The Morning Stream - TMS 2526: Circadian Zombie Disruption

Episode Date: September 20, 2023

Pants loses to whip. Armless Chaps. Special ops Linus. There are Three Doors. Are Pigskins Made of Cow Because I Like Really Wanted to Know. That's Me and a Spice Girl (Losing My Religion). What Happened In Vegas Came Home With Brian. Left us to flounder while you did shit. Pennywise tangled your Ethernet, now ESCAPE!! 6 Oreo Cookies for $100. That's Some Barry Bullshit. Even Pancakes Need To Pay Rent. Darts have finally caught up to bowling. Low-Poly Rabbit Mask. Stupid A Word Conversations with Tom. Zen Deficient Recommentals with Nicole and Randy and more on this episode of The Morning Stream. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

TMS is brought to you daily by the support of our patrons at patreon.com slash TMS. Like, we did least is geck, William Orchard, and William Pope. Coming up on TMS, pants loses to whip. Armless, chaps. Special ops, Linus. There are three doors. Our pigskins made of cow because I, like, really wanted to know. That's me and a spice girl.

What happened in Vegas came home with Brian. Left us to flounder while you did shit. Pennywise tangled your Ethernet. Now escape! Six Oreo cookies for $100. That's some berry bullshit. Even pancakes need to pay rent. Darts have finally caught up to bowling.

Low-Polly rabbit mask. Stupid A-word conversations with Tom. Zen-deficient recommendals with Nicole and Randy and more. On this episode of The Morning Stream. I get to watch Pirates of the Caribbean tonight. You must be so bored. No DVDs? No, ice cream?

Um, maybe you need a holiday. I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully. The morning stream. What do you say? We get nipple to nipple. Good morning and welcome. to TMS. It's the morning stream for Wednesday, September 20th, 20th, 2023. I'm Scott, and that's Brian. Brian, welcome back. Hello. Oh, it's so good to be back. It's good to have you back. Yeah, we got, you know, we had decent co-hosts for a couple of days. They did fine.

I had the pleasure of listening to both of them, at least the first part of each show, while I waited for other people to get up because basically I'm the first person up in any situation yeah i feel like you are that guy you're the you're gonna be the one to do all the night watches and stuff when the zombies come and all that exactly i'll take first shift uh you guys all get some sleep i'll take first shift and watch he'll also take last shift because you won't be able to sleep then either so you'll do two shifts while the rest of us you know i mean if it's zombies i don't think any of us will really be sleeping not well anyway right it'll be crazy but i think uh yeah that's where that's gonna lay yeah i feel like our sleep patterns are

Our, what's the rhythm, circadian rhythm? Our circadian rhythm, very good, yes. F all that, when the zombies come. That ain't going to work at all. Yeah, yeah. All that stuff goes to the wayside. That's right. All right, Brian, you went to Vegas.

I did. You left us here to flounder while you were gone. Not really, but you did a bunch of shit with cool people, and I guess we need to hear about a bunch of this. Yeah, well, let's first talk about the cool people, because they are the best part of this thing. The trip was with Tanner and Alex. And Barry, and then my son, Tristan, and I.

And the reason the five of us went is really because Tanner, unfortunately, because of work, wasn't able to, well, work and his, you know, trip to Tokyo, wasn't able to come to TMS Vegas. And so he missed down on his Vegas time. And it came up during one of our D&D sessions. I played D&D with all of those people that I just mentioned over Zoom or over Discord. it. And, um, and, you know, we basically decided, well, let's do a little short, uh, makeup Vegas trip. And we'll do, um, we'll do a few cool things and, and have a great time. And we'll roll some dice, but it probably won't be 20-sided. We'll roll a couple of D-6s across a nice felt service with, uh, surface with a, uh, a come out roll and, uh, yeah, and hopefully $5

dollar bets and 10 times odds. Sure. Like you do. You got to maximize your, your, your stuff. I know Exactly. Exactly. And so that's exactly what we did. We did a little three-day trip. And started off, Barry got a little bit late. So Tanner and Alex and Tristan and I went and did an escape room that Tanner had found and set up. And he had, I think he'd gone to another one from this very same company that had a Blair Witch themed escape room. And basically you're trying to find the, you know, trying to find the, the, You're following the footsteps, I think, of the people in the original Blair Witch film with video cameras and stuff like that. Did they have the little stick sculpture stuff? Like the little... All over the place, I'm sure they did. Yeah. Yeah.

But for ours, it was it. And I'm mistakenly, when Tanner first said, I got to say, we're going to an IT-themed escape room. I misunderstood and thought we were going to be untangling Ethernet cables and reformatting. routers and and uh man too close to our real lives you wouldn't want to too close to our real lives so uh okay this you know i posted a picture on online on threads of the three doors the scary not so scary and very scary or whatever it is the the three doors from it chapter one um not obviously not able to take any pictures within the escape room that's all at the end and they had i think tanner sent you a photo of bill scars guard's uh actual uh costume penny

wise costume from it's the dirty nasty one from like when they're in the in the under darker or whatever the hell they call it really gross one yeah um these guys spare no expense this this this escape room so even the outside of the building i took a picture of and i probably should have sent it to you even the outside of the building is is act like uh um maybe accurate It isn't quite the word I want here, but is immersive, right? So the building itself is the dairy, let me see if I can find it, public works facility, township of dairy public works facility. Wow.

Because basically you're going down into the sewers to find the kids that Pennywise took. And you go in, the first person you talk to, it's a little movie theater, and they, you know, they're like here's your endie or your waivers to sign uh if you get hurt in here it's not our fault blah blah blah um but then from that point on you're taken to the escape room by a dude named frankie at least we were um who kept it stayed in character the whole time uh the stoner dude you know said hey thanks for coming to dairy and volunteering to find these kids ha ha ha he's like you know long hair and and and just perfect for this role and um the escape room itself we probably went through maybe 10 to a dozen different unique rooms and you go you know you solve the thing in one room

it gives you access to the next one the door closes behind you you again you then you know continue on to the next room it's really impressive that's usually like what one or two rooms for most one or two rooms for most yeah most escape rooms and the the visuals like you know, the waiting room in the public works facility feels like a waiting room in a public works facility. It's like a crusty old CRT TV that's giving you your, um, your, your, your directions and what's going to happen and all that stuff. And, um, uh, without going, without going, doing any spoilers because I think, you know, this, this would be a great thing if you have, if you're coming to TMS Vegas, uh, 2024, this should be something you put on your list is doing this one, because

It is a completely different experience than any other escape room than ever. Do you think it'll always be this license? They'll always do this. No, I'll bet you they'll change it. But I'm sure with how much work they must have put into this thing, I would bet that it's going to be it for a year. Okay. Or at least another, you know, nine months and that's probably official, right? They get the rights to do this and I mean.

Yeah, I mean, they've got official. Warner Brothers or whoever has the It License merch in the gift shop. They've got the, they've got actual props and costumes and all this sorts of things. Those doors that were on my threads post were the actual doors from the movie. Wow. That's crazy. They just built new frames and put them in the place. But yeah, no, really cool. And there were actors, so I'd say of the 10 to 12 rooms, we had actors through about three quarters of them.

And sometimes the actors would come with us. You know, we rescued a girl from a cage. And she came along with us into a few different rooms. And they're very good about seeing if you are not picking up on what the things are to do in the room, with the things you need to do in the room to move on. And so they might say, oh, man, you know, it feels like there was something that changed over there on that wall when you flipped that switch and she'll be like looking at a wall

and like oh really and they're like oh there's what we're supposed to figure out and so they'd nudge us if it looked like we were kind of struggling a little bit but they'd always stay in character the only time well it wouldn't even say

it wasn't even breaking character but we're like all right I think we got this padlock number it's 3814 and you know they had to be doing something down at one end while I had the lock in my hand with the door around the corner from them.

And so I'm entering and putting three at one, four. And then the, this was one of the dudes, the mechanic dude. Hmm, you might want to check that last number, man. I love live. Live hints is a fun idea, though. Live hints is really fun. And they do it really well, and it

doesn't feel like they're, you know, they're kicking you across the finish line to make sure that you complete the, uh, complete the task. Um, there are a couple rooms where as you're solving that last thing you see like you know penny wise slowly coming down the hall towards you and and uh cackling on his way um and it you know you know in your head it's a dude in a suit it's a it's a clown costume but it still freaks you the hell out because of the steam and the the the water dripping down the sides of the uh the sewer line and et cetera it's like god they just did it it felt incredible and the

Without going into it, the last room you end up with, the last room you end up in looks like the freaking last room of the movie of the first, the first. Oh, I don't like that room at all. That's a horrible place to be. It is a horrible place, but it's, I mean, oh, geez, so good. Yeah. Wow, that's great. That sounds like they're killing it. Yeah.

It said, their website says 30 rooms, two attractions. Does that mean there's a whole separate experience you could have done or something? Yeah, there's, the second one is at chapter two. Oh, that's a cool idea. So you could do the first one one day and then do the second one the next day. That girl that was the actor that we rescued from the cage, there's one point in which we walk into a room that's got a coffin on the floor. And we open up the coffin, it's pad, and it looks really nice.

And we're figuring out that, yeah, someone needs to go into that coffin to be able to trigger the next thing. and I think she even said I think somebody needs to go in there and I said yeah I volunteer you yeah I don't like going in there I'm not going to go in there she almost broke character like laughing a little bit

but Tanner ended up going in the coffin oh Tanner that's right he told me in his text that he ended up in a coffin I'm just going to tell you now if I do this next year I'm not the one going in the coffin you might even have to beg me to go to the damn thing at all because this stuff scares the shit out of me.

I don't like haunted houses anyway. One's it really scary. I don't like them. But I might go. If I go, I am not getting in that coffin. Just saying it now. You won't have to go in the, you won't have to go in a coffin. And if we go with you, we'll do chapter two. And I'll be there for you. All right. We'll do chapter two.

Wouldn't it be sad, though, if we walked away from chapter two and said, yeah, it was all right. It wasn't as good as the first one. Yeah. It's like the movies. It would be screen accurate. Yeah. And then we would be really impressed because they would have matched the screen

accuracy. exactly well it sounds like fun and uh how is this this this seems like such a level above all the rest how much does a place like this run if you're going to go do it um i think uh tanner found groupons for 40 50 bucks a person 40 bucks a person that's no that's not and that came with a $20 charged game card so they had the dairy arcade that you that you ended up in after that last room so after you leave you end up in this arcade and it's got a whole bunch of like clown based um ring toss and throw the ball and knock down the cupid all kind of games your typical arcade for tickets games and so the four of us played all of our 25 dollars or most of our 25 dollars played all the games and then

combined all of our tickets to the little uh the ticket machine those in a booth that you could choose what what items you want yeah but we had enough to get um a six pack of Oreo cookies. Wow, that's actually not bad. After combining all, it was basically a $100 game cards worth of Oreo cookies, six cookies. Most of the time, it's like a plastic spider and some wax lips or something stupid. Exactly. That's great.

We were kind of starving, so it worked out really well. So later that night, Barry joined us, and we went to this thing called The Magician Study. Again, this is another thing that I'm saying, oh, God, this is highly recommend this. I'm not a huge go-to-magic shows kind of guy. I've been to Penn & Teller's regular show. I've been to a taping of Fool Us. I've pretty much watched every episode of Fool Us because I find it fascinating

and trying to figure out what they're doing. And I think we went to Lance Burton when Tristan was like five. Back when Lance Burton was at the Monte Carlo on the script. So I'm not a typical go-to-a-magic show kind of guy. Barry or Tanner, I think, had found this thing called The Magician. study through Instagram and it's a a moving

mysterious live in person magic show that I guess has to maybe keeps moving or at least gives us the impression that we that it keeps moving as far as like having to go to a different location because you're not told the location of the show until midday the day of the show that you're going to see that night oh this is some Brian

bullshit going on here. You'd love this sort of thing, right? This, this I kind of like. Yeah. And it's, and it was, it's very, um, uh, kind of intimate close-up magic. 40 people, 42, I think there was 14 people in each row, three rows, and kind of a you shape around this guy. And so everything you're seeing up close and in person and because again, Barry did VIP, because if you, if you create some sort of, um, artificial leveling system, Barry is going to pay to be at the top of that leveling

system. That's Barry. That's some Barry bullshit. That's what he likes to do. That's a very bullshit. So when we're basically, we were seated in the very front row directly facing this guy, and as part of VIP tickets, he will involve everybody in that front row at some point during the show.

