Read the show notes at http://flashpulp.com
Prepare yourself for: Racist Germans, roaming literary gangs, Tolkien's tower, Rambo, black market laundry detergent, and Bandette.
The Skinner Co. Network
FC79 - Waste Core
Some days, gloomy, my hours are slumberless Dear is the shadows I live with I'm underless Little wife flowers will never wake in you Not where the bright culture's all I'm taking you Angels have no fire of ever turning you Or they may angry if I sort of join in you Ooooh Sunday Hello and welcome to Flashcast 79 A Skinner Co presentation Skinner Co. preferred eight out of ten times in blind taste tests This episode is also brought to you by generous donations from Gigantor and the rev-p Many thanks If you'd like to sponsor an episode, please feel free to use the donate button on the side But now, prepare yourself for racist Germans, roaming literary gangs, Tolkien's Tower, Rambo, Black Market Laundry detergent, and Bandette Death is no dream for a death I'm caressing you With the strength of my soul I'll be blessing you Ooooh Sunday Hi, I'm a Popin' X and joining me in not being entirely sure who's playing in the Super Bowl Are Jessica May? That's true, and Jaredie? Hello, entirely unrelated to the Super Bowl Have you guys heard about the brutal rash of the thefts that are taking place in Italy At this very moment I have heard about the brutal rash What did I say about yelling in the mic, you're like I will not yell in the mic And then five seconds into the show, you're yelling in the mic Breathe into the mic louder, coldy-mick-older Yeah, I got this thing, it's like respiratory and it just happened like five seconds before the show started So I sound kind of breathy, so I'm gonna like stay far away But speaking of the Super Bowl, because we probably won't get back to it, because we do not talk about things like that A Pope, will you tell me what you just said the Super Bowl was for geeks? Oh, the superb owl? Oh, yeah, superb owl? Yeah, that's a superb owl, it's a superb owl It's a Scott Sigler joke, I believe Oh, is it a superb owl? Sorry, I thought she was being funny on her own The director of the Vatican Museums is warned that Italy's cultural heritage is vanishing After prosecutors and Naples said two more people had been arrested on suspicion of taking part in a premeditated organized and brutal sacking of the city's 16th century, Gralmini library Oh, so it's not like metaphorically vanishing, it's literally Literally vanishing Antonio Palucci said he was saddened but not surprised by the devastating losses of the historic institution in Naples, where thousands of rare and antique books were last year found to have disappeared The alleged plundering, which prosecutors have been investigating for the past nine months was symptomatic of a country whose rich cultural heritage was at risk from various factors including theft and neglect And where would this isn't Italy? This isn't Italy In Naples I believe, yes They have like an old history, why are people not looking after this stuff? Well, as soon as I read this article, the first thought that I had When I'd gotten to this point at least, this is from the Guardian, I should note As soon as I got to this point I was thinking, roaming literary gangs, terrorizing the back roads They're leaping from behind rustically leaning stone walls with switchblades in one hand and a sack of looted classics in the other, quoting Dante and demanding philosophic treatises It's like the nuns in, um, kids from the hall The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis man What do you mean all you have on you is a couple of expository essays? Essay? Essay? Yeah, uh, but that is not quite the case, this is, you know... Unfortunately. Often the truth. Soon after, when prosecutors started looking into reports of missing books, its former director Massimo Merino de Caro was arrested, accused of systematically plundering the library for its rare works and selling them on via contacts to a network of customers at Natalena Broad He subsequently admitted to taking books but said it was in order to pay for the cultural upkeep of the library Yeah, whatever As you will. He has been working with investigators from his prison cell in Naples Histories on how many books were stolen vary because there were so many uncatalogued items Why? But investigators have spoken of a total that would exceed 4,000 They include works by Galileo Galilee and, according to the investigators, a 1518 edition of Thomas Morris Etopia Yikes. How did they know it was meaningless? At least somebody's appreciating it somewhere Yeah, private collectors in their private and then what happens after they die and no one realizes this book is so important It's kind of a horrible thing, really But on the other hand, we've gone back to the idea that, you know, you have to destroy infrastructure to build new Whatever, but this isn't really that case I didn't include it in my notes here, but I do remember reading a part of the article in which they were mentioning Like, you would go into the library and find some ancient town beside like a half-drink mountain dew That would just be sitting there as somebody left behind, like garbage pile style Wow Yeah, it sounds pretty unfortunate Yeah And I don't know if it's necessary, I don't know what Italy's got going on regarding austerity But it's always sad when this sort of thing falls apart Well, thanks for bringing us down, right fresh into the shore Well, what I found interesting and sort of bring this back in a pulpy kind of angle When I think of libraries and I think of the way that knowledge is collected in the modern world Because it's very hard to ransack the internet, right? Like, once it gets to Project Gutenberg, it's pretty much permanently in the public library, if you will If you think of the public libraries, like what everybody can access in the world But this goes back to something closer to what you used to see in horror movies And read about in horror pulp all the time Which was that idea that you go to some remote library The ancient mysterious tome Yeah, you find this dusty tome that's rarely read and that gives you the power Nobody knows what it is It's the Necronomicon, it's the book of spells Yep That tome from the 9th gate, I don't even remember what they were chasing in that book or in that movie Anyhow, I thought it was interesting Maybe somebody has just bought the Italian Necronomicon We'll never know until, you know, Carverk shows it Yep [Music] JJ Abrams, remember last week we were discussing how he could have or how he had a hand or he was directing Two of the major science fiction franchises of I don't The Trek and the Wars Indeed Well, I was reading on the Perez Hilton, which is not a surprise Mr. Abrams will only be connected to The Trek so far as producing Yeah, well... And he's going all in on the Wars Hmm, I believe he'll do at least one Star Wars movie that he directs specifically I think, I mean even Lucas didn't direct them all as I recall I can't blame him, no director wants to be permanently attached to a franchise James Cameron doesn't want to be making aliens movies for the rest of his life Or really Scott doesn't want to be making alien movies for the rest of his life, frankly But at the same time, man, it seems like a big thing to move away from He really defined at least the first movie, I haven't, you know, we'll see what happens with the second movie With the Trek he mean? Yeah He defined the reboot, it's so Abrams, his fingerprints are so all over it that I find it I don't know what it's going to look like when he moves on, it'll be interesting Mm-hmm Well, he'll still be in there on some capacity, right, so Mm-hmm Yeah, yeah, I mean he's still going to be producing But at the same time, the visual signature, I hope, changes in an interesting way Mm-hmm I'm still wondering what Star Wars is going to look like frankly Is it going to be all white light and lens flares? Oh well, I don't think he would do that No, I don't think Star Wars can be our Apple feature Mm-hmm Anyway, that's an interesting note to see that he's moving on from the franchise Yeah, I was quite excited to find some news that I could actually use on the show I'm like "Ooh, ooh, I know something, I know something" On the Perez? Yeah I just wanted to quickly touch on "Dycline Hex", the little witch Okay We had been discussing in recent episodes the idea of going back and censoring older materials Mm-hmm To adjust wording And apparently they're having a bit of a froufer on Germany right now actually Really? Getting around to addressing a unpleasant use of the N word in a children's story The little witch Yeah And apparently it's caused quite an uproar, like some of the people feel like it's just time Mm-hmm The publisher should go back and just adjust it because they don't feel like the... My impression is that the story isn't meant in a spiteful way It's just the use of the word that becomes problematic Mm-hmm And some people that want to keep true too Keep true to the original end I'm sure the author never intended Germany of all people to have racial issues Yeah Not entirely surprising Anyway, I just thought that was worth noting and kind of of the discussion recently Mm-hmm On the same sort of literary bent, although much more pulpy A charity apparently recently bought a tower that was a heavy inspiration to Tolkien Mm-hmm And it's a nifty Georgian tower in Birmingham Okay And it's not a huge item at all It's not like a massive piece But if you look at it, it's got eye-shaped windows near the top and kind of a spirey Mm-hmm Whatever And then there's another tower in town across the way that looks like very much the spired top of the other tower from the two towers Oh that's interesting So this charity bought it, they're planning on turning it over to a sort of community thing They want to open a cafe and have people like paint a car in a paint spot Oh man, wouldn't that be wonderful? Yeah Yeah They bought it for a dollar, but