The Morning Stream - TMS 2718: Roughly Naked

Episode Date: October 14, 2024

They Wanged and Also Chunged. 80s Computer Beige. The Ding Dongs Complain about the Bell Curve. Average Sufferer. There's always a fan where there's poo. Stabbisimo. You'll get NO Sarah, NO Jennifer Connelly, and just a SHADOW of LT. YAR! The Princess Bride game is Mostly Boring. Marrying the Eff Up. Crawled through 5 miles of hand sanitizer and came out clean on the other side of. Asking Twice is Just As Nice. Isn't there a game where you're a warrior driving a mech called Mech something? Matt and Trey, their wildest dream La Casa Bonita. Yogurt so good that it hurts. What's the deal with all the Green Lanterns? With Stephen and more on this episode of The Morning Stream. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There's no such thing as ghosts or haunted houses or zombies or even vampires, but there are such things as great patrons of the morning stream. At patreon.com slash TMS, coming up on the morning stream, they wanged and also chunged. 80s computer beige. The ding-dongs complain about the bell curve. Average sufferer. There's always a fan where there's a poo.

Stabissimo. You'll get, no, Sarah, no Jennifer Connolly, and no shadow of Lieutenant Yarr! What Princess Bride Game is mostly born? marrying the F-Up. Crawled through five miles of hand sanitizer and came out clean on the other side. Asking twice is just as nice. Isn't there a game where you're a warrior driving a mech called mech something? Matt and Trey, their wildest dreams, La Casa Bonita.

Yogurt's so good that it hurts. What's the deal with the green lanterns with Stephen? And more on this episode of The Morning Stream. We put Kareem Abdul-Jabbar up against the Tari basketball. Oh man, what a move. We let Mario Andretti test drive Atari Night Driver. This game really cracks me up. And the great Pele himself tested Pele's championship soccer.

What a gig! It beat me a game! At Atari, we take our game seriously, so you have more fun. How'd you do, Kareem? I'm glad I won't face Atari in the playoffs. I got something better than money. The morning stream. He's taking a dump in a can. Good morning, everybody.

Welcome to TMS. It's the morning stream for October 14th, 2024. I'm Scott Johnson, and that's Brian. Hi, Brian. Oh, hi, Scott. Oh, hi. Oh, hi. You wouldn't even know that Brian was gone all weekend.

It had a really cool thing playing pinball and video games and seeing people. You wouldn't know. You wouldn't know. You could tell us that now and we could say, you're lying. And there's no way to prove it. I mean, it does seem like because you and I had very little communication over the weekend. It just felt like normal weekend, Brian's somewhere. But then, no, you were halfway across the country doing fun stuff.

Film sack listeners now. But TMS listeners who don't listen to the film sack wouldn't know. Yeah. Yeah, went to Houston for the Houston Arcade Expo. I kept trying to remember what the name of this thing was because it's not the Texas Pinball Festival. which we've been to before. But even though it's the, I guess it just says Arcade Expo, so it doesn't say more video games than pinball machines because it wasn't.

It was very similar in setup to the Texas Pinball Festival. I'd say a good two-thirds of the floor was still pinball machines, which is great. That's great. I would have thought it would be a higher ratio of arcade games. Of arcade. um fewer like still a good section of arcade games uh there were some that i was looking for was like all right no i did not see a single tempest uh but i did play i did play some uh i know yeah it's all right that's good i can play that anytime i want that's right there look at it right

right behind you plug that in go yeah um but i did play some uh some quicks i haven't played quix on an arcade machine in a long time and forgot how much fun that was completely completed one level, and that's it, because I really, I tried to get a little too aggressive with creating the really long, tall divider to divide the board up. I saw food fight, did not play any food fight, but I did play a ton of pinball and played the brand new X-Men game that's kind of inspired by X-Men 97. There's some stuff in there that's not, you know, it doesn't look exactly like. like the new Disney Plus series or anything like that,

but definitely inspired more by that than by the comics or the movies. Kind of that color scheme and the costume schemes and all that, man. Exactly. Sure. And, oh, my God, it's fun. It's got, it's one of these that I really like because it's got a lot of missions. So it doesn't feel like, all right, knock down these four targets, then knock down these six targets.

And then that lights this spinner up. And then you've got to go up this ramp and da-da-da-da. it's it's like all right you're a storm and you're fighting against pyro so you got to put out all of the fires all around the city that pyro is starting and so the targets that you want to hit are all lit up with red

and it gives you a different angle to try and hit all those things and then this other one is stop the juggernaut and he's breaking down these so you got to hit these three ramps and stop the juggernaut it's really cool it adds an extra level of of challenge to it is it this one I just put a link for in the chat

Is this the one? The stern. If it's from stern, this is it. Yeah, this is the new hotness. Ooh, nice. Look at that big Sentinel head in there. I like that. Big Sentinel head, and depending on which they have two different,

or two or three different models, or three, I guess, pro premium and limited edition, depending on which version you have, either the Sentinel head stays up if you have the pro version. But if it's premium, then you have to hit some targets for the Sentinel head to rise out from the case, from the playfield. Oh, wow.

And then you can start attacking it. Also played a lot of labyrinth. They have a new labyrinth pinball machine. And that's put together by a company called Barrels of Fun, who actually have headquarters in Houston, not too far from where the Expo was. And so as part of this, we also bought tickets for a tour of the facility, and we saw the process of them making these labyrinth games.

And building a pinball machine basically from scratch. right because you've got this kind of assembly line setup of people who only work on one specific thing for about an hour for the pinball machine and then they move that along to the next guy and then the next guy does this sort of thing so typical assembly line but but when you're actually seeing what they have to do in process yeah it's it's fascinating these people only work on wires like they have a setup like all right for this game we know we need uh 43 close clusters of wires, and this one cluster has three of these red ones and three of these blue ones, and they get plugged into this other thing, and then this other one has, you know, this wire harness on it, da-da-da-da, then one guy completely checks the play field to make sure there's no printing issues, and they have a whole wall of like, nope, this one has a printing issue, it goes on the wall. I noticed they didn't pay for the Sarah license. They only paid for the David Bowie license.

Let me talk about that, because I asked that very question, and there's a very good answer to it. Well, I'll get to it in a second. So each machine takes about 22 hours to produce, so over the course of a week with all the different hands that are touching it. But they actually put out a machine, complete a machine, about every 40 minutes, so about 10 a day that they get done. And they're doing a limited run of 1,100 of these. And it's a really, really cool. Again, who's their very robust game? Who's their primary customer when they do that, when they're pumping these out like that?

Is it just arcades? Is it like bars? It's a mix of collectors and arcades and bars. Do you have find out how much that is for a table? About $8,000, $9,000. Woo! Yeah, yeah. It ain't cheap.

No, that is not cheap. Although I have to admit, I think that's a little cheaper than I would have expected. I was thinking $12,000 or something for some reason. Oh, yeah, no. No, even that X-Men one we were looking at, I don't know how much the limited it is. one is, but the premium, I think the premium is 9,400.

So it ain't cheap. A lot of stuff. Chunk of change. There's stuff in there. Yeah. So let's talk about Sarah and Jennifer Connolly here, because I asked, I got a little Q&A session at the end of the tour,

and I'm like, so I noticed that Jennifer Connolly's likeness is not in this thing. How come she's not here? None of the videos show her, none of the art on the cabinet or on the playfield show her. And he says, well, actually, it's because we want you to have her experience instead of watching her experience. We want you to be her in this game. And so you're going through the labyrinth.

You're trying to rescue Toby. You're encountering all the goblins and the goblin king and that sort of thing. And there is an Easter egg on the back glass where you've got Bowie holding up the ball, the crystal ball with the labyrinth shown inside there. um there is a a little shadow of sarah over in the bottom right or bottom left corner oh nice so that sounds like dual that sounds dual purpose to me that sounds like well jennifer connelly is not only alive but also that's a lot of extra money we'd have to pay in licensing so also wouldn't it be cool if we did this big game as if it was from the perspective of sarah because i asked it like that i said so jennifer connelly didn't want you don't

didn't want her license of this thing or didn't uh agree to have her likeness in here and he's like oh no no it was it was purely this decision to make it your experience whether that's true or not sure you who knows but the guy that i talked to it wasn't it was i was talking to him directly as opposed to like in a big audience full of people he came over and was talking like four of us and i asked him about it yeah um but who knows because there's there's a lot of people like um uh we figured out that harrison ford is probably represented on the most pinball machines between Star Wars and Indiana Jones and those things.