So for example, Tristan and Barry went up and the guy spayed out and like fanned out a whole deck of cards. faces up and said look at a card think of that card don't tell me what it is don't point anything don't touch anything just look at a card and and and keep it in your head and damn it if this guy didn't pull out Tristan and Barry's cards like basically he held up the card to the audience and then said all right what was your card Barry's like seven of clubs and he's holding up

the seven of clubs. No other freaking indication. Like, this is one that is like that, again, after seeing every episode of Fooless, there was no force involved because they were all fanned out. Very interested. We're even allowed to take pictures of the cards being fanned out so that there wasn't...

Oh, wow. That's extra level of let the... Exactly. Yeah. Wow. Dude, up close, magicians that do, that pull stuff like that, they genuinely freak me out. Like, I don't know what they're doing. I don't... It's like that. Remember that one with

who was it, David Blaine in the kitchen of Harrison Ford? Yeah, yeah. And you did that thing in Harrison Ford's like, get out of my house, you wizard or whatever he said. Yes, it was kind of along those lines. They did a chopping a woman in half thing right in front of us, the wooden box that they enclosed the woman in and then chopper in half. That, in other iterations, I know exactly how they do that. We were up close enough that the things that I normally look for, which is kind of, of like the thicker bottom of the box that they can kind of crawl under or put their waist under.

It didn't have that, but I did, I think I did figure out how they did that one. I'm not going to say, obviously, because it's magic. That's magic. Yeah, of course. But because I was kind of a smart ass where he treated me like I was kind of a smart ass to him halfway during the show, surprise, he saved the last trick for me, which involved him basically throwing a throwing knife from across the room through a card and hitting my chest. to a target to a target on my chest oh my gosh i would have flipped out how and it worked and it was crazy and it was the it was the car it was actually a card that alex had written his name on and uh and i won't say anymore on that because again it's it's more fun if you go into this thing

not knowing anything but this guy was quick-witted he was hilarious um he uh he's secretive like you can't find any information or it's hard to find information about this guy online Tanner did some digging and eventually found something but even for the first part. When you're getting your picture taken with him, I should send you this. You can put it up on the on the screen. Let's have a look. Let's see. Your name is Scott. That's definitely me. Scott Johnson.

100%. Here you go. This is how he, the only way he'll be photographed is with the photo that I just sent you. Kimman text or Discord? The text. Sorry. I don't know. You're fine. Here it is.

So he's like a, it's the daft punk of the world. He's the deft punk of the, uh, the, the magic world, exactly. Here you go, chat. Uh, I got a copy it out. There we go. There you go. And he has a lovely assistant. She very lovely.

She does. That's the woman he chopped in half. Yeah. She's looking very whole there. So that's good, you know. Looking what? Very whole. Like one person.

Very whole. She's in one piece. Yes. Exactly. That's good. Great. So it's big old freaking low-poly, low-poly-gone rabbit hat. Low-poly rabbit mask. And he would only, basically, he put that, wore that to the entrance of the show until he told us, you know, put away your phones, from silence and blah, blah, blah. And then he took off his mask and made us, made him a lot easier to understand, even with his Australian accent.

And then he put it on for photographs at the end. Wow, that's cool. Yeah. I like stuff like new ideas for this old trade of magic. shows. I like them when they try to use new stuff. That's cool. For sure. And I'd love, you know, I'll see a show like this any day of the week, in person, close up, intimate setting over a David Copperfield in a big arena with a whole bunch of people and smoke and mirrors and all that stuff. Right. You know, give me these, give me this guy. Give me Penn and Teller any day of the week over. I do want to see Matt King. All that said, I want to see. Oh, he is great. And he's very traditional, but I love that show. That was really fun. Although I was in. they pulled me up on stage for one of the things. I think I talked about this, but when he did that, it was the only disappointing part of the show because I knew how the trick went.

Yeah. Because I had to to do what he needed me to do. And he kept whispering in my ear what to do and all this. And so on the one hand, I was like, wow, that's how this is done. And on the other hand, I was like, oh, that's how that's done. I know. Yeah, exactly. But you got to be part of it. And everybody else was like, whoa.

Yeah, it was cool. And he took my Coke and I never got it back. So that's funny. But anyway. Oh, shucks. It's all right. I'll go through the rest of these because I know we got Dunaway coming. Did Dupar's for pancakes.

It used to be right across the street from the plaza in the Golden Gate. It's not anymore because of rent issues. They weren't paying rent, apparently. They're over at the Suncoast Casino, and they have the best freaking pancakes ever. Are they paying rent over there? They're paying rent over there, fortunately. They've learned their lesson, I hope. We went to a dart club called Flight Club.

It's in the Venetian. and I did this with Chris Brown when we went out there earlier this year. It's a bar restaurant, but every station has a dartboard that has video cameras on it and scores your game. As you throw the darts, it knows what you get, it scores it for you, and it's got a bunch of different games like, you know, you're throwing darts to take out the other people's numbers so that they can't throw any more darts kind of thing.

It's good. If they finally caught up to bowling, it's like, Let's get digital here, man. Exactly. Exactly. That thing was such a blast. Everybody had a great time. Of course, Spice Girls tribute concert was that night.

I got some good video I'll put up here, Brian tearing up. Yeah. Once, basically, once I got over, like, comparing them to the Spice Girls and looks and performance, they actually all had great voices. their dancing was great. They had the weirdest, like, basically it was in the Thunder from Down Under stage at the Excalibur, which is the Magic Mike. It's like the Australian Magic Mike show. I don't know if they ever take their clothes fully off, but it's, you know, buff dudes all like dancing and flexing and whatever.

Sure. So along with the five women playing the Spice Girls, they had three Thunder from Down Under guys called the Spice Boys that would, dance while the women were doing their costume changes and then occasionally dance with the women on stage. And it just felt really, really weird, especially like we were sitting at the very back really close to the bar. As a matter of fact, you've got that picture of me up with Ginger Spice. She ran over and gave you big old hug there around the next. She did right behind me as the bar. I basically could have just turned my chair around and said ginatonic and not even had to get up out of my chair.

Wow. Dangerous proximity into a bar. A little bit, a little bit for me. But that table we were sitting at is basically the back area of the audience, and it had a platform with a, like, grippy surface stuff so people don't slide on it when they walk kind of thing. And yeah, sure enough, both the Spice Girls and the Spice Boys danced up on that table right in front of us. It was like, all right, yeah, this is great. Were any of them the spitting image, or were they all kind of just not?

I mean, they were, they all were pretty darn close. They did some things that I think weren't, like the posh spice didn't have a very good voice, kind of like the real one. The real one. And through one of their songs, so one of their songs was Viva Forever, which was on their last album, and the Jerry Hell look like, Jerry Halliwell look alike, left the stage halfway through the song, which was appropriate because Jerry was not part of the band

when they released that third album. So she just kind of disappeared, Tristan, goes, what happened to Ginger Spice? And I'm like, oh, well, she actually wasn't in this song. She didn't sing this song, so she kind of left halfway through. So that was pretty darn acting. Yeah, I kind of admire, if that was on purpose, I kind of admire this subtlety of it,

because it's only people like you are going to notice, right? Kind of brilliant, yeah. And then there were these two little girls, like little five and eight-year-old girls in the front who were just loving the whole show. And all five of the Spice girls and the three Spice Boys all, like, really interacted well with them, like sang directly to them and high-fived them and stuff like that.

And that was just the freaking sweetest thing. Would you see me rubbing the tears out of mine? That's actually why that I'm doing that. We went to Chino Poblano in the Cosmopolitan. We went to Tacos El Gordo, a couple of my favorite restaurants in Vegas. And I think Tanner and Alex had been there. Yeah, they'd been there before, too, and did the full prefix menu and loved it,

so we had to go back there. And just the weird people that you see on Fremont Street. You know, we watched a cover band out there and watched this dude dance, who must have been like in his 80s, crawl up out of his wheelchair, and start dancing to outfield lose your love tonight. You know what's great about that is I have seen that dude on TikTok before.

Apparently he's known for this or whatever. And Tanner sent a better video than any of the TikToks I've seen. Really? Oh, great. They're usually too crowded and he's too far and you can't really tell what's going on. But you guys were right up next to that guy. He looked like that dude. That dude's live in his best life at that age. He really is.

He is having a great time. He was awesome. Yeah, Bobby says that. guy was there in April really so yeah he's apparently a regular I think he's into it the plaza

so carousel bar beautiful oh yeah I was gonna ask about that really beautiful great place to people watch some nice you know you can set up at the bar but then they're also

nice little couches you shaped lounge or booths all around the outside so it'll be a good place to hang out in April not great video poker not not great

drink service on the video poker machines i played video poker there for maybe um half hour at max max coins and did not get a free drink oh that's no good you know what that so go inside get your free drink at that one then take it outside and hang out the uh the carousel does the carousel rotate or no no that's a shame the upper part of it rotates to give you that feeling but uh yeah probably a safety hazard to have cheap people drinking on a um a surface that turns like that a bit Big wheel. Who knows?

I don't know because Whiskey Down has a rotating bar so I don't know how they get away with it. Pink box donuts as great as they look. They are damn delicious

and I think they had some they might have had a sugar-free option. Oh, really? I'll check that out. I would love to try that. Big ass donuts. So Tristan and I split one. We split two of them.

We split one day and then split the other one the next day. Yeah, they don't make them small there at the pink box deal. No, no, they do not. No. They do not. And finally, and probably the most importantly for us and for what we do here,

met with the plaza people, the replacements for Bernadette. And not only were they wonderful and very accommodating and are absolutely willing. Basically, in a nutshell, said, yeah, whatever Bernad did for you guys, we'll do it as well. We're happy to have you guys come back. That's great. That's very good to hear. I was worried about that, just a little, because when things change, you never know. You never know.

And one of them, you know, I'm talking with her, and she says, yeah, I used to do an event down at the Tropicana, a trivia competition. I said, oh, was it the trivia championships of North America? And she's like, yeah, to Kona. And I said, yeah, I used to go to that event and I even, you know, beat Ken Jennings for a little while at Jeopardy. And those, the hotel parts of those events were flawless. So the woman that we've got, you know, doing the working with us for TMS Vegas, I can absolutely vouch for her. Great. Her service and accommodations and stuff like that.

I think the sand dollar is still an option for us or something with the sand dollar perhaps, maybe? Possibly. I talked with James about another option that I think would be, might end up being a better thing for what we do. So I'll talk to you offline about that. Okay. And we can figure that out. But I did get to see James. I regaled us with stories of Burning Man because he went this year for the first time ever.

I didn't know this was his year. My gosh, what a year to go? I know, exactly. And it really wasn't. From his perspective, it wasn't nearly as bad as the media made it look. It made it look like the freaking fire festival or like it was disaster central. It really wasn't that bad. It was more bad caused by the people who were panicking about the mud.

and the water and the flooding and tried driving on a dried up lake bed that had fresh rain on it, watching every rotation of their tires collect another inch of mud until finally their vehicles were four or five inches deep into the dried lake bed, which then the next day dried all around their tires, their wheels, so the cars were like really stuck at that point. The photos that they were, so this is part of the problem. those idiots are the ones people took photos of, which are the photos of the media used to say, look how bad this is,

but really it was about people that panicked. And most of the people that were panicking were like first-timer influencers who were used to being pampered real good, and they don't like the mud or the rain. So I kind of figured that was kind of going on on the ground, but it's good to hear from a dude who was there. But did he have a good time?

Did he have a great time? He went with his dad. His dad apparently goes every year. And this was the year that James decided to go with him. And it was pretty fun. It was pretty fun hearing these stories. He had a great time. James is he's the best.

Is he Svet or no? Was she there? No, Svet was working. Actually, out of the city working for a little bit, and she was getting back that night. She was right. She said something we were there in April about Salt Lake having a problem with overbooking on bands and stuff.

And I kind of just said, oh, that's interesting. and didn't think much about it, but I was talking to a local bar owner and Chuck, my son-in-law who does all the live shows, or son-in-law, sorry, nephew-in-law. He's not married to my daughter. And he said, oh, yeah, it's effed up here.

