. Oh, your morning forum is still the food choice, by the way. Oh, it is? Oh, shit. You know what? Let's, for the chat, since you're all here live. So in other, right, which you'd rather eat Killian Murphy or Margo Robbie. If, uh, if you click that link, I just put it into the chat, that will be the correct one. And then I'll fix it before anyone has a chance to hear it at home. All right. That'll be the deal there. Uh, but yeah, go to frogpence.com slash, the morning forum, listeners.

Viewers go to the other thing. Right? Well, I don't see anything wrong with my phrasing. I don't know what you're talking about. What was your phrasing? Which one? I missed it. Did you say a thing that I missed?

Oh, I said whether you'd want to eat Killian Murphy or Margot Robert. Well, hey, that's on them. They want a double entendre that. Yeah. They can do that. I can't believe you guys would read into me saying that. Oh, you guys are horrible.

What a shock. All right. What else? Oh, I made an offhand comment that I may not ever do again. So I've told you about this place, this Mexican place we like, called Laugh, La Fountain, I think it is. Oh, yeah, right. That's right, the fountain. Yeah, and we like it.

That Spanish for the Fountain. The Spanish for the Fountain, exactly. El Nino, the Nino. So we like it there. They have these smothered burritos that are really addicting and we like going there. It's good. And the price is good. And the people are nice.

And it's just a nice, clean place and it's newer. And I don't know. Just something about it. we crave it and so we go there yeah and i may have mentioned this before but somebody at one point said uh they think that these this series of restaurants that all seem to be sort of family owned slightly different names very similar menus that they might all be just fronts for the cartel like there's some kind of money laundering okay this is how you push money through as you make a restaurant you know kind of like if you have an italian restaurant and you're a mob boss and an italian

mob same thing you use the restaurant as a front right yeah so uh no big deal i've just something that has come up before so i'm sitting we're at the restaurant and i make this offhand comment while our waitress is walking by where i said i wonder and this is before i see her i go i wonder if the cartel still using this place as a front i just mumbled that yeah and kim's looking at me like whatever but the waitress looks at me smiles and raises an eyebrow and keeps walking Now, I don't know if I'm supposed to take that as a tacit admission that it is a front for the cartel and its dirty work. Yeah. Or if she just was making a face.

I don't know. She, you know what? I think it was just making a face because if it was a tacit admission, she would have given you one of these. She would have given you the old Catherine Hahn like Agatha all along. Oh, is that the, that's the greatest wink in all of Hollywood, isn't it? It is the greatest wink. There are no, there's no better cackle and no better wink. Sorry, Catherine Hahn takes both.

I don't know how you wink better than that. But anyway, I brought it up and then I quickly said, maybe I'll ever bring that up again. Because even on the off chance that I'm correct, I don't want them to know that I know. Right. You don't know what I mean? Exactly.

You don't even want them to think you suspect it. I don't want to have some midnight visit from some guy in a really nice black suit. who's like yeah we need to sit down and talk for me i don't want this visit i don't want this conversation yeah it's probably bad that i did i started watching brian's recommendal well it's oh yeah yeah how about how about hope davis man yeah there's some mob business in that thing that is a little freaky bob town town business so far i'm only two and a half episodes in but but your honor is great it's uh it's hard to it's hard for me to put this above breaking bad for Brian Cranston because he was just

so amazing as Walter White. I don't think I can, I don't think I can ever say anything that he does tops it, but this really comes close. It's really good, and he is really tapping into what makes that guy a great actor, and everyone else around him's great. The tone is exactly what I

wanted. Like, this is going to be a fun, dark piece of business to run through. I'm excited about it. For sure. All right, Brian, you got a little something, too. I did. I did some lifting on, I did some Ubering on Friday for Lyft. Oh, you Ubered for Lyft.

I Ubered for Lyft. I've decided that, because too many people, and I still get it, like, I'll still say, oh, you know, I've got to, we've got to go home after the movie because I've got to do a little lifting. And my aunt Barb still's like, for a second there, I thought you meant you were going to be doing weights. Weight lifting. So you just don't like it. Ha, ha, ha, ha. I mean, of course, that's a fun joke to bring up again.

It's a very fun joke. Sure. I'm going to say Uber. I Uber for Lyft. And I'm doing all my drives. I end up in this part of town that I hate being in because, A, it's really far. It's like as far in the little radius that I draw that I'm willing to drive in. Yeah.

Like I'll actually set a radius in the app and say, only give me rides in this area. And this is at the far end of it, which means that I'm only going to get half the potential of rides. that I would normally get because anything going east of that circle outside of that dot where I'm going to end up is, it's not going to give me those rides. It's only going to give me rides going west. So I end up in Commerce City, Colorado, and drop off somebody, I immediately get another ride for somebody named Tanner, no relation. And I start making my way towards the pickup location. And I'm about, geez, maybe about a mile from it. And I get a call from the usual Lyft passenger phone number thing.

There's like a phone number that comes from Lyft that is, if the passenger calls, then it comes through this thing. And I answer it. What's that? It's like a forwarding kind of deal. It's a forwarding thing so that they don't get my phone number. I don't get their phone number, et cetera. But I answer it. And it's like, hi, Brian, this is Joe from Lyft.

this call is you know recorded for quality assurance um can you pull over can you can you get somewhere safe i'm like uh sure i can pull over into this uh into this area where i'm going to be picking up the passenger so there's a lift guy telling us someone that lift corp is telling you this is a lift corporate and i'm like uh what's up he's like well uh i can't tell you which passenger but you had a passenger on one of your recent rides that complained about a smell of alcohol in your car. What? I'm like, smell of alcohol.

Come on. It's like nine in the morning. I'm certainly not drinking, but whatever. This sounds like horses. He says, can I get your, can I, let's get your confirmation here. I show you're on your way to pick up somebody named Tanner. Can you go ahead and cancel that ride? We'll send another driver to go pick them up.