they need a million pounds to get it converted to modern standards Because apparently, even if you go up to the top in a windy day, it sways Jeez So The time is now, it's really great that they're Stepping it on this, yes, and I really hope that it turns into something more If you happen to be in the Birmingham area and you want to check it out, please let it down Or if you have a spare million, yeah Yeah, you want to throw it down on that, that'd be great Absolutely, and we need some stuff too, so you want to invest Mm-hmm Now while I was reading this article, actually, I believe this is another one from the Guardian, actually, yes it is While I was reading this article, there was a neat note about the construction of the tower, which obviously came well before Tolkien did The folly, which is what they call it, stood at the heart of a magnificent park that was When it was built by a local eccentric John Perot in 1758 The pragmatic explanation is that it was a hunting lodge and status symbol, but legends insist, and I always love the local urban legends, of course Legends insist, he built it to look yearningly at his wife's grave 15 miles away Or, that when she was alive, it allowed him to spawn her Trists with her gamekeeper lover Mm-hmm Yeah Oh boy Apparently, there are tales of secret passages in underground chambers, although That's pretty cool My understanding of the tower is that there are essentially seven little rooms and they're not very big There's not a lot of room for, yeah, secret passages and the like, but at the same time, it's always fun to have legends about it Mm-hmm, that's really cool Supposedly, if you contact the fellow in charge, Ben Bradley He will actually take you on a quick tour through the tower Oh, nice I want to go Yeah, it would be fantastic Maybe when we're in England, next year Mm-hmm Next, yeah, oh yeah, for sure Mm-hmm Let's get around on that What, we are, next May, we have to That's right We have an obligation We do Airfarers, good enough He'll give us his floor, right Alan? Mm-hmm We can have your floor We'll leave the kids at home, just the three of us Speaking of visiting, we recently had a little interview with the book guys That's right With the book guy, Paul the book guy Paul the book guy And his friends And all of the podcast is also called the book guys Oh book guys, I've had it, oh, well, I'm sorry It's PaultheBookGuy.com, right? PaultheBookGuy.com and the podcast is the book guys The book guys, pardon me, okay It was a lovely little visit Apparently they're a lot closer than... Yeah, well Paul himself is in Toronto proper Which isn't that far from us tall But the rest of them are spread across America Mm-hmm Yeah, it was a nice chat Yeah It's always fun to hop on another show I did have a few moments where it felt like We were overrunning them a little And turning it into a flashgast That will happen when Skinner co arrives It was nice to hear them promote the Convention of Ice and Fire, too Yeah, an odd coincidence And it was nice that we had a back end That's the convention that's going on Around Ravenwood Castle in April In Ohio, right? Yeah Yeah, so everybody, if they have the opportunity I should definitely go check that out Report for a pope If anybody is going, please contact us Comments@flashbolf.com I'm very small, I could probably fit in your suitcase Well, to have an on-the-scene reporter would be great I would really enjoy that I would definitely have to find something special for you If you were to do that for me Yeah Now, in a more personal note I, this week, picked up a book called The Garner Files It was a recommendation Well, it wasn't a recommendation of Strasburg specifically But Strasburg sent me to an article About James Garner, which included a mention of the book That I didn't realize was recently published So I bought it for my kobo And now I stare at it longingly Because I have so many other things that I have to finish first Yeah Well, such is life Yeah, true I got a lot of things that I'd like to get reading to at some point I was glad that when we were talking to the book guys They didn't go all the way around the room for what we were reading Because all I ever read is, like, supernatural romance Which, you know, you shouldn't be embarrassed about what when you're talking to the book guys It's not really what you want to And then she kissed his full lips Shut up and shut your mouth Kissed his lips, which was cold and marvellous And your balls? What? Uh, we watched Ramble last night First blood You know what? He really likes Sylvester Stallone He really did, uh, pronounce his words very nicely It must have been the Rocky movies The first Rocky movie is really what got him so Yeah He was never quite as bad as Arnold But he, you gotta admit that Oh, it's bad Okay, so the end scene where Stallone is crying And he's discussing his time in Vietnam and everybody's dead He's so rough on him And he doesn't, like, you just feel so bad He does a good job of it He does But the thing is he does kind of devolve into No, blah, blah Well, but you would Yeah, exactly Yeah, the thing is, too, is that like His acting technique is just to stop pronouncing his words His voice is a little deeper, whereas later on It really seemed Because of the boxing, whereas Arnold He has, like, an Austrian accent And he's a big guy, he just kind of Not anymore, he doesn't But yeah, I understand what you mean Yeah, but it didn't seem like a boxing-related injury Whereas Sylvester Stallone, like, as time progresses He seems to get worse in his career Do you think so? I think so I wonder if it's a bit Like the picino effect, right, where the person almost becomes a caricature of themselves Can I actually just point out that Al Pacino was considered for the role of Rambo? Oh yeah But turned it down because he wanted Rambo to be more of a madman He wanted Rambo to be even more insane Yeah, they didn't want to go that way Oh, Hoffman? Dustin Hoffman also considered for the role? That's right But he thought it was too violent, which is kind of an interesting split Down there And who wasn't going to play the opposite fellow? Kirk Douglas was supposed to play the role of... The lawman, yeah, Sheriff. Yes, exactly But in the end of the novel, written by David Morrell, Rambo kills himself And they didn't want to go that way in the film And so Kirk Douglas quit over it 'Cause he thought that they should stay true to... True to the book Yeah, true to the book Which is so funny when you're talking about a Rambo movie that it's... The integrity of the book must remain... Well, I'm actually a fan of David Morrell's writing Yes, I do agree I never seen Rambo before, I'd never read First Blood, but I did... I did read a lot of his other... Well, we've talked about the Brotherhood of the Stone and... No, no, no... But the Brotherhood of the Rose... The Brotherhood of the Rose... Very much that same sort of one guy against the world type. How did it end? What did Rambo... Rambo? It didn't end with Rambo's. No, did he go to jail? Yes. They carded him off. Yes, for like a month or so. You find out in Rambo too that he's... Maybe in Thailand, stick fighting? Or maybe that's the third one. Anyway, oh, I believe he's in prison for a while And then they sent him to Vietnam to rescue some POWs. Because they need Rambo. They need Rambo. Because he's the best at what he does. No, that's Wolverine. Oh, yeah, my bad. They also considered Travolta, John Travolta, Steve McQueen, who was too old at the time. He was actually David Morrell's pick when he was first writing it. Oh, yeah? But yes, he would have been too old to play. The Queen? I love Steve McQueen, but I don't know that I see him as... I don't know. The physicality of John Rambo. So much of that role is not talking or doing... And I realize McQueen is not talking. When I think of Rambo jumping out of whatever he did, and off of the cliff and into the trees and landing onto a tree, I don't see. That was... Actually, he did part of that stunt himself. The last third of the jump, that was him doing the stunt himself. Jesus Christ bit. Oh, yeah, you can hear him hit that branch. He broke a rib doing that. He got pretty injured in that movie. What really makes the movie for me? It's a okay movie. There's a lot of solid gags. There's a decent enough plot that follows along. But what makes it for me is really the scenery. That movie is so beautiful in the background. It's shot in British Columbia, although they say it's in Columbia. In Hope British Columbia. They say it's Hope Washington, but it's actually Hope British Columbia. Just amazing. And you almost expect Mulder and Scully to come wandering out of a vaccine. Yeah, well, I found it really cool because I was reading up on the film and apparently they had to import a lot of those weapons into Canada. Right. Because, you know, they couldn't just get them here. And halfway through shooting, about 50 of their guns went missing. And they had hundreds, yeah. Oh, that's hilarious. Uh oh. Yeah. Do you think they were kept to souvenirs or do you think there's some fellow hilarious? You're firing his M60 in the woods of BC. You see. Yeah. Get away from my weed, veal. Yeah. Yeah. Well, speaking of odd trivia for the film, you were mentioning that there was a scene that was cut out in which he basically has a flashback to the norm. And he's having some sort of memory of being with a Vietnamese hooker. Yeah. And then it comes back to the modern period and he's just crying. Yeah, just weeping. And I guess maybe if it wasn't a queen or a patino or someone who was playing it a little more deer hunter style, that might have been acceptable. But this movie to me really births the '80s action flick. Well, actually it's funny. Iron Man kind of a man. It's funny you say that because this movie did have a real influence on the action flick from now on. Because Stallone was so unhappy with the way the first cut came out that he wanted to buy it back and destroy it. And when they said no, he