Everything's booked out for a year or more, and you can't get slots, and people like Snoop Dog take the tiniest place and take it anyway. I don't know what that says about Salt Lake's music scene right now, but apparently things are on fire and she told me that and I was like really seems crazy to me but it does yeah would not have expected that to be not at all but svet's got her finger on that pulse man it's all these california people that moved here they all want rock and roll I don't know what

they want uh right exactly well that's cool that's good for you guys because it's an embarrassment of riches yeah yeah we can we can all see whatever right like they're all coming here except taylor swift she did not put us on her tour oh no eras for you no that's okay though yeah i probably wouldn't go i mean i might they're making a movie they're making it's fell in my lap i would yeah if tickets fell in your lap absolutely i would go yeah without a doubt no i am not paying i'd pay i'd pay a hundred dollars to see the show that's where i draw the line right there i do i'd pay 75 i don't know what i'd pay but i know this it's somebody's making a movie and they they filmed it already and i can't remember who it is but it's some like high flute

and director so there's a whole concert film coming oh it's not the one that um is it the concert film that like broke amc's uh website when those tickets went on sale no that was the live thing right this is uh yeah this is the live live yeah this is more like uh like scorsese did with you two or whoever he did it with or maybe the stones yeah with you two and then the one that they did for metallic yeah i think so i i don't know enough info so this is more like a uh an actual filmed cool that'll be awesome yeah but uh i'm glad you're back I'm glad Kim's back. She's back. Yay. Balance to the force has been brought here.

I'm going to, surely I'll eat better than I have been. But we missed her terribly and it's good to have her home and she had a great time in Mississippi. And I wish things were a little more fun for her and her family right now here. But I won't get into details. Things are gnarly, though. It's getting crazy. Anyway, more on that later. Let's dive into some done away contest, business.

thing deal yeah uh i need some done away in my life i need some of this game we didn't have one on on monday it felt weird we didn't you know we didn't we didn't fake some trivia that day we just went for it and uh so this will be nice we'll be properly back where we're supposed to be so here we go let's do it hey dunaway what are you doing welcome to the show welcome to half asses or no the other one tadpully feud what do you doing oh hi I'm doing good. You? Yeah, you know, hanging out, getting ready for stuff. We got a big show you and I later.

It's all sorts of stuff going on. You know, it's a busy Wednesday. Oh, it's just every, oh, every Wednesday is a busy one, which is great. I love being busy. Keep moving. I'm a shark. Yeah, I'm not going to complain. Stop, I'll die.

No complaints here, man. It's good to have you here. We're going to pull in a listener as well. Let's see who has tried to ding us. Oh, look at this. We got a brand new person, I think. I need to, are they a friend? Yes, so this is easy.

All right, so let's pull them in. This looks like their name is nerd something. Hold on. N, they have to use a three for their nerd. N3 are, oh, nerd Steve, here it is. Okay, nerd Steve, a maddenate to the call. Hopefully you'll pick up and we won't have any technical issues. We're going to find out.

Mr. Nerd is my father. Also, you should like this guy, Don't know. Look at his, look at his icon. It's a Windows 98 logo. Oh, look at that. Wow, he's, he's, uh, even, This avatar is play retro. Yeah, I love it.

Hi, is this Steve? Oh, hello. Hello? Hello. Hi. Hello. Who's this? Is your name Steve or you just go by nerd Steve?

I just usually go by nerd Steve. All right. Well, you're nerd Steve. To us, you're nerd Steve. It's good to have you here. I have all kinds of questions about Windows 98 as your avatar, but instead we're going to jump right to it for time. He's forced to upgrade from 3.1.

Oh, there you go. All right then. Just living in the past. Bibbitt, you want to explain to him how. works and what he might win today? I will totally do that. It's time to play the tadpooly feud. I've surveyed the tadpoole on some nerdy topics.

Scott and Brian have to predict the answers that they gave us, and it's their job to see how many of those answers they can guess. Steve, your job is more important than ever because you're going to be working with either Scott or Brian. And if your team wins, you get a prize package that includes hypergunsport and agent in depth. Both from Steam and both courtesy of Racer 951. Oh, yes. Both good games, too. What's up, my friend.

Hyper gun sport in particular is very cool. Is it cool? Excellent. Racer's good people. He's good people. He's very good people. Let's give you guys your topic and get this show on the road. We asked 408 tadpullers to give us their answer to this.

Name something you'd prefer to be made out of leather. Oh, cut. A belt. Show me your back. Belt. Number two. Number two answer on the door. Really? We'll beat your belt. What is Scott doing exactly over there?

I don't know, but there's a, here's the thing. This is the tadpool. I'm scared about most of these. Yeah. I'm afraid what they all think would be a great leather thing. I'm a little nervous about it, but let's see what happens. Right. I got to have, I got it, pants are better when they're leather. Okay. Show me pants. are you serious not even on the board not even in the top 10 but number 16 was pants so pants pants were there's crazy pants were there just not big those pants were not big enough for you buddy

no it's frog pants i thought they would have been i thought they would have been down with frog pants and being clever but i guess i was too clever oh you know what shot myself that's not that bad of an idea i think i i think i agree with you uh All right, well, it's me and Steve. So, Steve. So, Scott, Steve, you're a team, and you have control of the board. That's right. We're going to win this for you.

So let's go. Do you have anything that jumped to your head first? Like a leather thing you want to wear. Oh, boots, of course. Oh, that's so good. I wish I had it been in your team before. Yeah. All right.

Show me boots. Oh, they were made for walking. Shoes, sandals. I'll group those all together. well done uh 36 10 i can't believe you put boots and sandals together that's the abomination it was it was like two people said sandals and then there were a lot of shoes and a few boots i'm like let's put them all together i have a question for the uh for our host here um can these are all they're things that you wear not necessarily okay something you prefer to be made of leather okay

so it doesn't have to be stuff you wear then if that's the case so you can you can say bondage and Well, you wear those, I think. Some of them. Oh, you know what? That's actually, you gave me a hint. Let's do, let's do whip, a whip, leather whip. Oh, yeah, sure. Show me, throw me, throw me the idol. Let's show me the whip. Show me the whip. Oh, man. Number 10. Oh, my God. I cannot believe I was pants lost out to whip. I hate you people. Go ahead. I hate it so much. How about, okay, so Steve, I don't want to just fart this one out, but how do you feel about seats, like car seats? Yeah, I feel that. People prefer that over, you know, whatever else, cloth and stuff. Yeah, I feel okay losing with pants to your car seats. That's a good one. Yeah, let's do car seats.

All right, show me car seats. Yep, car seats, interior, steering wheel, cover, et cetera. All right, nerd Steve. Number four on the board, for those of you listening and not watching. Do people call you Nathard sometimes because they see the way you spell it? Because you got a three in there? Yeah, it was my second choice. I actually tried spelling it as nerd Steve and someone else took it.

And I was like, oh, darn. There was that gold rush a few months ago when Discord had let everybody have a chance at their own name. And it was crazy. That was crazy. I can find a B. Brian. I'm so shocked I got mine. I thought someone was going to snipe it. They usually do.

Yeah, no, you left out. There's no, there's no Scott Johnson's on Discord. No, it's not that my name. It's just frog pants. I should have tried to get my name. Yeah. Use a Kedalarha, like nerd Steve. But we can still say, uh, pexclamation point ink.

That's right. That's right. Or fear three, for three or I like that one. Uh, all right. Steve, anything popping for you? Uh, jacket. Jacket. Jacket.

Lather jacket, of course. Like my morning jacket. All right, show me. These are all better answers. Show me a lead to jacket. Hey. Number five on the board, yes. Did you know, I heard, I learned this.

I was this weekend old when I found out that John Travolta tried out to be the Fonz. I had no idea. Did he really? Yeah, wow. It was crazy. He almost got it, too. It was like really close. Come on, Mr. Bosley.

What's his name? Steve. You miss the scene. Mr. C. I live up in the apartment above the garage. I mean, you can kind of see it. If you erase everything else you know about Travolta, you can kind of see that

it would have been a fit, but... Yeah, I mean, Vinnie Barbarino was kind of the fond. It really made way more sense than who we got, because who we got, when you really look back and you go, oh. Oh, yeah, Henry Winkler's nothing like that character. He's like... Yeah, when you look at it now, especially you looked

and now, it was like, you were the Fonz. Okay. Yeah. You're interesting. He's Gene Cousinow now. He's not even close to that Fonz thing. All right. let's see uh oh man leather things uh yeah still don't have a uh an unbeatable lead but you've got 24 points to brains pretty to brain's embarrassing it's an embarrassing is what it is i mean probably something like a i have a leather real leather wallet so probably like wallet slash purse that was the other one i had

i was number one i just fill it money things i don't know let's dry that let's do that uh okay money holder money holder yeah doesn't know we go we go we we go wallet. Show me wallet. Number one. Yeah, number one is wallet. Dang it. I don't know why we like leather wallets, but we do. Mm-hmm.

I mean, there's really no reason. Hold your money. Well, in the 80s, though, we had a moment where everybody had the Velcro. Oh, they had that, what was it, like a nylon kind of Velcro thing? A nylon with Velcro. Sometimes it was camouflage. You couldn't find your wallet. It felt like it was made out of printer.

Oh, I, like Brian's. I hate those things. much now. Yeah, I would never wear metal, which is great for when you go on an airplane, and you have to go through TSA, and they take your, you have to take your wallet out. A metal one, yeah. My dad went through a money clip phase where it's like everything had to be

money clip. I'm like, okay, dude. Was your dad Tony Soprano? What's going on, man? I'm telling you, man. It was awesome. He had like the magnetic clips and like, hell yeah. That stuff's cool. That's old guy stuff. I love it. That's old guy stuff. I might get into that at some point. All right,

let's see. Steve, where what do you think man we uh i mean there's leather sofas i mean we did car ceasing car interior oh shit yeah furniture duh this is good yeah we like yeah we like things for our butts yeah i got you yeah not the pants but everything else yeah everything else for your butt but the pants great all right let's do it show me your couch oh oh leather leather couch was number 13 wow that shocks me I thought people were hardcore on that

okay done away you have a chance now not much of one but you got one no much oh thank you thank you Scott

thanks a lot no problem I like my leather umbrella just kidding don't use that one I think I'm going to go with

name something you'd prefer to be made of leather my meat no I'm going to go with purse purse all right good

all right show me purse or handbag or whatever there we go damn it I assume points on the board I assume wallet covered it all I wasn't I don't know what I was thinking

that's such a man's perspective that a wallet is not a purse yeah I'm very much a man no yes now it's heading towards it's been cooler what do you do not answer anything it's my turn yeah you go ahead is starting to get yeah starting to get cooler and I'm thinking of all the leather things

I got jacket, I got my pants, you know, I'm ready to ride my bike, but I gotta have, yeah, yeah, yeah. It got my leather underwear, I'm a little sweaty. But I also got my leather gloves. Oh, gloves, gosh, leather gloves. Do you keep those in the glove, glove department? The department.

Yes, yes, absolutely. That's where they go. Brian, you would love to. I did that by accident with Nick on the way to Vans game the other night. I called it a glove department on, not on purpose. I just said it by accident. Nick goes, department. And I went, holy shit, the title.

are real. Oh, no. Wow. All right. Show me gloves. Yeah, number nine. No gloves, no gloves, no. Adoras says, Brian can still win. He just has to run the rest of the board this point. If he does, then Steve wins regardless.

He wins either way. He won either way. Yeah, you're not Steve win, the casino. No, the casino magnet. Steve could win, yeah. Yes. No, just a nerd. Just a nerd. You're Steve will win.

Just a nerd. I'm not the guy that owns $4 billion dollar casinos. I'm just a nerd. I like that. All right, Dunaway. Rip us a new hole here with six and seven. I'm going to put on my leather diaper and pooping it with,

let's see, I'm going to go with, um, I have a, I had, I don't have anymore. I had a leather vest. And I just don't, if they don't like pants,

I don't see how they're going to like vest, but I'm kind of out of stuff. I want to go on a Saturday night bar hopping with you. I want to see what your life's like. Your leather vest. Yes. To the saloon. All man.

That's right. I got my leather sandals and my leather vest on and I'm ready to go. All right. See my vest. Show us a vest. Oh, that was number, it was up there. 22 on the list. All right.

Yeah. We got a lot of bikers in the in the tad pool. So I assume they all know all the leatherings. How about a, if you buy a fancy watch, you can do leather on that, those long ones, those weird ones that people are into? Oh, a leather, like a leather watch band or something or leather? Yeah, yeah, leather watch band. So I'd say leather watch band is, I don't know how else you'd say it.