Like, oh, for Pete's sake, fine. Yeah. So I cancel the ride. He says, all right, go ahead and close the, close the app. We need to do a confirmation. We're just going to do a couple quick things. Get you back on the road. quickly as possible. I'm like, fine. He says, can I get your phone number? Like, well, you just

called me on it, but fine, I give it to him. And he says, all right, I'm going to be sending you a link. I need you to go there and it's just going to be a form you're going to have to fill out. So, uh, so I, I, uh, give him a phone number. And then I, I look at the link before I even open it. And I see that it says, um, uh, please upload, uh, uh, please upload a, uh, uh, uh, screenshot of your driver's license front and back. Okay. I'm like, well, why do they need that? And then I look at the link, and at first glance, it looks like a lift address, but then I

realize it's like, no, it says dynamically lit.co, or mystically lit.com, not anything lift. It's like, wait a minute, that's not L-Y-F-T. That's L-I-T. What the hell? So, sure enough, it's like, that's where my little bells go off, and I say, uh, Can you tell me my last name? And he's like, I can, Brian, just, we need you to fill out this form.

I'm like, yeah, so, so really, you said, like, this is just the passenger. You're calling. You're making it sound like your Lyft so that you can get me to upload my driver's license information. Can I get you to hold on just one second? I put them on hold so that I can find the Lyft customer service number. Oh, my gosh. So this is whoever is calling himself Tanner then, because that's how he can use that. Tanner. And the

the number, the text number that the message came from was like a 305 number. So he's not even in the U.S. He's basically just spoofing the app to like have rides pick up so that when the driver comes to pick up the rider,

he can interrupt the ride, call and say I need you to, there was a threat of alcohol on your car, blah, blah, blah. Need you to deactivate. So if I, so By deactivating the app, I mean, basically, I just closed the app is all I did, a logged out. If I would have given him my driver's license number, he could have logged in as me, not just transferred, like, well, I guess my banking details are hidden in there.

He would have been able to transfer all the, any money I'd made that week, which at that point, Friday morning was $34. Yeah. Good luck with that. Yeah. But still, he would have had, he would have had access to an account where whatever he wanted to do in there, including like close up the account or future stuff. Or, yeah, exactly. Or accept rides on my behalf and get my rating down, et cetera. Damn, dude.

Yeah, it was, so he hung up while I was searching for the Lyft customer service number. But fortunately, like, I was able to send them screenshots. I sent the text. I decided to, you know, look at that website myself. If you don't click on anything, people, but it's, you know, it's mystically lit.com. So when the who is information, I found out it was GoDaddy. so I reported that to the Go Daddy abuse. Good.

Abuse thing. I've been working with them. I'm getting them other details. So Go Daddy's on the case now. Wow. And yeah. So next time, here's my thinking. If this happens another time, part of me kind of wants it to.

But if it happens another time, I want to recognize it as, you know, they're all brain. received a report of alcohol on your car oh no really shoot um then i'll say oh no i just i just accidentally hit that um i've arrived at the destination so that means you have five minutes to show up to my car or else you're going to get dinged with a five dollar no show charge oh no what if i say i've picked you up and i drive to the destination that means you're going to have to pay for the ride that i gave you that you weren't even the car to use and what are you going to do report it to lift also be ready to record all this, you know.

Yeah, well, that's why I've got the in-car cam. Oh, right. So you probably have footage of this. You probably have this. Well, I mean, all I have is just my side of the conversation. It doesn't record the, oh, no, I guess it records both sides of the phone call because I was on speaker for me. Yeah, you would have heard it on speaker. That's wild.

Wild. I'd be so, I'd be equally annoyed and also proud that you sussed out because you, because that's a lot of people, I could see people getting suckered for this. Easily. Like, if you look at that site and, and again, maybe only only. do it because I had a VPN on my and whatever you do don't click on anything but I have a VPN so I ran the VPN and then did

I don't think incognito mode makes any difference because it's not like that just keeps it out of your history and stuff like that but it looks like a lift it looks like the Lyft app and it's got this little slider bar that wants you to take it across it's yeah it's it's realistic looking and I can

easily see more people falling for this than than not just because it and I got suckered in I should not have even given my phone number I should have immediately said you've got my phone number

you just called me you don't need me to give you my phone number that that's what you know yeah that's what that should have been the first tip off really dang well Brain Bowl bright reminds me that I got taken once sort of correct it was some game codes

where I we were supposed to get game codes from Blizzard for something and somebody who said they were from Blizzard and they had a Blizzard address. I mean, it was really good. They ended up getting those codes from me because they needed to, they're like, we need to see which code you have so we make sure we don't. So it's just a scam to get codes, not money or anything. And it worked. They got the codes. And then when I went to give the codes away, none of the codes worked. And Blizzard's like, yeah, there's a rash of these going around. Here's how they're spoofing it. Here's some fresh codes. It all got worked out.

but it was, I hate, I hate feeling that feeling of like almost getting taken. Or even, you know, like, even though it was just dumb code too case. Yeah, like Tina's parents, when they got fooled into believing that Tristan was stuck in Utah without any money to get home. Because they figured out by looking at his Facebook page that he occasionally goes to a nerdtacular out in Utah. And Tina's folks believed it with a phone call. That's right. That was a bad one. I forgot about that.

my mom's done it my uh kim almost got taken by one of these FBI need to see your tax info things uh this was early in those and i heard her on the phone and she was going i don't understand why the baby did and i went wait a minute what are they asking for and she put their hand over she goes this this this i'll go you're going to want to hang up on those chodes yeah and she's like oh shit and hung it up but yeah that kind of stuff is gnarly i hate it i hate it scammers you can all eat a butt how about that yeah exactly get a real job go ahead get a real job go ahead get a real job Go get a real job. Exactly.

That was a fun story. Let's move on now to... Oh, good, Amanda Catherine. Well, I hope now she says she drives for Lyft. So now you know, if you get a call, it sounds, no matter how official it sounds. If they even ask for your phone number, don't give a... Because they will have it. They have your phone.

It would have it. They have my... Like, when they set up the ride, they've got my license plate number. They know what my car looks like. They've got my first name. and uh yeah do you have a accent or anything or they just sound like a dude what's that would the guy sound like you have an accent or no no just sounded like uh just sound like regular regular american dude okay that's sometimes the giveaway too is it's like hello we are with fbi and

you know they do that then you're like uh-huh sure you're with the fbi yeah but if they sound like me and you that sucks i'm used to that all right uh let's play a little game folks yeah yeah Welcome to the morning half asses. It's a Monday edition of a little quiz show we do to try to give away prizes to our listeners. And joining us to help us do that is Mr. Brian Dunaway. Hello. Why is God? Oh, you can't hear me?

Oh, I can now. You cut out for a sec, but you're back. Pieces. Yeah. That's weird. You can't hear me now? Yeah, you're good now. Sound great now.