suggested that they cut out a lot of his scenes. Right. And that actually cut down the actual run town about a half. Oh my goodness. And because of that timing, they said that was an influence on future action films. Oh, I don't think I could have taken this movie. It had been, it was about 90 minutes, I think. If it had been closer to two, two and a half, three hours. But instead of precedent for the future. Yeah, I can imagine. I mean, I could see that depending on what they cut, I could see there being more meat for a sort of, because David Morell's books are a little bit closer almost to a role. Well, I don't want to say they're a Robert Luddlem kind of style, but they do have that sense of having a larger framing than Rambo does necessarily. Well, I mean, it's either being more meat there that just never was touched on. Even the sheriff has some backstory too. And it's not really mentioned at all. And you only see a glimpse. You see three medals on his desk in the background in one of the shots. And those are medals that he was supposed to have earned in the Korean War and that. But it never comes up in the film. Exactly. It's supposed to be this whole animosity kind of thing. Yeah. I have this resentment towards the Vietnam. It's interesting and sort of weird to watch that movie now and to see because we have society, at least in North America, has really become pro troops and pro law enforcement. But at this point, there's definitely a disparity. It's obvious that the law enforcement people aren't necessarily terribly trusted. The movie really hinges on one rogue deputy who really gets things started. David Caruso sends sunglasses. Well, no, David Caruso is there and he is incredibly young. He looks like he's 10. But it's the mustache guy. Remember the mustache guy? The desert does. Yeah, he just can't stop pounding rainbow for some reason. I think at the time it was a little more viable because we were coming out of the 70s and it was a very much damn the man kind of time. And this might even play differently in the 90s when it was a little more X files and less government trust. I guess in some parts of America right now it's really that same paranoia. It's just that everyone else's distance themselves a little bit from due to the craziness of it. Anyway, it's an interesting thing to look back on. It was like, don't you come in here without long hair and wear in that flag and it was the American flag? Yeah, having long hair and an American flag was enough to get you beaten up in this town. Yeah, and it was just like every law enforcement officer was looking for like just to make up some or like to use a law, but you know, like trying to trap you in some circumstance where he can throw you in jail and it was just like at every turn there were such jerk holes that it wasn't really viable to me. We still have a lot of homeless folks, but it seems like the idea of the drifter has fallen away a little bit. We don't seem to have as many vagrants like in that sense. I'm sure that a lot of the homeless folks are just doing that same thing and I'm not noticing, but I don't know what's the situation that we've, we don't have that soul vagrant who wanders into town and kind of a man of mystery like what happened to that trope. Yeah, well, you know, he's got bigger. He has no money, no prospects, nobody wants to watch a show about that guy. Yeah, I suppose. Just as a final note to loop back to the pulp a little bit, apparently Stallone in the commentary compares Rambo to being like the monster to Troutman's Dr. Frankenstein. That's right. Because he keeps referring to I made him. Yeah. I made him. I made him. The way he is. Yeah. Only I can fix him. Right. And Rambo can't turn off the killing. Yep. The killing urge. Mm hmm. Anyhow, all of that to say that it was a little more interesting than the time I saw it. Honestly, yeah, I really didn't anticipate all of those levels of interesting. Mm hmm. And as I remember the sequels, it never reaches that high market. Yeah, I think we're stopping to this one. Like the next two are just downhill. And I haven't seen the newest one, but I hear that it's a lot of violence and not a lot of quality. So we'll see. Maybe we'll get to it someday. You were mentioning Jessica May the barbecue backfire. Ha ha. Okay. So I think I was saying on the Flashcast recently that we barbecue all through the winter. Oh indeed. One because, you know, burning meat smells good. Oh, we should clarify because I know that in some parts of America, especially at the TTS house right now, he's probably shouting that we enjoyed grilling, whereas barbecue is a specific type of pork meat. Well, or a shadow that comes off of the grill. Right. And barbecue, you're eating barbecue, but we don't say that. We cook things on our barbecue. Yes. So, yeah. So in the wintertime, we just kind of, as we're walking back and forth towards the barbecue, we make the same like footprints until there's like a little path. Until finally, when it's time to bring the meat inside, you got like a really nice runner going. Um, anyways, so it's fun to do and to say that you do it. And also to let the neighbors smell the smell that they haven't smelled in a couple of months. Also to make them a wee bit jealous. Yeah. So I have gone out twice this week and some am effort is cooking barbecue. Oh yeah. Do you think we've inspired the barbecue or do you think that? I hope so. I think that maybe they're doing a little sashay, they might be, you know, snapping and being like, I can do it too. And you know what? I think maybe I smelled charcoal and we're gas over here and charcoal. There's stepping it up. So, yeah. So that's backlash, the lash bitches, you have to be able to take it if you want to give it. That's right. And so you know what I'm doing tonight? Barbecuing. Barbecuing. Barbecuing. But you know what we have that they don't? What? A fan art section on their Facebook page. Yes. So huge fan or huge thanks to everyone who submitted a little something. We've started it on the Facebook mob, the flash mob, if you want to go search in for it, you can find a link via flashpump.com. And Jared doesn't even know, but I just put up another one that is art made for the mob by, well, so far, just a pope. Oh, right. But things that have been sent to people. Into mob art. Yeah. Paintings and things like that. So if there's anything that she sent you that you've taken photos of, if you want to put it in there or give it to me. Yeah, that would be great. Your doodles. And we send those out and we don't see them. Yeah. And there's so, there's so many now that it would be really nice to have like a record for everyone to see, you know, their own personalized photos and octopi and show. That's right. A lot of those things end up just sitting on my bulletin board at work or something and you never end up seeing. Mm hmm. And so from that lovely topic, let's move on to something a little bit more bothersome. Oh, please. Let's do. Oh, heh heh heh. Spudger bother. I must admit, I'm a bit of a freak when it comes to doing laundry. Oh, I don't mean the part about separating colors from whites. We tried that years ago and it was bad for society. I just mostly throw everything together and hope for the best, thus my pink and maw of underwear. Nope, my personal pet peeve is scents. I abhor the lingering perfumes that many laundry detergents leave behind. This being said, my soap of choice is all free and clear. It washes away those pesky blood stains like a champ and leaves no residual odors to irritate my finicky nose. I'm just hoping that unlike its big orange competitor tied, my dear all continues to fly under the radar and remains free and clear of the stink of cocaine, meth and marijuana. What the hell am I talking about, you may ask? Here's a short news story that may brighten and enlighten your curious mind. The call that came in from a local Safeway was unlike any of the organized retail crime unit of the Prince George's County Police Department had fielded before. The grocery store located in suburban Bowie, Maryland had been robbed repeatedly, but in every incident the only products taken were bottles of the liquid laundry detergent tied. They were losing $10,000 to $15,000 a month, with people just taking it off the shelves recalls Sergeant Aubrey Thompson who heads the team. When Thompson and his officers arrived to investigate, they stumbled upon another apparent tide theft in progress and busted two men who had piled 100 or so of the bright orange jugs into their Honda. The next day, Thompson returned to the store's parking lot to tape a television interview about the crimes. A different robber took advantage of the distraction to make off with 20 more bottles. Later, Thompson reviewed weeks' worth of the Safeway's security footage. He found that more than two dozen thieves working in crews were regularly raiding the store's household product's aisle, sometimes returning more than once the same day and avoiding detection by timing their heists to follow clerks' shift changes. Owners and managers of other area stores, having seen Thompson on the news, reached out to him to report their own vanishing tide bottles. Since then, the oddly brand loyal crime wave has gone national, striking Bodega's supermarkets and big bucks discounters from Austin to West St. Paul, Minnesota. In New York, employees at the Penn Station, Dwayne Reed, nabbed a man trying to abscond with tide bottles he'd stuffed into a suitcase. In Orange County, an attempted tide theft led to a high-speed chase that included the thief crashing his SUV into an ambulance. Last year, for the first time, detergent made the National Retail Federation's list of most targeted items, says Joseph LaRoca, founder of the Trade Group Retail Partners, who helped compile the report, tied was specifically called out. As the cases piled up after his team's first tide theft bust, Thompson sought an answer to the riddle at the center of the crimes. What did thieves want with so