I guess that's the word, those are the words. So those would be the words used. Yes, show me a leather watch band. Damn it. number 14 just outside the top 10 sorry Steve I failed us on that one that's all right I think you're doing pretty good

All right Brian Pat pool providing the answers Actually tadpool providing us Oh So those of you Really? Yeah Those of you like

I don't understand the question Are we allowed to look at them? I never remember if we can look at the tadpole I always forget if that's a rule or not You mean the chat room or tad pool Well the chat room You can look at the chat room Yeah

I thought you said tap pool okay, okay, I got you. I mean, there's a lot of people in, there's a lot of tad poolers in the chat room. The current physical, the current physical manifestation. Everybody in the chat room is a tad pooler. Yeah, yeah. Okay.

They are. I need confirmation. Everybody in the chat room, everybody in the chat room confirm that you know where the hell you are and what you're watching and that you're not in the wrong class. I need to know. All right. We would have just missed them in the first five minutes of the show.

I'm sure. Right. Okay, I prefer, I prefer, I prefer, name something you prefer to be made of leather. I like my, I like my ladies to be made out of leather. So, leather skin, lady. Leather skin, lady. Do you think I can put the lotion on the skin or it gets the hose again or what? What are you doing?

Yeah, that's right. That's it. Damn. All right. This lady on there, Brian. Is that really the answer you're going to give? Leather skin lady for the win. Number six.

Okay. Hey, all right. Show us the woman from there's something about Mary who lives next door to Mary. No. I'm shocked. Surprisingly, nobody in the tadpool said a woman. Yeah, shocked by this turn of events. Can't believe that that's not on there.

Steve, what do you think in there, dude? I was thinking like sports stuff, but I don't know if that's going to be enough in the heads. Oh, that's a good idea. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, but like what? Something you prefer to be made out of leather that might be R.E. leather? Oh, like Oh yeah, I mean something

that should already be made out of leather, yeah. Catchers' mitts and stuff like that? I mean, those are leather, aren't they? I don't know. It's basically, you know, saying it's something that you don't want to buy a crappy item that is not that is a knockoff, not made of leather

kind of thing. Is it a way of looking at this question. Oh, got to. I mean, I got two fur babies looking at me right now, so I'm thinking maybe a dog collar or a leash. Oh, that's smart. dog leashes and collars that's great yeah yeah yeah i do i prefer those myself all right all right show us dog collar slash leash oh uh those uh let's see i let you have both of them uh both of those were answers where were they 20 both of in the 34 range okay down there but

on there down there yeah on there but down there on there but down there on there down there been there down there down there. Brian, last chance, two questions or two answers left on the board, number six and number seven. Tadpool answer. I like the way I like the way Scott was going, even, I like the way Scott was thinking like a baseball glove

or a football, but that used to be a pigskin, so I guess you could prefer it to be made out of leather. Isn't leather pigskin still? But it's just animal skin? Is it just leather? Or does that have to be like cow? I don't know I always think of cow, but I guess it could be other.

Oh, it is only cow? Okay. Right. Well, it is the tadpool. I could just leave you wrong. I just assumed weather as always. Because you got sheepskin and different things, right? Yeah.

And Naga. But once again, it comes down to what the tadpool would say. I'm going to go, I'm going to go with a recliner. Wait, didn't we already do? Oh, no, I guess it's not the same as a couch. You did couch, right? You did couch. I picked over at the chat room or the tadpool because I was trying to see if people are putting crazy shit like April.

I guess that's a thing. Leather apron, sure. Use that when you're doing x-rays in the old school x-ray style or whatever. There you go. Right. All right. Show me reclinas. Oh, come on.

That's game. Congratulations. Going to Steve. Davis Travis says you can have leather from things other than cow. So that's, there we go. Here we go. Adora says, although leather is often made of cow skin and can also be made of the skin of pigs, goats, sheep, dogs, and cats, as well as crocodiles, ostriches, and other exotic animals.

I don't want to do stuff with a cat or a dog. That doesn't fit with my cultural upbringing. That seems bad. I know. It seems horrible. Feliski says, aren't Naga reptiles or did Waila lie to me? They are reptiles, Kaleski, but that's where you get Naga hide. How about Rich Corinthian letter?

I forgot about Flask cover. Oh, yeah, Flasker. We had some great flasker. That's all right, because that wasn't one of the answers either. No, keep in mind, we have a lot of vegans and vegetarians in the Tadpool. So number six was Cow. I prefer my cow.

I said cow. But I never used it. I thought that was too sarcastic. Freaking pee to people, man. All in our tad pool now. What the frick. And finally, we like things on our butts that are made of leather.

And we also like things that are not on our meat of leather. Chaps. Chaps. Chaps. I see, I saw that in the tadpool. I noticed you didn't put assless on there. Yeah, I saw that in the tad pool. automatically assless chaps are already assless you don't need to say assless

it's like ATM machine quit doing the right exactly but i but i it's if you wear anything no i got to i there you go i was going to i was going to argue that they become assless chaps because you can specifically wear them for that purpose right because you you're definitely going to wear something underneath them oh i see what you're saying so it's like saying um i'm driving a gasless car but you don't say like you're not you're not wearing it's breathless evening gown and change it if you happen to be wearing a camisole underneath it is it's intentional

to wear, it's intentional to wear chaps with nothing underneath them to turn them into the assless chaps. Because they're made to be worn over top of something. But taps are always assless. It's, he's an assless man wearing a chap, wearing chaps. But it seems, but it's also

like saying chaps are armless. That's not going to work for me. Because then you have to get into a whole thing. of what's not included. Here's what I can we can agree on. Assless chaps are British men with no but. All right. That's an Ashless chap.

I've slid run off this chel. Hey, what's it going on? Well, excellent work. I got to play this for Steve here. It's not easy. Whoops, that's the wrong one. Here it is. You're a winner.

And to Brian Dunaway, I say, Oh, what a shame. It's okay, though. There's always a chance. There's always a chance, you guys. Brian, tell him what he won again. I'll be tell you a few. of the things that you guys didn't say.

Underware, some people out there. Gaming chairs slash office chairs, they like made out of leather. Smartphone cases. I know Apple is discontinued in their leather smartphone cases. Book covers, armor, knife sheet. Oh, book covers. Masks, including masks with a ball gag. Sox, bondage harness.

Wait, wait, wait. Sox? Sox. Leather socks. Three people said socks. Yeah. I've never heard of leather socks. Braws, codpieces, dildos, okay?

Hat, lingerie, shirt, toilet seat, trench coat. What I am hearing is that humans like to wear other things flesh on their bodies. They do. Close to them. They do. That's what I'm here. One person said, Jeff Goldblum's pants specifically, I could not, in good conscience, combine that with regular pants. can coozy computer like laptop you can get some some high-end laptop manufacturer makes like a leather or a fake leather deal one person just says l-o-l-l-l-what nipple covers pencil box saddle seatbelts switch case covers uh wallpaper and finally uh okay bubble-lpaper geez i don't like that and your mom somebody said you're mom and your mom

Well, that's like the woman thing that you did earlier there, Brian. It's right. I just like you could have found of that. Leather lady. Yeah, still would have lost. Well, I think this is exciting and you probably already done it,

but Brian will send these codes directly over to Nerd Steve. Doing it right now. Yeah, Nerd Steve, I hope. Remember, stick with 98. Do not jump to Windows Millennium Edition. It's a bad time. I mean, I was thinking Vista for a while,

but then I heard terrible things. Also rough. You know, seven, pretty good. Ten was great. Levin's shaping up fine. but I would stay away from Vista. There was no nine, so you can avoid that. Yeah, so you're okay.

98 was a strong effort for then, for that year. Oh, yeah. So well done, and congratulations. Second edition. Second edition, that is correct. Brian Dunaway, you and I are doing play retro later. We're going to be talking about the Duke Nukem franchise, specifically the old 2D weird stuff in the 90s,

and how that led to the 3D game, also in the 90s. We're not going to talk much about all the weird crap that happened after. We'll mention some of it, but we're going to really focus in on... You know what happened. We all know what happened. Yeah, we're not talking about forever or any of that crap, but we will talk about strippers and how they've been removed from the game now. Yeah, and we'll talk about how I never knew, how I never knew Duke Nukem was ever a 2D platformer.

I thought it started with 3D. I didn't know. No, I played those old ones. I'm stupid. No, you're not stupid. You just weren't exposed to it. It's a weird thing that they exist, but they did, especially the first one. It had no, you didn't use any soundboard stuff.

So it had just beeps and boobs. Yeah, yeah. It was like old school. So we'll talk about all that stuff on Play Retro, either on the podcast later if you can't be there live or at FrogPants.combe today at 3.30. Nope, sorry, 4 p.m. Mountain Times, what I meant to say. Hey, Brian Dunaway, kiss our butts.

Oh, no. His lag benefit. We benefited from his lag today, is what happened. We did. Exactly. He just could not keep up. Nope. Nope. Speaking of which, we're going to keep up with Tom Merritt after this break. He's back, everyone. back again. It's been a bit.

So stick around. We'll have Tom here to talk a little tech here in a bit. And before that, a song. And Brian brought one. So what do you got? Yeah, we've got a band of psychedelic songweavers called Leon 3, or if I were to give this to Scott to have him intro it, he might have called it Leon I-I-I-I-I-I. I might have done it.

You might have. I'm just teasing you, man. They have a brand new studio album that's called Something is Trying to Change My Mind. It comes out October 13th. courtesy of monasonic records and soundly music. They have a brand new single that you're going to get to hear right now from these Texas-based troubadours. Here are Leon III and the song Manikins.

Fixed I'm here on a boat of star Evening light just sits here all day low Animals come out to watch us past Seems all things weren't made for men Manicam Manicam Manichens Chula frowls to cross the sun

A silver token Laying on my toe. When it can There's nothing anybody needs There's nothing anybody needs to know There's nothing anybody needs to know Merekeo. Merekeo.

Menniekeo. Menniekeo. Merekeo. Merekea o. You're going to be able to need to know. It's nothing about me snow. Sinai, oh my own. Oh my name.

And so you're not. So, I'm going to be. So, I'm going to be able to be. I'm going to take my hat back, you're going to take my hat back, you crispy shit. that one more time. Sure. That was Leon the third. Leon with three eyes after if you're searching for it. Leon has three eyes. It's crazy. Brand new studio album is coming out next month. It's called Something Trying to Change My Mind. That's the song, Manikins. So two things, when you say Leon, two things pop into my head. Yes. Leon. No, Blade Runner's one of them. Oh, no, it isn't

actually. It should. Why aren't you helping them, Leon? Why aren't you flipping the turtle over Leon? You're absolutely right. I should think of that one. But instead, here's what I think of. I think of Leon from Kirby Enthusiasm Okay, yeah J.B. Smooth, that guy. Yeah. And who's the other? Oh,

and the other... Oh, tell me airplane. You think of airplane. I think of airplane. The guy goes, and Leon's getting larger. That whole thing? Yeah. It's impossible for me not to see that when I hear Leon. Well, you can make a pterodactyl.

You can make a hat. That guy, it's like a giant Thailand. That guy's the best part of airplane. He is... Enough time has passed. We can make this judgment. You are a hundred. 100% correct.

Airplane is half the film without that dude. Without that one guy. Yeah, I agree. All right. Tom Merritt, incoming, guys. Oh, my gosh, it feels like months.

I don't know why it feels so long since we've had Tom on, but I have missed him terribly. It feels like a hole in our hearts has been here for all these Wednesdays. Yeah. But now... This hole in our hearts will finally be mended.

Today, that changes. Kind of in a tough spot here, Tom. Sorry. Tom Merritt, everybody. Fresh. Well, sort of fresh. About a week fresh. from his trip to freshly recovered from jet lag that's right uh spent a bunch of time in korea south

korea my uh my my my my understanding is you had a really wonderful time there oh look at that it's like a sleepover at my brother's house this is crazy um i actually cannot wait to come to salt lake and uh be at some event where your brother is and then talk korean with him in front of you we can make that happen i can arrange this that be awesome and talk about and like point at Scott and kind of laugh while you're both speaking Korean to each other and make him feel really self-conscious. Why not? Why not go two? Two on one sounds like a great idea. No, that's great. Did you have any run-ins with any, I don't know, K-pop celebrities or anything cool like that? The closest, black pink? No, sadly, we did not. The closest we got to that is we were in Seoul Forest, which is kind of like their Central Park. And we're walking down this hill and we see these kids in school uniforms, which isn't unusual.