How about now? Pretty good. Yep. still sound good do it the whole time yeah do it the entire time and never not do it just kidding don't do that uh what's good to have you here how are you with how was your weekend oh it was fantastic i got a little uh i got a little stuff done around my office yeah got some retro equipment where it needed to be and got to play around a little bit watched a way too many movies well when i say watched i turned them on in my room

while i was cleaning up right i was watching like hell boy from was it two thousand 19, what were you 18, 19, something like that, yeah. Yeah, yeah, a whole bunch of just really rad kind of movies that just never really can, you know, just really set down and watch, like horns, that

Daniel Radcliffe thing. Yeah. Oh, how is that? How is that? I thought it was pretty good. It was unique. It was unique. Also, not brand new movies, but still. That's all right. Yeah, I love, I love background and stuff like that, and it's always best to just put on things you're not really going to care about. But once in a while, you'll find like, uh,

I don't know, a little jam in there. I do. And you know it, you know it because you sit down and I was like, oh, I sat down and I stopped doing it. I was doing it. I watched a little bit of horns. It was pretty good. All right. Well, there you go. Look at Harry Potter doing horns work. Speaking of horns work, Brian, explain how this works. Who wins what and how we do it. Okay. It's time to play morning half asses, a trivia game where I'm actually going to be giving the two of you the answers. I'm going to give Scott and Brian a category and six possible answers. Three of those answers fit the category. them do not, depending on how confident they feel with the category. They can

provide one, two, or three guesses. But if any of those guesses are wrong, they get zero points for that round. If they guess one and get it right, they get a point, two, get some three points, and three, get some five points total. The player with the most points after three rounds wins the prize for their contestant, and here are two contestants

that can't be here live that are here virtually via the results of a spreadsheet. Scott, you're going to be playing for Sarah in Melbourne, Australia. Nice. Brian, you're going to be playing

for John Brown in Illinois. John Brown. I feel pretty safe. Exactly. I feel pretty safe in saying John Brown in Illinois. Like, there's one John Brown there that listens to the show

that knows exactly that it's him and we can't docks him basically. Nope. There's some 4,000 of you that are wondering if you. Docks proof. Yeah. That's great.

All right. We'll talk about the prizes after the game. Let's get right into the game. Here is your first category and your six first answers. I know you guys, you guys know your South American beaches really well, but let's see how well you know your South American beaches. Which of these six, which three of these six are beaches in Rio de Janeiro? Learn, Madeiro, Sanibel, Ipanema, Vernela, and Concele, Conceil-Sau.

I wish I knew the girl. I wish I knew the girl. girl from Ipanema. She could tell me. Don't we all wish we knew the girl from Epinema? Brian, what are you doing? You're messing with you because you always call me out. I'm the only one who can see what you're doing. I know.

That's what I'm exactly what I'm doing. I'm with you. I'm locking in with two because I don't have any idea. Let me, let me, uh, boom, shock lock her. Okay. Okay. All right. Um, how come neither of you selected Epinima?

A girl from Ipanema, it's a beach. She's walking on the beach and she's, you know, it's a... I don't know if that's a Rio de Janeiro thing. That's what I was going to say. I don't know. Is that a song from, uh, who's, uh, Joe bin, Jow, what, uh, from Brazil. Um, well, uh, let's see. Did either of you get points? Uh, no, the three, the three, it's kind of a throwaway question, right?

There's no hope any of you. No. No. It's really, there was no way. Uh, learn epanima and Vermela. I did choose one that got, but I chose wrong wrong. Which chose one, but you both chose Madreau. Poop.

Does you see where those other ones are? No, it does not. Okay. All right, let's get to a, let's get to a question that you guys could actually do something with that you have a chance. First of all, you know we don't go to the beach. Never, never, never. No, no. Look how white I am.

Are you kidding? I'm so white. Scott's so white. Hashtag. Question number two, NBA stars taller than seven feet, zero. Taller than seven foot. Jesus. I think I noticed. Which three of these six are taller, or as tall, seven feet zero inches.

Tim Duncan, Bill Russell, Moses Malone, Karim, Karen, Abdul-Jabar. Should be Karim. Thank you, Auto-Correct. We're all tall. Can I choose they're all tall? Karen. taller than me. I love Karen.

Can I speak to your point guard? Yeah, please. Can you please get your point guard for me? That was not a foul. Can I please speak to the manager of the team? Yeah, auto-correct, but I'll blame myself for lack of perfecting. Shaquille O'Neal and Yao Ming. You guys both, oh, I don't know if Brian isn't locked in yet.

Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, locked in. It looked like you guys both locked in. If you said Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Shaquille O'Neal and Yao Ming... Which we both did, right? You both did. You're correct, and you both got five points for that. I know my tall people. You totally do.

Yeah, I was... The worry I had, Brian. you rarely have all three in the same column. I know, I know. And so visually, I was like, oh, shit, is Tim Duncan taller than I thought? It really is a random thing. So when it comes up like that, it just looks like a... I thought you're trying to make that column tall.

That's a 21-foot plus column. Tim Duncan, by the way, is 6'11. Bill Russell is 6'9 and Moses Malone, 6'10. And of the other three, Yao Ming, the tallest, it's 7 foot 6 inches. Yeah. The three on the right, I've heard of, if you're under seven foot, I ain't heard of you. Yeah, and Yao Ming is strikingly tall when you see him.

You see him next to anyone, including other tall people. And you're like, he's taller than everyone here in the world. Yeah. He is a giant, seven and a half feet tall. All right, well, then it really comes down to our third question. It's time for a little bit of science. Let's see how you guys do with this one. I was hoping some weird science.

This is weird science. Three of these things were originally. made from tree bark which three of these things were originally made from tree bark uh is it aspirin cinnamon quinine cloves cumin or ibuprofen three of those things originally made from tree bark oh my gosh this is tricky so one of them i think i know shit i've at least heard of that but maybe it was a wives tale okay i don't know either i'm going for it oh he locked in he's locked in. Now's your chance to Google

really fast and then put it in. We've got time to freaking Google. I'm still trying to read the words. Like, I don't have to spell quine. I don't even know what that is. I can't even know what that is? Quineine is a it's a, it's a malaria treatment. That's right. I thought it was a poison for a minute.