And initially that first Indiana Jones machine from like the mid-90s had a person on the on the backglass that wasn't quite Harrison Ford because they didn't pay for his likeness. So they had to change it just enough and they like said, all right, if we take this out and this out,

does this meet your criteria for not looking like, oh yeah, blade runner machine? Does this meet your criteria for not looking like Harrison Ford? And it did enough to the point that they put it out. And you look at it and you say, well, clearly, that's Harrison Ford. But you look closely at it and you can say, oh, yeah, it doesn't have the scar under his lower lip. He doesn't have this.

There's kind of some weird stuff going on with his eyes. Just a little uncanny valley on it to make it not him. A little uncanny valley. Yeah, exactly. That makes sense. The new video game's a bit like that. They kind of have his likeness, kind of don't.

Yeah. Really weird. They should, you know what they ought to make. They ought to make an Air Force one pinball machine. And then you have, at some point, you've got to get one ball from one track over to this other ball, this parallel track, but there's no way to do it except for a string. You got to like, somehow swing over there and survive. Right.

Yeah. I don't know why they didn't make one of those. That would be great. That would be great. Keanu Reeves also on a lot of machines, that a Johnny Nomonic machine, probably the the very same Johnny demonic machine that I played at the Texas pinball festival made its way over here. There's probably only two of those in existence.

I didn't even play it. It's just like, yeah, that's great. Not playing it. You didn't walk out on it, though, really, like you did the movie. I didn't walk out halfway through a game like I did with the Princess Bride Machine. Oh, really? Yes, T and I both looked at each other and said, do you feel like playing this anymore? It's just not that fun because it's from this company called J3, or P3.

P3 that makes these modular pinball machines where you can, instead of paying for a brand new game, you buy the base unit and then you can put all the special ramp things and parts that make it look like that game. And then the whole base of the play field is a video monitor. And so that changes to show you things that are specific to that game. So the one that I've played that actually was really cool modular for this company was a Weird Al-Yankovic one that referenced a ton of his different songs. And that one was really cool, although it still had that same problem of big playfield, top third has a bunch of stuff, middle third has nothing except the two ramps that go along the side. And then the bottom where the flippers are has some stuff. And for Princess Bride, it should have been as robust.

is the labyrinth game as far as having you know IP content I mean that modular the modular idea

is such a great idea until you put it into practice and then you realize you're creating you're creating some limitations potentially

I mean there's probably a way to do this you know yeah if you figure out a way to have stuff in that middle third yeah

and make it you know make it feel like you've got more than just two targets to hit or three spinners

and a couple of ramps it's like oh no you need there needs to be more in these games to make it worth it. I probably would get bored with that We're at L. Yankovic game after a while because as cool as all of the

Easter eggs and references to his music are, it's still just up in the top third of the game and that's it. Yeah. No, that's cool. Any other moments of memory that you'd like to share with people with your trip? Well, I definitely want to I've got to give a shout out to

I'll give a shout out to Rusty and Shelling one at the end of this. We also saw wang chung wang chung was playing live there on friday night so we uh everybody wang chung at that they did that night and it was at night right where you wang chung you have to wang chung tonight you have to wang chung all day long you can't wang chung at night yeah that's good but they they uh did a longer set than i would have they did a longer set than they said they're used to for doing casinos and stuff kind of makes me a little sad like oh yeah usually we have a lot of noise from the casino machines but this is cool with all the pinball machines if we get a chance to do a longer set

and I'm like, oh, oh, yeah. But they did some stuff from to live in Dye in L.A. They did the song from the Breakfast Club soundtrack, which is really cool. It's surprising there. They did a great Bowie cover of Moon Age Daydream.

Oh, I could hear them doing that. Yeah. They're mic, they did dance hall days, of course, and then sadly their biggest tit, which doesn't sound, everybody have fun tonight. their biggest single of all time

and it doesn't sound like anything else they've done. You know, that's like such a pop, such a little pop song and it's kind of like Hanson's Mbop. It doesn't represent everything else that the band does.

Yeah, or it's the biggest hit. It's like Marcy Playground with Sex and Candy or Wheatis with a teenage dirtbag. Teenage dirtbag, creep by Radiohead. It's another example of this. It's like, ah, yeah.

Just doesn't represent their catalog but it's you know right yeah you know what r em's that's me in the corner that almost ruined them in my opinion like that was so overplayed and so not like the rest of their music at least it didn't feel like it to me so i get that uh anyway awesome well at least you got to see wang chung in a and in the smallest venue possible you know it really was yeah with about a hundred of my friends and um and rusty and shelly uh just awesome they are such great people to hang out with And they are bigwigs in this, in this ecosphere. Everybody knows them.

Everybody comes up to them. And they always made a point, like when we were hanging out in a group, they always made sure that Tina and I were included and introduced to everybody and that involved in conversations. It never felt like, oh, yeah, no, these are our friends from this 80s cruise that we always go on. Hold on. We're going to talk to them for a little bit. Go off and do something on your own.

No, we always felt like we were. were part of the group and included and everything. So it was great seeing them and, of course, great seeing J.K. Grammer and Sarah, who are also very awesome. They came up just for the, well, they came up for the afternoon and then ended up just getting a room at the hotel and staying in the night. Oh, nice. That's great. Yeah.

I love them, especially Sarah. No offense, JK, but she's amazing. You married the F up, dude. I'm telling you. She's awesome. Just love her. She's like a, I don't know what, I don't even know what kind of. energy it is, but when I'm around her, I just, I don't know if things feel better.

She's great. Yeah. Well, that's awesome. I'm glad you got there. No con, crud. None of that business. No con crud. You would think, like, this would be where you get the concrete because everybody's touching the game.

Yeah, you're all touching stuff. Like, all touching the same thing. No, feel, feel great, feel fine, and hand sanitizer all over the damn place. And a lot of hand washing, a lot of that. But, eh, came out clean on the other side. That's good. that's awesome that's how if you you can do those kind of things there's two tricks lots of hand sanitizer and never touching your face if you don't touch your face you're in you're in good shape because it's not

like a thing people are breathing on you it's you're getting it off a joystick so you just you're careful you're good no no well nicely one one quick game that i played those so cool uh sorry um uh they they had brought from the from the direct from the 90s do you remember these pods that they had at some arcades Where you'd get in, you were driving a meck around. What was this thing called? A mech. There's something familiar about it being a mech. Is it battle tech?

I think it is battle tech. Oh, yeah, you know what? We talked about these on, I don't know I could correct me, but I think we talked about it. I think we talked about these ones. Yeah, this is it right here. Oh, my gosh. Not border break. that was something in Japan.

It is battle tech. Battle mech. Battle mech. Okay. Did I say Battle Tech? Battle Tech. Sorry, it is Battle Tech. Battle Tech.

Okay. Oh, there it is. Okay, yeah, this is, I think, the one we talk. That game's rad. It's really rad. And so Tina and Rusty and I and some rando played, and you're just driving this, this mech around. And they've got, you know, your pod is,

you've got four screens and then a big screen where where you're driving everything. It's just a really, really cool setup. Yeah, those are awesome, dude. What a freaking blast that was.

Look at this room full of these. How cool would this be? Look at this. Yeah, that actually, I think, is at the Game Preserve in Houston. Oh, no way.

That's awesome. I'll bet if I looked closely, based on those stickers, I could tell you the four that they had set up at the event that we played. That's funny. Some of them are a little more yellowed

than others. Some of them are cleaner. They all, they do all have. that 80s computer beige though yeah that's awesome I used to love that game very rare to see it though I think I maybe saw it twice

my entire life so that's cool you got to hang out with that alright let's move on we got a we got a couple of guests coming in real quick yeah I have friends of the show who we want to talk to because I got some cool stuff happening they totally do yes

let's see if I can find them both here we go Bing bang bong Bing bong they don't have intro music But if they did It might sound something like Let's see Egg willow

The egg willow You all want to go to a place called a Here you go see See it's just It seems nice But it's a little discordant Maybe it's Maybe it portends something darker

You never know Something sinister You never know exactly what's going to happen But we do know this Amy and J.F. DeBoe Joining us hi Amy how are you I'm good. I'm good. Good morning. It's nice to have you back. J.F., it's nice to have you here for the first time on voice anyway. How are you? Good morning. I'm good. How about you guys? Doing great, man. Doing great. Don't worry. Asking twice is just as nice. That's our motto.