But there's a guy with a clipboard talking to them and pointing and stuff. And we walk past and we're like, that kind of looked like they were doing a shoot. But Eileen's like, yeah, but they didn't have any equipment or stuff. Are they just shooting on their phones? Come around the corner and down there is like a huge TV setup with cameras and lights and everything. and there's what is very clearly like the stars kind of a hundred meters away getting ready to shoot. So Eileen was going to take a quick picture and somebody came over as like, yes, please don't do that. So of course we didn't.

But yeah, so we saw, I don't know what drama. I don't know what actors being shot in Soul Forest. That's the only brush with celebrity that I had. Maybe you'll be watching one of them Netflix K dramas. Yeah, right? And you'll see yourself back there, Mr. Extra, in the background. You never know. Yeah, I don't think I was in front of any cameras.

But they do shoot while they're airing there quite a bit. So we started to do a little detective work to see if we could figure out which drama this is. And we need to kind of dive in and see if we can figure that out. Oh, so like if you're mid-season on something or whatever they call seasons over there, they could still be doing episodes from that season. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. They shoot very close to air, like, you know, within a month of air. Wow. Oh, wow. It's like South Park. It's crazy.

Yeah, right. Well, that's cool. I'm glad to have you back. I felt, we felt a real void here. Yeah. Oh, thanks. Yeah. You should get that heart looked out. You don't want holes in it. I hear that's bad in the long run to have holes in your heart. I know a good cardiologist. Oh, good. Let us get on that. But I know that since you've been back, you've been, you know, inundating yourself with catching up with things and, you know, paying attention to all the tech that. been dropping. What's going on today? Indeed, indeed. There is a big Amazon announcement today still kind of going on, these guys, you know? They just, they don't, they don't value our times. But yeah, they spent the majority of the announcement talking about the upgraded voice assistant. We call her Al-Exa. She is going to have a large language bottle, finally.

Everybody's been wondering, like, man, this thing's behind the times. So I didn't get any information yet on which one, whether it's open AI or something else. But you're going to have some generative AI. And it seemed pretty impressive. She sounds more natural talking to you. You can have more natural conversations. You don't have to phrase things exactly right. At least that's the promise.

We'll see how that works. And it's coming to all the models. If you have an echo, it's coming to it. Oh, good. So that's what they spent the majority of their time on. And then they're running overtime here, throwing in all of the other stuff, which is, you know, upgraded at Echo Show 8 with spatial audio, new fire TV sticks, blink security devices. Probably the one I'm most excited about is the ERO mesh Wi-Fi Max 7, which adds Wi-Fi 7 support. Wi-Fi isn't even validated, so it's giving like advanced support for the next version of Wi-Fi.

as well as 10 gigabit Ethernet ports and support for more than 200 connected devices, which in a world where we're all built in smart homes is going to be more and more important. Pricy! It starts at 600 bucks. Ho!

That's a price tag. Any new updates to that drone that just flies around your house when you're not home and keeps an eye on things? They have not mentioned that yet. It looks like they're talking about a new Echo Hub right now as we're talking about it's one of those wall mounted ones uh with an eight inch touchscreen you're trying to be more of a smart home controller uh what's these smart glasses

things i'm seeing echo frames do they yeah those aren't new uh they've they've had echo frames so so this is an upgrade i think everybody forgot i totally forgot they did this i didn't yeah that they had these but yeah echo frames uh longer battery life better speakers still 270 bucks and And new styles, which when you're talking about frames, that's probably the most important thing for a lot of people is what are these things look like. So they've always looked like glasses, but now you've got more stylish. It did feel like one of the things that you needed to see out of either the S word, the A word, or the G words, these big three that have personal digital voice assistance for so long was some news somewhere about large language modeling. or something, and it felt like it's been really slow for any of them to say much, and I didn't know who's going to be first.

I'd be honest, I'm a little surprised it's them. I thought with Bard and everything Google was doing, I thought they might be the first ones to announce. Google's been just rolling things into Google Assistant slowly, rather than doing a big, like, hey, now it's going to get immediately. So there is large language model supporting Google Assistant. it's just not been over, you know, like overarching for everything.

It's like there's more capabilities that you can do to it and it slowly improves. So it's less noticeable than what Amazon's doing here, which is like big upgrade coming. I think that's great because right now I'm having

very unfortunate stupid conversations with the A word. It's not working out great for her and I. And part of it is like the other day I had a band, Brian and I talked about us all time, bands that have names that are hard to SEO.

So if your band is called, called band or the band or music or something dumb like that or live yeah um no getting it to play any korean group's name oh i'm sure it's a nightmare not even not even because the names aren't even in korean they're just different so you know laceraphim new genes like it's pretty good with bt because they're big enough but yeah some of the other stuff it's just it's just hard to get it to respond to what i wanted to and i realize that it's just part of it is if you use enough chat gpt which is not audio based but since i use it a lot i'm i'm now getting used to getting more stuff like that right so it felt it just felt like they're very quickly fading into

a weird kind of obscurity so i am personally happy that they're doing this given that i've got i don't know six of these around the house that'll be nice to get more use out of them so so that's cool but half the time i'm like turn on my lights i have a lights command turn on lights it's a backyard thing And it'll go, I'm sorry, I don't have a command for that. And I'm like, no, I do it every day. You have this. This is when I go out and pee the dogs at night so I can see. Yeah.

I know you have this. So start over. Oh, you have it this time? Oh, very night. Like, I'm excited for that to get better. Yeah. Yeah, no, exactly. Voice recognition being better.

It sounding more natural is nice. But just being able to say something without having to think about it. And having it being able to ask you like, oh, did you mean this? And that be helpful versus like, I just didn't hear you. That'll be nice. Yeah. And also that drone that Brian brought up, I kind of weirdly excited about that, even though it's freaky.

It's freaky and weird, but I don't, I wouldn't do that to my cats. They would, like, we leave the house. They want to just sleep on the couch and not worry about. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right? We had the Astro, the robot. Oh, yeah, I showed us video about that. Scared the crap out of my dog, Sawyer. He is not okay with it.

Who has that now? I know you guys passed it around. Roger's in the middle of testing that now. Interesting. So he's got kids. Like, I want to hear how that's going at Rogers' house. Yeah, no,

we should ask him about it today on GDI. That would be a good thing. Yeah, that would be a good discussion. Speaking of which, that'll be today, 2 p.m. Mountain time. And by then,

you'll have all the Amazon stuff figured out, I'm assuming. It's still coming. Come on. Yeah. And you guys, I know you covered a bunch of it yesterday that the Microsoft Xbox

leak was a really interesting story. There's so much cool stuff happening on DTNS. Why aren't you already subscribed? You probably all are. but if you're not, get over there and get that done. And I'll be on today, 2 p.m. Mountain Time. We're doing a bonus show today. It's all going to be very exciting.

I went from no Tom for like three weeks. Nothing but Tom. All the Tom. All the time. There's no Tom like the present. Nicely done. Thank you. All right.

So tell us anything else you got going that we should be pointing our eyes at. What else is happening? Anything else? Well, if you'd like to see a few pictures of my trip and some discussion of some of the technology, like the e-sims I used and things like that. FreeTime Newsletter.com. Last week's edition, still there for you to get if you haven't got it already,

and you can get all of that stuff. That all sounds good to me. It's Tom Merritt, everybody. You know him as Ace Detect on Twitter, X. So follow him there, I guess. I don't know. We'll see you later. I'm trying not to be so down on that thing, but whatever.

It's poop. Yeah. The rumor is Musk is going, well, he said it. He said out loud. says he's considering charging everybody to use it. And my answer to that is, I'm not giving you, I don't even care if it's a penny a month. It's not about price.

I'm not giving you my financial data. I'm not doing it. Oh God, no kidding. I don't trust it. Like, I just don't freaking trust. He just basically is like, shoot, they all still haven't left the platform. All right, what else can I do? It does feel like

sabotage. It's like an arson insurance kind of situation. Like, will you get more, will we get more by imploding X than he would from just running it. That's a legit question. I'm not conspiratorial person, neither are you, but this sounds more and more true by the day.

All right, we're going to get on. How do I make it so that for every five tweets that you look at, or whatever they're called now, since they're not Twitter, for every five tweets, a clown with a knife will appear on your screen at a random point and scream at you. Great. Then maybe I'll leave Twitter finally. Maybe I'll leave. Yeah. Exactly. If they do the charge thing, though, I literally will because I'm not giving them my, I don't give, I don't give lots of companies my financial stuff unless I trust them. I don't trust them. Exactly. And they better have TFA. They better have. And they just better be a thing that I trust. Yeah. And I don't. I don't. And there are other alternatives now. So buy Twitter. X, whatever. Exactly. Let's do this. Well, what do you recommend? what I recommend, something on a streaming service.

That's what we do here for recommendals. And we bring in our two friends, Randy and Nicole. Nicole's not answering yet, so we'll talk to Randy first. Hi, Randy. Good morning, morning, stream. Hi. Good morning. Hi.

This is a more mellow. I like it. Yeah. Tell us more. Are you having a mellow day? Sometimes you need to be mellow. You know, you just sometimes. You just need to find your zen and you need to cross your legs and levitate.

It's just sometimes. Yeah. That's what you need. The last week and a half for me has been very zen light, very zen. What's the word when you don't have enough of a vitamin or something? Deficient. Zen deficient. Zen deficient. So I need some Zen.

So I'm going to try, after the show, between now and DT&S, I'm going to attempt some zen-like activities, such as I'll walk the dog a dog a little bit. And I won't even have headphones on. I'm just going to listen to nature when I do it, you know? And you do it with a yo-yo. And so you can walk the dog while you walk the dog. Oh, I see. walk the dog yo-yo trick yeah uh Nicole's with us also hi Nicole how are you hey oh nice to see you how do I sound you sound great yeah yeah welcome are you on your

are you on your phone is that what you're on I'm always I'm always on my phone but I phone sound good oh maybe we lost oh I'm always on my phone but I click oh there we're we're you back now maybe you're in a weird you're in a weird zone or something I don't know it's a cut now well I'm in my car right now so You sound fine now. I'm sure it was just one glitch. You're allowed at least one. Don't worry about it.

You're good. We're going to do recommendals. We got them all lined up, everybody. And we're going to start with Brian, as we always do. And I already know what he brought. So I'm very excited about this one, and I really hope it lands where I hope it lands. So Brian, tell us about it.

This definitely landed where I was hoping it landed. And in this clip, you're going to hear Zoe Saldana. And, uh, that's my understanding how you spell, or you pronounce that. Zoh, right? So, right. Zoh. And, um, yeah, no, this is a, this is a, uh, cool, brand new series that, uh, just wrapped up its last episode of hopefully its first season. All right, here we go.

How do you use Manuelos? I'm not an officer. Are you with? Special activities. You want your chance? So here it is. When? Classified.

Where? Classified. I'm not done vetting you yet. I was vet before they let me in the program. Not my program. When the lioness team was first formed, we just needed female soldiers to frisk and interrogate female insurgents. You can't have a man running his hand over some Muslim teenager's groin.

But it has evolved to. What we do now is locate the wives and the girlfriends and daughters of these high-value targets. and we place an operative close to them. The operative makes friends with them, earns their trust, leads us to the target, and we kill the target. Some may consider that cruel

and outside the lines of what's just. What do you think? I think if you ain't cheating and you ain't trying, ma'am. You got any tattoos? No, ma'am. You know, talk about taking somebody up then let's talk about your tattoos.

Let's talk about your tattoos. Well, they're important because they can, if you're going undercover and somebody sees a tattoo, all of a sudden they know that you're not who you say you are, or at least the religion that you might say you are. Yeah, that is a show's title that I've had to say very carefully over the past week, as I've been telling people about it. It's called Special Ops Lioness. It's not Special Ops Linus.

Okay. It's the peanuts version of us. I would watch the hell out of that, by the way. Oh, yeah, who wouldn't? I mean, seriously. Sure. It is, yeah, you heard Zoe Saldana and Saldaña and Leisla de Oliveira as Cruz Banuelos. Basically, she is, Cruz Manuelos is this woman who's brought in as a new member to the lioness program and is hired to befriend the daughter of a suspected terrorist and get close. tour so that they can take him out.

It's excellent. It's eight episodes. You've also got Morgan Freeman, a very brief Morgan Freeman appearance, but he's great. And Nicole Kidman, who kind of plays the lead. Basically, Saldania is the head of the lioness program, but Nicole Kidman is the CIA official that oversees the whole thing. Oh, gotcha. Okay. But of course, not just being part of this special ops team, Zoe also has to deal with a husband, a doctor husband, and some children, one of which, one of whom is not behaving well based on the single parenting that her husband is having to do when Zoe is out in the field.