It's also the flavor in tonic when you get a gin and tonic. The flavor is this anyway. Tonic. Quineine. Okay. But you know what? In large doses, quine will kill you. So Yeah, and he was a big. That's why I stop at no more than 12 gin and tonics a day. He was an important Jedi and helped train Anakin.

That's right. Quine gin. That's my favorite mix, my favorite drink. All right, you guys are both locked in. You both said cumin and I'm sorry. Oh, shit. This is one of those rare ones where all of them were on the left side. It just is the way it worked.

Aspirin, cinnamon, and quinine all originally came from tree bar. I know where cinnamon come from now Cinnamon is all I knew for sure And isn't it still It's still a form of tree bark It might still be Yeah it might still be From tree bark

So that means we've got to go to a tie breaker question Damn it Tricor Time breaker And I really can't give either of you Like let's see Yeah you each picked one correct one in the first round You each got all three right in the second round

like neither of you has done any better than the other um wow so we'll just randomly arguably so I'll just randomly say um Scott will get the first answer on this one and then Brian will be forced to do a higher lower now I don't care it doesn't matter it's fair either way I'm good yeah on an average day according to National Geographic in 2018 on an average day how many ships pass through the Panama Canal? Two. I'm going to say how many on average day?

How many on an average day pass through the Panama Canal? It's a highly contested zone and area and all that. It means there must be volume. So I'm going to say... It's also very expensive to pass through the Panama Canal. Yeah, you don't just... One does not simply walk into the Panama Canal. That's right.

I'm going to say... Speed, sped up footage of the... that stuff is pretty cool. It is cool. I'm going to say 100 because it's got to be at least, it's got to be at least that. So 100, I say. All right. 100 is incorrect.

Brian, is the actual answer higher or lower than 100? If they're going to freaking have a whole article in the National Geographic, I hope it's more than 100 because otherwise what the hell are you even writing for? Who cares if it's less than 100? Yeah. All right. Fair enough. Okay.

The actual answer is lower than 100. It's only 48. 38, on average, 38 ships. What boring ass article was this? Oh, there on average, 38 shit? Who gives a crap, write something else? Look, that's still impressive. So you want to just have all these digits.

But the point is, these giant barge-like ships, it takes wild processing, man. Oh, shut up. It does. A minute ago, Scott, you said, I know it has to be at least 100. So I'm going to say 100. Yeah, I did say that. But that was, maybe I was tricking. That was ignorant.

That was me ignorant. Oh, good. Yes. Right. Yeah, no, it costs a ship. the toll to go through the Panama Canal is $800,000. Holy Moses. The Panama Canal, the Panama people are just raking that money. Yeah. So what do they have to do?

Does that with the Panama? So, wait a minute. So $800,000, what, a year? Or per ship? No, per ship. Would you go through? It's like paying the toll. Well, you should have told me that first.

I would definitely went lower. Why would you? Why would you thought that? That's high. So wait a minute. That is very high. what's going through. Let's go through the shortcut. All right.

So that means that this isn't even worth doing unless your cargo is worth, you get to be worth multiple millions to be worth it. Right. Yeah, you're not going to sail your little boat through there, but I mean, a shipping container that's got hundreds of, hundreds of containers on it that are being paid X amount to get those containers. I did not know that.

Yeah. I'll bet the Panamanians are doing just fine. They're probably all right. That is what they're called, right? Not Pandamanians. Panda. I love what you keep calling. Pandamian.

Panamanians. Panamanians. It's really some pandemonium going on there. Panamaniac is great. Scott is our winner. And by proxy, that means Sarah is our winner in Melbourne, Australia. Sarah, I'm going to be sending you a couple of codes for Frick Inc. The game, Frick, Inc.

And Picks Ross, which I'm assuming is a P-Cross style game. I love those. It's like a little puzzle game that you draw pictures, basically. on uh do you remember the do you remember the pick cross game on the ds the mario yes that was so good that game was really good yeah why is that not available i gotta go find that that game i'll bet you can it's gotta be a switch version right which is even better with the touch screen is there i don't even know i like they i feel like i haven't heard of not a mario one anyway like that mario one in particular was so much better than any pick cross i'd played and since because it animates it like after you got the the picture done it was all like Zelda and Link and Metroid and stuff like that. Was it called Picross? Zelda and Link? Mario P-Cross, I think it was?

Mario. Not a C, but P-I-C-R-S. I got to go find it. Yeah, just one C, right? I may have to, I will... High Cross. I will find the ROM and play it normally on a DS, everyone. That's what I'll do. Perfect.

Well, that's great. Congratulations. Oh, let's let Fletcher say. Congratulations. You're a winner. People in Australia should win things. I'm super stoked with that. I agree. Yeah.

It's good to see some representation. We had Margot Robbie winning at the box office, and now Sarah wins here. That's right. And also I got to- It blows my mind that she's Australian, just because you, you, I only ever hear her accent in interviews. Like, I can't think of a movie I've seen where she keeps her actual accent, right? I'm trying to think of one, I can't. Margarabi you're talking about, right?

Margarabi, yeah. Yeah, when she, no, you did, I was making sure. when she says when she was in um the one where she breaks nancy carrigan's leg uh oh i tanya yeah she had this crazy east coast accent thing yes yeah she does a similar thing when she's um in the the dc stuff when she plays what's her be harley queen her she's she really is like how how often you get somebody who's a really great actress who's like literally a great actor she's very good at her job She's also unbelievably attractive, and she does producing, she does writing. She does so much stuff.

She's great. I think she's great, all right? So take that world. You heard it here first. Scott likes Margo Rauby. Hot take. Hot take. No way, really?

She's so unlikable. Let me just say this, too. Ryan Gosling is too ripped for 42, 43, whatever he is. Jeez, no kidding. Yeah. It's grossly, he's grossly ripped. How are you getting... What's holding that prosthetic chest up?

He is a beast in this thing. Yeah. It must have worked out right before every scene. I don't know. Anyway, Dunaway, it's been a pleasure. And we'll do this again Wednesday. We'll pull you back in for a little Ted Pooley feud where we play with one of our listeners on the air.

That's always fun. So if you want to be here live for that, people at home, please do. You might be able to be in the show and win some prizes live on the air. Dunaway, anything else you'd like to say to us before we go? Yeah, I can't believe Barbie. did so much better than Oppenheimer opening weekend, I mean, but yeah, one's a

three-hour epic. The other one's like an hour and a half. Come on. Yeah. I think if you're going to make summer a good time movie, you're going to win over serious thought-provoking, you know, complicated plot movie. Yeah, who really won? Because when they did the Barbie

Oppenheimer thing, when they combined the two, I think Oppenheimer got a little bit of free press there, so I'm going to get the win to them. Plus, there are more letters from Oppenheimer in Barbenheimer than there are from Barbies. That's right. That's right.