Hey, you guys are in the thick of it. I understand there's like two weeks left on this project. So for those who weren't here last time Amy was here, sort of explaining the thing, why don't you guys give us another shot at what's this is and why the listening audience might want to go check it out. J.F. Dubot, you haven't had a chance to sort of spill the beans here. So tell us what this project's about, why you're excited, and where people can go. About five years ago, actually, it's going to be five years on the 31st on the dot. Amy and I released the first episode of our cozy horror fiction podcast, A Quillow. And it's a joint project that I started with Amy after her old jaunt on America's next top podcaster because I realized

oh, ladies got more potential than she's been letting on, especially on the production side and a narration. So we work together, we put this project together and as time's been going on, we're on our seventh season.

We finished our seventh season a few weeks ago, like maybe a month and a half ago. And we kind of came to the conclusion that if there was ever a time to translate the podcast, to translate the story into a different format, make it a book, because obviously I have a thing for books.

Yeah, the timing was now or never. So we looked at our options, and I said, you know what, let's try to strong arm my publisher, Inc. Shares, into publishing this title. Ink Shares loves me, I have a super good relationship with them, but at the same time,

because we've got so many seasons of the podcast, I wanted to make sure that they were on board and to do that, let's do the entire crowdfunding, crowd voting thing with them, show them that there's an audience, that this is a cool project with cool people and cool listeners. And that way, they'll be 100% on board, and we can get this turned into a cool book. That's awesome. You're a big fan, I know, of the Ink Shares service, right? Like, you've used it a bunch, and you just mention you're close to them and have a great relationship with them.

Do you feel like they're very author-focused, like author-first sort of place over there? Because people ask me, it's like, well, if I go support Tom's book or J.F. Debo's book or any of these books over there, how do I know the author's getting, you know, decent cut or blah, blah, they're getting treated right or whatever? Is this just another scheme to give some other company a bunch of middle money? Well, I'm going to preface by saying that I have a close relationship with Inshares, and I was at the CEO's wedding a couple of years back. Oh, geez. Maybe close enough to have a bias.

Yeah. Maybe a little close enough to have a bias. But I would say, the thing is when Nink shares, they don't offer advance, which sucks. But at the same time, they offer a significantly higher percentage on royalties. I think our royalties are about 35% on net. Oh, that's good. Yeah. Massive compared to the standard industry.

Wow. And if you're looking for examples of more traditionally higher profile people that are publishing with Inchairs, obviously, I mean, there's Tom. But you also have Gary Whittah who published his second book with Ink Shares just a few months back, Gun Dog. You'll know Gary Witta. He also published Abomination with Innshares. But he's the, I think he's the screenwriter for Book of Eli. But more importantly, for your interest, the one on screenwriters for Rogue One. Yeah.

So the fact that he went back. Back to ink shares for his second book is, to me, it's kind of a demonstration that even outside of the close-knit circle of people who have, who got their start with Inchairs and are working closely with Inchairs, that the company still has a good reputation. Yeah. Amy, how excited are you for the audio? Well, I mean, the audio's kind of done, right? You don't have to do.

Well, what do you have? I mean, I'm going to redo it. Like, that's part of our, that's one of our, like, few little concessions if we get down to signing a contract is that I will do the audio book. we are going to re-edit it, you know, the story and fix some things and add some things. So it's not going to be just like a direct slap the script in a book and now we're done. I've also come a long way in what we're doing in five years. We've been doing for our for our Patreon, we do these like behind the scenes episodes

and like retrospectives where we go back and listen to episode by episode. And it is going back to that season one was a little wild. I was like, I made some choices. Yeah, boy, you really get a rude awakening when you go back and listen to your own work, your own early work, right? And so it's like so foundational and important to go back or that it exists at all. But it's sometimes I think, like if I go back to something that's like 10 years old, I want to die when I hear it. So I assume that means you guys have learned a bunch of stuff. You're going to apply that to this final product.

That must be exciting. I do need to do a shout out to my time on A&T. because Amazon Prime Video just announced that they're doing a series on the Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist, which you all may remember from culinary capers, right? Yeah. So, yeah, they're doing an Amazon Prime series, and I'm so excited. That's cool. It's like a documentary or what are they doing? I think it's a story inspired by, executive produced by Jamie Lee Curtis.

Really? So, yeah, it's wild. I guess she's got some money to put behind it. Yeah, you know, why not? So I think that's pretty funny. No, that's great. Out of nowhere. It is Canadian Maple Day in six days.

Is it? Is it? What do you do to celebrate Canadian Maple Day? I'm just curious. Down here, I don't think we ever know. What do you guys do? We're Canadians. We eat.

We have a Canadian maple chugging contest, like you get down a stine full of maple syrup Yeah, big bowl of curds covered in syrup. Oh, you guys know what you're up to. Well, that's great. I'm very excited for you guys. Tell people where to go, what time you got left, and kind of what needs to happen to make this thing fly. Either one of you.

Well, go ahead. I'm going to lament that, I mean, you've done Kickstarter and crowdfunding before, so you know how it is. Like, your first two weeks are great. Your last two weeks are great. Everything in the middle is a nightmare. Yeah. So true.

We're coming on the tail end of the nightmare. So we are above half-funded for the three months. We've only got two weeks left to get some like 230 pre-orders done. And we've got some good ways of kind of drumming up the interest for it. So we are ending the campaign Smackdown on the 31st of October. I mean, thematically, it's great for us. It's Halloween. This is a cozy horror book.

It's also a fifth anniversary of our first episode. and what we need to get done is basically get those last 300 and 30 orders We've got some awesome perks for people who order We've got a short story That's perfect for anyone who's listened to the first season We're also

We're getting our cover made by a legendary horror artist Lynn Hanson So we're looking forward to that Anybody that orders three books Gets a citizenship card and their very own individual address in Aequilow. We're trying to drum up some cool stuff for people. That's awesome. I love that.

And also, if you go, so listen, folks, go to inkshares.com and just search for Aikwillow. I know you can get it off your website as well. But however you get there, get there. Check this thing out. This is the very first sentence under the name. Somewhere between the Twin Peaks and Stardust with a touch of Hellraiser. Good Lord, if that isn't enough to get genre fans.

Who would have thought that there was a conflict? of those three rivers. Yeah, and I love all three of those rivers. You should, too, love them, and go support this and help out our friends, because this is awesome. You guys, I'm very excited for you. I really want this to go through for you.

So best of luck. We'll keep pounding away on it here and there to get people in there in the next couple of weeks. And, you know, just have fun doing it. It sounds like a blast. Yeah, I did. We wouldn't be doing it if it wasn't. Except for this middle bit.

I know how that is. Right, exactly. Get ready for the fun of the last two weeks. Again, go to inkshares.com. Look for Akewillow. That's A-C-H-E-Willow, all one word. And it'll find it right away. Thanks, guys.

I appreciate it. I'll see you soon. Thanks for that. Bye. Bye. Nice. Go help them out you guys. That was not a paid promotion, by the way.

We did this because we like them and we want them to succeed. All right? Oh, you didn't get that. Brian got a little Venmo in the background. Mo. Just came through a chiching. Okay, good. Thanks, guys. All right. Good. That's funny. All right. We are going to dive right into the morning half-asses. Oh, before we do, real quick. I went to this place called Los Botellas. Oh, okay. Which is Spanish for The Bottles. Okay. All right. I looked it up. It was literally The Bocles.

Good. Brand new Mexican place, kind of fancier, upper-scale Mexican place that opened. We've been trying to go forever. We finally had a reason, went with some friends. It was great. I just want to put this on anyone's list that if you're out in this kind of central valley of Salt Lake and you're like, man, I'm in the mood for Mexican and I'm okay paying, you know, a little more. This place is awesome. It's so good. It's called Los Botelis. And here's the best part. We're out there. We're on the outside eating. They do table side guac. You know, and all that. Just an amazing experience. All beautiful, nice music and everything. But out of nowhere, dancers come out, like flamenco dancers. And that's fine. That's great. Little entertainment, whatever. We were there long enough to see it twice. Did Mr. Jones like one of them? No.