Yeah, it's excellent. It's a really, really gripping series, and it's made by, Taylor Sheridan, I should have led with us. The guy who gave us Yellowstone, Sicario, 1883, the film Heller High Water, the writer of the film, Heller High Water. Every mini-series that's named for a year. Yes, 1883 and 1923.

Tulsa King. Yeah, this guy is fantastic, and this show is really, really good. I see it's got this Tucker character played by LaMonica Garrett. that guy was also in 1883 and for me kind of stole this stole the series. It was so good in it. I don't know if you know who he was in this thing. He's called...

He is Tucker... Oh yeah, he's a member of the team of the team that the lionesses are part of. So when they befriend the operative, the rest of Zoe's team goes in to take them out. Yeah, he's so good, dude.

I didn't even know he was in 1880s. He didn't know who he was. I see 1883 and I was so blown away by his performance. When I heard he was in this, I was like, well, of course I'm watching this. Plus Taylor Sheridan, even though that guy literally shares an hour apart we were born on the same day. Oh, really? Oh, wow. And that guy goes off and becomes the biggest megastar and television production history and film writing.

Yeah. And I'm making podcasts. Look at us. You know, it just goes to show you. It doesn't, it's not based on when you're born. It's just based on where, what you do with it. I guess it matters. One other person I want to bring up is Michael Kelly, who was Doug Stamper and House of Cards,

a bald guy who always seems to play either a politician official or a CIA official. You know this guy, Michael Kelly. He's great. He is great. And he's excellent in this. and does not take any crap. There was a clip I almost pulled, which was he and Zoe Saldania going back and forth.

She's got the Enya over her end, but I've always heard it as Zoe Saldana. Is it Zoe Saldana? I always thought it was Saldana, but I don't... I also said Zui or Zoh. Anywhere. Oh, really? Are you not looking at Wikipedia? Everywhere I look, I'm not looking at Wikipedia.

You're right. Yeah, maybe there's... Maybe there is an Nya in her name, but I'm... Okay. you have to spell it right to say it right you know i guess exactly but uh man this guy you're not kidding i go through his i mdb everything is a government official uh secret ops guy uh so often bad guy turned yes uh he's are any of those uh an alien in human clothing because that's what he looks like it looks like he's trying really hard too not that it does yeah he's making a

face like, I'm definitely a person. Transformers. Yeah, he's great. He'd be an alien. Anyway, so it's called Special Ops Lioness, and it's on Paramount Plus, and it's very, very good. Again, eight episodes, and you'll be,

you know, Free Rangers was saying I dropped out after episode three, I'd almost say, give it, typically three is what I would give a series. This thing, this thing, right from the beginning. Yeah, give it all eight. No, I would say, everything kind of picks And the operation that they're working on picks up in the fourth, fifth episode.

So there's a lot of kind of set up and getting close to the right people. I mean, if you're not, if you're not hooked in four episodes, we were hooked right from the beginning. But if you're not hooked in four episodes, then I'd say maybe it's not. Taylor Sheridan known for kind of a slow burn in the beginning of his stuff. But I like that. I'm a fan of that. And this looks like Sicario the series in a lot of ways. and I love those Sicario movies, both of them.

He wrote them both. They're fantastic. This looks like more of that, or more in the vein of that, because this isn't like, this isn't ranchers and cowboys, exactly. Yeah, he's got a taste for special ops stuff as well, obviously. That guy, though, man, he's just pumping out hits for whoever you all need a hit. Guess who's here for you? He's your man.

He's your hit man. Yeah. And he's getting people in his stuff like, well, you may. mentioned Nicole Kidman and Morgan Freeman. These are huge people to have in your TV show. Oh, yeah. It's got a, it's a great, it's a really, really good cast. And

Tina and I are like, basically, Nicole Kidman is playing a character that has a really weird voice, but we're trying to decide is that just, is that just Nicole Kidman's voice without the accent? And we just got to get used to Nicole Kimman sounding like that now when she's playing an American character, or is she really

mugging a weird voice for this thing? Seems like she's more since that thing on HBO what was that called? Big Little Lies Oh, yes. Yeah, Big Little Lies. It feels like she's...

No, yeah, Big Little Lies. It's a different thing. But she just seems to be dipping her toe in TV in a way that is kind of weird because it's not like a starring role in a lot of these. It's like just little bits.

Like here I am in this one little thing and then I'll be in your other little thing and then I'll be at AMC telling you how great movie theaters are. That's it. Of course they're great. Well, you're the only one in there, Nicole. Yeah, geez Louise.

Anyway, well, this sounds great. I'm all in. I found an Instagram post on Zoe Saldanya's official Instagram where. Oh, good. And it's just where she says that that's her name should be spelled with an enya and that most people don't know how to make that on a keyboard. So they just don't. Made with a good point. Yeah, I like that.

Made with some nice Celtic New Age. All right. Weird reference. Let's move on to who's up next. Nicole, let's do yours. I got a clip here for this, and this one's a, you pick something that's a little bit personal for me, and I think for you as well. Yeah, in a good way. So we'll talk about it.

So it's very, very personal for me. But before you do that, I just wanted to tell Brian that we finally got to the episode that he told me I would absolutely love in After Party, the Wes Anderson episode. Did you love it? Wonderful. So freaking brilliant. And Tina and I just watched Asteroid City, actually. So it's funny the timing on this. And my, I was telling my friend Paul, I said, do you like, are you a Wes Anderson fan?

He's like, I mean, I like his movies. I said, okay, well, have you watched Asteroid City yet? And he says, no. I said, it's the most Wes Anderson thing I've ever seen. And, you know, I've seen every Wes Anderson thing. Yeah. But, and he says, so it's basically like Wes Anderson made a Wes Anderson movie. Yeah.

Yes. You know what? That's perfect. what it is. What Wes Anderson thinks of making movies. Yeah. Yeah. That's crazy. He has a whole other movie coming out like before the end of the year called The Wonderful World or sorry, the wonderful story of Henry Sugar. That's coming straight to Netflix and theaters. That looks amazing. How was that guy make two of the most Wes Anderson-ass-looking movies in the same year? It's crazy to me. No kidding. Yeah. Anyway, sorry, Nicole. Go ahead. Anyway, so yeah, this is this is something that I watched back

in January when I was going through my own well I still am mental health is a journey right and you just kind of and I've been you know I a lot of people don't talk about it they don't talk about struggles and intrusive thoughts like I didn't even know what an intrusive thought was until this year and a lot of people struggle with it and I have family I have friends that I had no idea struggled with this so this topic is very close to home for me and And it's a documentary series. There's actually two of them. I think I recommended the first one years ago.

And this is a recent addition to their series. So there you go. Play the clip. Here's your clip. Anxiety is an alarm. It's saying something is wrong. To our brains and bodies, we're not ever taking a break. We're basically working all the time.

When I'm having an anxiety attack, the first thing I do is I feel hot and pressure. The first time I took Xanax, I said, oh, I understand why people get addicted to this. I could think clearly, it made me feel like a better version of myself. A pill is a really simple solution that we have created this whole infrastructure to promote. We live in this age of overprescribing and oversupply, which means you're more likely to try it and more likely to get addicted to it. Knowing what I know now, I would never have taken that first prescription. Amen, brother. Wow, though.

That debate. It's a very, so this is a documentary series called Take Your Pills. And this is the Xanax. So the first one they did back in, I think, 2018 focused on Adderall. And the prescription of Adderall and the abuse of Adderall. And also how it can be good as well. So with any medication, it can be abused. So this one is take your pills, Xanax.

So it really dives into, what I want to make sure that I stress here is that everybody is different. Everyone has a different story. Everybody's body reacts differently to medications. And they show that in this show that there are people that Xanax is helping them. And there are people that have the opposite. And I have family members, I have really, really close friends that until I went through my own mental health challenges this past year, I had no idea they struggled with anxiety and issues. And so Xanax typically for, so for a couple of my friends, they got introduced to Xanax through

Ambien. So they were having trouble sleeping. So they took Ambien. And I have one friend in particular, who during the lockdown, she couldn't sleep at all. And so she took Ambien for like a month. And then she had really, and Ambien is a benz-o. So this is all the classification of a drug called benzodiazepine, yeah. Yeah. So, and Xanax is part of that classification. And so what this documentary really kind of dives into is, you know,

why. I love there's one segment of it. It's like, okay, so we have all these pills now. What did our parents' generation and the generation before do? And they were like, they drank, they drank. Like crazy. There's a reason why I've never met my grandfather on my dad's side. He just, he was an alcoholic and he left. And like, it's serious, deep stuff when you start diving into it. And that's what I've kind of been diving into and understanding and looking at my dad because he had an alcohol problem. And what I've come to learn is my dad had severe ADHD and he self-medicated. And I'm like, oh my gosh, this makes so much more sense now. Like my history and understanding just that side of my family and trying the mental health

challenges and understanding anxiety and why we as humans have it and how it can go wrong. And it's just if you're interested in anxiety and depression and all that stuff, it's a really well done series. And it made me understand it a little bit more and understand myself a little bit more. You know, the reason I said it was, I don't, I won't get into the whole thing because it's, you know, I have time. And also, I think I've told the story, but back in 2004, I was put on the form of this, that the generic forms called Al Prazalam. And I was, I didn't know that. I didn't know that they were even the same thing. I did no research.

I had a doctor who said, oh, so you're having stress headaches at work. Turns out it was a vision thing. I didn't know that. So I just needed some updated prescription stuff for my eyes. But he said, well, for that, I would take three of these a day. I go, what are these? Oh, this is Alprasolam. Yeah, three, 25 milligrams.

Or no, five milligrams? whatever it was per per dose and take three of these a day and he was right this one of the side effects was this is the only thing he was right about one of the side effects was it did alleviate those headaches but that's because i'm taking tranquilizers i didn't understand um it also made me kind of stoned all the time and i'm like well he says take three a day i don't even feel like i need this many, but I'll keep doing it. I hit tolerance withdrawals within about 30 days. Didn't even know what those were. It was horrible. And I will tell you to this day, from 2004 up through part of 08, I also quit cold turkey. That was a mistake.

Oh, yeah. Benzo is really hard to get on. And they show it in this documentary that some people are even more sensitive where they have to use like droppers to, I have to have to. I have a friend it took her a year to get off of them because they were sending she was she was having seizures oh yeah i mean seizures are a total side that's where i screwed up because i just i was so pissed yeah by the way that doctor and you didn't want to deal with it i mean didn't want to go through it anymore no 100 this is like a built-in like i don't forget this for my dad or something but i was just so stubborn and pissed about it because i because what i'd realized that two things that happened one i was being naive and didn't know what i was doing but two this doctor

way, way overstepped what any of this needed to be. He, by the way, got not disbarred. What do you call it when you get your license taken? For a whole other issue, so he's no longer out loud to practice. Excommunicated doctor. Exactly. The Pope said, no.

But anyway, he did this and then this got so bad. And I didn't know what was wrong with me. But it dawns on me when I realize, oh, the only time I feel even okay is when I take one of these? Hmm. I wonder if this has something to do with it. I'm just some, you know, dumb, barely 34-year-old.

And I go, I'm cold turkey in it. And Kim's like, is that safe? And I'm like, I don't care. I've had it. This is the worst. And I did. And I made it through it. But it took a lot longer as a result.

So I don't recommend doing that. I never did it again, though. So that was good. Because I was never like addicted, but my body wanted me to be dependent. Yes. That shit is toxic if you do it wrong. has a very short half-life. Like, it's, it's, it's, um, like it acts fast and it goes away fast.

Right. So. And there are people who have been taking it for 20 years who are still just can't. They just, they're now, they're stuck, right? So they try other kinds with longer half-lives. And there's other ways to sort of try to do it or whatever. It's a little bit like methadone for heroin users. There, there are some solutions, but most doctors just aren't prepared to help you in that way.

And it's specialized care. Right. It's just a total nightmare. I mean, you obviously, you've been studying this so you know all about it. But it was the worst time of my life, the worst time of my life. I didn't know that. And that is not a thing you talk about a lot, right? No, right?