The meme is weighted heavily on the Oppenheimer side. It's like Benefer. Jennifer really wins in the Benefer name. I agree. But it's also, they also made a crap shit ton of money, 178 million or whatever, a lot.

They did really good. They both did well. Yeah. Yeah. So we're all win, Brian. Kiss our butts. All win. All right.

There he goes. Hey, you guys. We got time for no news. Instead, we're going to go straight to a little bit of schlykerisms coming up here shortly. you know, Comic-Con's going on.

There's, uh... Oh, I bet their announcements happening out there, huh? Yeah. I guess it went on. But we also have some,

because it's over now, but we have some, well, we have some bad news around Marvel. Oh, always. It's just lately, it's just one bad news

after another. Feels like it, right? We're in a rebuilding phase, I think, a little bit. I think so. Yeah. It's like,

uh, it's one way of putting it, I guess. But, yeah. Anyway, uh, we'll get to all that in a second.

We're going to take a break right now when we come back, Stephen. So stick around. Brian, play a song while we do that. Yeah, so Tadpool listener Louis Loyo, or Lewis Loyo, who jokingly took offense to my dislike of kiss, or our dislike of kiss. I'm doing a make-good for Lewis, so I'm happy to do it. He got in touch with an indie band that he really likes, Patty Pershela and the Mayhaps. This is the single from the upcoming EP, which is called Perpetual Motion Machine. He went and got permission, like I asked

people to do, from the band. Absolutely appreciate when folks do that. And even got me a copy of the song, which is even better. Here is the song Spill by Patty Pershela and the Mayhap. This is great. If you like the Black Keys, for example, this is some

black keys-ass blues. You're going to love it. Talk a little louder, my man, help me understand, same age as a daughter, oh damn, don't you know me understand, same age as a daughter, oh damn, don't you reach for my mind. A smile is not an invitation There's by behind this laugh I'm thinking So talk a winter loud about me Help me understand You know, I kind of like it when you walk away You keep talking but it's all to say

say yeah looking like you want to make my day quit spitting in my

face quit spinning in my face you got something to say quit quit spitting

in my face You're like my politics It's radical for me just to exist now And everything I'm only pleasing myself So you could tell you dreams with somebody else Who sings my fingers weave it Car keys and guitar strings

I'll never be the best to play No, not the top that you might be yeah I kinda like it when you all to go away yeah you keep talking but it's all the same looking like you want to make my day

oh quit spitting in my face keep spitting in my face my face He got something to say Quit speeding in my face You kind of like it. You kind of like it when they're all doing, yeah. You keep talking, but it's all the same.

Lookin' like you want to make my death Oh, quit spitting in my face. Quit spitting in my face. Got something to say, yeah. Quit spitting in my face, yeah. You got something to say Wait, are you gaming on a Chromebook? Yeah, it's got a high-res 120-hertz display,

plus this killer RGB keyboard, and I can access thousands of games anytime, anywhere. Stop playing. What? Get out of here. Huh? Yeah, I want you to stop playing and get out of here so I can game on that Chromebook.

Got it. Discover the Ultimate Cloud Gaming Machine, a new kind of Chromebook. Johnny came calling one Sunday, the girl of his dreams was so sweet. She served in some wonderful dishes, but he found the meal incomplete. No soup? Good day, Irene, good day, goodbye he sighed to get the punch of soup for lunch. I'll pick another bride. Lousy conniving, murderous crimson wizard is deadmate.

And we've returned. Tell me who that was again, please. We'll do. That was Patty Pershela and the Mayhaps from their upcoming EP, Perpetual Motion Machine, a brand new song called Spill. Nice. That sounds all right. Yeah.

Yeah. I haven't heard any in the middle I didn't like in months and months and months. Well, I hope to continue that trend with this one. It is an uphill, no, upward momentum trend. Something. I don't know what I'm saying. I'll take you. I'll take it. Major spoilers time. We're going to talk to Stephen. We're not going to make any spoilers. All right. There are none. No, no, no. Not this week anyway. But we got stuff to talk about. Let's do it.

And now welcome Stephen to the show. He's a huge freaking nerd. Dollar, Dalla bills, y'all. Yeah, he is. It's Steven Schlecker, joining us from major spoilers.com, my one and only place to find out the latest in comic books, pop culture, TV movies, and more. And Stephen's here with us today to talk about some of that stuff. Hello, Stephen. Hello, Scott.

Hello, Brian. It's nice to have you here, as always. So normally, this is at the time of year normally. Stephen will come on and we'll have some big blowout discussion about some huge thing that happened at Comic-Con. But this year has been a little

studio list. Like, there's not a lot going on. mostly just like the convention itself, the cosplay is great as always. People are happy to be back in full force, all that stuff. A little lackluster. Yeah, not a lot going on. Do you have any hot takes on that before we go to our main discussion here about DC and that? I think you pretty much hit the nail on the head there, Scott. It is very much a Comic-Con back to comics, although technically media has always been a bigger part of Comic-Con than people think it's only been since about 2005 or whenever Twilight started to hit big.

that Comic-Con focused more, or San Diego Comic-Con focused more on movies and television properties. And so it was nice to get back and have stuff focusing on comic books for the most part. Most of the studios, in fact, basically all the studios pulled out because of the Sag Afterra and Writers Guild strikes, because part of that is the actors can't go and promote their materials. So if you can't get big names on the stage to bring crowds in that will then spill across social media to talk about your product, you know, why, why go? Yeah, that's a good point. That's the take they all did.

So, so in your estimation, though, had the strike had not happened landed when it did, we would have probably had more of the usual. Oh, I mean, Doom 2, you got the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I mean, there's so much going on. Barbie definitely would have been there in force this weekend. So, yeah, there's, yeah, the strike definitely played a role in the studios pulling out. That being said, though, last couple of years, you know, COVID certainly shut down Comic-Con. But even before then, Warner Brothers was not showing up to the convention with their Big Hall Age presentations in favor of doing their own online version of their big presentations.