much laundry soap? To find out, he and his unit poured over security recordings to identify prolific perpetrators, whom officers then tracked down and detained for questioning. We never promised to go easy on them, but they were willing to talk about it, Thompson says. I guess they were bragging. It turned out the detergent wasn't being used as an ingredient in some new recipe for getting high, but instead to buy drugs themselves. Tide bottles have become ad hoc street currency, with a 150-ounce bottle going for either $5 in cash or $10 worth of weed or crack cocaine. On certain corners, the detergent has earned a new nickname, Liquid Gold. The tide people would never sanction that tagline, of course, but this unlikely black market would not have formed if they weren't so good at pushing their product. In closing, I can't help but wonder what the next valuable drug trading commodity will be. Coffee? Air fresheners? Who knows? It'll all come out in the wash. I'm Jeffrey Lynch, and that's This Week's Spot of Bother. The tide is high, but I'm holding on. I'm going to be your number one. Spot of Bother is available on iTunes and Stitcher Smart Radio. For transcripts, source references, and audio credits, please visit bothersomethings.com. For additional bits of bother, follow me on Twitter @pleaselynchme. Excellent entry, as always, sir. I've actually heard about these black market tide dealers previously. Apparently, it's quite a thing, this and some other brands of household items are becoming very commonly sold at flea markets or where you'll have these set-ups of open-air markets where people, you know, they haul in their van full of stuff or whatever for the weekend and they set up a table and there's very little regulation swap meets. Apparently, they'll steal the goods and then they'll sell them at half price or whatever at the flea markets and it makes good money and because they're lower priority, they're not expensive electronics or something that is more likely to be easily tracked. It's just another bottle of tide. It's much harder to follow up and catch these people. It's almost like, once you're out of the store, there's no way they can bust you. So, or at least practically, you know, I mean, I guess if you get caught with 5,000 tide bottles and... Anyhow, excellent entry, Mr. Lynch. That's totally crazy. Oh, excellent outro, as well, Mr. Lynch. Hm, very fancy. We miss you, too. Yes, absolutely. Well, that was all rather horrible, but you know what else is horrible? Come from beyond to save us from our own past, Gibraltar has found only one solution to protect us. Here, now, is your horrible histories. Sanitation is my fellow monsters, I'm Gibraltar, and this is horrible histories. Yeah, so, um, we've got some adoptables, interns, cleaning up the mess that, uh, Richard left. And then, after he dumped his waist-core down my mail-shoot. Yeah. Now, now, interns, you wanna get the whole thing? Yeah. Clamp the whole mess. Anyway, so the left guy is taking a break from his corporate sponsors for a while, so we won't be interrupted again. Anyway, let's kick up the dino-therms and see if the histoscope has in store for us today. [MUSIC] Cote of Rani was the last Hindu leader of Kashmir until 1339. She was the daughter of Ram Chandra. Ram Chandra had appointed a administrator. Rin Chanda. Rin Chanda became ambitious, set a force of mercenaries under the guise of merchants to Ram Chanda's home. These mercenaries took Ram Chas men by his brag. Ram Chanda was killed, and his family was taken prisoner. In order to slip by his rule and gain local support, Rin Chanda appointed Rob Wayne Chanda as a administrator of Lara and Dintar, portions of the city. He also married his sister, Cote of Rani. Rin Chanda's rule was hardened stern. Rin Chank burnt Islam and adopted the name Centen-Sarind Doonra. He died as a result of his assassination, after rule of only three years. Cote of Rani was first appointed as a regent for Rin Chank's young son. Later, she was persuaded to marry Wustan Dvra by the elders. Wustan Dvra died in 1338. Cote of Rani had two sons, one by Rin Channa and one by Wustan Dvra. Cote of Rani became ruler and on right, and appointed a man named Bata Bashara as her prime minister. She was considered very intelligent and a great thinker. She saved the city of Shurlinggara from frequent floods by having a canal constructed. This canal would take water from the Julian River and its entry point in the city and again merged her and again into the river beyond the city's walls. One local official Shamaer in the Kufra power pretended to be sick and when Bata Bata Bata Shamaer came to visit him, he jumped out of his bed and killed him. He then rallying military support and forced Cote of Rani to marry him, but rather than saying, but rather, except his subjugation, Cote of Rani presented her final wedding present, presented him her own wedding present on the night of their marriage. She sliced over in her stomach and presented him her intestines. Well, that's all for this, just go right now, ladies and gentlemen. Well, it looks like the interns have mutated. Oh, yeah, me and life can't get on this. No, don't let me go for the legs. How romantic. Yeah, well, yeah. Have my guts. Nicely done, sir. You sounded much clearer this time. Glad to hear that Doc Blue's interns managed to find some work after the mob mafia game. Yeah, yeah. Got done. Actually, we finished this last weekend. I can't believe we didn't mention that in the... That's right. Oh, I used an A. Well, it's 'cause it wasn't done last time we were recording flashbacks. Exciting conclusion. Mm-hmm. We've managed to narrowly kill all of the mafia folks. Yes. Finally, we had an innocent victim. I feel like I helped lead the team to victory. I feel like it had a lot to do with the keep up your... I feel like I did the own food. No, no. I feel the people who were remaining picked up the notes that you had laid down. But by providing those notes, you really made yourself a target and were assassinated. Yeah. But I was able to use those notes with your bloody fingerprints still on them to... I felt for you all. Points and fingers. And we managed to get the right people. I must confessinate and say that very... Like... From the beginning, I was very involved. And then nearing the end, shit just got crazy round here. Oh, yes. So I even... Oh my god. I was tracking my inbox every night, making sure I did my junks. But I look back and there's something that I should have done on a night that I didn't do. Mm-hmm. You know? And I felt like a big douche bag for it. So I promise that next game, whatever happens, I'll just be like, children, no. You're not eating lunch because mama has to update and read the thread. It was a great game to offer. Yeah. It was so good. We had so much fun and it'll be nice to see. I loved when my characters go. Yeah. It was so much fun. I'm excited that he's already said that he's willing to do a season two. I would really like to see him as continuous. Yeah, maybe take some time. A little rest. Yeah. That's the thing. It's a very stressful session and I need a little time between. Yeah. There was a lot of things to keep track of, like the different jobs and people. Like I found... And who was guilty? Well, who was... I have a really crappy memory anyways, but a pope has been playing a lot of... Sorry I suspected you're rich. You were shady. Uh... Stuffing so shady you're rich. Oh, and he's also discussed a season two of Doc Israel back on the Flashcast. So I'm looking for this. Yeah, excellent. Yes, I'm very excited about that too. I would like to just quickly note that you can find Mr. Gibraltar on the Twitter. Mr. Walter 42. Indeed. And you can also sometimes find him at game nights and movie nights. With us, The Flash Mabbers. Yeah, man true. Mm-hmm. Find us on Facebook and we will become friends and we will love you for a conversation. We'll introduce you. It'll be great. Yep, yeah. Nicely done, sir. I'm looking forward to seeing how those mutant thing pans are. Yeah, yeah, I hope they can keep their jobs, sir. And I believe Westcore will probably be the name of the episode. Anyhow... You should have just worked it in places, so then it just seemed natural. Uh, next up I believe we have the captain. Or not specifically, right? We have a note from him explaining what exactly we've got coming ahead of us. That's what I hear. I think a pope is gonna go ahead and read that. So he sends... a lovely letter saying... GIRL! A more than a brace of weeks behind on thrusting pulp into me in her ear and the ear beyond. That jellyfish lumpo cogitating goo we cause the mind. And so I've no commentary worth a whale's flute to toss you away. I suppose I'll have to merely enjoy Jan Pope's fine maritime twang as she reads this letter on to the airwaves. 'Tis with such a notion in me mental ocean that I'm casting into the sea a bottle contain an atail for ye amusement. 