Mr. Jones did not like one of those. Deep cut. So these two, this couple comes out. And I see the guy first. And he's suited up to the wrists with like a very Latin suit, you know, and frills and all this. But, you know, ankle the wrist covered up, man. he swings around the girl is roughly naked like i mean like hardly i can't even believe you can do it i was just like shocked by it and some of it was because it was like you know skin toned accessories and

stuff uh-huh she was really skimpy like hardly anything on this girl wow and so they're over there boogging by my table just right next to me i'm on the outside of this little curved table and i'm just kind of yeah and my wife's like yeah was it like oh this is really cool but now you're kind of staying an uncomfortably long time at my table you need to keep it moving there's other tables just keep moving and my friend darren was just grinning at me because he was like oh my gosh look at the show we're getting anyway uh still high i mean it was it was fine it was and i'm not a prude it was fine it was just weird and caught me off guard and that place is really good food the food was insane so good i had these

steak tacos that i thought were going to be average they were amazing They were so good. We had some Mexican. Oh, sorry. I was just going to say, it's your fault. I did it, but I watched that Casa Benita, Mia Moore, like, immediately. That thing is so good. It's such a great documentary.

I laugh, so hard. It's so funny. Yeah, so funny throughout it. And you're looking like, how did this place even survive or make it through inspections, let alone, you know, get bought? But, yeah. It was amazing. I really enjoy it.

If you guys have Paramount Plus, you've got to watch it. There's moments. Like, when Trey Parker was doing the animatronic greeter, I was losing my shit. He's like, howdy, partner, you look hungry. Come on in. There's something about the way he was doing that. I was laughing so hard. It's so good.

And for such a long time he was doing it, just like randomly, like in the middle of them looking, inspecting and other things like, hey, partner, are your parents recently divorced? Yeah. Are you a single dad bringing your kid to a thing? it was really funny and also kind of well there's a lot of money you had to get spent like it's insane that thing the whole thing's great a very very small scale of this was the coverville 500 experience in Vegas where where oh cool we're going to get that venue for like X amount of money that's exactly what I was going to pay at the other place your guys are awesome thanks for making it work and then it's like oh no you need to pay the union for moving tables and chairs oh you need to pay buy drink tickets for everybody because there's not going to to be an open bar. Oh, you need to pay for this. You need a green room for the for the artist. It's like, yeah, crap.

Yeah. I had a little bit of PTSD watching this thing for remembering the, yeah, it is, the other thing that that's, what's funny about is we finished it, or I finished it. And Kim's like, all right, we're going out with the Sanders. What do you guys want to, where do we want to go? And I went, I am in the mood for Mexican,

a little bit of like a higher, you know, more of an entertaining experience or like more of a, yeah, and I wasn't going to get anything there near like Casabinita, but I thought, let's try it. And then we got the half-naked lady dancer, so it was good. Yeah, so you did get something. Yeah, nice. That's all right.

Sorry, you were going to say something before I got off on that. Oh, just, you know, we had, you know, obviously had some Mexican food in Houston because there's a lot of that to be had, a lot of really good places. But I'm still craving a visit to Casa Bonita and the not quite as good as the Mexican food. food that we had in Houston just for that experience and also because I just want to help I want to help Matt and Trey recoup some of the money that they uh they're 40 million dollars they push actually there's a lesson in that documentary about committing to a thing and then seeing it through you know what I mean yes yes if you have the resources and they do so that's helpful but they do so that definitely helps but yeah you definitely uh need you need to uh I mean anybody else would

to cut rope after the $3 million and went. Right. It just said, you know what, screw it. Let's call it a loss and a learning experience. You could almost make more money by tearing it down and then the value of the real estate would be more valuable. But they were like, no, the whole point of this is to have this thing exist and bring my childhood back.

And it was obviously Trey's big thing. Matt Stone seemed to a little bit like, yeah, I'm here. I'm doing it with him. I'm doing it. But it's not really my thing. And, you know. Definitely. was more a Trey thing, yeah, for sure.

Really enjoy it. And listen, you could see it parts, right, where Trey Parker doesn't look like he did when we first saw him doing the South Park thing. And when he's fully shaved on his face and wearing a suit, he's kind of unrecognizable. And so when he's coming over and bringing us a plate of cookies, you can kind of see why we wouldn't recognize it.

Yeah, I could totally see what happened there. Absolutely. He's like us. He's aging like us. And it's fun to watch. like us and that's totally fine and uh yeah matt's matt stone seems to be not aging at all and i don't like that i don't know what's going i'm just so glad that that wasn't something we got referenced in the uh the documentary oh yeah we uh there was this guy that came in didn't even recognize us you're like

two doors down from casa benita and i sound just like cartman but how do you not recognize me that's awesome uh all right well let's guy dive into one of these deals right here that music signifies the arrival of one Brian done away Brian thanks for being patient and showing up a little later than usual how are you doing man oh hi Scott and Brian how are you doing well you're doing better because you got internet back and power and all that shit I'm all kinds of patient I'm all kinds of patient now I get power and internet I can just sit back and kick my feet up and no I'm still super busy but still yeah but kick you know what the fact that that Hurricane came and went and left so much tragic destruction in its wake.

I'm glad that you fared better than... Not that I want to say, I'm sure glad it was you, not... I'm glad it was somebody else, and I don't mean that. But I just mean, you know, we're glad our pal Bryan's okay, that's all. Yeah, yeah, yeah, look, look, I've never been about comparing my pain to others. I'm sure other people have suffered more, other people have suffered less. I'm just an average sufferer. That's right.

You suffer for your art, and that's all we need. Well, it's good to have you here. We're going to play a game. Oh, I haven't logged in. I should do that. You have not, yeah, but you can log in while I tell everybody how we play this game. Welcome to the morning half-ass. It's a trivia game where I'm actually going to be giving you the answers.

I'll give Scott and Brandon category and six possible answers, three of which are correct. And three like that crow or that raven that keeps or hawk that keeps eating pigeons and killing them and dropping them on the roof at Casa Benita are just plain wrong, depending on how confident they feel with the category. They can provide one, two, or three guesses. But if any of those guesses are wrong, you get zero points for that round. round get one right you get a point two right gets you three points and three right gets you a whopping five points for that round the player with the most points after three rounds wins the prize for their contestant you guys are playing for people i've pulled from the tadpool that aren't able to listen live scott you're playing for jean in brooklyn new yorkman brooklyn too oh what's the song what's i can't think of the song something till brooklyn no sleep no sleep no sleep that's it that's it yeah jean uh jean knows marianne from brooklyn those of you who are fans of uh the howard and show. Brian, you're playing

for Josh, who lives just down the street from Scott. Nice. Oh, I know that, Josh. Yeah, I'm sure you do. Yeah, Josh is great. He should win things. I'm not not that I don't want Brooklyn guy to win, but I'm just saying. Do you just want to lay down the guy like just throw

the match right now? I think he, maybe he's counting on me losing. I don't know. Maybe that's the deal. Nice. Nice. All right, let's go ahead and get things started with question number one. No hands and no buzzers for this one. You're going to tell me which these things, which of these six things match the category, three of them are right,

three of them are wrong. Which of these are a type of knot? The figure eight loop, the double magnum, the Siberian hitch, the moccasin bend, the cat shank, and the dementia twist. Ooh, the double magnum isn't what you think of it. Demosch, twist.

Twist, twist. I'd like a box of the double magnums. All right, well, three of these are right, so they must be somewhat right. right let's see here I'm going to go with even though that one

sounds like condoms I'm still clicking it all right that shank yeah all right you guys selected three correct answers but which of you and you only did two each right

so each of you selected two choices but between the two of you you selected all three correct answers Siberian hitch Is correct Nice They all sound like sex moves too By the way They totally do

Give her the old Siberian Hitch You know what I mean The macaus and Ben Shank Yeah Shank to keep your cat Tether I guess That is also correct

So now it's between Figure 8 loop and double magnum To determine which of you Is getting some points Well I feel pretty good about this It is a figure eight loop I don't know what the double magnum is but that does

I like a sex move but I've seen that illustration for how to do the figure eight loop like a million times on the internet so it's like yeah yeah that's one click it's similar to a bolin I think right because you're creating a loop

and then you're going through the loop to create a almost like a noose kind of like a figure eight yeah yeah all right that's all right that's okay we got another couple questions for Scott to catch up Brian going to the next round with three points yeah it was upset last time remember Scott waited

till the very last and he came through He did. I did. That's right. Might happen again. Question number two, this is funny because this actually got discussed in Savannah. And Brian said there's no way I'd remember any of this anyway, so it doesn't matter. But when we were watching Return to Oz, we said, I wonder how many books El Frank Baum wrote about Oz.