I felt like it was my fault. It might be somebody listening. Right? Yeah. You blame yourself and you think you're crazy and all this stuff and you don't understand why you feel this way. And I'll say it permanently, it's like it opened a wound of. of sensitivity and oversensitivity and also just sort of generalized anxiousness that I didn't have that wound before. This made that wound and never quite healed. To this day, it's still not

quite there. And I resent it like nothing's, no one's business. But I can, I know all of that in my heart of hearts and I know what I'm saying is 100% true, but I will say there are absolutely reasons why these medications are miracles in the right situation. Like right now, you know, about how terrible, you know, opioid addiction is. And it is. It's freaking horrendous. I watched dope sick two weeks ago or whatever recommended it. My dad was on OxyContin during that whole thing. And I watched Tim go through withdrawal on that. And that was awful. It's really, really bad. So it's a similar thing, but I also have, like I would avoid that stuff like the plague. But right now, Kim's sister is essentially in hospice, a situation where their liver failing from cancer after dealing with

stage four cancer for five years and we don't even know how long she's got it's like we're down toward the wire but she is very medicated on the stuff now because she needs it like this is this is an act of scientific miracle kindness in her case right this is going to make her final days so much better than they would have been they would have been a horrible painful terrible event. And back in the old days, who knows what they do? Make her chew on leather and drink whiskey? I don't know what to do. By the leather strap. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So on the one hand, it's just like, it's a whole, my biggest problem isn't so much that these things can be horribly addictive or in the wrong chemical makeup really mess people up. It isn't that issue that I

have because that we can manage that. We can say, well, yes, that's true. So we're going to be careful and we're going to do this. What I have a problem is the dope sick thing where the biotech companies either don't give a shit about people and they market this stuff in a way that every other new you know you're watching your CNN or your Fox News at night and you're in your 70s and somebody comes on there and tells you how great their pills are like that's the problem the marketing the marketing behind it is is challenging yeah that's a real that's why I'm it's why I mean honestly I've I've gone eight months with whatever happened to me in December which I'm still trying to figure out.

I'm still, I went eight months of just, I cried every single day, every single day. And I was so, because of the people in my life and watching them go through the struggles they went through, I was very scared of any kind of medication. And so I'm on the opposite side where it's like I have doctors saying, no, this is why they, you're the reason why you should take this medicine. Like, your everyday life is being, you know, affected. And so I finally, I finally decided to take an SSRI, which is Zoloft, and it changed my life.

I'm like, oh, my God, I can't believe that whatever affected me in December, I went eight months of trying to manage it myself. and I just couldn't and I I I'm glad I find I mean but it took so long and I I look back over the summer and I'm like God like just so much crying and so much overstimulation like you were saying it's it's like I have this wound now that is just I just it's over my whole nervous system is just on edge well so since we're being like Xana X comes in since we're being like oh it's a quick fix Since we're being really honest about all this stuff, this will blow some people's minds. Maybe it won't. I don't know. But the reason, well, there's a lot of reasons. Like podcasting, I cranked up hardcore partially due to this because I was, I refused to let it kill me, right? I was like, I'm going nuts with this.

Even if it goes nowhere. Got to focus on something, right? Yeah. We're talking 04, so it's just the right time. And then nerdtacular started not as a way to have an event or to, hey, it's time to, hey, it's time to expand and do this thing. those started as a way for me to go like horn to horn on this kind of anxiety because it was so debilitating that there were times I couldn't even go to like a restaurant without feeling overwhelmed with all these people all this stuff was horrible I remember meeting Patrick we were in Vegas and I was and I met Randy and Patrick there I can't remember it was a podcast thing that it was but you were there for like a blip and And I'm, I didn't get, oh, new media expo, right. Yeah, Brian's concert, all that stuff, 2008.

I was, yes. Do you know why I bailed? I got super, I got super sick and I bailed. But I'm to this day convinced that that sickness was my overwhelmed nervous system. Like, I just, it made me sick is what happened. And I had to get away from. But when that happened, I got it. I understood it.

Like, because, you know, Mark even happened. as social anxiety and I was like okay I totally get it so yeah um it's just it was I remember that but part of me it's weird because part of me looks back on all this uh and and I and I am overall glad in a weird way I wish it would never had never happened but there are things I appreciate now that I never would have even thought about before and there are things that that that I absolutely took for granted until this like chemical rewiring of my freaking brain happen. And so I feel like, I feel like having a thing like that in your life and doing stuff that somewhat overcomes it in the long run and not completely failing out of it helped

me. It gave me perspective, I guess, is the way to put it. I know a lot of people in a really bad situations. I don't want to ever make light of that or ever have anybody feel like, well, it didn't work as well for me. I'm not. trying to do that. But I guess I can, I guess I can say I get it. I get why that is so fricking hard. And like Wendy always says, she hates prescribing, you know, overprescribing anything. But she'll say it herself. These things are miracles for those that need it. You know, and the problem is doctors are giving it to people who don't. Oh, you have a stress headache? Here's three Xanax a day.

Dick. He's such a dick. I want to go in his house and toilet paper his house and throw dog poo at the window and stuff. I'll never do it, but I want to. you know well and and i think it's important i think it's important us talking about it mental health i feel like is not really talked about and and i that's why i was so surprised at one of my best friends struggled with i was like wait what and you know it's just because i'm i pro i talk about things to process it so whether or not i'm undiagnosed ADHD or whatever i i've always talked about things to help myself process what's going on. And so this was, I mean, this show, just coming on to this segment helps me process things.

And it's been, it's been really, it's been really nice because there's been listeners that have reached out to me and said, thank you for talking about it. So, because especially with mental health, you kind of get locked in your own head. And when you watch this documentary, you kind of see that situation. and you just kind of you almost spin out of control unless you have the right support system if you don't and that's where when people don't

have the right support system it can really go bad so I'm glad we're talking about it and if you are listening to this there are things that you can do to get help huge support groups out there too all kinds of stuff that even back in 2004 it was pretty good

there were a lot of forums I subscribe to to try to get through all there's a there's a forum called Benzo Buddies that my friend told me about. I was on there for a while. It's a great name. Yeah. It's not bad, right? Well, I'm glad you brought it up.

And it's, sorry, the name of it is, what is it again? It's, take your pills, Xanax. So there's one just called Take Your Pills, and that's focused more on Adderall. And this one's focused on anxiety and Xanax. Yeah. And my memory of the first series, which I watched also, and it's been a while, like you said, 2018. game, but I remember it feeling like a fair-minded scientific approach type documentary. It's not an attack piece.

It's not a... No, it looks at both sides. I mean, in the sense that it's... That's the one thing that I didn't understand about medication, that everybody responds differently to different forms of medication. Even as something as CBD, CBD is like, oh, it's so great. Well, for some people, it's not. And it doesn't do anything.

or it actually does things that they don't like. Yeah. Right. So it's just, it's your own personal journey. And that's when I talked to my doctor back in Colorado and he said, you know, unfortunately with, you know, medications, it's a kind of, we ask you about your family's history. So like for, you know, was there any medication that worked for your parents or, and that's kind of where they start in trying to figure out what to put you on.

Yeah. Yeah. Back then they were called episodes. Episodes. And what else name? The vapors. I got the vapors. The vapors. I've got the vapors. I remember Beetlejuice. There's a scene in Beetlejuice where the, what's her name? The weird girl. Winona Ryder. Oh, Lydia. Lydia. She's like, she's with Prince Valium. And now back in the 80s, it was Valium. Valium is the... Valium's like the grandpa. That's the one that put you on to wean you off of Xanax because it has a much longer half-life.

Yeah. And again, the right person, the right thing. Doctors sometimes don't know. Just better doctors, please. And less biotech control and less lobbying and less shareholders and all that shit. Yeah. Yeah.

All right. There you go. Hey, nice long one, but it's all right. It's important stuff. Windy segment. Sorry about that. It's important stuff. Let's run to fly over to Randy here.

Randy's got a link here. what do you want me to do here i'm going to be quick i've got to drop this and sign off oh all right um so i was just looking for something fun and something that would make me laugh and i returned to a movie i've seen many times it's streaming this clip you're going to hear is a couple of high schoolers who have skipped out of their christian school and are having i don't know coffee or something uh while skipping school he is in a wheelchair and she is a brand new student to the school who is considered a wildcard

Alright here we go It's a matter I'm scared to be seen in public with a stripper No I'm scared of being seen with a cripple I've been seen with worse Hillary Faced and I freak out When I'm out there waiting for

Who cares It's just that I don't get out much On my own I'm not really a stripper you know I'm not really a Christian So how'd you end up American Eagle. I mean, you're Jewish, right? Well, after I got expelled from my last school, it was either here or homeschooling.

I figure I could handle these freaks better than my parents. Well, lucky me. Are you playing footsies with me? Wheelies. Hey, isn't that? Mary? What is she doing downtown? There's only one reason Christian girls come down to the place.

girls come down to the planned parenthood she's planning a pipe bomb okay two reasons i don't know that was a pretty good joke but i do not know what this is this this is saved saved the uh the teenage comedy in a christian school starring jena malone and mandy moore and you just heard uh macaulay culkin and the other uh top line actor is patrick fugit mccallie culkin was just talking to Susan Sarendon's daughter, Eva Amuri, who, again, plays the transplant who kind of shakes things up. It is just, it's just a dark comedy. And it's exactly what I needed. And I recommend everybody watched it. It's called saved and it's saved with an exclamation with save. Saved. Saved. 2004? I love this movie. Yeah. It is a good movie. Do you guys know why there are, when

someone rings, that's funny, it's tied to Nicole's thing. When people bring up two. 2004 and 2005 movies, I don't, I don't have memory of most of them because of that was that time. Because of that time period, cheese, leaves. I know. That's why I'd never even heard of this. And this happens all the time. I remember Incredibles in 2004 and then Batman begins in 2005. And that's it.

The rest is a blur. I don't know, nothing. Oh, and Serenity. That was the one I remember. But anyway, sorry, I needed to take it back there. Randy, tell us more. It's good. You like it.

We should all watch it. Yes, it's fun. It's funny. It's got, this is before Jesus Camp, by the way. And it's not really, like, you might think of Jesus Camp when you watch this, but only because you've seen Jesus Camp. Like, this is not really related anyway. Sure. Got a couple of key roles played by Martin Donovan as the principal of this Christian school.

He's Pastor Skip. And Mary Louise Parker, you know, your weeds connection. And she plays the main character's mother, and they're just having so much fun. It's just, it's, it's funny. And it has a, there's a point in here somewhere, but I don't know what it is. It's like, like in the end, no one really, you know, no one really changes their mind about anything. They all just kind of like, they all just kind of like had an experience and they kind of laugh about it. I, uh, I don't mind saying.

I liked, you know what? I like the heyday of, uh, of gentlemen. or sorry, Mandy Moore. I like her. Yeah, she's a really good actress and a good singer, too. She is the villain in this thing. She is amazing. She is the star of the whole thing, and she gets to sing.

And, you know, you always got to enjoy a Mandy Moore singing in a movie situation. Yeah, sure. She's been busy doing stuff. Way more than the pop little pop starlet that she was when she first came on. She put out a great cover album that still blows my mind the songs that she picked. and how she covered him. Yeah, she's great. Well, well done.

We'll look for that on what's, sorry, what, where did you say it was streaming? So it's currently on Amazon Prime. It's always on something. This is one of those movies that jumps around. Currently on Amazon Prime. And wasn't this kind of like McCauley Culkin's like comeback movie? So McCulley Culkin had not done a lot.

And this was a movie where he specifically chose, like they wanted him for a different role. and he was like, no, I want this role where I'm smoking a cigarette sitting in a wheelchair. Like, I want people to see me in a very different light. Interesting. And he pulls it off. He's a really, really memorable character. All right.

I will definitely check that out. Thank you, Randy, for that. And if you have to bail, we'll see you soon. I do. Thank you. Have a very good day. You too, man. We'll see you next week for this here segment and FilmSack this weekend.

All right, check this out. This is mine. It'll be quick, I promise. It's a thing on EMC and is also on. on HBO Max for some reason. I don't know why they made a deal, but there's a deal there, and it's not about subscribing to both.

So whatever, I was happy to get it. Been meaning to watch this forever, and it's right up my alley, here you go. Open it. Slowly. Is that all of it? put them back if I catch you stealing artifacts again

the hole you'll be digging it'll be a lot bigger all right it's very vague it's vague on purpose because I don't want to give anything away I think this series is worth watching it's called dark winds wind like the wind blowing

and Dark Winds is a series on AMC produced by a whole bunch of really smart people that you know from, let's see, was it, shoot, somebody big is helping do this. And I forgot. George R. Martin? Yeah, that's it. That's it.