'Tis Franklin D'Gash's recreational entertainment. A tale of Victorian eccentricity, excess, and pachydermic pandemonium. I'll weave ye a fresh tale of piracy by the by. But I hope me offering will sate the wild beasts that lurk in the harbor of ye Skinnerico, wear me ship, the grim bastard bobs uneasly. The curious cyber penguins of last night's debacle were tough. And their metallic jaw jewellery has had me men begging for hair, gunther garment, to dently decimate the wounds they have caused through eating. I must go. There be some disturbance in the murky waters. Ah, 'tis just a grim faceman. Ye wenches fallin' in. I suppose we could offer our gentlemanly assistance. You know, uh, having the parking lots rezoned for canal and harbor usage was really quite a pain, but I think it was really worth it. I'm really enjoying having the captain around. Yes. So, with, yeah, yeah, and be it, uh, whatever guys he appears, even in the time-traveling Syria psychopath, that is Franklin D'Gash. A night of nonsensical dreams, and a persistent headache, left me washed up like a beached whale upon the shears long in my night-room. The most I could achieve on my road to mourning humanity was to loosely tamp my pipe. My drooling lips could scarcely support the trembling pipe stem which spilled smoldering shag down my shut. The possible ignition caused me no worry. As squint through my eyelids, I saw that fire would only improve the room in which I had brought much party. I bellowed for aid. Mr. Tribling's flew into the room, for this was in those pleasant days before his revolt, a lemon tea resting upon a silver tray. It was his own drink, and he teased me with it. Despite his preternatural ability to brew tea, I had become a verse to the beverage, finding it faintly reminiscent of Simeon urine. I insisted that the goose ate pull me to my feet in commenced grooming. He disliked getting his fur wet, but I was in powerful need of water's erosive touch, and I had no desire for his fumbling mitts to draw insects from me. At length my beastio man-servant supplied me with a towel, followed by a vast breakfast spread. When finally my repast ended with a pudding, I realized that my only hope for true wakefulness was a stroll in the park. Fully and spattered non-currat, I departed the house, snug in the embrace of my latest invention, the L.H.A.R. Part ordinary seat, part elephant, it was the ambulatory shares to end all mobile furniture. The recent fad for steam-powered carriages had quite inspired me, but I was more comfortable with vivisection. I had taken a pair of young elephants, afric for the convenient expanse of ear-hopholstery. One, I had flattened along the back, the other glued upon it, in repose, so that I had legs to motivate the chair. Another pair to rest my arms upon, and the final pair to drape a roofing over. The lower walking limbs I had stripped to the bone and varnished, as one would at table, which achieved an aesthetically pleasing grain. Naturally, I had decapitated the beasts for their features on monstrously penile. The trunks I'd restitched as simple cranes, while shopping and such, while their tusks made rather vicious forward-facing ladders for retaining one's seat. By means of gimbals, I maintained a gentle ride, while the LH hair plowed through the streets, scattering pedestrians with cries of awe and admiring shrieks. As the chair negotiated a junction, I'd naturally endowed it with the delicate mind of a badger I found in my garden one opiated night, for such matters as navigation are beneath a gentleman's concern. The other road users gave ground gracefully, as we turned into the park. A wondrous expanse of bays green beneath a smoggy sky. My mount picked up speeds that relished the grass between its skeletal toes. With my peasant beating spear, I directed my chair towards a certain cops, in whose leafy shade I was confident of finding gentlemanly diversion. Within the trees' penumbral umbrella stood a trio of handsome carriages, two of which bounced jokingly upon their wheels. A quintet of well-dressed gentlemen and ladies ringed the cars, their gaze intent, and their breathing heavy. When I drew up my Pecoderm armchair, I listed a gasp of surprise and a satisfying swoon. Wordlessly, I offered my hand to a "finally clad maiden." The unconscious lady would be far too much effort. A smile of secret sort passed between us, and I helped her up the tusks and into my lap. With the depression of a bony lever that shezes hood rose over us, the four ears of the elephant spanning around twin closes in an amorous and faintly hairy screen. My ill health was vanishing in a lady haze. Yet something was awry. I first noted it when the earth gave the impression of great emotion that I had anticipated. Indeed, the quiver of thighs I distributed to my central minestrations was a disturbance in the outer world. The smooth travel of my elephantine stool had belied our true progress. For as I peered between petticoats and leathery folds, I saw that we were far from the restful grove in which we had begun our courtship. My chair's tusks were slick with gore, and from one of them dangled and impaled swan, the other boasted a child's pram. This was potentially awkward. My companion's alarm was irritating the evidence so I applied a calming chloroform to her and activated the chair guns. It would be dreadful if word were to escape the park that yet another of my creations had run murderously amok. Accordingly, I took aim at a gawping bystander and silenced his potentially slanderous tongue. Our bloody route was easy to retrace, but it was strewn with flattened pedestrians. As the LA chair bounded and capoured, those few which it had merely maimed I drew upon and finished off. With the noisy folk extinguished, they did bemoan my actions. My mount calmed and contented itself with uprooting daffodils. It seemed unlikely that I would return to the passionate grove, for it was now a blood-spattered boneyard. At least I'd rescue this charming lady who drooled unconscious upon my waistcoat. In time, the chloroform would wear off. And before then, we must find ourselves a fresh cot to revive our romance. Hello, Chair of Hunt! To the Heath! Oh, the gash. All you really want is a little lovin'. So many nice little turns of phrase there. I always greatly enjoy next pieces. You can find all the Captain Pickhart and Franklin the Gash and Alex Japan and so many other characters adventures over at CaptainPickhart.com. If you are so lucky, Nick is constantly doing a bit of improv business and notting him. I wish we were close enough to go. I can only imagine how amazing it must be. Thank you, sir. As always. Oh, you can also follow Captain Pickhart on Twitter. I should mention that. Do so. It's worth it. Please do so. Every word. Next up, I believe we have a bit of board gaming with the Gigantor. Salutations, Flashcast and fellow mobsters. It's Gigantor, and I got to meet a board game review. This week, I'll be reviewing Dixit. Dixit is a game very much similar to Cards Against Humanity, only it lacks the sarcasm, the vulgarity, the F-bombs, but it pushes art. The game plays three to six players, and it only takes about a half an hour to play through a game. Everybody has dealt a hand of cards containing wonderful artistic images. They're a little bit cartoony, but that's okay. This allows for a younger audience to join in on the game. I believe you can get like eight and up, but you could probably even manage younger, aim over their heads, and they'll get it. It's a simple game. As I said, the game is simple. Every round, there's a storyteller. He picks a card from his hand and makes up a sentence that loosely describes the card. Then all the other players, they choose a card in their hand that best matches the sentence given by the storyteller. They all pile their cards together, the storyteller will then flip them up, and everybody then gets to vote on which one they think is the best representation of the sentence or word given by the storyteller. Once the votes are tallied, the players move their bunnies along the game board. Oh, wait. I forgot to mention, this game is more than just cards. It also has a game board. The game board is designed to look like a grassy meadow, and you mark your positions with little bunnies. The point system to this game is fairly easy. If you're the storyteller, you don't really want all the votes. You want most of the votes, or at least one vote. If you either get all the votes or no votes, then you get no points. And what happens is, if the storyteller makes his point-gaining scenario, he'll automatically get three points. Every other player who votes for another player gets one point per vote. So, if someone was a storyteller, I played my card matching the storyteller, and I got two people voting for mine, I would get two points. And then, after that, it all becomes a race to 30 points. The gameplay and the rules flow easily, and in no time, you're playing like a pro. Seeing as the game is heavily centered around the art, it's obviously great. The art I mean. The cartoony drawings and paintings, they'll get a laugh. There's so much going on in these cards, because you need to be able to pick something out of each one of them multiple times, depending how often you play it. So, there has to be kind of a variety in what's going on. These pictures, as great as they are, there's a lot of random chaos, and I find myself staring at the pictures over and over just trying to absorb all the great details into it. Though, now it comes time to, my only real beef with this game is, over time, the replay value does drop a bit. As you get acquainted with the cards and the pictures, the challenge of coming up with an original description can get a bit tough. But to be honest, you'd have to play several games before you run into this problem. Dixit is a fun game, and has great visuals. For this, and the simplicity of the rules, I'm going to give Dixit a 4 out of 5, sorry, a 4 and a half out of 5. It's a great pickup game, doesn't take long, you can't ask for better. The rules are extremely simple, the art is great. Just don't play it too, too much, and you'll always have yourself a fun game. Now, with that said, I'd also like to thank Rich for his recommendations in Flashcast 77, I believe it was. He mentioned Battlestar, Glactica, and a few other games I will be hunting down because they sounded extremely interesting. Rich, you're not stepping on my toes. In fact, I'd like to invite anyone with their own favorite board games to send it in. Share those hidden gems. I'm always on the hunt for a good game, and I know you guys probably know of several that I've never even heard of. So please, share what you know. Thanks for listening, guys, and keep on playing. Awesome. Yeah, I'll even actually take that last comment a step further and say that if anybody even has some suggestions for board game reviews, or they want to get in touch to feed, they're not comfortable on the mics, but you want to feed some information to Jack Antor. Just fire it on to comments@fleshwolf.com. We're