And we found out there were like 25 or something. Which of these are books in the Oz series? by L. Frank Baum, or Baum. Balm. I'm doing both ways so that I guarantee to get a thread message from Free Hotel Room about my pronunciation. You know what I was actually going to tell J.F. when we had him is he's like all the authors that are big and awesome. They all have initials. Oh, initials. Yes, right.

That's a big deal, I think. Even some authors that are not awesome use initials. Yeah, that's true. There's a few of those. There's one very specific one. I'm not going to mention. All right. Let's get to your choices here. The Flying Monkeys of Oz.

Osma of Oz. The Patchwork Girl of Oz. Harriet in Oz. Endless Oz. And Rinkitink in Oz. Three of those are actual books in the Oz series by Elfrink. Mom, three of them are fakeerone. Well, I want flying monkeys, but I don't think that's right.

So I'm going to go with something else. Okay. Yeah, I meant to study this. I knew I should have studied it. really? I know I didn't. I didn't study it. I knew I should have studied it. Yeah. Yeah. How many books do we say it was?

It was three. 16? Oh, that did he actually wrote? I think I thought it was in the 20s, was it not? Okay, maybe so. Because there were there were five volumes in the Amazon set and each one I think had four

or five books in each volume. And Scott doesn't think there's any flying monkeys of Oz in that list of 20-something books. I mean, that seems like such a dumb title, but I don't know. Let's see how we do.

Well, I will tell you again that you guys did not overlap each other. The three you selected, between the two of you, the three is selected were Osma of Oz, the patchwork girl of Oz, and Rinky Tinkie Tink and Oz. Rinky Tinky Tinky Tink. And all three of those are correct, meaning

oh, look at the point. Scott gets three points. all right within striking distance then you're absolutely within striking distance and uh yeah don't don't accidentally choose ozian harriet i mean harriet in oz yeah i wondered if that was the thing there endless endless odds seemed probable to me endless did but i didn't choose it endless oz yeah uh no i think the one thing we did notice about all the books is they all had of oh no rikitink in oz so that one doesn't follow the the format so there's of z and ins and that's about it. There's ofs and ins. All the ins of us.

Oz ever after. Let's get to question number three and going in with four points. Scott going on with three. That was, you get to step. You cut out a little. Okay, come back. Now we're going to see basically just was doing some flavor text to just say.

It all comes down to this. Words spelled differently in American English and British English. So we know there are words that are pronounced differently between the two. But what about words that are spelled differently. Your choices are parallel, yogurt, potassium, jewelry, curb, and

truly, which three of these are spelled differently in British English. So what you have, what we have here is our spellings, right? Like color versus color. What you're looking at here are the American spellings of all those words. Right. Color is a good example. I hope so. I hope this is the American

spellings because they all look right. Yeah. Oh, Lord. This is a hard one. Yeah. I'm going to go with that one. Yeah, definitely for like... I'm going to go with... Some of these words, does it seem like they would exist in both places?

Right. There is no potassium in the UK, oddly enough. Yeah, their bananas have something else in it. It's like... I think I remember these... Photassium. Okay. All right.

All right. locked in. You guys both locked in on yogurt. That is correct, yeah. It's yoghurt. Yeah. Yoghurt. With an H. Yeah, with an H. Yeah, with H. Between the G and the U and the UK. I've seen that one before.

Jules. Oh, you cut out out again. All I heard was Jewel. Jewel Jewel. Jules. Jewelry is another thing that you guys both locked in on two L in the British English

jewelry. Curb just guessing. Which Brian selected. is also correct meaning oh! He's a total sky with three. G.

G. G. G. I didn't think curb would be something they would have at all. So yeah.

Do they? Okay. When they do, when they watch Curb your enthusiasm over there, do they get a different spelling on the logo and stuff?

That'd be interesting to see or do they go, what is this cureb your enthusiasm? Are we going to watch some cure beer enthusiasm? Yeah, I wonder about that. Zoe, you'd have to tell us.

That's crazy. I didn't know about curb. Jewelry and yogurt, I think I just, I knew those for sure. The rest were completely up in the air. I was hoping you guys would get thrown by truly, but which... How else would you spell parallel?

I was trying to think of different ways you could do that. I'm like, couldn't think of nothing. Pair L-L, like another E instead of an A, maybe, or, you know. And Patasum's a proper name that you can't, you can't mess around with that one. Yeah. No, no. Truly scare me, though, with the E-Y. Right, because, yes, exactly.

Or a U-L-L- or U-E-L-Y, right, because you could also see that one. Oh, yeah, jewelry also has another E as well. But yeah, parallel, one of the greatest words ever because you've actually got parallel lines and parallel because of those L's, yeah. It's unlike, you know. I never even thought of that. What about circle?

Circle has a C in it. Yeah, circle should have an O. It should be C-I-R-C-O-L-E. Circle. I like that. Everything about a shape should have that shape in the word. We don't have any letters like squares or triangles, but we should invent one just to put in those two words.

Well, triangle has an A, so text. Actically, it's got the... Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. The angle. Yes. But not really... If you turn off the little feet, then the A is a triangle. Yeah, there you go.

We've all learned a little something today. I like that. Very good. All right. Congratulations, though, going out to Brian and to Scott. neighbor, Josh, down the street from Scott. Yep. Who's going to be getting the prizes?

Here are the prizes you're getting because the person who... Oh, yeah, we tried to give these away to Yanna, and we couldn't... You stuck it. Marking and last, or sorry, lost idylons. I don't know that one, but first one's great. Those games are going to Josh, but Gene and Brooklyn, you're actually getting a game called We Were Here Forever, which requires two people, and I know somebody in your circles who would be the perfect other person to play.

We were here forever with you. So it's an escape room game that requires two people, and I think you will have a blast with that. That's awesome. Congratulations. Both codes. What a rarity here. That's amazing. Well done, everybody involved, except done away.

who beat me and I'm pissed at him. Oh, but you killed me last week. So, you know, it's okay. They all is balanced in the world today. Plus you and I yesterday morning had a great time on Play Retro. We did Cho Iniki finally. You had Internet back. It was a glorious moment of video and audio.

And we put it up for you guys. We delayed it. So hoping he can get Internet and it worked. So now, what do you have to look forward to? Well, him on Wednesday. And then again, another Play Retro on Friday. Good Lord, the content coming out of this whole. So much stuff.

So good. We're going Postal for Halloween this year because that game's kind of creepy. It's kind of Halloween. Oh, yeah. Postal, Postal, a controversial, very old game now. And we're not doing Postal 2, which is considered one of the worst games ever made.

I'm going to play a little postal too. I've heard some people say they like it. You know how it is? For every piece of poo, there's a fan. There's always a fan where there's poo. Always leave the fan on when there's a poo. Hey, Brian, kiss our butts, and we'll see you soon. Bye now.

all right there he goes uh we're gonna take a break somehow we did that we worked that out to get all within the hour i don't know how we did that kind of perfect actually yeah i'm a little blown away so brian let's go straight into it why don't you tell me what song we're splitting things up with here yeah this is a band called die d y e don't worry not not uh di e no um and they're you know just as emotional in their song title uh choice this is a song called feel it's a chromatic reckoning of self, according to the description on here. Dye is

actually a really cool abbreviation of the artist's name. His name is Daniel Yee. And this is their latest. You cut out that last bit. Man, I'm getting cutting out a little bit a lot today.

You went with latest. The last word I heard was latest. Here is their latest and then you stop. The latest single feel, which is an attempt to turn back time and be kinder to himself. Listen to Feel a brand new single from Die. And if I could remind you, I want to forget you, I don't forget when I'll tell you, I'll tell you, I feel like I'm falling apart, falling apart, I feel like we're crashing across, crying, cry of cry,

I'm going to find You've never seen the change Only don't give me a rage As I could take it all away You call me thinking And if I could remind you How Who

Who Who Who Who Who Who To forget When I tell

I feel Like a Falling the fly I feel Like we're crushing the Like we're crushing the cards I can't

be found Fereau. Fri. Fri. Fri. Fri. I'm not going to be able to I'm going to be.