Marvel has done something similar to that. Of course, Disney is doing its own D23. So there's a lot of incentive for the big studios to create their own event as opposed to fighting with every. else at a convention that holds at most 150,000 people. Yeah, good point. Something we found on FilmSack this weekend while we were just dorking around. If you go to, this is how much money, marketing money, Barbie threw it everything. If you go to Google and just search for Barbie and hop in there.

Even if you're in dark mode, you will now get an explosive pink screen with a bunch of sparkles. Oh, yeah, yeah. I assume that costs big money. I can't imagine it didn't because Google doesn't do that shit for free. if you type Oppenheimer you do not get it your screen doesn't go black no it'd be cool though or like a big mushroom cloud in the front of it

town down yeah oh crap what's gonna happen oh no they probably had to tread a little lighter given their subject matter I'm guessing yeah but anyway well so there's that then there's this other thing that is a little bit of a bummer it's the Eisner's the Eisner's come out every year they're at the big awards in the comics industry where all sorts of mainstream plus indie stuff

gets recognized. I always look forward to them because it's always like a bunch of books I want to check out and read. And DC did really well. Yeah, check out. Check out DC. They got, they won for best short story finding Batman by Kevin Conroy and Jay, Jay Bone from their DC Pride 2022 issue. They won for the best single issue, Batman One Bad Day or One Shot. That's Tom King and Mitch Gerrards, who did that. The best continuing series, DC won with Night, Nightwing from Tom Taylor and Bruno Redondo. They won for Best Limit. series. I've talked about this series on the show before the people need to check out the human target from Tom King and Greg Smallwood. James Tynan, who he won Best Writer, but he has done

work for DC Comics, The Nice House on the Lake, and the Sandman Universe, Nightmare Country. He's won with the work there. For Best Penciler or Inker, Greg Smallwood for the Human Target, Best Cover Artist, Bruno Redondo for Nightwing. And then we have Best Coloring, Jordie Belair, who has done coloring work for Nice House on the Lake, Suicide Squad Blaze, and has done some Marvel work. Of all of the

companies that were represented, IDW, Dark Horse Comics, a bunch of drawn-and-quarterly, Abrams Comics Arts, the only one who won anything that had any representation with Marvel was Jordy Bel Air with Best Coloring. That was it.

That seems like not a great I don't know what that means. What does it mean that the creative end of where all the primordial comic work comes from, comic books, right? Forget about MCU, forget about DCU, all that other stuff is just like down the road kinds of things. They're all comics first, then movies. It seems like something's being run differently, maybe? Or what's the deal? Because I know Jim Lee, as editor-in-chief, has really been a strong thing for DC, and everyone's very happy with him.

but I don't know what's going on over at Marvel. Is it just a different regime, a different... Well, so if we look at what DC has, finding Batman was a short in their DC Pride event. So all the publishers basically have a pride-related title that they release, but it could be Kevin Conroy's passing last year, could have played a role in that. When we look at some of the other stuff,

like the limited series, the Human Target, and Batman One Bad Day, those are things that are not part of the quote-unquote main DC storytelling. You know, right now, DC has night terrors, which is this horror event that's going on through most of their books all this month. It would have been better to do it in October, but whatever. So what you're seeing here is in all these categories where DC is the clear winner, you have them saying, hey, let's take a chance with this. Let's take a chance with our black label title or let's take a chance with this limited series with these writers, Tom King, who are very well-known

and liked in the community and let's see what they can bring us. Let's try something different. If we look over at what Marvel is doing, just last month, they killed Ms. Marvel, and she's going to be back this week from the dead as a member of the X-Men team, right?

So not even dead two months. We have the death of moon night happening, I think in October, must be in October where the death of moon night is happening. So we've got that happening. Marvel is about to launch in October a big company-wide crossover event called Gang War, which is going to bring in a lot of the ground-level heroes Daredevil Iron Man, PowerFist, all those characters, which are great, but these gimmicks of let's kill a character off every quarter,

let's do these big massive crossover events, that's stuff that they did 10 years ago. Yeah, and that is such a shallow well of creativity to, say um all right here's what we'll do we'll kill the character and then we'll bring them back you know it's it's uh uh it gets it was excited the first time they did it and when they killed superman it was great and when they you know spider man died but was really in doc ox head and and all right yeah but yeah you can't just dip into that well and i don't know what uh i don't know what else they you know what are the things they could come up with to do but it's got to be you know maybe maybe stay away from uh the giant multiverse

well and say, oh, we're going to have a giant crossover where the X-Men face hundreds of different versions of themselves, a la Spider-Verse. They just need to come up with something. They've dipped into the Spider-Verse over at the publishing side so many times. They totally have, yeah.

And the fact that the multiverse has become part of all things Marvel, whether it's comic books or TV shows or the movies, it's almost kind of draining. It's almost kind of like, okay, what else you got? I like chocolate ice cream, but maybe I want to try pistachio.

Sure. Are we looking at another, like Marvel is going to have to do a crisis on infinite Earth's kind of thing and say, all right, we're kind of eliminating 90% of the new universes we've created around. Funny you mentioned that, Brian. You may remember a big thing that happened in the 2000s where Marvel launched, what was it, Marvel, what was the Unlimited, the Ultimate universe, right? Where we got really great retakes on Spider-Man from Brian.

Michael Vindis, of course, that introduced Miles Morales. Yeah, exactly. Well, that universe was killed about, I want to say, 10 years ago. Guess what's coming back? Oh, the one that you just got killed. The Ultimate's Universe. The Ultimate's Universe. There's a big event that's coming up.

I forget if it's August or September, but the Ultimate Universe is still, quote, unquote, around, even though they thought it was gone. And now they want to be part of the Marvel universe, that Miles Morales crossed over from the Ultimate Universe to the main 616. and so now he's going to be back. You know, all these other characters may be back. So, yeah, I don't, you know, Marvel's doing fine. They have, they make lots of money.

One of the things that Marvel does, if you look at the solicitations, we did the Marvel ones last week, the DC ones went up on the site just a few minutes ago. But even if you pick up a previews catalog, you just flip through it, you'll notice that Marvel pushes out so many books. And DC has started to cut back on the number of titles that they're offering month after month where it used to be Marvel would have like 120 titles and DC would have 100 and now DC is like yeah we're okay with 40 titles a month and and I don't know if that's the accurate but it's you know a fraction of what Marvel is doing for sure yeah yeah so one of the nice things is when you obviously if you're pulling back the number of titles you're not making as much money potentially or you could focus on the titles that you have and you could make them much better Batman one bad day the whole one bad day line the Riddler one is the one that won. But the Catwoman one, the Scarecrow one,

these are all really good stuff. So if people are looking for a bunch of really good Batman one shots, the one bad day stuff, how did these criminals become the criminals? You know, they spent time and focusing on that. So maybe Marvel could do that. That could be one thing where they're just like, hey, who are the best and the brightest?