happy to pass it along to him. You know, that game that he was mentioning actually reminds me a lot of one that I came across online called Drawsom. Oh, yeah, that's a sort of Pictionary, yes. Yeah, it's a little Pictionary-E. It sounds very similar to his in that you have this picture and you make a caption for it. Maybe I'm not thinking of the same game then. It also works in another way where you're the one that draws the picture. Right, oh, okay, so you're saying half of it is like this game? Yes, so initially you might have like some sentence, like a skier going downhill, and then you draw a skier going downhill, and then it goes to the next person and they have to look, they don't know what your original sentence was. They have to look at your picture and make a caption for it, and then the next person gets that caption and has to draw a picture for that. It's a little bit like this game, then you have to keep coming up with a different thing for the same picture, but it changes a little bit every time. Right. Now, on that actual aspect, it did remind me a bit of Cards Against Humanity as Jack Antor mentioned, in the sense also that we found from a weekend of playing a few rounds of Cards Against Humanity, that the problem with the game is that the novelty of the Cards is maximized the first time you see them. Yeah, I mean, half the fun isn't even playing the Cards with picking them up and getting them in your hand and going, "Oh, I know I'm going to use that one next to what the Card is going to be." So while there are some perennial favorites, like Mecha Hitler? Yeah, yeah, and some that we can't really say on the show. You do find that the first time something is played is a lot funnier than the second time, and I can see how this game would suffer that same diminishing returns, especially when you're depending so much on stationary, non-changing art. Now, a flip side of that, though, would be to try the same game, but as an app that maybe connects with multiple iPhones to one iPad or something to that effect, where you could have just a huge library of pictures and continuously be updating that. That's a great idea. Somebody do that. Yeah, those Dixit people get on that. Make it soon. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that they were working on something similar. Yeah. Anyhow, I must say that I do find the idea of massive Gigantor sitting at a table with a bunch of his friends, and they're all moving a bunch of little fluffy bunnies around a meadow pretty hilarious. But that is all I'm going to say about that. You know what you should do, dude? You should, like, send in a photo of you playing these kids. Yeah! Well, not even just bunnies, but I mean, like, we could throw it in the show notes. Mm-hmm. Like, here's the board. Here's me with the board, dudes. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that would be nice. Um... Action chat. Speaking of action, we have a little international smuggling we did recently. Do you have anything to declare? No. No. Action shirt. Thank you. When we went across the border for the mob meetup in Buffalo. Yes, and the monkeys. Don't forget the monkeys. We were lucky to have Hugh O'Donnell show up, and he brought along some Girl Scout cookies. Yes, he brought three boxes, and we have two in front of us. Oh, he did bring three boxes? Yeah, one of them got fed to the children. What? One day, we were like, "Oh, we're one snack short for lunches." And so we got the shortbread cookies, and I was gonna save the rest. You fiends! Oh, my God. They were so... They were like, "You?" It was like butter. It was like butter and sugar in the mouth. Butter and sugar. Ball. Ball. Ball. Ball. I am taking this to the shareholder meeting, and this is going to be discussed. Thank you, Hugh. Well, yes, thank you, Hugh. Fortunately, we've managed to somehow save the thin mints and the peanut butter patties. You know what? I did save two for you, but then I looked over, and I saw the toddlers on the counter, and they each had one of the last cookies in their mouth, and they were like gobble gobble gobble. And you respond! At least they shared them. Yeah, with each other. Yes, pretty remarkable. I miss the days when I can leave them on a cold stone on the side of a mountain for this sort of thing. Oh, Rome. Cheers. Okay, well, listen, I did want to make a quick note before. Okay, so we have a new segment from Mr. Adonal. Yes, Hugh Adonal. I am incredibly excited he is going to come on and discuss comics. Yes. But we have been saving, apparently, some of the cookies for quite a while now for a special vacation in which to sample them. The mailbag's a little like this week, so we're going to save what we do have for next week. Okay. Because the episode's also running a little long. So, comments@flashbulb.com, please send in. Comment@flashbulb.com. Comments@flashbulb.com send in everything you got. Can we get sued for that? But we are going to sample some thin mints and some peanut butter patties, and then we are going to... You see, he's not even fighting it this week, guys. No, she was staring at me. I could feel it. I was trying to throw and the... No way, man. They want to hear the chewing. Are these thin mints been opened? I hope not. There actually is something else from either the box or the straws box that has been opened. A few people. Really? There's lots left, yeah. Clearly, I'm going to have to talk to security. Oh, no, these are all right in my coffee. That's so funny. So... They're directly in my cup of coffee. I really... Okay. The boy scouts and the girl scouts, you're familiar with the sort of situation, the gap between them. Mm-hmm. Well, I know that the boy scouts are gay haters, but recently, they're being a little more pro-gay. Hello-no. Oh, my God, I love thin mints. Wow, these thin mints are delicious. I don't even like mint, and these are good. The girl scouts actually take the opposite view. They're pro-gay and they're pro-choice. Mm-hmm. Which is, to say they're pro-choice is a pretty heavy topic, but at the same time, you're dealing with a large female population, and to have some honest discussion about their bodies in a space like that is a pretty awesome thing. Mm-hmm. It also shows that when it's a women's organization run by women, they're going to be pro women's health. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I agree. Guys. Like, there may be a time in your life where you could die unless you have this procedure. And you want to be able to do that with a doctor and not in somebody's, you know, back room illegally. I'm sorry, my mind has just been blown by these thin mints. Yes, I absolutely agree. I saw this thing on the internet. It was like, for solicitors, we found Jesus. We have no money. We already have a paper, knock a few of thin mints. Something to that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have to agree at this point. I wouldn't turn away a girl scared at the door. That was so good. Okay, let's listen to Hugh's discussion of comics, and then we'll come back and taste these delicious peppermint patties. I haven't even had them when I can only assume they're-- Peanut butter. Peanut butter, buddy. Sorry, what did I say? Peppermint pattie from the Charlie Brown. Oh, yeah. He's high on the peppermint. That's right. Charlie Brown. Hello, and welcome to the first exciting issue of Hugh Likes Comics. I'm Hugh O'Donnell. I'd like to start by talking about my favorite comic from last year, Bandette, by Paul Tobin and Colleen Coover. It's published by Monkey Brain Comics, which is an indie publisher that makes comics for Comixology, a service for iOS and Android. Bandette is a fun little all-aged comic, about a daring young thief who sometimes works on the right side of the law. She prefers to steal from "bad guys" and even helps out the police on occasion, playing heroin. But when she sticks her nose too far into the business of the criminal organization, Denise, the mob decides to rub her out once and for all. Bandette is a charming love letter to French comics, loaded with style, cleverness, and endearing cast of mysterious masked thieves, a street army of ballet dancers and delivery boys, and colorful villains. What really makes the comic stand out, though, is Colleen Coover's gorgeous art, which has an iconic, almost, satiric style that really pops thanks to her inquashed colors. Her process is all digital, and it's really fascinating to watch. She talks about it on her blog, which is Colleen Coover.net. The first three issues of Bandette are out now on Comixology, and that only costs you 99 cents each, which is kind of an amazing deal. You should go check them out. Until next time, this is Hugh from the Way of the Buffalo podcast, saying, "See you in the funny pages." So this is the second time that we're recording this portion of the show, because I deleted it by accident. The makers of mulligan need a mulligan. Indeed. So I apologize for that. A little production error. And I've been told that there was so much magic that went on that will never be rediscovered. I was hilarious in that back end, and it's never going to happen again. Your back end is hilarious. Ha ha ha. So, because we have to do this a second time, we have a guest with us, because we have no other way of doing it. And here is Darwin. Say hello, Darwin. Hello. Oh wow, that was very good, buddy. Are you enjoying being on the show with us? Yep. You're a very good boy. Having to record early on a Tuesday, which is an unusual event for us. Yes. But to loop back to where we were, unfortunately, we have no more of the peanut butter patties. Yeah, they're all gone. Yeah, we ate them, and they were delicious, and we recorded as such, and then all of a sudden they disappeared somehow. We put them in the fridge. When we were over there, this lady in the line saw us with the boxes and says, "You have to put them in the freezer." You're so much better than the freezer. At Jim's Day. And I wasn't sure about the freezer, so