If there were real shitcons, you could use them as manual to Food. I would rather buy shit, literally shit, that's worth something, because a good fertilizer, than buying shit coins. That is grade A 100% bull cookies. And we've returned. Tell me one more time who that was. Sure. That's a band called Die. D-Y-E.E. Actually, an artist who by the name die and brand new single from them called feel nice everyone should feel a little something everyone should feel but not feel die because your fingers will get all uh oh yeah all messy yeah don't do that i recommend not not doing that yeah don't do all right let's get our old pal uh stephen in here and now welcome stephen to the show he's a huge freaking nerd dollar dollar bills y'all this is the truth he is a huge freaking nerd and he joins us a couple times a month to talk about some pop culture some comics some other stuff and he's here with this now stephen welcome back to the show how are you Hello, Scott. Hello, Brian. I'm doing well. Thank you. Oh, thank goodness. You know, having you here, it just brings the academia into the show a little bit. Oh, today's midterms. Midterm grades are due. I guess how many students are like complaining about their grades until I say, um, you didn't turn in your projects. You want like a percentage? If I turn it in, can you change my grade? Uh, no. Well, let me give you a, I'm going to guess a percentage. The percentage of your students who are complaining that their grade sucks, I'm going to say 65%. It's lower than, that.

Lower than that. Good. But, and here's something that's interesting because, you know, most people think about the bell curve and that, you know, it's an even distribution. It's actually not. The even distribution. And, of course, Bobby can talk more about this next week. But when you're a freshman, there's a lot more D's and U's favoring that side of the

bell curve as when you're opposed to a senior. And there's a lot fewer. There's a lot more A's and Bs on that side of the bell curve. Oh, interesting. Or just the curve. I've never really truly. fully understood the curve, I admit. I've never...

So it's in an ideal curve, it's shaped like a bell, high in the middle. And so in the grading scale that people understand, most people should get a C. That means they're doing average. And so that's where the most of the grouping should be at. There should be very few people, about 3% that are going to flunk, about 3% to 6% that are going to get A's. And then about 33 or so to 40% are all in that C category and the rest kind of fall out into the into the D and the B range. Yeah.

Well, here's a look at why my brain's so stupid. You say bell curve. And when I was in high school, I would hear bell curve or college, and this is what I would do. It's meant to be a simple visual representation. It's shaped like a bell. But I in my head go,

all right, but what about the little ding-dong thing at the bottom? Does that get counted? Those are the ones that are complaining about their grades this morning. Yeah, they're all the ding-dongs. But I think about all these little details, like is there a ring at the top that's being held on?

how's it being, like I'm, I get way wrapped up in it. You want to visualize the entire bell. Yeah, no, I have like a 3D bell is what appears in my head and it doesn't match with the simpleness of what we're supposed to be doing. So I, I'm not made for that crap. I should, I would be, I'd be down in your little ding-dong area. That's where I'd be. I'd be down in Stevens ding-dong. That's where I'd be. I like the, I like the lake bell curve. That's the one that I follow. Oh, yeah, the lake bell. She, you know, she gives me good grades. Let's just say that. Kim's not around. All right.

Hey, Stephen, let's get into it. We want to talk about this. There's a great opportunity once in a while to talk about the Green Lantern or the Lantern Corps. Because sometimes it comes up. It's like,

oh, we had conversations back when, you know, there was a movie and it was bad. And we talked about it then. Sometimes the comics have a cool story thing going on or whatever. But right now, it seems like we might be headed toward Green Lantern again,

in a good way, perhaps. Yeah. Yeah, in a good way. So a couple of things. Probably the biggest news that has come out in the last couple of weeks is they've kind of finished the casting for the green lanterns for the upcoming lanterns with an S series coming to HBO. Now, this is going to be an HBO original instead of a Max original, and it's going to be eight episodes long. And so far they've cast Kyle Chandler, you know him from Friday Night Lights.

He will play Hal Jordan. And then Aaron Pierre, if you've seen him in Rebel Ridge, the new movie on Netflix, Netflix. He is going to play John Stewart. And I think he does kind of have a good look for John Stewart, I think. No one has to believe me. No one has to believe me when I say this. All right, you don't have to believe me. But I'm going to

tell you this and I promise you it's the truth. I watched, now, but believe me later. I watched Rebel Ridge and when I did at the end of it, I said, he would be a great John Stewart. And then it happened. And I was thrilled. You don't have to believe me, but I'm telling you that was in my

head because this guy was made to play this role. Also, if you haven't seen Rebel Ridge, it is fan effingtastic. Yeah, it's really good. It's really good. And I think what makes it work for him being John Stewart is in the comic books, John Stewart has a military background. He's a former Marine and Aaron Pierre plays a somebody who is in the military in Rebel Ridge. And so he's got the build for it. He's probably got the training for it and those kinds of things. Now, the interesting thing about this lanterns series is here's how they're describing it a new recruit john stewart and lantern legend hal jordan two intergalactic cops drawn into a dark earth-based mystery as they investigate a murder in the american heartland what do what does that sound like to you guys

i mean if you if i were to say what are some other shows or movies that you may uh true detective oh hey that's really great brian that you said true detective because the series is co-written by Chris Mundy, who did True Detective from Night Country. He also did Ozark. He's one of the writers on that. He's going to also serve as the showrunner. And then we also have

Damon Lindelov of Watchman in the leftovers fame. He will be a co-writer and executive producer on the series. And then Tom King, the comic book writer, especially the writer of the upcoming Supergirl movie, which we've talked about before. He is also serving as a writer and executive producer

on this. Tom King is having a moment. That guy is awesome. I love his writing. Yeah, he's pretty controversial. Some people really like his stuff. Some people think that he dives too much on psychological trauma to drive his stuff. But that's fine. And then you have James Haas, who will direct the first two episodes of the Lantern series.

Now, he directed, if anyone is a fan of the show Slow Horses on Apple TV. If you haven't watched it, you better be watching it because it's a damn fine show. Hoss directed the entire season. Yeah, Hawes directed all of the episodes. of the first season of Slow Horses. Oh, really? He has also directed episodes of Raised by Wolves, Black Mirror, and Penny Dreadful.

So what you're saying to me is we're going to actually get a really good Green Lantern, Lantern course. I'm hoping so. But here's the thing. A lot of people may be confused because a lot of our listeners out there, Scott, may be saying, well, wait, didn't I hear that Nathan Philean was playing Green Lantern in an upcoming movie? And yes, he will be playing Green Lantern Guy Garner in,

James Gunn's Superman movie. Do you think we get any crossover from the... Probably not. Probably not. I don't know. It would be interesting, but I just think that... He'd be down. Based on this dark, dark, earth-based mystery and the fact that James Gunn tends to be a little bit more lighthearted

when he comes to his dark stuff, I don't think we're going to see the crossovers on this. But this also brings up the question that a lot of people may have, why are there so many dang green lanterns here on Earth? Yeah. What is that? Can you answer that in a succinct way? Can you tell us what happened? Why? Yeah, sure. Because we think that we, on Earth, just like New York City, thinks they're the center of the universe. Everyone Earth thinks that they are the center of the universe and therefore every green lantern must be from Earth. Okay. So the real story is that the universe is divided into 3,600 sectors. And so there is supposed to be originally one green lantern for every sector. Per sector.

located in sector 2814. That's a good trivia question for the future, Brian. Hold on to that one. 2814, committing it to memory right there. Yeah. However, there are now 7,204 green lanterns to monitor those 3,600 sectors. And a lot of them do come from the Earth sector, 2814. All right.

So just doing the math, there's more than two lanterns for every sector now. So perfect. Everybody cop in every sector. Yeah. Pretty much, right? So pretty much. And that's kind of the way it started, right? So when we look at just green lanterns from Earth, of course, Alan Scott, who's the OG Green Lantern.