Those two. Robert Redford and George R. Martin, together at last, as executive producers. A lot of people don't know that George R.R. Martin, the R.R. is Stanford Robert Redford. Oh, look at it. George Robert Redford Martin. Jeez.

So you're saying, are you serious? No, but it'd be funny if I, it'd be funny if I went up to where they, where he lives and maybe both of them be hanging out playing cards, who knows. But anyway, it's, uh, it's actually not really that much like, yeah, it's not really like, it's not like it's obvious that these guys have anything to do with it. But it's, it's, it's, it's just kind of weird that they're executive producers. But anyway, this is a show created by Graham Rowland. Uh, you know him from all sorts of stuff, uh, prior to this, including, uh, let's, uh, let's, see here, Dark Wind, which we're talking about. He wrote for Fringe. Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan series, he just finished, almost human. Remember that cool show that was on for a hot minute?

Oh, yeah. That was really good. A whole bunch of lost credits as well. Anyway, he is doing what he does best. It's that kind of thing. I'll say this. So here's the premise, just real quick. The voice you heard in that was Zarn McClearnan. You know him as, I forgot his name, on it, but he was that amazing Native American in Season 2 of Fargo. He was in the most, or in these recent seasons or the whole series

of, shoot, Brandy just recommended it. The one on Hulu, the reservation dogs. That's it. Reservation dogs. Yeah, he's the officer. He plays the cop, a little more comedic role. Anyway, anytime Dr. Sleepy was in, anytime this guy's on camera, I'm transfixed. There's something about him. He's a Westworld. I could change. there you go another good one hensie dent was the um the fargo role that's right he is so good in

everything he is he transfixes me i love him so he's your main guy he plays joe leaphorn he's a policeman it's set in the 70s it's like they made this name porn leephorn like leap like jumping and horn yeah oh yeah not lee porn le porn i thought you said leeporn leigh porn le porn le porn No, that'd be my brother's new porn channel. No, he's very good, as you expect that guy to be. But there are a bunch of other people in here, like Noah Emrick. You know him as the best friend on Truman Show is just an example. He was in the first season.

He was the CDC guy in the first season of Walking Dead, things like that. He's great. Rain Wilson plays this car dealership owner called Devoted Dan. slimyest slimyest dude total total D-bag in this thing yeah

person that really blows my mind is this Jessica Matten she plays Bernadette and I can't ever say her last name Manuelito anyway Manuelito

she is a native American who blows my mind acting wise but she is also like really big on the whole like get stuff done for the reservations

helping kids stuff on the outside of acting she's really really great this other guy named Gordon plays the Jim Chee character. He's a Native American, but he works for the FBI, and there's a whole thing with that story. I don't want to give too much away. I've only seen

season one because season two, well, it's queued up now. It's out. Season three is going to start sometime soon,ish. Maybe the, maybe not because of the strike. But this is a kind of show where I don't know what to compare it to. It's, it's got all the trappings I like, set in the southwest. It's in the middle of the desert. These are Navajo, uh, Navajo, uh, Navajo observation officers trying to keep the law happening, you know, on the reservation and dealing with federal authorities is a nightmare. And it's the 70s where there's a lot more just horrible people about the state of these people's lives and all of that. I think they handle all that stuff pretty well, but there might be something supernatural going on, but you don't really know.

And if that part feels losty, it does for sure. I really like this show. So Brian, you've seen this? I didn't know you'd seen it. We've only the first season. And I tried to look and see if I recommended it and I couldn't find it. But yeah, no, we loved it. And I'd forgotten about it. So knowing that season two is out, definitely going to get caught up on that. Yeah, it's real good so far.

And I guess I'm as far as you. I only did the first season. But I liked it so much that I'm ready to barrel into season two now. And I think people would really like it. If any of those trappings that I mentioned are interesting to you, It's like noir, southwest, desert rat vibe set in the 70s. I mean, my gosh, they just made this for me is what they did. I love the whole idea, the whole concept on the face of it is just rad.

So anyway, it's available on Max right now and AMC Plus, if you have that. I'm glad Max has it. I don't know why they have it, but they have it. So that's where I'm watching it currently. And that is my recommendation. All of these, of course, will be up on QuickTMS.L.I. They already are. And Nicole, it was great having you on.

Yes. Thank you for being so raw and real. Well, I appreciate that. I hope, yeah. It's always a hard thing to talk about, but when, you know, it feels good to do it. And hopefully, you know, we're not triggering anyone out there who's going through some rough stuff. If you are, I wouldn't bet you rather have it happen in 20, 23 than 2004. 2004 was not.

I mean, it's 20 years ago almost. Wow. It's not as good as it was. it is today in terms of getting help and knowing what is going on. And the education is just better now, you know. A lot better. A lot better. Anyway, it's been great having you on here.

Tell hi to Mark and your kids. I will. Love you guys. I don't know why I said tell hi, but sure. Why not? Tell hi. Tell hi we said Mark. Tell hi we said M-A-R-C.

All right, we're done. We got a quick email. I want to rip through. And this one comes from J-B. And he says this. Hello, Sparrow and Borders Books. I like this. We're going back to the mall.

I like it, yeah. During the windy segment of episode 2523, Scott mentioned that he is bad at math. This is, this made my day because I think he's wrong, but I love how he, I love the example. Yeah. He said, I would like to make an observation. Scott is great at math. His expression of it is not just through solving equations on paper or intellectual study of math from a book like we are all taught in schooling and college systems. My argument is, look at the frog.

made wearing pants on the frog pants discord the scaling coloring gradients shading etc all are math are all math and you can't that you can't just do in your head or you can just do in your head right you have no reason to be uh sorry you have no reason to be able to prove it on paper because you can just apply it look at the nostrils on that damn thing I don't even I don't have it in front of me but I can't even imagine oh yeah I do let's see the nostrils No, that's not the one. All right, never mind. It says, and that just one tiny detail.

Your brain can calculate what it takes to bring forth an image like that without needing to work it out to some equation. Your brain can just do the math. You mentioned that you used to play basketball, so your body and brain already know how to do ballistics, which is a straight math. You have, sorry, you have no need to prove it with an equation on paper because you can work it out in situ. I don't know what that means. Situation? In situation, yeah. Okay.

right then in the moment in the moment yeah that makes sense oh there's frog right there on the screen chat can see it so please be careful about saying you can't do math you can do it just fine just not some freaking college textbook just a thought love the show and you both jb all right i took i took this at first and i went oh that's really nice but then i thought yeah but for all practical purposes if you tell me to do some geometry equation you're gonna you're gonna hate you're not gonna be around me i'm terrible at that stuff so yeah I mean, I think, you know, I see his math, I see what he means by math, and it's really just, it's the fact that you know spatial, you have a brilliant eye for spatial design and what will cast a shadow, what will be rounded, what will be textured, what will be a certain shape, and that is a form of geometry, that is a form of, it's not an equation, I mean, it's not an equation that you can write out. it's an equation you are able to do in your head.

Now, is it by the technical definition math? I don't know. Not really. Yeah. It's like driving. Brian can go drive a car. What does that mean? Well, he knows all the math of where to drive, how to drive, when to slow down, how to pull back, how to park, or anything you do in your life.

Yeah. Those are all, by that definition, we're all doing math right now. We're all calculating things in our heads that, uh, to get through our day that may not necessarily be this number times that number but we're calculating in our heads yeah so in high school if i'd have walked up to the math teacher and said hey i want to join the math club oh what what are your qualifications i can draw real good look at the shading on this frog look at the nostrils for pete's sake he's going to go okay but how about the pythagorean freaking longitude of a broken noodle or whatever he's going to say

and i'm going to go i'm freaking i'm bad at that don't ask me I'm bad if he says, what's 58 plus 32? I'm going to have to think about it for a while and maybe use some fingers. Only if you have 90 of them. That's true. I don't have nearly enough. Also, big cereal, a big birthday shoutout to Sarah. Yeah.

WinMegis's daughter, Gratz. Yeah. That's great. You know what? We'll give you one of these. Happy birthday. Happy birthday. Go out and party.

You know, let it rip. That's awesome. I love the name Sarah, like... Sarah, yeah. The Marvel character named Sarah. Oh, would it spell like that? S-E-R-R-A? No, one R for the Marvel character.

But in Marvel Snap, she's great. She gives you one extra point of energy to use to bring out cards. She's a terrific character. A terrific card. Wonder if at home when Mega Server goes, Hey, Sarah, and his phone goes, bo-boom, and tries to help them. I'm sure. I'm sure that's close enough that I bet it does.

It might. Yeah. Hopefully that gets better soon. Anyway, happy birthday to her. I hope she has nothing but a fantastic time. Yeah. Big thanks everybody for supporting us on our Patreon. You know what to do and where to go.

Patreon.com slash TMS. It means a lot to us when you do. Big thanks to everybody who already has. It is the motivation of how the show continues to go. It's not entirely our motivation, but it helps a lot. Okay. We got to pay them bills. Oh, yeah.

No, this light. These actually these lights and these are all controlled by Patreon payments. If the lights stop, then all this is dark. Yeah, for the, for, you know, if you're like me and you leave your gaming PC on all night by accident. Oops. Who's paying that bill? Is it just flying through the star field without you? Wake up on the other side of the galaxy or something?

No, that's funny, though, because I was at the main menu when I left it, which mean the display never went to sleep. So it just sat here cooking. Oh, so that, yeah. I feel like an idiot. I hate when I do that. It's not a burn in. Like, at least you're not dealing with the situation with the CRT where the image will burn in. after being up there for a day.

Yeah, LCD for all of its, whatever its failings are, at least it doesn't burn. All right, that's going to do it for us. Hey, Brian, let's get out of here with a little song in our hearts. What do you got for us today? Sure. And, you know, I don't think I said this at the top of the show, but big thanks again to TV's Travis and Bobby

for doing such a great job filling in the last couple days. Yeah, they were great. Let's get to this one. This is going out to Nicholas from Boulder, Colorado. Hey, guys, it's my 27th birthday on September 16th. and after over a decade of listening to TMS and other Freight Pants-related content, I'm finally requesting a song.

Let's party. I don't know how old Sarah was, but he's young enough for the let's party. There we go, exactly. From the bottom of my heart, I can't thank both of you enough and the community at large for all the years of enjoyment.

And I say that as a full-time lurker. Show the love, though, sign Nicholas. Ni-Claus, I guess. Niklaus. It gives me a pronunciation. No pronunciation guide here. All right.

Lately, he says I've been joining bands like Cranben or Hermannos Gutieres, mostly instrumental guitar-based focus songs that make you feel like a cowboy writing some dirty Western trails. Any cover of or by them or in their style will be appreciated.

Also, Holy Smoke's Brian. I'm sorry, I wrote a short novel for this request. No problem, Niklaus. This is Crenbin. I'm sure I'm misproncing that. K-H-R-U-A-N-G-B-I-N.

A writer in my car pointed me out to this band and said, oh, yeah, I'm going to go see this band tonight. They're awesome. And I just started playing in my car, and they were really, really freaking good. This is one of the very few covers that you can get by Crangbin. And it's a cover of David Bowie from the Modern Love Tribute, the David Bowie tribute that came out two years ago.

Here's their cover of Write. I'm going to be the Taking it in the right way. Keeping it in the right way. Taking it all the right way. Never no turning back. Never going to go.

Never turning back. Flying in just a sweet place. Coming inside and saying. Flying in just a sweet place. Never been no affair Never been no affair Never been no fair Sometimes

Right You're here One time Don't party, nobody Sometimes you Do it Doing it

Giving it Mother Give it Hey Do it Taking it sometime Giving it

I Taking it all the right way Never know turning back Never go Never go Never know turn about Bye Taking it

Giving it Giving it Taking it Never don't turn about You know Never don't turn about Flying in Covering it

Coming in Flying it taking it in the right way keeping it in the right way keeping it in the back taking it on the right way never no turn back and you know they don't never know turn in a bad

flying in just a sweet place loving it's nice safe flying just a sweet place Just a sweet place I've never been no fair Never been no Never been known Never been known

Never never Never never never Never never never never don't try about never you're trying back never on time about never

I never never I never I never I never I never I never I never

time away I never don't turn it back I never none I never turn and back I never I never, I never, I never, I never, I never, I never, I never, I never, I never, I never, I never, I never, I never, I never, I never, I never, I never, I never, I never, I never, I never, I never, I never you can tell you better.

Get more at frogpants.com. It's not easy being a cast iron bitch. Oh, geez.