we did the fridge. I think maybe next time, if we were ever to get Girl Scout cookies again, I'd maybe try the freezer. But the fridge was stellar. Mm-hmm. So thanks for those, Mr. Adolph. Yeah. Thanks for your fantastic review. It was so good. It was so great. It's like you do this all the time. Bandette sounds fantastic, and the idea that I can get the first three issues for basically three dollars on comics all that you use. Yeah, and I don't know if it's still on the show or not anymore. And I was saying how it reminded me very much of our say in the pain. Right, the French comics act. Yes. Oh yeah, and we were discussing, we weren't sure if Americans were terribly exposed to French cartoons. And yeah, because we got a lot of French cartoons. Yeah, and you say that. Was it near? Yeah, like you guys listed off a catalog, and I hadn't heard of any of them. Really? And I lived, like, a block away from me up out by the child, so that's so funny. But I have French in my family. Well, that and I went to school in French. I was in Southern Ontario where it wasn't a priority at all, and then moved to Ottawa where it was. So I was always drastically behind, and everyone made fun of me. And when did you have to start taking French? The first time I took French, it was like grade three. Really? Yeah. It was just like, basically the alphabet. Yeah. Yeah, and then I came up to Ottawa on grade four, and everything went downhill. Not because of where we moved. I was perfectly happy. It was just, it's a government town, so. I don't know if we've ever discussed it on the show, but I actually went to kindergarten in French. Yeah, he was a Frenchman. He spoke no English, except they then thought he was a dummy, so they kicked him out. Yes, to be fair, I did not actually speak French either. I had a problem with my ears, so I couldn't hear anything. Or at least I would mishear everything, essentially. It would be like, wah, wah, wah, like Charlie Brown. Yeah, it was very Charlie Brownish. So, which is interesting, because I had a very similar experience. I had to get an operation when I was in grade one on my ears. Tubes, tubes. Tubes, the tubes. Yup. So, Jared, every once in a while, he's like, oh my God, get the baby's ears checked. Maybe we need the tubes. The tubes. Anyway, I will definitely be checking out Bandette. Yes. And he mentioned it briefly, but he, oh, mister? He's getting tickled under the table, I think. The dog. By the dog. Yeah. He mentioned it briefly, but his podcast, The Way of the Buffalo, is on a temporary hiatus. Mm-hmm. But it will be returning. It's because there's no more buffalo. Yeah. It will be returning very shortly, in March 1st. So, definitely sign up for the feed now and enjoy it later. Yeah, don't miss the deed. Anything. Don't miss the anything from you. Are you going to sing some aerospace? No. No, we're not. What? Because, okay, I grew up around, or part of my growing up, was around musicals with my Aunt Mo, and we always sang in response to things with, like, parts of musicals that we like, or songs or whatever. So I find myself doing that around the house. I find myself sometimes doing a flash cast. And also, I'm finding that I'm doing it when we're meeting up on the internet. And part of me was like, you know, this is kind of an annoying trait, and it may bother people, but part of me is like, you know what, maybe I should do this more. Maybe this is really good, maybe this is, like, highly entertaining. Maybe if I do it, other people will do it, and it will be fun. So tell me if I do it too much, everybody, but I have no- I find I end up joining in with you. Yeah, every once in a while, you'll get in there, or you'll do the next line. Fine. So, yeah. It's- It's the time I start it. It's such a fun kind of random thing from my childhood that's kind of crept up the whole way through, and it's fun that it's coming in through, uh, hanging out with other people as well. Well, it was E.G.'s tail! Yeah. Ludo is chasing his tail. Ludo is chasing his tail. Yeah, Ludo is chasing his tail. And yeah, we showed them on the mob about chasing tails. He's a silly boy. This is the weirdest flash cast ever. Uh, okay. Well, speaking of weird flash casts, we don't really have much of a mailbag. What we do have we're going to save for next week. Indeed. So, especially considering the circumstances. Yes. So, comments@flashbulb.com, we're always happy to hear your questions, suggestions, comments. Please, if you're time traveling through the episodes you're catching up, let us know what you think. We'd love to hear about that back. Yeah. Talk about the back episodes. We remember- Well, I have a crappy memory, but a pope remembers every franger moment of anything that ever happened. And I think they're recorded somewhere, so. Yeah, I hear. Yeah. And Jared, obviously, would like to hear what you think about his stories. So- Most times, yeah. Once something comes up, I have some odd recollections from that period. Unless it's critical, then he doesn't want to hear it at all. Yeah, well. Like that? Yeah. He's a diva, for real. No, we love time travelers, so. Send us your comments. Yes. Are you a daddy? Hope. I recorded Shades of Grey by the Monkeys. Mm-hmm. 50 times. Yeah. 50 times. I tried it one day, and then my fingers got sore, and I couldn't do it anymore, and I got really mad, and yeah, I get really obsessive, and I start hearing only the mistakes a little bit, and then I think I sound like I'm on the corner with a guitar, and I even don't have business to be on the side of the road. Anyway. Now, an alternate dimension me, Lost in Space and Time, has already asked you, but I will ask you again. Oh, okay. When are you supposed to be recording something from Labyrinth? I was supposed to, well, it was kind of just thrown up in the air. In fact, you're like, "You're doing Sunday songs now, and why aren't you picking something from Labyrinth? Go." And generally, that's very helpful for me, 'cause she can just call up David Bowie in. But then I was thinking, "You know, I love shades great, and I haven't done it yet." And so, yeah, I record it one time, and it sucked ass, so I just started practicing it without thinking about recording it, and that way I could just enjoy it and figure out what I wanted to do with the arrangement, and get a little better at it. And obviously, I haven't been playing guitar very much, 'cause you can hear it on the track, but, uh, screw you up. Anyways. You do an excellent job. Like, obviously, you're not one of those metalhead guitarist guys who sits there practicing as fingering for... I said fingering. Uh, practicing his fingering for, you know, hours a day or whatever, but... He enjoyed it. You do a... Yeah. You did a great job. Thank you, and I'm so glad that you thought so, and a couple people listened to which made me feel very good, and then I'll do it more, and then more people will love me. Next Sunday. Yeah. Apparently. Maybe I'll do something from Labyrinth. I think that it sounds like a randomly awesome, spontaneous idea by me. Mm-hmm. Great. And then we'll cut to Sunday, and it'll be like... Dun-nuh-nuh. Never miss the... Yeah, yeah. It'll be that Aerosmith song, the one song that we said, "Don't play it or a wedding," and then my really ridiculous uncle is running through the place going, "Please, where are you? Why do I need to hear that song?" Which ridiculous uncle? Let's not hear names. You don't know. He's a close talker. You know my close talking uncle? Okay. You would know, if you met him. All right. You would know. You would remember the close talker. All right. Oh, narration. All right. Well, I haven't been close talking with anybody this week, but recently. But I have been looking into narration for audiobooks, because I really love reading, and I already do some narration. But I think we're all in a position where if we had more time on our plate, we would be expanding our... Yeah. Like, you might be doing narration a little more outside of Skinner Co2, and if we had the time. Yeah, if we had the time, exactly. What, man? Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. We got a breaking news here. What's going on? Oh, you're going to whisper now? You're going to whisper at those guys? You're going to whisper secrets to everyone while we're talking and playing them with... Okay. You want this all to whisper? No, we're too loud. He says. Okay. Okay. I think everyone will really appreciate that we're whispering to them now, right in their ears. Thank you, Mr. Three. Okay. But now we're going to talk. We'll burn. We'll burn. We'll burn guys. Okay. What was I saying? If we had more time, we would be doing other things. Yes, we would be doing other things. I would be on a world tour right now, everybody, and I'd be working on my fingering. But you were looking into a narration site, right? Yes, actually. The site was audiobookvoicetalent.com. There you go. So I came across this article that was talking about 10, like, essential skills for a narrator. I'm not going to list the whole thing, but I found some of them really interesting. First and foremost, they said you have to engage the listener because nobody wants to listen to somebody monotone. Yeah, exactly, because that would suck. And then the next step was to give a consistent performance. And I think this is a big deal and it's hard for us sometimes when we're doing like a three-parter that is recorded over the span of a week or something, because you could get sick or violently angry. Yeah. Yeah, maybe it's like 10.30 in the night and the other one recorded at six or something, but it has to sound the same. I think listening back to what you did before is, yeah, that's okay, that's Mr. Three playing with magnets from the Time Traveler. Nice. He's putting them all over the fireplace. Yeah. The studio's fireplace, yes, there is a fireplace in our studio. Yeah, it doesn't work, but it looks awesome. Another important step was to have intuitive timing and I thought, do they teach that? No, it has to be intuitive. You want to sound like when you're on the mic, you're having like your, you're actually, you know, recreationally reading or whatever it is, but that you're in the moment, right? Yeah, because I mean, say sometimes it would sound better with a dramatic pause in between your sentences. Right. That's not necessarily written into the script. You have to sort of know when that is appropriate and yes, not. Oh, yeah. There are definitely lines I write with the intention of coming across heavier or even being, you know, and then Mulligan replied like you want that design. Sometimes you'll say, okay, I want to pause here, but yeah, you can stick that in post, but if you have to fix that a lot, you can't be doing that. So having that natural ability will probably, yeah, or, you know, not, not speaking too fast because sometimes when people speak too fast, it's really hard to understand them. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot going on. You don't want it to be. And you want it to sound natural, but you're not exactly speaking into the mic the same way that you would speak to a person, you know, here. And speaking of sounding natural, another one of the important lessons to learn is that you have to have an authentic separate narrator voice. You can't, you can't just have the same voice throughout. Obviously you have to have different voices that, you know, you're comfortable with. You know, I'm, I'm barely comfortable with home characters. So he's one of my hardest ones, but, um, for example, like Ruby, she is very similar to my voice. And so sometimes it's difficult to make the separation between I am the narrator talking now and I am Ruby talking now, but there has to be that line of clear division. In a previous existence, we were discussing how Roy Deltrice, right? The guy who does the Game of Thrones audiobooks, how you find some of his characters kind of blend together because he doesn't have enough variety in his voices. Yeah. And I mean, he's a great guy and I love personally he's really nice puppies and really vibrant. He and I are like this, um, but I mean, he does so well in a lot of the other aspects. You wish him one life. No, I mean, I really like a lot of the way he reads the book. He has a great, he has a great fantasy voice like he sounds like that. He sounds like a Gandalf almost like he has that kind of a story, just not a book. He's very familiar with George R.R. Martin's material. Yeah, they're close, right? He was having, having worked together in several ways. Okay. And that's all fair. But when you can't tell your old men apart in Game of Thrones, that becomes difficult because, you know, yeah. Yeah. Anyway, an interesting point. And the last thing was that it's very important, um, probably the most important thing is that you have to be able to accurately interpret the author's intent. Right. And I know you had been saying, you don't want to give like a fresh spin. You're like, you know what? I need to like this. But what if we did it like this? Yeah. You know, you don't want me saying something sarcastically if it's not supposed to be sarcastic. I'm not saying this line. I just feel it. Exactly. You know, you have to sort of put yourself in the place of where the author is. And what is he trying to convey here? Yeah. Yeah. And it's interesting because this is one of those things that people have been fighting with all the way back to when we were telling, you know, a lot of stage play stories and stuff like all the way back to Billy Shakes, right? Like everyone is still trying to take guesses at how to, how to interpret his material, how the tone and inflection is supposed to reflect what's going on in the scene. Mm-hmm. I mean, there have been times when I've heard through the episode we've been doing a listen through or I've listened to afterwards if I haven't heard it before. Mm-hmm. And I'm like, what? I didn't mean that line to come across like that. And sometimes I really like it. But sometimes you're just a diva. Usually it's go back and fix it. But it's that that's what makes it so hard to sometimes do something where read something when you haven't had a lot of opportunity to familiarize yourself with the script. Right. You know, I can't just read something, you know, spot on, it's the first time I'm reading it because, you know, I can pick up on the intent as I'm going, but it's new. Mm-hmm. Right. It's hard to guess. And I don't want to be guessing. Yeah. Yeah. You know, we don't have time for weeks of prep or whatever. Exactly. Yeah. And I found that article very interesting. I'm certainly going to go check out-- I even find your second retelling of it extremely exciting. Thank you. Fascinating. Thank you. It is. If anybody wants to go check out the site, again, it's audiobookvoisttalent.com. Go there. Check it out. Tell me all about it. And give me money for something. Sure. Yeah. She would go to the website herself, but she would rather you guys do it for a prep. You're going to go to the website and tell her about it. You can see how great this website is, and now go check it out. Give me the call. Tell me all about it. Background plots. OK. Well, for background plots, before we get out of here, I just wanted to quickly touch on the last two episodes that we did, a special episode 15, the Wolf Family's Vacation. Mm. I had the hardest time saying that line. I kept saying the Wolf's Family Vacation. Yeah, I know. And I'd be like, "The Wolf Family's Vacation." Oh, yeah. Just so many times. I know. I know. There were a few places in this church because it was a fairly straightforward story where I tried to put little word bombs to trip you up. I hate that. I find her theirs. All right. You'll hear every once in a while. And she's-- oh, you don't hear it when she's reading, but she'll be reading, and she'll like yell out a particular phrase of words that are hard to say, and he'll just giggle because he's just waiting for her to say something. Anyways, continue. Yes. So special episode 15 was a urban legend. Mm-hmm. And it was almost too detailed and too long to be an urban legend. You were saying that, but I believe it was at some point. Yeah, at some point in the past, we'll never know. I had intended this story as a starter around the campfire story. Which is a great idea. I love that. I want people to take this one, especially away, hopefully. Or the majority of the details, a little that, and be able to retell it to their kids or their, you know. Go for us. Have campfires. Tell the story, people. Yeah. You know what would be fantastic? If you do happen to be around a campfire, or you're just having a flashlight camp out in your living room with your kids, I mean, of a certain age, to the story with a little little room. Yeah. Tell them this story. If you happen to tell this story, you happen to be at your local bar, and Norman Clifford there, and you're telling this story, why don't you just record it for me? It would be fantastic to hear somebody else's. And feed them some ribs while you're doing it. But don't read it. Don't read it as we originally wrote it and delivered it. Just tell your own version of it as you remember it as closely as possible. That would be a lot of fun for me. Anyway, so to quickly move on, the Big Bad Wolf, we also released. Yeah. That was fun. I had a bit of a hint of that fairy tale kind of sense as well. I obviously meant to be invoked by the Big Bad Wolf title, and the huffing and puffing and the three pigs. Yeah. I recall there was actually a part in that story where you had a sentence that you put in there to clarify what was going on, and I thought, "You know what? That's a little bit." Sometimes I get worried. Yeah, sometimes I get worried that people are going to miss a detail, and I was actually largely just trying to provide a hint about the conclusion a little earlier on. But I felt like it was already, there was already this mounting suspicion. It's interesting because that sentence wasn't in the first draft of the script, and it was only after I read it over again that I wanted to be clear about motive that I went back and put it in. So when it came out, it wasn't a problem, it was so easy to snip, I just removed it. Yeah, you were going to put something about seeing a crack pipe in the-- Yeah, it was just a shattering glass of a pipe. But it was kind of obvious that something a little bit more shady was going on in that check. Yeah, fair enough. Oh, I think we're about to be serenaded. The last-- these-- both those stories were items that sat in my notebook for the longest time. Or I should say my note file, because I have two files I maintain on my phones with one specific thread notes, you know, if I have an idea that's really just a Ruby idea, I'll put it under her heading, or I have the other one which is a general junk drawer. Junk drawer. Yeah. A general junk drawer. Yeah, where I keep my junk. The other one is a general junk drawer where I just keep ideas for all of them. I can pull them all again out of that. I can pull a coffin out of that, or I can just pull a chiller. So it was fun to finally clear those out. We got this-- oh, yeah, we're being played out. That's nice. Okay, well, I guess in that case we should say goodbye. Thanks, Jim, for posting wiki.flashpup.com and flashpup.com. Thanks, Jim. Thank you, Jim, the Jesus of our flashpup. You can follow us on Twitter as SkinnerCo. You can follow us individually as Darity Skinner the Jessica Mayo or a Pope in Acts with a zero. That's me. Enjoy the show. Tell a friend. Really enjoy the show. We've got a donate button on the site. Few of comments questions are terribly confused by this music. You can find us at flashpup.com or email us text or mp3stacommas@flashpup.com. Oh, you're magic. The entire run of flashpup can be found at flashpup.com or via the search bar and iTunes. Flashcast is released under the creative commons attribution on commercial three-point out on boarded licenses. [music] (soft music)