He's not really a space cop. He got his powers from a magical ring that he can basically do the green lantern stuff, except that his is a weak to magic and also to wood. So if somebody attacked Alan Scott with a bat, he wouldn't be able to defend him. I love that so much. That's so stupid. Magic and wood. So Harry Potter.

would be like, you know. Oh, yeah, I would like stabbing with that wand. Exactly. Like, stabissimo. Yeah, make sure you put him in a sector where there's no planets known to have any kind of wood or trees growing because the Hogwarts galaxy. Yeah. So in the 1950s, DC Comics decided that they needed to update their cast of characters

and put more science and space into their comics because who wants to read, you know, stuff that their parents read. And so that's where we were introduced to how Jordan, who was a test pilot, he should showed up in showcase number 22 in 1959. He got his ring from Aub and Sewer, who was the previous guardian of 2814. And he crashed landed on Earth, as his dying

wish, was to send the ring out to find somebody who was strong and had a strong will that could wield the ring, and it picked Hal Jordan. And the only thing that they really changed with this version is that they were space cops, number one, and that the rings are susceptible to the color yellow. And so that's where we see Sinestro come up and where

we see yellow being the big issue with green lands. When they do that yellow thing, which I was familiar with, but it always annoyed me because I don't understand the extent of it. If somebody's wearing a yellow T-shirt at a concert and shows up there, he's averse to that? He can't deal with it? I mean,

he certainly wouldn't be able to take off their shirt. Well, not with his powers. He could probably do it with his hands, but no, not using it. So if he's going to save a load of people with one of his big giant green hands he conjures up. Anybody in yellow is just shit out of luck. He could grab their pants or grab them by the leg if they

weren't wearing yellow on that. So the banana costume. I could grab them by something else because if you're a green lantern, you can get away with it. That's right. But if you're a big banana costume guy, you're hosed. You may as well just forget it. You would have a lot of problems with that. In fact, in All-Star Batman and Robin, which is a controversial series

from Jim Lee and Mark no, not Mark Miller, Alan Moore. Yeah. I think that's right. In one of the sequences, Batman lures Hal Jordan into a room that he has painted completely yellow. Everything in the room is yellow, including Batman's costume, has been painted yellow. Batman makes a joke about would you like a drink of lemonade? And the thing completely proceeds to beat the crap out of Hal Jordan.

Yeah. Wow. That's amazing. A lot of people think that Hal Jordan is a bit of a jerk. But the real jerk was the second Green Lantern of Earth in this updated version, and that's Guy Gardner, a very jingoistic, red-blooded American male who showed up in 1968. At one point, the thinking was, well, what happens if something happens to Hal Jordan or what if he's off planet? Wouldn't make sense to have a backup green lantern. And so that's where we went from 3,600 green lanterns to 7,200 green lanterns.

And that worked for a while until people were like, hey, let's just keep adding green lanterns. And Neil Adams in 1971 said, well, if you look up the makeup of Earth, why do we have two white green lanterns? There should be a black green lantern. And that's where we get John Stewart to come in. And honestly, I think John Stewart is probably the more popular and probably more well known of all of the green lanterns only because of the Justice League Unlimited series. Yeah, people love that. I love that. It was amazing.

And from then on, he kind of became my lanterns. So I'm curious, that's going to be a fun juxtaposition, though, right? Because you got Hal Jordan, your old timer, right? Yeah, I'm too old for this crap. Yeah. And then you get your young, you know, bright-eyed upstart over here and John Stewart. I just feel like that's a fun combo. They're going to have a good time with that.

So there are some things that I think could be, there are some things that could be really interesting about this, especially when you think about what the green lanterns represent, they represent the police. Yeah. And you have somebody who is a black man, who has now. of policemen. And are they going to be diving into any of the topics like police brutality of black people? They might. Is that going to be a subject? Certainly, we saw with Lindeloff with Watchman. Oh, yeah. Watchman got very into issues. Exactly. I think that that's probable. And I like that, you know, make it a little more, a little bit more real. How does how Jordan,

sorry, go ahead. I was going to say they could certainly go because it's in, in middle America, they could certainly kind of lean into the, what was it, the heroes where Green Lantern, Hal Stewart, or I'm not saying, Hal Stewart, and the Green Arrow went traveling across America and they were dealing with more social issues. This was also something that was a Neil Adams thing in the late 60s, early 70s of where they were, you know, just traveling across the land, seeing what this America was really like. And they were encountering racism and a bunch of other things that they had to deal with. So a lot of that, I think, might be some themes that show up in this TV show. How come Hal Jordan ever ages? What's his deal? If you're in the core?

Nobody ages in comic books. Everybody is eternally 33 years old. Okay. But I mean, in this case... Green, green foundation, no yellow, no yellow rouge, no yellow foundation. But there's nothing in there about, like, you know, he's a pilot in the 40s or whatever. No, no, no, no. No, everybody, in comics, there's always a shifting time scale.

Like when Tony Stark was first around, it was like Korea, I believe, and then it shifted to Vietnam. And then, you know, in the most recent versions we see it, the first Gulf War, that kind of stuff. So there is that kind of shifting thing. And the same thing is going to happen with John Stewart. You know, he was a military guy in his first incarnation. But that was like Vietnam era stuff. And now we're going to shift that up to, you know, whatever the current conflict is. Yeah, whatever.

Yeah, some recent thing. Also interesting to note, John Stewart is only the third. black superhero at DC Comics all the way in 1971. Hold on. Can I guess the others? He said Black Lightning was before. Black Lightning came after John Stewart. He is the first one.

White Lightning is the first one to have an ongoing title starring a black superhero. I was with Brian. I was for sure. I was sure that was before that, but I guess not. Yeah. Who else is there? Yeah, there's a bunch of them that they, you know, when we talk about black characters in comics. We've got Ralph Jackson, who was probably

what we considered the first hero. He was a military. It's a military comic. So I don't think we can call him a black superhero. And then, of course, we have Easy Company, which has some black characters. We had a team, again, not led, but a Molo of the team, the Sea Devils, in 1965, had a black character. We had Bwana Beast in 67 as a, as a hero. The Secret Six had a team member on it. It wasn't until

we get to Mal Duncan and Bumble be in 1970, where we see black superheroes donning costumes and doing superhero stuff as part of the Teen Titans. And then, of course, we get John Stewart in 71, Nubia from Wonder Woman in 73, Black Lightning in 77, then Cyborg in 89 as the first black character to lead a superhero team. And then, of course, static in 1993 as kind of focusing the entire story on black characters and black heroes. On the Marvel side, you got obviously Black Panther and you got Luke Cage and you got

there's got to be more than that. Miles Morales. Miles Morales certainly is a mix. Yeah, he's a mix. But I'm just trying to think like he's. Oh, yeah. There you go. Storm's a good one. Brother Voodoo, who was, what was his deal?

He became Sorcerous Supreme after. Oh. Yeah. Making sparkly circles. Yes, exactly. Awesome. And DC has others, too. There's Black Racer, you know,

flipper-dipper from Jack Kirby. So there's been a lot of characters, but when you look at, number one, the definition of a superhero of what we normally look at as a superhero. And then especially when we look at them as leads in titles or headlining their own book,

there's very, very few. Yeah, that's interesting. Dr. Calhut said, Brother Voodoo was a black man who did Voodoo, Nice. Thanks, Dr. Calhoun. I appreciate the clarification. Thanks for the clarification. We are not done with the green lanterns of Earth. We've got Kyle Rayner, who came about in 94. Oh, yeah, right. He was of Mexican-Irish descent. He was a cartoonist from California. Simon Baz was introduced with the new 52. He's Middle Eastern descent.

Then we have Jade, who is Alan Scott and Rose Canton's daughter. Oh, yeah. She's cool, dude. Yeah, and she only became, she became a green lantern when Kyle Rainer and her were dating, and Kyle gave her his backup ring or a spare green lantern ring. And so she was, she was a green lantern for a while. Then more recently, and I would say in the last five years, we've got Jessica Cruz, who debuted in 2018. She is a hero that suffers from PTSD and crippling anxiety. So that makes her very interesting as a character. Was that the one where she, they did like a.

cyberpunky kind of planet thing. It was like almost like a, what am I thinking? That is our last one, Sojourner Joe Mullen from the Farsector series in 2019, where she was a green lantern of Earth. The guardians of Oa came to her and said, we will give you this power of the green lantern. And you can become a green lantern and use this power for one year or you lose it completely. And she's like, okay.