Let's bring them in. Greg Capulow was announced coming back to Marvel Comics to do some art beginning in October. So that may be something for fans of Greg Capulow. to look forward to. But let's bring some people back in. Rob Leifeld is doing two projects over at Marvel. Love him or hate him. He's doing two new projects

over at Marvel. We'll see how long, how many issues those go. Is he drawing or just writing or do we know? He did the art on the teaser images. I don't know. They didn't make any other announcement except that Rob Leifeld is going to be doing two new projects. I think in December or in January. Nice. So weird

chess and funky feet. I'm excited. Let's get in there. Yeah, yeah. So maybe reduce the number of and maybe just make the titles that you have the best that you can possibly make it. Now, granted, the best is subjective and some people may like the champions and some people may like Ms. Marvel the way she was before they turn her into an X-Man. So, you know, that's all very subjective. But I think instead of focusing on quantity, quality might be what Marvel comics could be

focusing on. And the same thing could be said for their media side on the movies and TV side as well. The one advantage D.C. has is they have the two tombs. They have Tom Taylor and they have Tom King doing pretty exclusively D.C. work, although they do some independence and stuff. But they're not right. Yeah, they're not exclusive. They're not exclusive. One of the nice things. So people are like, what does it mean when you're exclusive at a publisher? Well, the main thing is you're getting a monthly paycheck and you're getting insurance. You're right. Yeah, that's the main thing. You're not like an independent contractor basically. But the two Tom's are killing it. Like they are, their work is probably the best in the larger, you know, in the main. stream industry of comics right now. And when you don't, when you have them over there just killing it, issue after issue, I just think that's hard to compete with. Like, you just don't have anybody right now that's doing that over at Marvel. And there are plenty of voices or names and people doing great work.

It's not that. It's just that I don't know how you tie the two tombs down. Those guys are crazy. Crazy good. Yeah. And if people want to look for some other great writers, obviously James Tynne in the fourth, I mentioned has got the best writer of the year. But look at Cullen Bunn.

He does some great horror stuff. Sixth Gun is probably one of his best known works, although he's done a bunch of other stuff. They're about to relaunch the Sixth Gun very soon. They're doing a Kickstarter right now where they're collecting all of the Sixth Gun run into a series of Omnibai or Omnibuses. But then we're going to get a new Sixth Gun series

coming up in 2024. So that's from Oni Press. So be on the lookout for that. But he's a great one too. But he's not doing anything over at Marvel Comics right now, to my knowledge. you all have not read the sixth gun I implore you to read it it's so good

so good and he's done a lot of the stuff people like on Kenny X-Men like you mentioned X-Men Blue Magneto which is like a Pokemon almost yeah you gotta catch them all yeah you gotta catch all those blue magnetos alright well there's that

if you want to read the entire listing of who won and who is up against everybody you can read all that at major spoilers.com Steven is there anything else going on on on the site that you want to tell people about I think if you're just wanting to kind of know what the publishers are doing, then definitely check out the solicitations each week or each month when we post them. We've got most of the big publishers up there right now,

although there's some smaller publishers that we get some information about what they have in coming months. That'll give you an idea of where the publishers are going and what they're thinking. But if you're looking for great reviews and commentary on comic books in the comic book world, definitely check out major spoilers.com. And if you're looking for some really cool comic book related podcasts, we've got them to, the major spoilers podcast is great. This week we have Rand Belavia of Ukla the Mock fame. He's back again.

We're going to be talking about the champions volume one. That's a Ms. Marvel comic for those of you who are like, oh, they killed Miss Marvel. She's back this week, don't worry. But we'll be talking about the champions this week on the major spoilers podcast. And I know it's like late July and everyone thinks it now is the time that the temperatures are going to cool off.

But, man, we're going to be up in the upper 90s after having a whole summer of no 90 degree weather. We're in the upper 90s this. week. And so you can bet that I'm going to stay hydrated. And I hope everyone else stays hydrated. We're going to try, man. Thanks. It's something I noticed about that weather. Everyone's like, oh, it's 85 to 90. I don't know how I can take it. I'm like, man, it's 103 here every day. Yeah, we had 100 and we had 102, 103 yesterday. Yeah. It's so hot right now in the mountain, Intermountain West, freaking Kansas. You guys are fine. All right.

One thing I was going to say, what was it? It was something to tell you. because I knew you'd be interested and then I forgot about it. And, yeah. I don't know. Oh, I know what it is. PSA, a little programming PSA for people. To know, kind of moving forward.

We've done a little bit of change up on how we schedule things to try to maximize our schedule. Some days we're overloaded with guests and other days we're not. So we've redistributed power a little bit throughout the network. And so here's what you can expect. Every other Monday,

although next Monday we're not here. so still the next person will be Bobby. But every other Monday you get Stephen and the other Monday you get Bobby. Bobby's moving from Tuesdays to Mondays. Lots more time for Bobby to talk science with us. Oh yeah, big time. He gets the whole episode to himself, basically. And so to Stephen when he's on.

So both those guys will be sharing Mondays and we'll be doing those every other. On Tuesdays, Tuesdays are the biggest shakeup where we've just really moved everything around. Starting tomorrow, Dan Dan the Tabletop Man will be here for his monthly appearance. Bill will be on next after that, Amy after that, Travis after that. We're going to do that Travis thing once a month. So that's even a new thing. But Amy's moving from Thursdays,

Dan from obscurity to regularity. And we're going to give Bill a little more wide birth to, you know, build up his topics and stuff. It'll help Amy too. I mean, how hard is it or how easy is it to have a book every damn week? She can't read a new book every week. And what if that book isn't good? You know, she's like, well, what do I do?