And they're like, all right, we're going to send you to the opposite side of the galaxy. And you're going to solve a crime. and take care of business on this really crazy planet that, as you said, is very techno-based. And if people want to read the Far Sector series, it's really cool. It's kind of like lethal weapon and tango and cash type story. So it's really kind of neat. Yeah. I really liked Far Sector a lot.

That was awesome. I read that based on your recommendation, I think. I think it was you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So those are probably the most well-known green lanterns of Earth. Again, you could probably think of a little bit of Earthism. Aren't we great? Aren't we the center of everything?

There are a number of other green lanterns of Earth. who are from Earth who are currently dead for one reason or another, one of them being how Jordan killed all of the green lanterns at one point. Jeez. When he became... Dick move. What was his evil version? I forget what his evil version was.

It wasn't the black, because Black Lantern was a whole different thing. No, that was a whole different thing. Shallow hell. I don't know. I don't know what you'd call him. Well, there you go. You know what? And we not only got some great information about the upcoming series,

but a real 101 on how all this shit works. Totally. There was no green lantern parallel in the Star Jammers, was there? Because the Star Jammers were kind of like the X-Men Justice League, but there really wasn't a Green Lantern. I'm trying to think if there was a power-based. Right. Energy. Anybody off the top of my head. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Before I go, though, Scott, let's loop this back around to what we were talking about at the very beginning of my segment here, where we're talking about the bell curve. Sure. There is actually a sector in space that has. no light. And so what do you do when all the creatures there have no sight or have no vision? And part

of the power of the green lantern ring is to will things that you can imagine in your mind into life. Well, there is a character called F. Sharp Bell and everything is sound based for that character. Wow. So we'll tie the bell curve and the green lanterns together. They really bring it

back around. And his name is F sharp. Sharp Bell. Yeah. Wow. That is some DC bullshit right there. I love it. It really is. The LAD at the end of that. Yeah.

Where's the lad? Give me the lad. Stephen, as always a pleasure. Don't forget everybody, Major Spoilers.com. Anything going on there you want folks to know about? We're just cranking stuff out every day for all of our fans worldwide and on the internet. So go check us out, major spoilers.com.

And remember, even though it's not as hot as it used to be, everybody needs to stay hydrated. I agree with this point of you. We'll talk to you soon. All right. Oh, he left. without me leaving him. He knew how to do it. He knew how to get the F out.

So I've been dutifully keeping one eye, just in the corner my eye on my camera because I guess T-Mobile's showing up with our phones like any second. So if for some reason I suddenly bolt running, you'll know why. Because I have to sign, is why. You have to sign for it.

You don't want the guy. They're known for like ringing the doorbell and then leaving like a fart in the wind before he could even get the door. I know. That's why I'm going to haul ass. And there, my wife and daughter were supposed to be here, but instead, they took Phoebe somewhere for her birthday because she's not sick anymore. And then she was like, oh, shit, I forgot. The freaking phones are coming. And I'm like, can you do them? I'm like, I'm on the show. I don't know if I can do it.

I'll do my best. All right, Brian, we're about done anyway. I got a quick thing here, a theory from Dr. Nicky. Love it. Let's hear it. Yep, she's great. Love hearing from her. This is about the bushfish. And she has a theory about where that came from. Bushfish. Hi, Sharpchen, hawked, and barred owl. This is Dr. Nicky, you're expert on all strange animals. I have a message for you about the bushfish. I can say with almost absolute certainty that that was probably a fish that was dropped by an osprey, considering you're close to a body of water.

Either, you know, they fumbled and they dropped it, but most likely some other birds attacked them and made them drop it and tried to get it from them, either another osprey or like a blue jay or something. I knew this because I'm a biologist But also because my parents live in Florida And they've had bald eagles drop fish in their front yard And that's how we found out that that's what that is So America Love the show though And please contact me for any future strange animal questions

I will be your resident strange animal expert Excellent We need somebody like that out there helping us with the bushfish You know And she does birding too So like it's it I don't know why we didn't think of her immediately like she's a bird.

Yeah, I'm glad she heard it and, you know, offered it up because I wouldn't have thought to do it. No. We will from now on, though. So there you go. I think that's probably accurate. That's some, you know, probably, I like the fighting idea that there were two birds in the sky.

Totally, yeah. And I forget about Osprey. We get a lot of hawks here in our battle. Like always, every time I drive by really tall light poles, like, yeah, hawk on top of that one, just kind of watch and stuff. But I wonder how many, if we have a lot of Osprey out here. Yeah.

I think you probably have, I think we have some. We probably do. I think our climate is. We probably do. I would think so too, yeah. Like if it's, um, uh, these men, and maybe there's some hocks that I miss, or I'm sorry, there's some osprey that I miss categorize as hawks when I drive by them. Oh, good point.

Yeah. I look for the white. That's right. Either way, birds or dicks. Right? I mean, yeah, they kind of are, especially geese, man. I was driving, doing a lift ride the other day, and just slow-moving geese that you know, they know what they're doing. Oh, yeah.

They know. We could go faster. We could fly even if we wanted to. But we're just going to walk and look at you and go, yep. They're jerks, man. No doubt about it. Well, thank you, Dr. Nicky.

She sent that via Discord, but you guys can send your messages in any way you want. 801471062, or you can text us that same line. if you don't want to do a voicemail. And if you'd like to, you can email us, the morning stream at gmail.com or find us on Discord at frogpants.com slash discord. That is going to do it for today. We're going to get out of here with a little bit of music from Brian Abbott. What did you bring today for this?

Oh, my gosh. I'm so excited to play this. This was going to be on Thursday, and it was going to tie in with the birthday of one of our listeners. So I actually got two requests from the listener celebrating birthday and from her husband. So let's read these both Lydia, Grace Bauer, and John Bauer, both wrote in, said, hey, the song is your choice. I love yellow and queen and the Beatles, so anything in that genre makes me smile.

John Bauer is my hubby and patron. We watch together. And then John wrote and said, this is a birthday for Lydia Grace Bauer, my wife since 1986. My wife since 1986. Oh, I love it. That's like a business bar that's been working since. It is. It's established 1886.

This song is our song. Love the show, though. So happy birthday. Hope you had a wonderful birthday. Lydia. She said how old she was again, sorry? She did not. All right, we're going to give her a young one.

Of course she's young. Yeah, we'll give her a young one. Here you go. That's the wrong one. No, that's not it. Where did my birthdays go? Oh, here we go. Let's party.

There you go. The far included. Perfect. The song I chose, this was great because I was, I've played some covers of Abercadabra before. That is their song. And I didn't want to go to one of those, so I went looking for a new cover of it.

And I was pleasantly surprised when I found this band Flap. F-L-A-P! exclamation point. It made me go down a rabbit hole of their music and other bands like them. This is fantastic. And I don't know if this is like your scroll-nut zippers-style swing, which is kind of perfect for the abracadabra lyrics. This is a band called Flap from their album, Flap from 2008. Here is Abricadabra.

I heat up, I can't cool down. You got me spinning round and round. Around and round, around it goes, where it stops nobody knows. Every time you call my name, I hit up like a burning flame. flame, burning flame full of desire. Kiss me, baby, let the fire get higher. Abra, abracadabra I want to reach out and grab you.

Abra, abracadabra, abracadabra. Aberacadabra. You make me hot, you make me a sigh. You make me laugh, you make me cry. Keep me burning for your love. With the touch, you make me a sigh. I'm a velvet glove. Abra, Abra, Cabra, Catabra.

I want to reach out and grab you. Abra, Abra, Abercadabra. Abercadabra. We're going to be able to be. I'm going to be I'm going to be I'm going to I'm going to

I'm I feel the magic in your caress, I feel the magic when I touch your dress, I feel the magic when I touch your dress. Filving satin, leather and lace, black pennies with an angel's face. I feel the magic in your eyes. I hear the magic in your size. Just when I think I'm going to get away, I hear the words you always say. Abra, Abra, Caddabra, I want to reach out and grab you. Abra, Abra, Aberra, Debra. I'm going to be.

Abra, Abra, Abra, Caddabra, I want to reach out and grab you. Abra, Abra, Abra, Cidabra, Abra, Cidabra. Abra, Abra, Abra, Cidabra. I want to race down and grab you. Abra, Abra, Abra, Abra, Good Dabra. Abroquadabra This show is part of the Frog Pants Network Yes, get more at frogpant.com