I've spent all this time reading this book. it's not very good. How do I talk about it? Exactly. So we got a rotating list there and we give everybody, basically to get their own episode to be a guest instead of this like slap dash, everybody get on here and get out of here kind of thing. Yeah. Wednesdays, we're keeping Tom and recommendals where they're at. And on Thursdays, Wendy is back to owning Thursdays. She owns it and she needs it because that's, we need that room on Thursdays and not rushing everybody else. That always felt so rushed because, yeah, we'd have our Thursday chat. Then we'd bring in

Amy and be like, oh my God, it's almost 10 o'clock. We've got it. We got to, Amy's just finished talking about Clay and now we have to get a book. Yeah, and I don't want to kick her out. I hate it. I hate that feeling of like, oh, hurry up, you know, because I don't want her to hurry up. I want to spend time with her. So that's what we're going to do. So that's the plan moving forward.

It's all pretty simple and straightforward. But we look forward to Bobby Science segment on Monday's coming up soon. Dan tomorrow will be great. Plus everybody else. It's all good in the hood. All right. Finally, a follow up from Jeff Sire in Canada, who says this. Just to comment on what Wendy said today

This is last Thursday And how equality can feel like oppression I can't remember where I read this But I thought it was the perfect description If you have been leading a race your whole life By a couple of laps Just seeing somebody in the distance over your shoulder Can be panic-inducing.

I think that's a really great way to illustrate that It's very very what's the word? It's very astute Astute Yes, I like that We haven't used the word astute in about 100 years. Let's do it. Let's get it out there.

I haven't used it in a while, so I'm using it now. That's an astute observation that he made. Jeff Seyer, everybody. Watch him as he goes. Next, we have this, a note, a text we got about the Shire. Right, which ironically is in response to Jeff's message about Mayor. Oh, right. I forgot.

He was the one, yeah, that was not on purpose, but it's all tied together. He says, hey, Sam and Bilbo, the Shire says, city, or is the Shire a city? The Shire is a region. Hobbiton is the village within the region. Very good. Very good. That makes sense. Right. The mayor. The mayor of Hobbiton. That's right. Here in the region of Shire or the Shire. That's right. Nicely done. Thank you for the clarification. We will never have to bring up that Shire bullshit again. Ever. We're done. I know. Please. Please. Let's not. So you can be like Jeff sent us an email, morningstream at gmail.com, or you can be like this anonymous

person and send us a text, 801471062, any time you like. We're going to get out of here before we do. I want to mention that Patreon is a thing, and it's a thing that supports the show and makes it run. So hop on over today and sign up today. Get all that cool art in the mail, them couch parties, then monthly benefits, the pre-show content every day, the ad-free experience, all of it can be yours right now simply by signing up at patreon.com slash TMS.

Brian, that's going to do it for us. Do you have anything else before we go? Uh, I don't. Um, I'm in the, uh, the throes of listening to 311 right now for soundography. And I'm getting to what I consider to be the albums that I really, really dig for them starting with Evolver. Uh, you know, I like sound system. I like, uh, um, bits and pieces from their earlier albums, but Evolver is where I feel like, ah, this is, this is where I'm really into 311. I'm curious when you get to their latest two albums, which are fairly recent, how you'll fit. Yeah. Because I love them. Because there's one that's a regular album than one that's instrumental. versions of the song. Oh, right. Same album, right? Yeah. Except with instrumental. Yeah, that one with the words, the one that they just put out normal, is some of my favorite of they've ever done. I love it. So I'm curious what you'll think when you get to it. So we'll see. Yeah. Well, and if you're jonesing for a brand new soundography episode, I'm posting one today, focusing on the Bengals.

You might think it's a Susanna Hoff's band. And if you only look at their greatest hits, you'd be right. But if you look at their deeper cuts, it's a Michael Steele band, man. Michael Steele, the vocalist for a lot of Bengals music that I think is as good and in some cases better than what got thrown out as singles.

Oh, wow. She gave another genuinely unique voice to a band that already had a very unique voice in Susanna Hoffs. So the Bengals getting posted here later today. Nice. I like the Bengals too. big fan yeah uh well great let's do a song speaking of music let's do a song let's get one out

what do we got okay how about this one right here michael hennessey who goes by the name night time in discord and the streams and stuff said hey sour mash and barley on this day 10 years ago my beautiful wife actually tied herself to me in matrimony 10 years later i'm still shocked that she hasn't come to her senses she supports me and my hatred of stupid all while teaching young minds while going to school for her own masters at the same time. Here's to 10 more years. Hell no to the snow, though. She grew up in the

desert and hates all things snow. Thanks, Michael. Fair enough. Very good. He wanted either a cover of May it be by Enya or In Your Eyes by Peter Gabriel. I'm going with the latter of the two because I have

80-something covers of In Your Eyes by Peter Gabriel and that's, by golly, what you're going to hear. This is a newer one though. This came out a couple of years ago, and it was a single released by a band that you maybe haven't thought of since the 90s when they put out a single called Good. They are better than good. They're better than Ezra. And this was a single, their version of In Your Eyes by Peter Gabriel that came out in 2020. Here is Better Than Ezra. All right, here we go. Real quick, I didn't know this, but Susanna Hoffs, who I think still looks incredible. She does, yeah. It's 64 years old, and I don't

understand. I don't understand her genes. What the heck? She doesn't look like she's had work done. She's just beautiful from the day she was born. She'll die beautiful. She's just a, I don't get it. Humans, other humans don't look like this. I don't get it. We don't stand a chance. No, we don't. I've already, we're already screwed. So anyway, live long, Susanna Hoffs. All right, that's it. Thanks everybody for listening. We'll see you tomorrow. Love I get so lost Sometimes

Days past And this emptiness fills my heart When I want to run away I drive off in my car but whichever

way I go I'll come back to the place where you are and all my instincts pay you return and the grand facade so soon we'll burn Without a voice

Without my cry I reach out from the inside In your eyes The light and heat I am complete Your eyes I see the doorway To a thousand churches

Your eyes The resolution of all the fruitless searches. Oh, I see the night and then he rise. Oh, I want to be that complete. I want to touch the light, the heat I see in your eyes. Love. like to see so much pain

so much wasted and this moment keeps slipping away in all my instincts they return and the grand facade so soon we'll burn without a noise

Without my pride I reach out from the inside In your eyes The light and heat I am complete I see the doorway To a thousand churches Your eyes

The resolution Of all the throughly searches Oh I see the light and the heat Oh, I want to be that could be I want to touch the light, the heat I see in your eyes Your eyes

You're right You're right When I want to When I want to run away. When I want to run away, I'm Rick Perry, and I approve this message. Remember Rick?